Comrade Commissar's covering some unexplained potential anomalies in the background of the late Mr. Nicholas Berg. I haven't a clue as to the truth of any of it, but gee, that's strange.

Rumors swirling range from contacts with an acquaintance of Zacarias Moussaoui to strange goings-on once he was actually Over There.

Read the whole thing and try to figure out just what the hey is going on here. This article doesn't help clarify things at all. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Everyone who's ever seen the 1970 George C. Scott movie Patton has probably memorized at least one or two lines of dialogue from the opening sequence. Of course, being 1970, the real "Patton speech" couldn't be put on film. I doubt Franklin J. Schaffner would even have tried. (Today, it'd be the centerpiece of the film; it's better than anything Quentin Tarantino's ever come up with.)

Anyways, the guys at Boots and Sabers have reproduced the speech after having a link to it come up in the comments. I won't copy it here, 'cause it really exceeds the standards of content, but I will link it and send traffic their way. Laugh out loud and get the Evil Calvin Grin as you read it.

Click here to read.

UPDATE: Oops, I didn't correctly mention the source of the speech. I also forgot to mention that the real General Patton wouldn't have delivered that speech in a low-pitched growl. From recordings made of the man during the war, he had a rather high-pitched voice, and sounded kind of like an angry old uncle when he talked. Admittedly, that might be a limitation of the technological medium at the time; I still can't figure out why Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart (whatta gal!) sound alike on old recordings.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 01:01 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I continue to be disgusted by the recent performance of the American and Islamist establishments lately.

On the one hand, we are wasting time and focus wringing our hands about this worthless Abu Ghraib story. Message, Mr. President: I DON'T CARE. So some dirtbag enemy "soldiers" got pushed around a bit in a jail. Big deal. I didn't see any heads being sawed off. (The thing with the dog may be a bit much, however.) Message to the Congress as a whole: DROP IT. I wish Rumsfeld had gone to the Hill and said, "I take full responsibility because I ordered these activities. It was necessary to demonstrate to Islamist forces that to oppose the United States is to not only invite death but to guarantee humiliation, torture, and other things. Message: We be bad."

On the other hand, I am outraged at the grisly execution of Nicholas Berg by Islamist forces. Al-Qaeda continues to march forward on the Benjamin Martin Scenario, and their actions may eventually cause a grievous problem for all of Islam. Which way do you turn to pray when Mecca's been reduced to a smoldering hole?

I am a Jacksonian. That means that I don't favor pulling punches (except the NBC punch) in wartime, and I don't tolerate the abuse of our prisoners. The enemy will be relentlessly pursued and annihilated whenever possible. We are obviously not doing this, because Moqtada al-Sadr still draws breath, and the enemy does not fear us. That needs to change. The anguished wails and ululations of Islamic women should ring out in the night as they find their Islamist husbands dead by our hand. America can mean great friendship and cooperation. It should also stand for a fearsome enemy that demands respect or delivers annihilation.

I wholeheartedly reject any suggestion that the Abu Ghraib issue or further ruthless retaliation against the enemy somehow establishes moral equivalence between us and them. We would have laid the mantle of civilization down in order to defend it and to force an end to hostilities. The Islamists, on the other hand, have never been capable of productive civilization; the historically impressive gains of Islamic civilization are beyond their grasp.

The Jacksonian code as spelled out by Mead properly analyzes Abu Ghraib in my opinion. The Islamists, having executed people who could be considered their prisoners, (Daniel Pearl, the four military contractors from Blackwater, and now Nicholas Berg) have invited Mead's dirty war, and I would have no major compunction against watching Iraqi/Islamist POWs be gunned down. (Public relations issues would be the only thing I'd really worry about.)

Andrew Jackson's mindset would probably say something like this: Escalate the violence against our enemies until they collapse. Destroy anything necessary to bring about the end of the war and the defeat of the Islamists. Any and all casualties suffered by their side in pursuit of this goal are acceptable; there is no subsitute for victory.

I am only one man, and my opinion is unrespectable in the halls of Washington. Yet, it may be that there is a rising tide amongst the Jacksonians of this country. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 12:38 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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One of the first things that caught my eye about Jen Martinez's A Collection of Thoughts was a piece she wrote on the Douglas AC-47. Any gal who wrote about those sorts of things is readily worth reading.

At any rate, Miss Martinez has posted something on my favorite strategic bomber:

Ode to the Old B-52

O'Great Bird that flys so high,
And looks so graceful in the sky,
Who did its mission great or small,
Who made SAC's men look so very tall.

She came to this land so far away,
And for eight years she would stay,
For most of these years she would fight,
While Charlie cringed in desperate fright.

The men would call her a hulk of rust,
And look at her in great disgust,
She would set there with no fear,
For she knew she had no peer.

To many she was known as the Old Black BUFF,
All her life she was treated rough,
The men who worked on this bird of prey.
Would never know an eight hour day.

Although they called her many names,
Old B-52 remained the same,
Although not a plane of beauty,
She knew how to do her duty.

