“It really doesn’t matter how President Obama divides the Afghan baby, how he splits the difference between McChrystal and Biden. Because the war has been lost,” Thompson said on his radio show today. “I say this because of one sad and simple fact. The president does not have the will and determination to do what’s necessary to win it. His heart’s not in it, and never has been. The Taliban knows it. Al Qaeda knows it. Our allies know it. And the American people know it.

He’s probably right

Two-thirds of Americans disagree with the Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian court rather than a military court, according to a new national poll.

But six in 10 people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say that the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks should be tried in the United States, as the administration plans to do, rather than at a U.S. facility in another country.

The poll indicates that 64 percent believe Mohammed should be tried in military court, with 34 percent suggesting that he face trial in civilian court. Six in 10 people questioned say Mohammed should be tried stateside, with 37 percent calling for the trial to take place at a U.S. facility in another country.

“The decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in front of a civilian court is universally unpopular – even a majority of Democrats and liberals say that he should be tried by military authorities,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Despite that, most Americans say that he will get a fair trial in the U.S.”

Not sure what Holland’s point is here. Of course he would get a fair trial, but the majority of respondents, in a CNN poll for gods sake, understand that giving this scumbag a civilian trial is ludicrous:

Trying KSM in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda and the hostile nations that will view the U.S. intelligence methods and sources that such a trial will reveal. The proceedings will tie up judges for years on issues best left to the president and Congress.

