Vice President Cheney gave a wonderful eulogy today for President Ford that you need to watch.  It’s 10 minutes long but worth your time:

Gerald Ford became President at a terrible time in our country’s history and served admirably.  He did what was necessary, at great personal and professional cost, to heal this nation and did it without hesitation.

After he left office he left the spotlight for good, as any President should.  His successor, who served this country terribly and caused so much grief and pain that lasts to this day, went down to a defeat that ranks as one of the worst of any Presidential elections in 1980.  Ever since then he has embarrassed himself and this country with his idiocy.

Not Gerald Ford tho.  He was a accidental President who did his duty and then went on living his life.  As soldiers do…..you did well President Ford and for that I thank you.

Goodbye President Ford and God Bless.

Tribute video done by Katherine Schindewolf.

On December 28th, for some God-awful reason, someone had the bright idea to repeat the broadcast of this episode of The View. What is it? Ratings week? As if they didn’t have enough controversy hanging around recent comments by Rosie and Joy Behar . Whose bright idea was that? I think they knew it would generate controversy the 2nd time around if it was missed the first time.  Compound that with the childish mudslinging of Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell (the latter needs to learn to keep her piecrusted cakehole shut, so go Donald!).

 

James Brolin puts down Republicans and promotes a 9/11 conspiracy site. Meanwhile, we have Danny Bonaduce, who was a cohost to the male answer to the View a while back, and his family receiving death threats and harrassment, because he chose to call bull-sh** when rudely intruded upon by nobody John Conner. Being married to Barbra Streisand probably doesn’t do much in the way of increasing one’s intelligence; or in one’s capacity to think with logic and reason:

Also discussed on: Dennis Prager Show

Here is the whole video, resolution sucks tho.  You do see him drop but the camera doesnt follow him all the way down.  They do zoom in on him after tho.

Be forewarned that the video shows Saddam hang.  DO NOT press play if you don’t want to see it.

Enough warning?

Ok, lets get on with it:

UPDATE 12-31-06 1020hrs PST

Here is a report of what was said in the chamber:

By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq’s savior, not its tyrant and scourge.

"He said we are going to heaven and our enemies will rot in hell and he also called for forgiveness and love among Iraqis but also stressed that the Iraqis should fight the Americans and the Persians," Munir Haddad, an appeals court judge who witnessed the hanging, told the British Broadcasting Corp.

Another witness, national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told The New York Times that one of the guards shouted at Saddam: "You have destroyed us. You have killed us. You have made us live in destitution."

"I have saved you from destitution and misery and destroyed your enemies, the Persian and Americans," Saddam responded, al-Rubaie told the Times.

"God damn you," the guard said.

"God damn you," responded Saddam.

New video, first broadcast by Al-Jazeera satellite television early Sunday, had sound of someone in the group praising the founder of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was executed in 1980 along with his sister by Saddam.

Saddam appeared to smile at those taunting him from below the gallows. He said they were not showing manhood.

Then Saddam began reciting the "Shahada," a Muslim prayer that says there is no god but God and Muhammad is his messenger, according to an unabridged copy of the same tape, apparently shot with a camera phone and posted on a Web site. Saddam made it to midway through his second recitation of the verse. His last word was Muhammad.

The floor dropped out of the gallows.

"The tyrant has fallen," someone in the group of onlookers shouted. The video showed a close-up of Saddam’s face as he swung from the rope.

Then came another voice: "Let him swing for three minutes."

All in all a execution that was much too swift for a evil man such as Saddam.  It should have been a long and painful process but alas, not much to be done about it now.  The Iraqi’s handled it well I thought.  There was some definite back and forth between the audience and Saddam which should not have been allowed but overall it went quick and was done professionally.

Another day, another case of the MSM missing a good story coming from Iraq:

Several Iraqi children, playing outside a gate near FOB Marez, noticed a suspicious device Dec. 22 and alerted a nearby patrol from 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment.
 