For many years, TAC had their show,
Now it was time for SAC to have a go,
So it was in 72,
That we launched the B-52.

She was equal to the task,
And North Vietnam felt her vengeful blast,
Their streets in ruins, their buildings alight,
To the peace tables they went, to make things right.

Now it was in 75,
That Old B-52 would homeward fly,
Her work well done, she had no shame,
The decisions were not her's to blame.

Charlie rose and gave a cheer,
For the Old B-52 was leaving here.
But as you know and I do too,
This is not the end of Old B-52.

For she's always there, just one flight away,
To come again and save the day.

---

Miss Martinez notes that this was written by a guy who was at U Tapao in Thailand, doing maintenance on these monsters. The events he references are, of course, Operation LINEBACKER II, authorized by none other than President Richard Nixon. Me, I've only seen a B-52 in flight once, and it was during the Cold War. I was at a school which is more or less on a USAF low-level training run, and the building I was in started rumbling. I thought I heard engines, so I ran outside and looked up. Suspended in the sky, low and slow, was this thing, instantly recognizable as a Stratofortress. It was shaking the ground and thundering its way under a radar site reportedly up on a mountain in the area. Hear that, Mr. Anderson? It is the sound of the Stratofortress; it is the sound of your freedom. Goodbye, Soviet Union. Yes, By Dawn's Early Light is one of my favorite movies. Too bad it's not on DVD.

Jen's fondness for the Buff (headed for 50 years of service, baby!) is one reason I enjoy reading her site. Go and read this patriotic Patton-loving, fire-breathing, veteran-backing gal's website.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 10:22 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I just heard on the radio that "an Arabic website" has posted video of an American being beheaded as revenge for this prison nonsense. (And no, I don't care that a few Iraqis got "treated like women" or "hoo-mill-e-a-ted".)

A brief message to the people responsible: You have now joined the ranks of the Imperial Japanese Army in thinking it's cool to behead our men. Open your history books (assuming that you have them and that you can read, two very big assumptions) and turn to the events of August, 1945. Even as the Japanese war machine was grinding to an eventual halt, they lost two cities in the world's first atomic strikes. As Walter Russell Mead points out, we firebombed Tokyo and others to the ground because it was thought that we were facing a bestial enemy.

You people don't even have the ancient traditions of Japan and its culture to offer as reasons to spare your worthless lives.

The Country Pundit's solution? Escalate the violence. Our soldiers and our civilians over there will know that they face a medieval execution if they surrender, and will fight with further aggression, knowing that there is no surrender to the likes of Islamists. I suggest we begin by inflicting pain on these people. There will be collateral damage. That's fine. I've been losing patience with these people (and the apparent unwillingness of the American people to fight dirty) for quite some time, and I want a permanent solution to this issue.

I am not disgusted by some photographs of naked Iraqis who have been captured in battle against our forces. I don't care that one of them wore a leash and was photographed with a woman holding it. I do not perceive the events at Abu Ghraib as some sort of "stain" on our honor.

I do, however, think that it is imperative that we avenge the execution of our people. The International Committee for the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and the European human rights industry be darned, the beheading of Americans can not be tolerated. Retaliation can begin with the people at Abu Ghraib.

The enemy must fear us and should never see an American President "apologizing" for American forces in pursuit of operational intelligence.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 03:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Pulled from the Blogs for Bush blogroll (available on the right; scroll down some if necessary) is Frizzen Sparks. I visited there today, and I found this:

NAJAF, Iraq — One of his friends was dead, 12 others lay wounded and the four soldiers still left standing were surrounded and out of ammunition. So Salvadoran Cpl. Samuel Toloza said a prayer, whipped out his knife and charged the Iraqi gunmen.

In one of the only known instances of hand-to-hand combat in the Iraq conflict, Cpl. Toloza stabbed several attackers swarming around a comrade. The stunned assailants backed away momentarily, just as a relief column came to the unit's rescue.

"We never considered surrender. I was trained to fight until the end," said the 25-year-old corporal, one of 380 soldiers from El Salvador whose heroism is being cited just as other members of the multinational force in Iraq are facing criticism.

Additional research indicates that Corporal Toloza used a switchblade knife in this little dustup. I know precious little about knives, so you decide:

A prayer, a blade, and indomitable spirit. Wow. This guy's a beast, and I'm glad that his bold move was rewarded with survival for him and his comrade. The extended entry holds the other photograph of Corporal Toloza from the AP, shot in a square of some sort that is dedicated to the memory of another fallen Salvadoran, Natividad Mendez. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 01:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I decided to take a look at the NMAM participation site after seeing the address in Jen Martinez's entry on the subject. They've got a "MEDIA-NEWSPAPERS, RADIO, TV" list of things to do, which I've partially reproduced in the extended entry. I've removed things that bloggers can't do, like "project crawls, scrolling, and banners on screen", since none of us have a TV station. more...

Posted by: Country Pundit at 09:28 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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