Whether a jury ultimately convicts KSM and his fellows, or sentences them to death, is beside the point. The treatment of the 9/11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than as an act of war will cripple American efforts to fight terrorism. It is in effect a declaration that this nation is no longer at war.

~~~

Prosecutors will be forced to reveal U.S. intelligence on KSM, the methods and sources for acquiring its information, and his relationships to fellow al Qaeda operatives. The information will enable al Qaeda to drop plans and personnel whose cover is blown. It will enable it to detect our means of intelligence-gathering, and to push forward into areas we know nothing about.

This is not hypothetical, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has explained. During the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (aka the “blind Sheikh”), standard criminal trial rules required the government to turn over to the defendants a list of 200 possible co-conspirators.

In essence, this list was a sketch of American intelligence on al Qaeda. According to Mr. McCarthy, who tried the case, it was delivered to bin Laden in Sudan on a silver platter within days of its production as a court exhibit.

Bin Laden, who was on the list, could immediately see who was compromised. He also could start figuring out how American intelligence had learned its information and anticipate what our future moves were likely to be.

It’s crazy. Simply crazy.

Even more harmful to our national security will be the effect a civilian trial of KSM will have on the future conduct of intelligence officers and military personnel. Will they have to read al Qaeda terrorists their Miranda rights? Will they have to secure the “crime scene” under battlefield conditions? Will they have to take statements from nearby “witnesses”? Will they have to gather evidence and secure its chain of custody for transport all the way back to New York? All of this while intelligence officers and soldiers operate in a war zone, trying to stay alive, and working to complete their mission and get out without casualties.

And the other poll is about ObamaCare. Notice how the AP tries to hide some inconvenient numbers with a article entitled “AP POLL: Tax the rich to pay for health bill”

…what the Associated Press does not even mention in their story is probably the most relevant part:

In general, do you support, oppose or neither support nor oppose the health care reform plans being discussed in Congress? (IF SUPPORT/OPPOSE Is that strongly support/oppose or somewhat support/oppose?

To no surprise that’s opposed by 43-41%. Eleven percent neither support or oppose and 4% “don’t know.”

Also conveniently left out of their story is the response to whether people should be penalized if they do not buy the government-run health care: Sixty-four percent oppose. Why do you suppose that was left out?

Also left out was of the respondents, 37% are unemployed or retired. No wonder they want someone to pick up the tab.

Forty-two percent think they economy will get worse if this scam is shoved down our throats, while 28% think it will improve. Again, this is left out of the story.

Also, over the past five years, 86% of respondents said the care they received from physician or hospital was excellent or good, only 2% said it was poor. This was left out of the AP story. So why do we have to blow up the entire system?

That’s a couple different polls on the two hot button issues of the day which Obama and company should take heed….but won’t. Now granted, the opinions of a thousand people cannot tell us accurately the sentiments of the entire country but when two liberal rags take a poll and the numbers go against the liberal position….the liberals should take notice.

This war is a new kind of war. It is different from all other wars of the past, not only in its methods and weapons but also in its geography. It is warfare in terms of every continent, every island, every sea, every air-lane in the world.

That is the reason why I have asked you to take out and spread before you (the) a map of the whole earth, and to follow with me in the references which I shall make to the world-encircling battle lines of this war. Many questions will, I fear, remain unanswered tonight, but I know you will realize that I cannot cover everything in any one short report to the people. The broad oceans which have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies.

This week President Obama is in Asia. Next week he will be in Europe. He will actually order his plane-not to land, but to fly AROUND his troops in Afghanistan, his troops in the Persian Gulf, his troops in Iraq, and around Iran where he could land and give diplomacy one last serious chance before Israel attacks and casts the Arab world into war (from the Mediterranean Sea to the Bay of Bengal). Nope, Obama will fly around all those places-literally dodging his responsibility as a wartime commander and as a peace-seeking statesman. When did Presidents lose their courage? Maybe he needs to read up on his Democratic Party idol. I found it interesting.

MY FELLOW AMERICANS:
Washington’s Birthday is a most appropriate occasion for us to talk with each other about things as they are today and things as we know they shall be in the future. For eight years, General Washington and his Continental Army were faced continually with formidable odds and recurring defeats. Supplies and equipment were lacking. In a sense, every winter was a Valley Forge. Throughout the thirteen states there existed fifth columnists — and selfish men, jealous men, fearful men, who proclaimed that Washington’s cause was hopeless, and that he should ask for a negotiated peace.

Washington’s conduct in those hard times has provided the model for all Americans ever since — a model of moral stamina. He held to his course, as it had been charted in the Declaration of Independence. He and the brave men who served with him knew that no man’s life or fortune was secure without freedom and free institutions.

The present great struggle has taught us increasingly that freedom of person and security of property anywhere in the world depend upon the security of the rights and obligations of liberty and justice everywhere in the world.

This war is a new kind of war. It is different from all other wars of the past, not only in its methods and weapons but also in its geography. It is warfare in terms of every continent, every island, every sea, every air-lane in the world.

That is the reason why I have asked you to take out and spread before you (the) a map of the whole earth, and to follow with me in the references which I shall make to the world-encircling battle lines of this war. Many questions will, I fear, remain unanswered tonight, but I know you will realize that I cannot cover everything in any one short report to the people. The broad oceans which have been heralded in the past as our protection from attack have become endless battlefields on which we are constantly being challenged by our enemies.

We must all understand and face the hard fact that our job now is to fight at distances which extend all the way around the globe.

We fight at these vast distances because that is where our enemies are. Until our flow of supplies gives us clear superiority we must keep on striking our enemies wherever and whenever we can meet them, even if, for a while, we have to yield ground. Actually, though, we are taking a heavy toll of the enemy every day that goes by.

We must fight at these vast distances to protect our supply lines and our lines of communication with our allies — protect these lines from the enemies who are bending every ounce of their strength, striving against time, to cut them. The object of the Nazis and the Japanese is to of course separate the United States, Britain, China and Russia, and to isolate them one from another, so that each will be surrounded and cut off from sources of supplies and reinforcements. It is the old familiar Axis policy of “divide and conquer.”

There are those who still think, however, in terms of the days of sailing-ships. They advise us to pull our warships and our planes and our merchant ships into our own home waters and concentrate solely on last ditch defense. But let me illustrate what would happen if we followed such foolish advice.

Look at your map. Look at the vast area of China, with its millions of fighting men. Look at the vast area of Russia, with its powerful armies and proven military might. Look at the (British Isles) Islands of Britain, Australia, New Zealand, the Dutch Indies, India, the Near East and the Continent of Africa, with their (re) sources of raw materials — their resources of raw materials, and of peoples determined to resist Axis domination. Look too at North America, Central America and South America. It is obvious what would happen if all of these great reservoirs of power were cut off from each other either by enemy action or by self-imposed isolation:

(1.) First, in such a case, we could no longer send aid of any kind to China — to the brave people who, for nearly five years, have withstood Japanese assault, destroyed hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers and vast quantities of Japanese war munitions. It is essential that we help China in her magnificent defense and in her inevitable counteroffensive -for that is one important element in the ultimate defeat of Japan.

(2.) Secondly, if we lost communication with the southwest Pacific, all of that area, including Australia and New Zealand and the Dutch Indies, would fall under Japanese domination. Japan in such a case could (then) release great numbers of ships and men to launch attacks on a large scale against the coasts of the Western Hemisphere — South America and Central America, and North America — including Alaska. At the same time, she could immediately extend her conquests (to) in the other direction toward India, (and) through the Indian Ocean, to Africa, (and) to the Near East and try to join forces with Germany and Italy.

(3.) Third, if we were to stop sending munitions to the British and the Russians in the Mediterranean area, (and) in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, (areas) we would be helping the Nazis to overrun Turkey, and Syria, and Iraq, and Persia — that is now called Iran — Egypt and the Suez Canal, the whole coast of North Africa itself and with that inevitably the whole coast of West Africa — putting Germany within easy striking distance of South America — fifteen hundred miles away.

(4.) Fourth, if by such a fatuous policy, we ceased to protect the North Atlantic supply line to Britain and to Russia, we would help to cripple the splendid counter-offensive by Russia against the Nazis, and we would help to deprive Britain of essential food supplies and munitions.

Those Americans who believed that we could live under the illusion of isolationism wanted the American eagle to imitate the tactics of the ostrich. Now, many of those same people, afraid that we may be sticking our necks out, want our national bird to be turned into a turtle. But we prefer to retain the eagle as it is — flying high and striking hard.

I know (that) I speak for the mass of the American people when I say that we reject the turtle policy and will continue increasingly the policy of carrying the war to the enemy in distant lands and distant waters — as far away as possible from our own home grounds.

There are four main lines of communication now being travelled by our ships: the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. These routes are not one-way streets, for the ships (which) that carry our troops and munitions out-bound bring back essential raw materials which we require for our own use.

The maintenance of these vital lines is a very tough job. It is a job which requires tremendous daring, tremendous resourcefulness, and, above all, tremendous production of planes and tanks and guns and also of the ships to carry them. And I speak again for the American people when I say that we can and will do that job.

The defense of the world-wide lines of communication demands — compel relatively safe use by us of the sea and of the air along the various routes; and this, in turn, depends upon control by the United Nations of (the) many strategic bases along those routes.