Upon investigating, Soldiers from 2-7 Cav. determined it was an improvised explosive device and called for the explosive ordinance disposal team, who arrived on the scene and destroyed the device.

The children who pointed out the device received gifts from the 2-7 Scouts that same day, and were further rewarded the next day when 4th Brigade Combat Team Civil Affairs Soldiers visited them with more toys, candy, and soccer balls.  

During conversations with the children, Coalition interpreters applauded the children’s courage, and stressed that if they find any more potential IEDs, that they should stay away from them, and notify Coalition Forces or Iraqi Army Forces manning the checkpoints outside the gate.

Which also gives me an excuse to put up one of my favorite videos:

Play the Online Saddam Hussein Hangman Game:

Or even more fun, click here.

News that Saddam may be swinging by a rope within a few hours:

Saddam Hussein has been transferred from U.S. custody, his lawyers said, and an Iraqi judge authorized to attend the former dictator’s hanging said he would be executed no later than Saturday.

The physical hand-over of Saddam to Iraqi authorities was believed to be one of the last steps before he was to be hanged, although the lawyers’ statement did not specifically say Saddam was in Iraqi hands.

"A few minutes ago we received correspondence from the Americans saying that President Saddam Hussein is no longer under the control of U.S. forces," according to the statement faxed to The Associated Press.

"Saddam will be executed today or tomorrow," said Munir Haddad, a judge on the appeals court that upheld Saddam’s death sentence. "All the measures have been done."

Haddad is authorized to attend the execution on behalf of the judiciary.

"I am ready to attend and there is no reason for delays," Haddad said.

As I write this it’s about 10:00am on the West Coast which is about 9:00pm in Baghdad.  Saturday is in a few hours.  Rumors are that he will be hung late morning in Iraq which would put it within 12-15 hours from now.  Hopefully we will all hear news that this evil man is dead very very soon. 

Meanwhile the job of the hangman is a very coveted position it seems:

One of the most coveted jobs in Iraq does not yet exist: the executioner for Saddam Hussein. The death sentence against Saddam is still under review by an appeals court, but hundreds of people have already started lobbying the prime minister’s office for the position.

They have sent messages through Cabinet officials and their assistants, and by way of government guards and clerical workers. One candidate, an Iraqi Shiite living in London whose brother was killed by Saddam, telephoned an aide to the prime minister to say he was prepared to drop everything and fly to Baghdad to execute the former ruler. It would be an honor, he said, according to the aide.

"One of the hardest tasks will be to determine who gets to be the hangman because so many people want revenge for the loss of their loved ones," said Basam Ridha, an adviser to Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki.

And we all know who will be watching the hanging with sadness:

Jules Crittenden and I would love for those who thrilled that a murderous thug is dead to join us in a toast of your favorite shot drink when the news come out.  I am choosing Patron tequila.

Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you living outside of the Southern California area you may not have heard about the two Long Beach police officers who were shot last week during a traffic stop:

The officers, Abe Yap, 37, a nine-year veteran, and Roy Wade Jr., 39, who started on the force three weeks before the shooting, were in critical but stable condition at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, Gomez said.

"Their condition remains the same," Gomez said.

The two were shot through the front windshield of their patrol car Friday afternoon on Long Beach Boulevard at Sixth Street after stopping a white Nissan Pathfinder for running a red light.

Gallegos jumped out of the vehicle and opened fire, police allege.

Wade suffered four gunshot wounds to his chest and neck area above his bullet-proof vest and Yap was shot once, with the bullet entering his lip line and exiting his cheek, police said. Wade was the more seriously injured of the two.

The Pathfinder was found Friday evening parked at 250 Elm Ave., a few blocks away, police said.

Now some good news to report.  Both officers are in stable condition and the suspect, Oscar Gabriel Gallegos:

is now dead:

Surrounded by cops, his body riddled with bullets, Oscar Gabriel Gallegos clutched his .40-caliber Glock and prepared for what he surely knew would be the last seconds of his life.

