Jerry’s Blog–Because Wit Happens

From MILITARY.COM:

DOHA, Qatar — U.S. Soldiers have been encouraged to spread the message of their Christian faith among Afghanistan’s predominantly Muslim population, video footage obtained by Al Jazeera appears to show.

Military chaplains stationed in the U.S. air base at Bagram were also filmed with Bibles printed in the country’s main Pashto and Dari languages.

In one recorded sermon, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, the chief of the U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling Soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him”.

“The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down,” he says.

“Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.” [Rest of article]

I am completely disgusted at what our “leaders” authorized over the past 8 years.

I would like to see some prosecutions.

Start with this @$$hole:  Judge Jay Bybee, now of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The recently released Bush Administration Memorandums approving torture are available to read here.

Read them and remember them the next time you’re waving your fists in the air and chanting “Country First!”…

This is great. Your tax dollars at work (I suspect), Kansas City:

If I was a young Somalian, I guess I’d have to think about becoming a Pirate. I would have to give some serious thought to answering the booty call.

Because it appears to me that this particular crime pays.  Quite well.

Ships and people are being held by terrorists, and countries and corporations cheerfully cough up millions per event.

So, of course, pirates are motivated to do it again.  How could you not be?!

I’m not sure what the complete solution is, but it’s not what it has been thus far–negotiating with terrorists.

Now…I’d like to see the current situation resolved with minimal death.   This ship’s captain taken hostage is an American so, of course, he’s worth more than hostages in the past.  Right?  Perhaps he didn’t realize the chance he was taking sailing a ship in “pirate waters”.  Maybe he missed that memo.

Seriously, I hope this has a happy ending–with no ransom money being paid.  Maybe everybody just walks away.

But then, I think we put the world on notice–and our allies join with us–that we will have zero tolerance for further piracy.  It will be a federal crime to pay a ransom.   We take that future ransom money we’re saving and buy some intelligence in the ports and find out who is doing these acts of piracy.  We park the fleet off the coast of Somalia.

And eventually, we kick some pirate ass–take a little of the jolliness off of Roger’s face.

Lives of hostages have already been lost.  More loss of life may occur in order to enforce our zero tolerance.

But we should not negotiate with terrorists (as we shamefully did in Reagan’s day with the Iran/Contra affair).

No more ransoms.  Just dead pirates.

Or am I wrong?  Feel free to comment.

Thank you for your service, sir.

***

From the NY TIMES:

For the first time in 18 years, the Pentagon granted the news media access on Sunday night to cover the arrival of a coffin to Dover Air Force Base from overseas.

The coffin, draped in a flag and bearing the body of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers of Hopewell, Va, was unloaded from a government aircraft by the military honor guard. Sergeant Myers, 30, was killed by an improvised explosive device near Helmand Province in Afghanistan on April 4, according to the Defense Department.

A ban on news coverage of returning war dead, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, was lifted by the Obama administration following a review of the policy by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

In the hours leading up to the transfer of Sergeant Myers’s corpse, Air Force officials received the consent of his family members — per the new policy — to grant members of the news media permission to be on hand….[Rest of article]

In a spirit of ecumenical goodwill, I hereby publish the video below which was released by the Taliban as a warning example to their devoted women and young girls. (That is what is interesting about this story).

I am always impressed by the Muslim fundamentalists’ efforts to join the civilized world–just another 1000 years to go, boys. (No, I’m not talking to you, girls! Cover yourselves, you hussies!):

Update: Better video with more screaming. You’re welcome, Taliban Buddies:

***
Swat Valley: Taliban whip a 17-year-old girl for being in the company of a young man
by Qaiser Felix

Islamabad (AsiaNews) - A group of Taliban pitilessly whips a 17-year-old girl, covered with a burqa, while she screams in pain and begs her tormentors for mercy. This is the content of an amateur video taken with a cell phone and broadcast today by a Pakistani television channel. The punishment was given because the young woman had left her house with a young man who is not her husband.

The incident took place in the Swat Valley. The images, also broadcast by the Indian Times Now and available on YouTube, show a young woman face down on the ground; two men are holding her arms and legs, while a third, wrapped in a turban and with a long beard, repeatedly whips her. “Please stop it,” the girl shrieks. “Either kill me or stop it now.” After 34 lashes, the young woman was led inside a stone building….[Rest of article]