Control of the air involves the simultaneous use of two types of planes — first, the long-range heavy bomber; and, second, the light bombers, the dive bombers, the torpedo planes, (and) the short-range pursuit planes, all of which are essential to (the) cooperate with and protect(ion) (of) the bases and (of) the bombers themselves.

Heavy bombers can fly under their own power from here to the southwest Pacific, either way, but the smaller planes cannot. Therefore, these lighter planes have to be packed in crates and sent on board cargo ships. Look at your map again; and you will see that the route is long — and at many places perilous — either across the South Atlantic all the way (a)round South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, or from California to the East Indies direct. A vessel can make a round trip by either route in about four months, or only three round trips in a whole year.

In spite of the length, (and) in spite of the difficulties of this transportation, I can tell you that in two and a half months we already have a large number of bombers and pursuit planes, manned by American pilots and crews, which are now in daily contact with the enemy in the Southwest Pacific. And thousands of American troops are today in that area engaged in operations not only in the air but on the ground as well.

In this battle area, Japan has had an obvious initial advantage. For she could fly even her short-range planes to the points of attack by using many stepping stones open to — her bases in a multitude of Pacific islands and also bases on the China coast, Indo-China coast, and in Thailand and Malaya (coasts). Japanese troop transports could go south from Japan and from China through the narrow China Sea, which can be protected by Japanese planes throughout its whole length.

I ask you to look at your maps again, particularly at that portion of the Pacific Ocean lying west of Hawaii. Before this war even started, the Philippine Islands were already surrounded on three sides by Japanese power. On the west, the China side, the Japanese were in possession of the coast of China and the coast of Indo-China which had been yielded to them by the Vichy French. On the North are the islands of Japan themselves, reaching down almost to northern Luzon. On the east, are the Mandated Islands — which Japan had occupied exclusively, and had fortified in absolute violation of her written word.

The islands that lie between Hawaii and the Philippines — these islands, hundreds of them, appear only as small dots on most maps, but do not appear at all. But they cover a large strategic area. Guam lies in the middle of them — a lone outpost which we have never fortified.

Under the Washington Treaty of 1921 we had solemnly agreed not to add to the fortification of the Philippines (Islands). We had no safe naval bases there, so we could not use the islands for extensive naval operations.

Immediately after this war started, the Japanese forces moved down on either side of the Philippines to numerous points south of them — thereby completely encircling the (Islands) Philippines from north, and south, and east and west.

It is that complete encirclement, with control of the air by Japanese land-based aircraft, which has prevented us from sending substantial reinforcements of men and material to the gallant defenders of the Philippines. For forty years it has always been our strategy — a strategy born of necessity — that in the event of a full-scale attack on the Islands by Japan, we should fight a delaying action, attempting to retire slowly into Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor.

We knew that the war as a whole would have to be fought and won by a process of attrition against Japan itself. We knew all along that, with our greater resources, we could ultimately out-build Japan and ultimately overwhelm her on sea, and on land and in the air. We knew that, to obtain our objective, many varieties of operations would be necessary in areas other than the Philippines.

Now nothing that has occurred in the past two months has caused us to revise this basic strategy of necessity — except that the defense put up by General MacArthur has magnificently exceeded the previous estimates of endurance, and he and his men are gaining eternal glory therefore.

MacArthur’s army of Filipinos and Americans, and the forces of the United Nations in China, in Burma and the Netherlands East Indies, are all together fulfilling the same essential task. They are making Japan pay an increasingly terrible price for her ambitious attempts to seize control of the whole (Atlantic) Asiatic world. Every Japanese transport sunk off Java is one less transport that they can use to carry reinforcements to their army opposing General MacArthur in Luzon.

It has been said that Japanese gains in the Philippines were made possible only by the success of their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. I tell you that this is not so.

Even if the attack had not been made your map will show that it would have been a hopeless operation for us to send the Fleet to the Philippines through thousands of miles of ocean, while all those island bases were under the sole control of the Japanese.

The consequences of the attack on Pearl Harbor — serious as they were — have been wildly exaggerated in other ways. And these exaggerations come originally from Axis propagandists; but they have been repeated, I regret to say, by Americans in and out of public life.

You and I have the utmost contempt for Americans who, since Pearl Harbor, have whispered or announced “off the record” that there was no longer any Pacific Fleet — that the Fleet was all sunk or destroyed on December 7th — that more than (1,000) a thousand of our planes were destroyed on the ground. They have suggested slyly that the Government has withheld the truth about casualties — that eleven or twelve thousand men were killed at Pearl Harbor instead of the figures as officially announced. They have even served the enemy propagandists by spreading the incredible story that ship-loads of bodies of our honored American dead were about to arrive in New York harbor to be put into a common grave.

Almost every Axis broadcast — Berlin, Rome, Tokyo — directly quotes Americans who, by speech or in the press, make damnable misstatements such as these.

The American people realize that in many cases details of military operations cannot be disclosed until we are absolutely certain that the announcement will not give to the enemy military information which he does not already possess.

Your Government has unmistakable confidence in your ability to hear the worst, without flinching or losing heart. You must, in turn, have complete confidence that your Government is keeping nothing from you except information that will help the enemy in his attempt to destroy us. In a democracy there is always a solemn pact of truth between government and the people, but there must also always be a full use of discretion, and that word “discretion” applies to the critics of government as well.

This is war. The American people want to know, and will be told, the general trend of how the war is going. But they do not wish to help the enemy any more than our fighting forces do, and they will pay little attention to the rumor-mongers and the poison peddlers in our midst.

To pass from the realm of rumor and poison to the field of facts: the number of our officers and men killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December seventh was 2,340, and the number wounded was 940. Of all of the combatant ships based on Pearl Harbor — battleships, heavy cruisers, light cruisers, aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines — only three (were) are permanently put out of commission.

Very many of the ships of the Pacific Fleet were not even in Pearl Harbor. Some of those that were there were hit very slightly, and others that were damaged have either rejoined the Fleet by now or are still undergoing repairs. And when those repairs are completed, the ships will be more efficient fighting machines than they were before.

The report that we lost more than a thousand (air)planes at Pearl Harbor is as baseless as the other weird rumors. The Japanese do not know just how many planes they destroyed that day, and I am not going to tell them. But I can say that to date — and including Pearl Harbor — we have destroyed considerably more Japanese planes than they have destroyed of ours.

We have most certainly suffered losses — from Hitler’s U-Boats in the Atlantic as well as from the Japanese in the Pacific — and we shall suffer more of them before the turn of the tide. But, speaking for the United States of America, let me say once and for all to the people of the world: We Americans have been compelled to yield ground, but we will regain it. We and the other United Nations are committed to the destruction of the militarism of Japan and Germany. We are daily increasing our strength. Soon, we and not our enemies, will have the offensive; we, not they, will win the final battles; and we, not they, will make the final peace.

Conquered nations in Europe know what the yoke of the Nazis is like. And the people of Korea and of Manchuria know in their flesh the harsh despotism of Japan. All of the people of Asia know that if there is to be an honorable and decent future for any of them or any of (for) us, that future depends on victory by the United Nations over the forces of Axis enslavement.

If a just and durable peace is to be attained, or even if all of us are merely to save our own skins, there is one thought for us here at home to keep uppermost — the fulfillment of our special task of production –uninterrupted production. I stress that word “uninterrupted.”

Germany, Italy and Japan are very close to their maximum output of planes, guns, tanks and ships. The United Nations are not — especially the United States of America.

Our first job then is to build up production — uninterrupted production — so that the United Nations can maintain control of the seas and attain control of the air — not merely a slight superiority, but an overwhelming superiority.

On January 6th of this year, I set certain definite goals of production for airplanes, tanks, guns and ships. The Axis propagandists called them fantastic. Tonight, nearly two months later, and after a careful survey of progress by Donald Nelson and others charged with responsibility for our production, I can tell you that those goals will be attained.

In every part of the country, experts in production and the men and women at work in the plants are giving loyal service. With few exceptions, labor, capital and farming realize that this is no time either to make undue profits or to gain special advantages, one over the other.

We are calling for new plants and additions — additions to old plants. (and) We are calling for plant conversion to war needs. We are seeking more men and more women to run them. We are working longer hours. We are coming to realize that one extra plane or extra tank or extra gun or extra ship completed tomorrow may, in a few months, turn the tide on some distant battlefield; it may make the difference between life and death for some of our own fighting men. We know now that if we lose this war it will be generations or even centuries before our conception of democracy can live again. And we can lose this war only if use slow up our effort or if we waste our ammunition sniping at each other.

Here are three high purposes for every American:

1.

We shall not stop work for a single day. If any dispute arises we shall keep on working while the dispute is solved by mediation, or conciliation or arbitration — until the war is won.
2.

We shall not demand special gains or special privileges or special advantages for any one group or occupation.
3.

We shall give up conveniences and modify the routine of our lives if our country asks us to do so. We will do it cheerfully, remembering that the common enemy seeks to destroy every home and every freedom in every part of our land.

This generation of Americans has come to realize, with a present and personal realization, that there is something larger and more important than the life of any individual or of any individual group — something for which a man will sacrifice, and gladly sacrifice, not only his pleasures, not only his goods, not only his associations with those he loves, but his life itself. In time of crisis when the future is in the balance, we come to understand, with full recognition and devotion, what this nation is and what we owe to it.