With a laser sight attached to his semi-automatic gun and two ammunition clips in his pocket, Gallegos wasn’t going without a fight.

Within a minute, he’d be dead, shot 15 times in the parking lot of a strip mall on a busy Santa Ana street, but not before unleashing a hail of gunfire on police for the third time in a week.

"He wasn’t going to give up," said Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters on Thursday. "He was either gonna kill them or be killed, and fortunately, he was the one who was killed."

So ended the manhunt for a 33-year-old ex-convict suspected of shooting and seriously injuring two Long Beach police officers Dec. 22 during a traffic stop near downtown, then shooting again at police moments later as they raced to the aid of their injured colleagues.

Investigators received the break they needed Wednesday when Gallegos was tracked to Santa Ana, where he had apparently been laying low since the shooting in Long Beach.

Acting on information provided by an informant, undercover Long Beach officers traced Gallegos to the Santa Ana strip mall shortly before 5 p.m., where they watched from a distance as he stopped at El Taco Vaquero, a small restaurant in the 200 block of East Warner Avenue.

Gallegos placed an order for two burritos before making his way toward a small market a few doors away, said El Taco Vaquero owner Griselda Padilla.

Padilla also said Gallegos visited the restaurant several times before Wednesday because he had relatives who lived one street away.

As Gallegos was preoccupied, detectives contacted Santa Ana police, who dispatched a team of three elite SWAT officers to make the arrest.

As they prepared to confront him, a small team of Santa Ana officers checked their weapons and slipped into protective gear. They hoped the manhunt would end peacefully and Gallegos would surrender, Walters said.

It didn’t happen that way.

At 5:10 p.m., as Santa Ana police swooped into the parking lot in a marked car, Gallegos immediately opened fire, hitting their car with several rounds as officers bailed out, Walters said.

A few doors away at Stacy’s Fashion, owner Angelica Carillo said she was on the telephone when she saw Gallegos walk past her store before hearing a heated argument and sharp bursts of gunfire. She dove for the ground, she said through an interpreter.

El Taco Vaquero’s employees either ducked or ran toward the back of the kitchen, Padilla said, while four doors away, two employees and a customer at a hair salon ran to a back room.

The first volley narrowly missed police, one bullet piercing a door just inches from where an officer sat.

After ducking shots, police took refuge behind an unoccupied white van in the lot, where they positioned themselves for the remainder of the ensuing gunbattle.

Police fired from three directions, hitting Gallegos several times. But still he wouldn’t go down.

In the brief ordeal, the man Long Beach Police Chief Anthony Batts described as "evil," appeared hell-bent on maiming or killing a cop.

"Even after he was wounded and went down, he was on his hands and knees still shooting," Walters said.

It would take several more shots before Gallegos was stopped.

When Carillo peeked over her store counter, she said she saw Gallegos’ inert body on the ground, a bullet hole in the back of his head.

And the kicker?  He was an illegal immigrant who had been deported THREE times in the past:

Gallegos, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, was deported at least three times, the last one occurring in 1996, according to immigration officials.

Described by police as a "known local thug," his criminal record includes arrests and convictions for a firearms violation, selling or transporting narcotics, among others.

He was last deported in 1996 but since then has been arrested on weapons and drug charges.  Our immigration laws at work folks…..ain’t it great!

Just giving the fans of the Say Anything blog (which I guest post on) a heads up that the reason the site is down is because Rob had to change servers rather quickly.  It snuck up on him so he didn’t have a chance to warn anyone.  It should be back up as soon as the DNS switches over.

Riehl World View does an excellent job in his latest post of tearing apart another AP story.  The title of the AP article:

Many soldiers say troop surge a bad idea

But Dan Riehl finds that the article title is a bald faced lie.  Here is the beginning paragraph of the article:

Many of the American soldiers trying to quell sectarian killings in Baghdad don’t appear to be looking for reinforcements. They say the temporary surge in troop levels some people are calling for is a bad idea.

