What the hell were they thinking?
Newsweek is now admitting that the may have “got the story wrong” about the Koran being flushed down the toilet to traumatize the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

“We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst”

Hasn’t the unbiased press learned ANYTHING in the last 12 months??? From bogus fitness reports on the President to Reports pretending to being “at the front” doesn’t anyone check their sources anymore?

I mean, I know that the left benefits from making Iraq look bad but, honestly, do you have to make stuff up?

Geeeshhhh

Back to the Trenches

Breathing a sigh of relief, I see that the effort to ban suggestive cheerleading routines in Texas has stalled. Apparently the Texas Senate Education Committee has more pressing business. Go figure.

For more commentary on the topic, please click here.

Believe.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader just finished Victor Davis Hanson’s latest on NRO. You really need to read it.

Victor Davis Hanson on World War II Revisionism on National Review Online

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees that Pope Benedict XVI has put John Paul II on the fast track to sainthood.

Whew! That is quick. Without trying to be disrepectful… The body is hardly cold in the ground.

Anyhow… There needs to be a miracle attributed to prayer for John Paul’s intercession before he can be beatified. Generally the miracle needed is one of a medical condition that is healed without doctors being able to explain the cure.

Your Maximum Leader will begin praying for the Smallholder to be less squishy and more conservative. If that miracle occurs, he will start working on the Minister of Propaganda…

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader re-upped yesterday. Re-upped what you might ask? Re-upped his membership in the NRA. He’s now good for another 5 years. One of these days he’ll go and become a Life Member. But now is not the time.

Yes. Your Maximum Leader is a very proud NRA member. Indeed, your Maximum Leader believes that the NRA is one of just a handful of organizations that really care about the protection and expansion of individual liberty. It is a fine organization.

He celebrated this glorious event by going out to the range and blowing through a box of 9mm ammo. 9mm what you might ask? Well, your Maximum Leader owns a little 9mm Makarov pistol. Not a Chinese one. (Heaven forfend!) Not a Russian one either. (Although a Russian one would have been okay.) No. His is an East German model. Your Maximum Leader would be happy to photograph is pistol, but he forgot. So if you need some sort of visual aid, here you go.

Your Maximum Leader loves that little underpowered pistol. It is the only semi-automatic pistol he owns. It is likely going to be one of two semi-automatic pistols he owns. (The other being a nice Colt 1911 model. Which he will buy. Someday.)

When your Maximum Leader purchased his Makarov, it came in a box with lots of papers. He eventually found someone who read/spoke more than conversational German and discovered that his pistol had actually been issued to an East German Stasi officer. It was issued to him new in 1960-something and remained in his posession until his retirement in 1980-something. So the pistol has a little bit of (tolalitarian oppressive) history to it.

On the whole, your Maximum Leader is a revolver man. He owns a few. He owns a British Webley revolver from WWII. (38 cal - not .455.) He would like to acquire a .455 Webley at some point. He also owned a S&W .357 for a while. But eventually he sold it to a friend. His favourite revolver is his .45 Vaquero. Damn, does your Maximum Leader love that gun. It feels right in his hand. It looks good. It shoots wonderfully. It is easy to care for. It is everything you look for in a handgun.

Alas, the cylinder doesn’t seem to rotate as cleanly as it has for years. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t believe it is due to wear. He’s looked over the gun and can’t see anything wrong with it. So, he is going to pack it up and send it up to the good people at Ruger to take a look at it. Your Maximum Leader, while competent at basic gun care, is not a gunsmith. So he doesn’t care to go screwing around with his guns and possibly do something stupid to mess it up or render it unsafe.

Anyway… The trip to the range was fun. It felt good to shoot up the paper targets and smell a little powder in the air. But the outing did demonstrate to your Maximum Leader that he needs to go to the range more often. He wasn’t as good a shot as he once was. Practice is needed. Perhaps your Maximum Leader will resolve to go to the range regularly. (Since he does it very irregularly now.) It would be a good thing to do.

Carry on.

If you need help recognizing him, this should help (safe for work, I promise).

Believe.

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: Ack! My eyes! They burn?

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader is now paranoid for his oak trees after reading an article on the news wire. Here is the article: Officials Fear Spread of Oak Disease.

Some new people moved in near the Villainschloss and planted some new ornamental trees and bushes. Now he worries that they were carriers of the viral spores that could infect your Maximum Leader’s oaks.

Your Maximum Leader hopes they are able to contain any outbreaks on the East Coast.

Your Maximum Leader still mourns the American Chestnut. He hopes that various projects to breed a blight resistant American Chestnut work out and we can replant forests of Chestnuts.

Carry on.

Go here. I’ll let you folks figure out which one is me.

UPDATE FROM YOUR MAXIMUM LEADER: Ack! My eyes! They BURN!

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader may never look at a box of Cheese Nips the same way again. Why you may ask? Well just click on through to the lastest installment of the The Hatemonger’s Quarterly and you’ll learn why.

And if you aren’t reading the HMQ every day… Well you are missing out.

Carry on.

Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader sees on the news wire that Edward Cox (Richard Nixon’s son-in-law) is planning to take on Hillary Clinton in the New York state Senate race next year.

That could be a fun one.

Your Maximum Leader doesn’t suppose that there is any chance of Howard Dean and the Democratic party endorsing Gloria Mattera. Of course it is possible Dean would throw party support behind Jason T. Becker.

If Dean were really daring he would have the Democrats endorse Antonia Novello.

Carry on.