The Axis propagandists have tried in various evil ways to destroy our determination and our morale. Failing in that, they are now trying to destroy our confidence in our own allies. They say that the British are finished — that the Russians and the Chinese are about to quit. Patriotic and sensible Americans will reject these absurdities. And instead of listening to any of this crude propaganda, they will recall some of the things that Nazis and Japanese have said and are still saying about us. Ever since this nation became the arsenal of democracy — ever since enactment of Lend-Lease — there has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda.

This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, (and) that Americans have considerable industrial power — but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight.

From Berlin, Rome and Tokyo we have been described as a nation of weaklings — “playboys” — who would hire British soldiers, or Russian soldiers, or Chinese soldiers to do our fighting for us.

Let them repeat that now!
Let them tell that to General MacArthur and his men.
Let them tell that to the sailors who today are hitting hard in the far waters of the Pacific.
Let them tell that to the boys in the Flying Fortresses.
Let them tell that to the Marines!

The United Nations constitute an association of independent peoples of equal dignity and equal importance. The United Nations are dedicated to a common cause. We share equally and with equal zeal the anguish and the awful sacrifices of war. In the partnership of our common enterprise, we must share in a unified plan in which all of us must play our several parts, each of us being equally indispensable and dependent one on the other.

We have unified command and cooperation and comradeship.

We Americans will contribute unified production and unified acceptance of sacrifice and of effort. That means a national unity that can know no limitations of race or creed or selfish politics. The American people expect that much from themselves. And the American people will find ways and means of expressing their determination to their enemies, including the Japanese Admiral who has said that he will dictate the terms of peace here in the White Mouse.

We of the United Nations are agreed on certain broad principles in the kind of peace we seek. The Atlantic Charter applies not only to the parts of the world that border the Atlantic but to the whole world; disarmament of aggressors, self-determination of nations and peoples, and the four freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

The British and the Russian people have known the full fury of Nazi onslaught. There have been times when the fate of London and Moscow was in serious doubt. But there was never the slightest question that either the British or the Russians would yield. And today all the United Nations salute the superb Russian Army as it celebrates the twenty-fourth anniversary of its first assembly.

Though their homeland was overrun, the Dutch people are still fighting stubbornly and powerfully overseas.

The great Chinese people have suffered grievous losses; Chungking has been almost wiped out of existence — yet it remains the capital of an unbeatable China.

That is the conquering spirit which prevails throughout the United Nations in this war.

The task that we Americans now face will test us to the uttermost. Never before have we been called upon for such a prodigious effort. Never before have we had so little time in which to do so much.

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

Tom Paine wrote those words on a drumhead, by the light of a campfire. That was when Washington’s little army of ragged, rugged men was retreating across New Jersey, having tasted (nothing) naught but defeat.

And General Washington ordered that these great words written by Tom Paine be read to the men of every regiment in the Continental Army, and this was the assurance given to the first American armed forces:

“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the sacrifice, the more glorious the triumph.”

So spoke Americans in the year 1776.
So speak Americans today!

FEBRUARY 23, 1942 AT 10:00 PM , E.W.T.

Are we at war – or not?

For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?

Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies – that he may not be guilty.

And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial.

When the Justice Department sets up a task force to wage war on a crime organization like the Mafia or MS-13, no U.S. official has a right to shoot Mafia or gang members on sight. No one has a right to bomb their homes. No one has a right to regard the possible death of their wives and children in an attack as acceptable collateral damage.

My friend Jean emailed this request to me and I am asking for your help in bringing Sage safely home. Please donate what you can to help Sage .

I’d like to introduce you to Sage , a photo is attached to this email:

Lance Corporal Alex Werner lives in Milford, PA. He is the 2nd of four children. He joined the Marine Corps right out of high school, and chose to be a combat engineer since he’d always enjoyed construction, as well as destruction – ie bombs and blowing things up with them. One night while on a mission with his platoon in Iraq, Lcpl Werner’s vehicle rounded a corner and a dog ran out in front of them. The dog was killed, leaving behind a puppy who was on the side of the road. Lcpl Werner heard her crying and caught her (not an easy task he says). From that moment on, she has been with Lcpl Werner and the rest of the Marines of his platoon, being loved on by them and, according to Major Kleber’s telling, carried everywhere by them. The men have named the dog Sage. She is being showered with love and affection and toys that have been sent in care packages.

SPCA International has agreed to assist with transporting Sage back to the US from Iraq. Due to operational movements, it may be necessary to bring her home very soon. The cost of bring a dog from Iraq is over $7,000. SPCA International covers the majority of the costs, but requires the service member to provide at least $1,000 towards the cost of his own pup’s transport.

I am asking that everyone consider giving a gift to SPCA International to help get Sage home where she will live with Lcpl Werner upon his return from Iraq. If everyone gives just $10.00-$25.00 each, we can easily raise the $1,000 required to get Sage home and help take that burden off of Lcpl Werner.

Donations can be made multiple ways. Checks can be sent to SPCA International

Operation Baghdad Pups Program
P.O. Box 1230
Washington, DC  20013

The memo line should read “Operation Baghdad Pups – Sage”

Credit card donations can also be made on the website SPCAI

If you would prefer to purchase items that will be used to bring Sage home, such as her crate, please get in touch with me and I will get you a list of items that need to be purchased for her.

UPDATE:

From our friends at Flopping Aces, here’s the latest known schedule:  Alex will be home by April 30, 2010.  Sage is scheduled to ship out NOV 2 to make sure there are no problems.  She’ll stay with Alex’s mom until he gets home.  (You know this will be the longest six months of his life.)  If you’d like to contact him, here’s an address:

Lcpl Alex Werner
CLB-46, Engineer Co., 1st Plt (betchurass he’s a combat engineer)
Unit 72022
FPO AE 09509-2022

UPDATE From Jean:

The good news is that Thanks to Ratdog and crew, we have well exceeded the amount required from Lcpl Werner to get Sage home and are well on the way to paying for half of her trip all on our own – an endeavor I am SURE the SPCA appreciates as it allows them to help even more servicemembers and their dogs. The less good news is that Sage is stuck on a base in Iraq and can’t get to Baghdad in time to make her plane for this particular transport. So, she’s on hold until the January transport and we will continue to coordinate efforts to get her to Baghdad between now and then. As of now, Lcpl Werner has had to leave her to the care of other Marines as he has been relocated. I’m sure he’s missing his girl like crazy right now, but we are sure she’s being taken care of by the boys she is with now. Keep ‘em all in your prayers, one day closer to having our husbands and sons back home…

UPDATE from RatDog:

Another $500 has been donated to this cause!

In 1942 eight Germans, all with extensive time spent previously in the US including George Dasche who became an American citizen after serving in the US Army, were trained for three weeks as saboteurs by the National Socialists, after a two week interval of relaxation they were divided into two teams of four and transported in two different submarines for America. Dasche’s group landed on Long Island, the other group landed in Florida.

The Long Island group was spotted and hailed by a Coast Guard patrolman, they tried to bribe him with several hundred dollars, he refused the bribe and phoned in an alert. The saboteurs buried their explosives and uniforms and left for New York City.

Upon arrival in New York City, Dasche phoned the FBI and tried to turn the group in, the FBI thought his call was a hoax and ignored him.

A short time later, the uniforms and explosives were uncovered on the beach in Long Island; thus a national manhunt ensued for National Socialist saboteurs.

After being rebuffed by the New York FBI office, Dasche drove to Washington DC and turned himself in to the FBI headquarters. Again he was considered a crank until he opened a suit case with eighty thousand dollars in it.

With the assistance of both Dasche and coconspirator Burger, all eight National Socialist saboteurs were arrested. Both Dasche and Burger maintained they were promised immunity by their cooperation with the FBI. In the end, all the conspirators cooperated with authorities and freely admitted that they contracted to disrupt American war production with explosives; although they didn’t actually engage in espionage, they maintained they all agreed to the mission to escape the National Socialists.

Because of the legal situation of the time, it is safe to assume that FDR decided to try the National Socialist saboteurs by military tribunal rather than a civilian court because of two main reasons.

First: At that time, buying a weapon to commit a crime was not a crime. An effort to use the weapon had to be exercised before a crime was committed. Therefore, even though the saboteurs had a huge supply of explosives, they had made no effort to employ them. Thus no crime had been committed.

Second: A military tribunal could prosecute the more serious crime of enemy combatants behind enemy lines in civilian clothes. Under military law this was a capital offence.

FDR decided to use the military tribunal to insure convictions and executions. In twenty days the men were tried, convicted, and executed except for Burger and Dasche, they were given life and thirty years respectively, the tribunal was halted for three days while the Supreme Court heard an argument challenging the jurisdiction of the tribunals.

The Supreme Court issued a per curiant opinion (an unsigned opinion) affirming the tribunal’s jurisdiction.

The defense maintained that the saboteurs had not undertaken the effort to use the explosives and their efforts were merely a ploy to escape the National Socialism of Germany. The eight generals hearing their case were unconvinced and found them all guilty and sentenced the six to death and they were executed in the electric chair within six hours of the verdict being delivered.

Justice Stone began drafting the Supreme Court’s decision after the executions had been carried out. Stone felt that it was imperative that a unanimous decision was necessary because of the gravity of the crimes, not to mention the fact that the executions were almost simultaneous with the convictions.

Known as the Ex Parte Quirin decision it is not regarded as one of the highlights of the Supreme Court’s Legacy, despite being well received publicly. The decision was reached on July 31, 1942, but did not release its decision until October 29, 1942.