The Word "many" from the Websters Dictionary:

consisting of or amounting to a large but indefinite number

So in effect the AP is stating that a large amount of troops do not agree with a troop surge, but when you look at the article we find that a total of three soldiers don’t agree with the troop surge.  Those being Sgt. Josh Keim, Capt. Matt James, and Sgt. Justin Thompson.

While 1st Lt. Sean McCaffrey, Pfc. Richard Grieco, Staff Sgt. Anthony Handly, and Staff Sgt. Lee Knapp believe a surge will do some good.

3 against a troop surge, 4 for a troop surge.

Sound like "many"?

Dan Riehl:

And they wonder why we don’t trust the AP, or E&P. Headlined as it is, this story is a farce.

Just another day in the world of the Asshat Propaganda machine.

Scott at Powerline wrote a long piece last June which provided a ton of evidence that seemed to prove that Yasser Arafat was involved in the murder of two United States diplomats in 1973:

On March 1, 1973, a gang of eight operatives of the Black September Organization stormed a party at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum. The party had been held in honor of the imminent departure of Curtis Moore, the American charge d’affaires at the United States Embassy in Khartoum. The Black September gang took Moore and two others hostage — Cleo Noel Jr., the United States ambassador to Sudan, and Guy Eid, the Belgian embassy’s charge d’affaires. (Two other diplomats taken by the Black September operatives were released.)

The Black September gang demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy; the release of a Black September leader held in Jordan; and the release of several members of the Baader-Meinhof gang held in Germany. On March 2, President Nixon and representatives of the other two governments announced that they would not negotiate with terrorists for the release of the diplomats. That evening the Black September operatives marched Noel, Moore and Eid to the embassy basement and brutally murdered them.

The operation was given the code name "Cold River." Arafat himself gave the order that resulted in the assassination of Noel and Moore. From beginning to end the operation leading to the assassination of Noel and Moore was an Arafat/Fatah operation. While working on the 2002 column, I sought out a State Department spokesman to ask him if the department had undertaken any efforts to bring Arafat to justice for the murders of Noel and Moore. I sent an e-mail message with a draft of my column to State Department Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs deputy director of press affairs Gregory Sullivan.

I wrote Sullivan:

I have been leaving messages with you and other department officers over the past day or two seeking any information about department efforts to bring to justice Yasser Arafat and others involved in the 1973 assassination of former American Ambassador to Sudan…Cleo Noel and his charge d’affaires, George Curtis Moore. Attached is the op-ed piece I have written on the subject, including criticism of the Department for its apparent inaction…regarding its own former officers. If my assertions regarding the Department’s inaction are wrong, I would like to rewrite the piece to make it accurate. I wonder if you would be willing to take a moment to review the piece and provide me with any information on behalf of the department if I am mistaken.

In response Sulllivan wrote:

I can’t say I’m impressed with your research or argumentation. You’re obviously writing a piece designed to elicit a certain reaction rather than one based on factual accounts or actual comments made by the U.S. government. I really don’t have the time to do the research for you, but I do find myself compelled to point out…Evidence clearly points to the terrorist group Black September as having committed the assassinations of Amb. Noel and George Moore, and though Black September was a part of the Fatah movement, the linkage between Arafat and this group has never been established.

Following the publication of my piece, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request for State Department cables and reports on the assassination of Ambassador Noel. A year later -– in July 2003 — I received copies of 27 previously classified cables, all dating to 1973. The cables directly contradicted the Department’s assertion that Arafat’s connection to Black September and to the assassinations was ever in doubt.

A State Department employee dismissed Scott’s research and claims as not based in fact. 

Cough: (.PDF file from State Department via It Shines For All)

The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yassir Arafat, Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the head of Fatah. Fatah representatives based in Khartoum participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian embassy.

Initially, the main objective of the attack appeared to be to secure the release of the Fatah/BSO [Black September Organization] leader Muhammed Awadh (Abu Da’ud) from Jordanian captivity. Information acquired subsequently reveals that the Fatah/BSO leaders did not expect Awadh to be freed, and indicates that one of the primary goals of the operation was to strike at the United States because of its efforts to achieve a Middle East peace settlement which many Arabs believe would be inimical to Palestinian interests.