Its almost as if some folks are hoping that we loose. The Iraqi people have had enough of the insurgency and are helping the Iraqi/American forces by giving us info on where the bad guys actually are. More and more of the “insurgency” is being exported into Iraq from regimes that have no interested in a stable Iraq or a Democratic Middle East.

Are you saying that there were no reasons to go to War in Iraq? OR that you just don’t like the reason that got us into it? Don’t give me the bull shit about their being other dictators /despots who also deserve removal, because when we get to them you will still be bitchin’ about that too.

I would hope that Bush had plans to invade before 9/11 as IRAQ was a FUCK HOLE before, and can only get better. I am just kind of pissed that Bush 1 didn’t have the mandate to do it the first time, and that BC didn’t have the balls to do it OR to nab OBL when he had the chance.

I’ll make this prediction now as I am batting 1000 with predictions on this blog (like when I said J Kerry was going to LOOOOOSE months before the election), we are going to kick al Queada’s ass in Iraq, and develop thriving Democracies in the Middle East within 15 years.

Sure, we don’t know what will happen in 15 years but we also know what hasn’t happened in the last 15 years either. A policy of status quo did not put a man on the moon or topple the Soviet Union. To do great things you have to think boldly and commit yourself to accomplishing what you set out to do, and we have a president that is not afraid to do either.

back to the trenches

When we lose in Iraq, thousands of U.S. servicemen dead and billions wasted, terrorism and anti-Americanism growing thorughout the world, are you going to admit that it was a bad policy and that Bush is to blame, or are neocons just going to blame the failure on the liberals at home who didn’t support the war, just like Vietnam?

We don’t know how the world is going to look in 15 years, or what major events may take place in that time period to influence that outcome. What we do know is this: Bush plotted this war before 9/11, his administration manipulated intelligence, bullied opposing viewpoints and lied to the American people to manufacture a consensus, and they’ve has made economic ‘reform’ in Iraq a priority even over protecting our own troops, much less the actual welfare of the Iraqi people. Whatever the outcome, the legacy is damning. If I believed in Hell, I’d pray to God that there was special place there for Bush, Cheney and the whole lot of tem.

If (or dare I say ‘when’?) we suffer another major attack by terrorists trained and bloodied in Iraq, and if (when?) we wish our military was ready to fight a necessary war somewhere else in the world but can’t because we’re tied down in Iraq, I wonder if the neocons will see the connection.

Probably not. After all, by his own admission, Bush can’t remember a single mistake from his first term.

Believe.

There has obviously been a lot of hand wringing over the invasion of Iraq. Regardless of the reason for going to war, I believe that it was the right thing to do.

As I have said before, I would rather have al Qaeda fighting our professional army in Iraq than attacking our soft targets in the US.

It seems like al Qaeda has taken George Bush’s bait and has chosen to make their Last Stand in Iraq. While we are now fighting a better trained and equipped insurgency, they (al Qaeda) they are losing the battle of “hearts and minds” as they are blowing up scores of innocent Iraqis in their wake.

The Iraqi people (except in the extreme Sunni areas) are finally understanding that al Qaeda/insurgency are not going rebuild power stations and water treatment plants, build new schools or allow free thought and speech.

I have heard mixed reactions from the returning members of the 1^st Infantry Division members here in Germany on their return. It mostly depends on where they were located in Iraq that has determined their outlook. Those in the south and north seem to be optimistic about Iraq, those in the Sunni areas would just as soon deplete our stocks of daisy cutters and MOABs on the Freakin’ Place

WHEN we win in Iraq ( I say when because even the goofy left like Joe Biden admit whe have to win there) its going to be a large serving of Crow for some people.

Democracy is spreading around the world. Even the darkest of places are seeing a glimmer of light. Much like Regan got the lion share of the credit for the collaspe of the Soviet Union, in 15 years time, who will get it for peace and democracy in the Middle East?

Amazing things are happening there now. Some are baby steps, but some are huge strides as well. Saudi Arabia has had elections for some of its councils, Syria is removing troops from Lebanon, Jordan has held historic elections, Kuwait has a directly elected assembly, Egypt is moving towards reforms, Israel is in the process of withdrawal from Gaza and there seems to be a shaky truce that is still holding.

What of substance was done in the Previous Administrations 8 years of influence? That was a boom and bust economic ride where the veneer of ‘we care’ was covering over the building up of “the US is exploiting us” and the creation and plottings of al Qaeda.

EDIT: I am sorry that I forgot that the previous administration was responsible for Somalia and Kosovo. I applaud Bill C for smaking down the Serbian despot dictator (who was not as bad as Saddam and had no WMD). Europe did not have the balls to take him on and left it up to us.

So while some of us may deride the current President as a ‘liar’ and that he is ‘ruining our military’ (what, that huge social welfare system is actually fighting a war?), History is going to be painting a drastically different picture.

Back to the trenches

Bill recoiled from a flash of white flesh through the kitchen window. He didn’t see whatever it was. He put down the dishes and turned off the light to get a better look. Illuminated by starlight, he saw someone in the garden. He put on a coat, got the shotgun, and went to investigate. He pushed through the overgrown plants to get to the center clearing. Sitting on a bench was Ethel. She looked exactly as she did when he’d buried her five years before.

“You don’t prune the roses,” she sighed. “You never were a gardener.”

Ah, I see. Our Maximum Leader’s last post was very educational for me, and I’m sure a good number of other minions would agree. I didn’t understand the historical context of the ongoing argument between him and the Minister of Agriculture. Now I do, and I have a new conclusion:

It’s obvious that the Maximum Leder is afraid of the homosexual attraction he has for Smallholder.

It all makes a lot more sense now. Thank you. I’ll leave you two to sort it out.

Believe.