Justice Frankfurter asked Frederick Weiner, an expert on military justice, to provide his opinion. Weiner concluded that the court had been “careless and uninformed (in its) handling of the Articles of War.” Of course this is the area that should have been the primary focus of the decision.

FDR thought he was sending a clear message to Hitler and the National Socialists, yet he ended up leaving a murky precedent for the future.

The Quirin decision maintained legislation authorizing military commissions for the types of offences in question; however, in the time line of Quirin there was a declaration of war. On November 13, 2001, the military was ordered to try suspected terrorists by military tribunals.

President Bush relied on a joint resolution of congress to serve as a replacement for a formal declaration of war along with two provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, successor to the Articles of War.

Consequently, prisoners in the War on Terrorism were to denied protection granted by the Geneva Convention, ratified in 1949 and now considered to be a part of United States municipal law in accordance with Article 6 paragraph 2 of the Constitution, (the Supremacy Clause).

In addition the United States Supreme Court in Handan vs. Rumsfeld ruled that common paragraph 2 of the Constitution and Article 3 of the Geneva Convention applies to detainees in the war on Terror and that military tribunals are in violation of United States and International Law.

Because treaties become law in our country, and because of procedural sloppiness in the past, we are trying men who have admitted planning the terrorism of 9/11. Because of the laws of discovery, they will have access to all the secret files of the CIA and FBI that refer to them. Thus our intelligence people throughout the Middle East will be compromised and we will be left with almost no Intelligence sources. The water boarding/torture debate will rage for months or maybe years while these murderers receive millions of dollars of legal aid from us. In the end, there is an excellent chance that they will be found innocent and be free to walk upon American soil as free men.

Of course if this travesty comes to be, the blame will be Obama’s, as a matter of fact, the closing of Guantanamo, an insipid and thoughtless campaign promise has precipitated this miscarriage of justice and no matter how this plays out, Obama will be held responsible.

Burger and Dasch were released in 1949 and deported to Germany. Dasche spent the rest of his life trying to be readmitted to the US without success.

President Obama, we are at war. The Islamic Terrorists are not cooperating with your transformation of our society into a Politically Correct Utopia with nomenclature that neutralizes the ugliness of war. They do not chant Obama, Obama, they do not faint on cue, they pay no attention to subjective pandering by sexually mis-oriented news journalists like Chris Mathews. Their war is a fanaticism that welcomes death while destroying us, the Infidel. Although you may see yourself whispering Allahu Akbar during your death and accruing your place in heaven, the vast majority have no interest or sympathy with Islamic Terrorism, we seek to destroy it.

This war is no longer about your narcissistic view of yourself and your ratings; it is about us, the American people and the fanatic bastards who want to kill us. No they are not like Christian Fundamentalists or Conservatives or Jews or even Muslims, they are radical Islamic fascists or terrorists and they are at war with us and with you, whether you are your incompetent sycophants posing as advisors care to admit it or not.

At Fort Hood you related this purposely confusing message:

This is a time of war. And yet these Americans did not die on a foreign field of battle. They were killed here, on American soil, in the heart of this great American community. It is this fact that makes the tragedy even more painful and even more incomprehensible.

It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know – no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice – in this world, and the next.

These are trying times for our country. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the same extremists who killed nearly 3,000 Americans continue to endanger America, our allies, and innocent Afghans and Pakistanis. In Iraq, we are working to bring a war to a successful end, as there are still those who would deny the Iraqi people the future that Americans and Iraqis have sacrificed so much for.

Here, at Fort Hood, we pay tribute to thirteen men and women who were not able to escape the horror of war, even in the comfort of home.

You have finally admitted that we are engaged in a war, although we seem reluctant to wage war and regard the opinions of anti-American foreign journalists and the of Third World Dictators, as important in how we conduct our contingency operation. May I, as an American remind you that a war is not a police raid on a DC crack house.

While you weigh General McChrystal’s request for more troops on the political scale of public opinion and claim that victory is not an option you are comfortable with; I ask you to contemplate the works of General MacArthur, “In war there is no substitute for victory.”

And yet these Americans did not die on a foreign field of battle. They were killed here, on American soil, in the heart of this great American community. It is this fact that makes the tragedy even more painful and even more incomprehensible.

It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know – no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor.

Yes these Americans like the Americans of 9/11 were killed by Fanatic Islamic Terrorism, like the families of Flight 93, the survivors and families of the victims have no interest in a Muslim Crescent pointing to Mecca being erected on the site of killing.

The tragedy is painful Mr. Obama, but you make it more painful and incomprehensible by refusing to declare this an act of terrorism and by refusing to admit that Mao’s concept of Political Correctness embraced so fervently by the Left is an antiquated idea and is a major component contributing to Major Hasan’s Act of Terrorism against America; thus this heinous act was allowed to happen beneath the watchful eyes of the FBI and Senior Military Officers.

Policies like words have consequences, fear of speaking up and crossing a line of Political Correctness and Diversities Demarcation has guaranteed that this scenario will play out again on your watch President Obama and still we are full steam ahead without a point of direction on a pointless mission, according to you, since you refuse to define our mission, knowing only that Victory makes “you” uncomfortable.

It my be hard to comprehend the twisted logic, but we don’t need to comprehend the logic; it is enough for us to know that our enemy is evil and we must destroy him, not give him our money and love him into submission.

We the American People have stood our ground like the Revolutionary hero General Parker, who told his men before the Battle of Lexington, “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here!” President Obama, they have begun this war twice, how long can you deny the existence of the evil psychopathic killers who want to convert us or kill us.

And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice – in this world, and the next.

We know that your speeches are written by some Liberal Harpie seekng political advantage in the morgue of Fort Hood, but trying to make you sound Like Maximus in the Coliseum is laughable and a crime against script writers.

“I am the husband of a murdered wife, the father of a murdered son, and will have revenge in this world or the next.” Maximus: Gladiator, Speaking to Caesar in the arena, a pivotal and emotionally charged moment of the film.

Nice try Mr. President, but using the same line as an apologist for the United States and a President who doesn’t seek victory in war, once again you are left looking like an incompetent and impotent fool. Hint: Hire competent speech writers and get rid of the Marxist Yes Men that you surround yourself with.

You said it, “the same extremists” these are the people we need to slip our dogs of war onto. They need to be hunted down and slaughtered in a very undiplomatic and politically incorrect method. We realize you have a Socialist Agenda planned to cripple our economy and enslave the American People, but at this moment we are engaged in a war that has unnecessarily become a slow war of attrition against our troops and soon against our civilian population. Perhaps you should consider priorities and crush these Islamo Fascists before you implement your Marxist Agenda and weaken our economy to the point that we can no longer afford to carry the war to the aggressor or is that your intention?

Cherie Cullen/ Department of Defense
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates met with Sgt. Kimberly D. Munley at a hospital in Ft. Hood, Texas, on Tuesday.

Not to take anything away from Sgt. Munley, who is indeed a hero, more information each day is coming to light. From the NYTimes, we have this eyewitness account of the actions of Munley’s fellow officer that day:

The witness, who asked not to be identified, said Major Hasan wheeled on Sergeant Munley as she rounded the corner of a building and shot her, putting her on the ground. Then Major Hasan turned his back on her and started putting another magazine into his semiautomatic pistol.

It was at that moment that Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, a veteran police officer, rounded another corner of the building, found Major Hasan fumbling with his weapon and shot him.

How the authorities came to issue the original version of the story, which made Sergeant Munley a national hero for several days and obscured Sergeant Todd’s role, remains unclear. (Military officials also said for several hours after the shooting that Major Hasan had been killed, although he had survived.)

Six days after the deadly shooting rampage at a center where soldiers were preparing for deployment, the military has yet to put out a full account of what happened.

At a news conference outside the post on Wednesday, Lt. Col. John Rossi refused to take questions about who shot Major Hasan or why the initial reports said it had been Sergeant Munley rather than Sergeant Todd.

“These questions are specific to the investigation and I am not going to address that,” Colonel Rossi said.

Public affairs officials also declined to make Chuck Medley, the director of emergency services at the post, available for questions. It was Mr. Medley, who oversees the post’s civilian police and fire departments, who gave the first account of how Sergeant Munley stopped the gunman.

On Tuesday night, Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, of the Army’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs at the Pentagon, declined to say whether it was Sergeant Todd who had shot Major Hasan. “It could have been, but the final outcome will be determined by the results of the ballistics tests.”

In an interview on Wednesday, Sergeant Todd’s wife, Lisa, said he had asked the Army to protect his identity in the immediate aftermath of the shootings. Her husband did not consider himself to be the real hero of the day, she said. “They were in this together,” she said.

Neither Sergeant Todd nor Sergeant Munley were made available by the military for this article, but on Wednesday on the “Oprah Winfrey Show,” they offered their first public comments on the shooting. They did not give a detailed chronology of what happened, nor did they say who had fired and hit the suspect.

Both are members of the civilian police force at Fort Hood. Sergeant Todd said on the talk show that he and Sergeant Munley had arrived at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center in separate squad vehicles about the same time.

Sergeant Todd acknowledged that he had played a major role in bringing the violence to an end. He said that he had fired at the suspect, kicked his weapon away and placed him in handcuffs. It was the first time in his 25 years in law enforcement and the military, Sergeant Todd said, that he had used his weapon.

“I just relied back on my training,” Sergeant Todd said. “We’re trained to shoot until there is no longer a threat. And once he was laying down on his back, his weapon just fell into his hand and I’m, like, ‘O.K., now’s the time to rush him and secure him.’ ”