Powerline today:

The PLO had given the name "Cold River" to the operation and Arafat received a coded message confirming the assassinations by reference to "Cold River."

So for three decades our State Department has known all along that Arafat had a major hand in killing OUR diplomats but they still dealt with him as a legitimate representative of the Palestinians. 

These diplomats worked for the State Department for gods sake.  They ignored it and in so doing gave Arafat much more power then ever should have.  He should of been captured or killed for his role in the deaths of our citizens….but that never happened.

Instead he won a friggin Nobel Peace prize…..unbelievable!

Pictures from Doug Ross.

Other’s Blogging:

• A Blog For All
• Blue Crab Boulevard
• Little Green Footballs
• Bizzyblog
• Newsbusters
• Captain’s Quarters

Milblogger J.R. Salzman who blogs at Lumberjack In A Desert has been injured in Iraq.  His right arm has been amputed below the elbow and one of his fingers on his left hand is gone: (h/t Blackfive)

it is hard for me to tell you all this but i was hurt by an ied here. my right arm has been amputated below the elbow, my left has four working fingers. my legs are fine so l can still logroll! i am on my way to the hospital in germany, then back to the states for more care. i am in high spirits. i am going to be ok, but i will have a long road to recovery. please remember me in your prayers, as well as those who were injured with me. i will let you know more as time passes.

~ J.R. SALZMAN

The post is dated December 21st so he should be in Germany by now.  Keep him in you prayers.

Can Cindy Sheehan get anymore nuttier? (tip from Patrick Dollard)

Gerald Ford, our 38th and first ever un-elected President is dead.

[...]Usually, burying a 93 year old loved one is sorrowful but, I believe his pardon of Richard Nixon is one of the factors that have led to the untimely deaths of over 3000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East.

What’s her insane reasoning for this?

but since Nixon got away with his blatant crimes and every President since Nixon has skated away from office after having committed overt and covert crimes, we have on our hands, here, a situation that I am forced now to call: "Bloody George."

Because Nixon was pardoned this caused a chain effect of lawless Presidents that ultimately led to George Bush taking the war to the terrorists and taking down a tyrant who should of been taken down long before.

That’s it in a nutshell.

Blame Bush!  Blame Ford!  They secretly sat around the fireplace smoking pipes as they hatched a plan that 30 years later would ensure the victory of someone who would invade Iraq.

Man o’ man is this lady nuts or what?

Lot of interesting stuff going on in regards to Iraq right now.  First the 82nd Airborne is enroute to Iraq:

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has signed orders that will send the 82nd Airborne Division’s 2nd Brigade to Kuwait shortly after the new year, senior defense officials said Tuesday.

The decision to send the unit was first reported earlier this month. The soldiers, who are based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are expected to be deployed to Iraq early next year, and the move could be part of a short-term surge of troops to the battlefront to quell the ongoing violence.

The 82nd Airborne unit — which would include as many as 3,300 soldiers — will replace the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which had served as the reserve force based in Kuwait but has been deployed to Iraq.

Then Jules Crittenden received some interesting information from John Pike at GlobalSecurity:

When I spoke to John Pike at GlobalSecurity.org about Saddam’s long drop/short rope situation yesterday, he was more interested in reports of an early Gulfward departure of the Carrier Strike Group Stennis, to allow greater crossover time with CSG Eisenhower, creating a two-deck Carrier Task Force with greater strike capability. It is no secret that the U.S. and Royal navies are building up forces in the region. The midterm elections are done, Pike noted, and the 2008 elections are as far away as they are going to be. Politically, it is probably the best time to strike Iranian WMD sites and other targets, if that is what you want to do.