~~~

He said he was walking in a roadway between the main building, known as the Sportsdome, and five smaller buildings. Major Hasan was headed toward the main building, the witness said, when Sergeant Munley came around the corner of a smaller building. Major Hasan wheeled on her and shot her several times, the witness said. It was unclear whether she squeezed off a shot or not, but she fell over backward, disabled with wounds in her legs and one of her wrists, the witness said.

Major Hasan then turned his back on her and began to shove another magazine into his pistol. He did not appear wounded, the witness said. A few seconds later, Sergeant Todd came around another corner of the same building. He raised his weapon and fired several times at Major Hasan, who pitched over backward and stopped moving.

“He shot her, turned away from her and was reloading, when he was shot,” said the witness, who was nearby.

On the Winfrey show, Sergeant Munley, 35, said the incident was confusing and chaotic. “There were many people outside pointing to where this individual was apparently located,” she said. “When I got out of my vehicle and ran up the hill, that’s when it started getting bad and we started encountering fire.”

Sergeant Todd, 42, is a native of California who spent most of his adult life as a military police officer in the Army. He left the military police after 25 years to join the civilian force at Fort Hood. Like most members of the military, he has moved around a lot, serving at four bases in the United States and two in Germany.

Ms. Todd said her husband did not seem upset in the wake of shooting Major Hasan.

“He say’s he’s O.K.,” she said. “And I have to take him at his word.”

Thank you Sgt. Todd!

I think it speaks volumes to his character, not only in his actions that day, but in his inaction after that day, in not seeking the limelight and the pats on the back. A true hero.

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Senior Sgt. Mark Todd, of the Killeen Police Department, was outside the visitors center at Fort Hood on Thursday morning.

Soldiers present were also heroes, of course, with reports of shielding others from the danger as well as treating the wounded.

The petite police officer, who stands 5 feet 2 inches tall, said she was hit by three bullets. One struck the knuckle of her right hand; one passed through her right knee, then hit her left leg; and one pierced the femoral artery in her left thigh.

“I knew from the amount of blood and the color of the blood that was coming out” of the thigh wound that it was gravely serious, Munley said, sitting in a wheelchair with a blanket spread over her legs.

The soldiers who ran to help her knew it, too; even as she urged them to get pressure on the wound, they were fashioning a tourniquet.

Bleeding stanched, Munley immediately entered what “Today” hosts Ann Curry and Meredith Viera — themselves working mothers — dubbed “Mommy Mode.” She located her cellphone and arranged for someone to pick up her 2-year-old daughter (an older daughter, age 12, presumably gets home from school on her own).

“So the balancing act of motherhood and being a police officer did not end, even at that moment, for you,” said Curry.

“Absolutely not,” Munley said, smiling slightly. “It never does.”

Having your femoral artery cut is a life-threatening matter, and thanks to the training of our soldiers and law enforcement and the quick-action decisions they made that day, we can be grateful that more lives were not lost last Thursday.

A first responder during the Fort Hood shooting renders honors after aiding his fellow soldiers, November 5, 2009.
REUTERS/US Army III Corps/Handout

Authorities have been examining whether Fort Hood massacre suspect Nidal Malik Hasan wired money to Pakistan in recent months, an action that one senior lawmaker said would raise serious questions about Hasan’s possible connections to militant Islamic groups.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said sources “outside of the [intelligence] community” learned about Hasan’s possible connections to the Asian country, which faces a massive Islamist insurgency and is widely believed to be Osama bin Laden’s hiding place.

Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, would not identify the sources. But he said “they are trying to follow up on it because they recognize that if there are communications – phone or money transfers with somebody in Pakistan – it just raises a whole other level of questions.”

~~~

Hasan’s finances have been a mystery since last week, when the Army major and psychiatrist allegedly shot and killed 13 colleagues at the sprawling Central Texas military base. Hasan earned more than $90,000 a year and had no dependents, yet lived in an aging one-bedroom apartment that rented for about $300 a month.

~~~

Authorities know that Hasan sent repeated e-mails, starting some time in December 2008, to a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen. That cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, formerly served as imam of a large northern Virginia mosque where Hasan worshipped. The U.S.-born cleric praised Hasan after the massacre as “a hero.”

In January, al-Awlaki told readers of his blog about “44 ways to support jihad” – a term often translated as “holy war.” Many of his points dealt with ways to fund such efforts.

“Probably the most important contribution the Muslims of the West could do for Jihad is making Jihad with their wealth,” al-Awlaki wrote. “In many cases the mujahideen are in need of money more than they are in need of men.”

~~~

Colleagues and associates have described Hasan as a loner who voiced his opposition to the wars, including his assertion that Muslims were justified in fighting American troops. Hasan’s family has said he became more distressed as he learned he was about to be deployed to Afghanistan.

“He is a kind of fundamentalist. He thinks a Muslim must defend themselves,” said Golam Akhter, a civil engineer from Bethesda, Md., who said he spoke with Hasan on several occasions at the mosque where they worshipped.

He said he knew Hasan was a doctor but didn’t know he was a member of the Army.

“He used to dress in long dresses just like Pakistanis, and that made me also concerned,” Akhter said. “Usually only the imam uses those loose and long shirts and sleeves. That made me [wonder], being very educated, why he is using the imam’s dress.”

The article notes the contact Hasan made with one radical cleric but fails to note the other contacts:

Maj. Hasan made some of the contacts while visiting known jihadist chat rooms on the Internet, according to one of The Times’ sources, a senior FBI official. He said that several people with whom Maj. Hasan was in contact had been the focus of investigations by the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The other source, a military intelligence official, said those in contact with Maj. Hasan are located both in the U.S. and overseas. The official said they are “broadly known and characterized as Islamic extremists if not necessarily al Qaeda.”

~~~

These ties are in addition to Maj. Hasan’s already-reported links to radical Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, who called Maj. Hasan a “hero” on a blog post about last week’s Fort Hood shooting, which left 13 dead and 29 wounded.

The missed connections is obvious now. Why they were missed is another issue which at the end of the day is going to come down to one of the left’s favorites….political correctness.

As the wife of a Navy enlistee during the Vietnam War, I can say that my military life still remains a strong and humbling memory in my life. The comraderie is unlike any bond I’ve seen… from soldiers and shipmates to their families. Their unquestioned loyalty to freedom, liberty and this country is uncomprehendable to most civilians. During decades of wars conducted on foreign soils – indeed even the strategic and import of these missions being even more foreign to the layman’s understanding – the sense of ultimate sacrifice of self for fellow Americans and country has suffered from lack of respect. Nay… has even been demeaned by some with words and spittal.

With this diminished view of our nation’s warriors in mind, I settled on honoring that less heralded and honored Marine crew of WWII, the Code Talkers.

I have no intention of deliberately slighting any of the 18 tribes that contributed Code Talkers to the great battlefield. For all Code Talkers returned to their reservation homes as heroes without a heroes’ welcome. Very little was revealed of their role in order to reserve this uniquely Native American communication system for future conflicts. But little by little over the decades, more has come out of their importance in the war, and the untold many lives they saved.

So with both an honored bow to not only the Native American tribes, and our remaining veterans and currently serving military personnel, I devote this post to the story of the more well known Navajo Code Talkers of the USMC.

AP’s Ula Ilnytkzy had a story today that also acknowledges the Code Talkers… but touches on their fear that their legacy will die with them. Out of the 400 Code Talkers, only 50 are believed to be alive. Thirteen of them came to NYC – many using canes – to walk in the Veterans Day parade today.

The young Navajo Marines, using secret Navajo language-encrypted military terms, helped the U.S. prevail at Iwo Jima and other World War II Pacific battles, serving in every Marine assault in the South Pacific between 1942 and 1945. Military commanders said the code, transmitted verbally by radio, helped save countless American lives and bring a speedier end to the war in the Pacific theater.

They were sworn to secrecy about their code, so complex that even other Navajo Marines couldn’t decipher it. Used to transmit secret tactical messages via radio or telephone, the code remained unbroken and classified for decades because of its potential postwar use.

“We were never told that our code was never decoded” or given identities of the original 29 Navajos who created it, said Keith Little, 85, who joined the Marines at 17 and remembers crouching in a bomb crater amid heavy fire on Iwo Jima.