So we have a new brigade going into Iraq along with another carrier group while at the same time the Iraqi and coalition forces are taking a much harder stance against the outlaw Shiite faction of Iraq, for example this raid against a senior member of Sadr’s group:

Tension was mounting in the Iraqi city of Najaf after an American soldier killed a senior ally of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr during a raid on his house.

Sadr supporters and local police told AFP Wednesday that US and Iraqi soldiers had stormed the family home of Sahib al-Ameri, the president of a pro-Sadr political foundation in the holy city of Najaf, and shot him dead.

The US military confirmed one of its troops had shot Ameri in an overnight raid by Iraqi forces, backed up by coalition military advisers.

A statement said Ameri was implicated in recent bomb attacks on US and Iraqi forces, and was shot by an adviser after he fled to the roof of his house and aimed an assault rifle at an Iraqi soldier.

"The coalition soldier observed the man’s hostile intent against the Iraqi soldier and shot the man, neutralising the threat and resulting in his death," US headquarters said in the statement.

And the arrest of the Iranians last week.  Which has appeared to have bourne much fruit:

The American military said Tuesday that it had credible evidence linking Iranians and their Iraqi associates, detained here in raids last week, to criminal activities, including attacks against American forces. Evidence also emerged that some detainees had been involved in shipments of weapons to illegal armed groups in Iraq.

In its first official confirmation of last week’s raids, the military said it had confiscated maps, videos, photographs and documents in one of the raids on a site in Baghdad. The military confirmed the arrests of five Iranians, and said three of them had been released.

The Bush administration has described the two Iranians still being held Tuesday night as senior military officials. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell IV, the chief spokesman for the American command, said the military, in the raid, had “gathered specific intelligence from highly credible sources that linked individuals and locations with criminal activities against Iraqi civilians, security forces and coalition force personnel.”

General Caldwell made his remarks by e-mail in response to a query about the raids, first reported Monday in The New York Times. “Some of that specific intelligence,” he said via e-mail, “dealt explicitly with force-protection issues, including attacks on MNF-I forces.”

Remember the Iranians were arrested in the compound of a very powerful Shiite leader in Iraq, Mr. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. 

Add all of this up and it appears that a surge is indeed in the works, along with a much tougher stance against Iran’s meddling in Iraq.

Either way you look at it, good news all around.

Other’s Blogging:

• Riehl World View

Is anyone really surprised by this?

The FBI is missing nearly a quarter of its files relating to investigations of recent leaks of classified information, according to a court filing the bureau made last week.

In response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the FBI said it identified 94 leak investigations since 2001, but that the investigative files in 22 of those cases "are missing" and cannot be located. "There is no physical slip of paper on the shelf which indicates that the file has been charged out to a particular FBI employee, so therefore there is no way of knowing where the file may actually be," an official in the bureau’s records division, Peggy Bellando, wrote in a December 22 declaration.

"That’s an amazing number," an academic who has studied the FBI’s record-keeping procedures, Athan Theoharis of Marquette University, said in an interview yesterday. "These are very sensitive investigations. … They could be called to account for whether they are monitoring reporters. These are records that should be handled very well."

Sandy’s stuffing classified documents down his pants and hiding them under trailers while all of a sudden files about classified leaks turn up missing.

Just another day in a world brought to you by the Democrats.

But even though the article is about missing files pertaining to classified leaks (most often involving leaks that attempt to damage the Republicans) the article goes on to interview a professor who see’s the evil Government at work:

Mr. Theoharis, a professor emeritus of history, said that in the 1960s the FBI used procedures known as "do not file" and "summary memoranda" to avoid placing files in the central records system. As a result, he said, the bureau would tell judges or members of Congress that searches turned up no records, when files actually existed in a secondary system.

"There’s no reason to think they’re not doing the same thing today," Mr. Theoharis said. "I don’t want to sound conspiratorial but I don’t think one can discount this."

How do you explain then that almost every single leak was about the Bush administration?  The only one in recent history that the left could even call their own would be the Plame case, but we already know who leaked that information out in the case….cough Joe Wilson cough.