“It was all covered by secrecy. We were constantly told not to talk about it,” Little said. The Code Talkers felt compelled to honor their secrecy orders, even after the code was declassified in 1968.

~~~

“The code did a lot of damage to the enemy,” said Samuel Tom Holiday, 85, of Kayenta, Ariz., who also is joining the parade. He was a 20-year-old Code Talker when he and two other Marines went behind enemy lines on Iwo Jima to locate a Japanese artillery unit advancing on American forces.

Once the unit was located, Holiday transmitted a coded message to Marine artillery, which fired a big shell at the Japanese. After the Marine rifleman proclaimed it “right on target,” Holiday messaged “Right on Target” to a Navajo Code Talker in Marine artillery.

Prior to the entry of the original 29 Navajo Code Talkers, the Japanese – armed with exceptional English speaking code breakers – swiftly thwarted every attempt at a secure communication code between the allies. But the Japanese didn’t reckon with America’s first citizens.

Per the story on the Official Navajo Code Talkers website, it was Phillip Johnston – a California civilian and son of a Protestant missionary who grew up on a Navajo reservation and one of the few outsiders fluent in their difficult language – who came up with the idea to create a code using the Native American Navajo and pitched it to Major General Clayton B. Vogel, the commanding general of Amphibious Corps, Pacific Fleet, and his staff.

With plenty of fluent English speakers at their disposal, they [the Japanese] sabotaged messages and issued false commands to ambush Allied troops. To combat this, increasingly complex codes were initiated. At Guadalcanal, military leaders finally complained that sending and receiving these codes required hours of encryption and decryption—up to two and a half hours for a single message. They rightly argued the military needed a better way to communicate.

He realized that since it had no alphabet and was almost impossible to master without early exposure, the Navajo language had great potential as an indecipherable code. After an impressive demonstration to top commanders, he was given permission to begin a Navajo Code Talker test program.

Their elite unit was formed in early 1942 when the first 29 Navajo Code Talkers were recruited by Johnston. Although the code was modified and expanded throughout the war, this first group was the one to conceive it. Accordingly, they are often referred to reverently as the “original 29″. Many of these enlistees were just boys; most had never been away from home before. Often lacking birth certificates, it was impossible to verify ages. After the war it was discovered that recruits as young as 15 and as old as 35 had enlisted. Age notwithstanding, they easily bore the rigors of basic training, thanks to their upbringing in the southwestern desert.

One of the original 29, now 92, was present for today’s Veteran’s Day Parade in NYC.

The young native Americans gathered at Camp Pendleton and devised an ingenious code of 200 terms, which grew to 600 by the war’s victory. What took coding machines 30 minutes to do could now be transmitted in 20 seconds – accurate, concise and undecipherable by the enemy.

It consisted of native terms that were associated with the respective military terms they resembled. For example, the Navajo word for turtle meant “tank,” and a dive-bomber was a “chicken hawk.” To supplement those terms, words could be spelled out using Navajo terms assigned to individual letters of the alphabet—the selection of the Navajo term being based on the first letter of the Navajo word’s English meaning. For instance, “Wo-La-Chee” means “ant,” and would represent the letter “A”. In this way the Navajo Code Talkers could quickly and concisely communicate with each other in a manner even uninitiated Navajos could not understand.

According to Katrena Wells on the WWII history site, there was only 30 or less non-Navajos that could speak the language at the beginning of WWII. In fact, translation of this new code baffled even the untrained Navajo soldiers themselves.

The Navajo language, which was spoken on Navajo reservations in the American Southwest, was unwritten and quite complex as it relied on the use of tone, syntax, and dialects. A Navajo soldier that was not trained as a code talker became a prisoner of war at Bataan and was forced to listen to transmissions in his own tongue. The Fact Sheet cited above quotes that Navajo soldier after the war as saying, “I never figured out what you guys who got me into all that trouble were saying.”

After training, they were sent to the Pacific theatre. Forbidden to write anything that referenced the code and it’s secrets, these Native American warriors became “living codes”, with the military taking great lengths to insure their survival. It was of this unique focus on particular soldiers’ lives that the Nicholas Cage/Christian Slater 2002 movie, “Windtalkers”, was born. In typical Hollywood versions of history, what was not made clear was that the Code Talkers were not only transmitters, but often performed the functions of messengers, along with the duties and responsibilities of any other Marine.

Left—Right: Cpt. Johnny Manuelito (Naschitti, NM); John Benally (Fort Defiance, AZ), Pvt. Rex Kontz (Fort Defiance, AZ), Howard Billiman (Sawmill, AZ), Peter Tracey (Ganado, AZ) Design the NTC Project: Tech Sgt. Phillip Johnson (Leupp, AZ)

Praise for their skill, speed and accuracy accrued throughout the war. At Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, declared, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” Connor had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. Those six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error.

In this Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009 photo, Keith Little, 85, of Crystal, N.M., attends a book signing with fellow Navajo Code Talkers in Albuquerque, N.M. Little will join 12 other Navajo Code Talkers in the New York City Veteran’s Day Parade on Wednesday, Nov. 11. Navajo Marines helped the U.S. prevail at Iwo Jima and other World War II Pacific battles with an unbreakable code that stymied the Japanese. The code of Navajo language-encrypted military terms used to transit secret tactical messages was classified for decades after the war – and was so complex that even Navajos Marines who weren’t in the elite unit could’t decipher it. (AP Photo/Felicia Fonseca)

Code Talker Keith Little, 85 (pictured above) was one of those in Iwo Jima.. where in the first 48 hours they coded over 800 transmissions with perfect accuracy alone.

Despite their importance and value, the Code Talkers returned home, ordered to remain silent on their skills and communication codes. It took decades before their code was declassified in 1968.

Long overdue for official recognition, George H. Bush’s Department of Defense honored 35 former Marine Code Talkers at the Pentagon in September, 1992.

Thirty-five code talkers, all veterans of the U.S. Marine Corps, attended the dedication of the Navajo code talker exhibit. The exhibit includes a display of photographs, equipment and the original code, along with an explanation of how the code worked.

Dedication ceremonies included speeches by the then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Atwood, U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona and Navajo President Peterson Zah. The Navajo veterans and their families traveled to the ceremony from their homes on the Navajo Reservation, which includes parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.

The Navajo code talker exhibit is a regular stop on the Pentagon tour.

It took another nine years before another Bush… this time the son, George W… again honored the Navajo Code Talkers by presenting four of five living Code Talkers, plus the relatives of 24 others, with the Congressional Medal of Honor in an afternoon ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda in 2001. [Mata Note: link is to a July 2001 CNN story of the ceremony presentation]

“Today we give these exceptional Marines the recognition they earned so long ago,” Bush said. The president said they brought honor to the United States as well as the Navajo Nation.

“Our gratitude is now expressed for all time in the medals you are about to receive,” he said.

Before Bush presented the medals, the names of the code talkers were read aloud and those attending the event gave them a standing ovation.

“It is, I think, one of the greatest honors that you can bestow on the code talkers,” said code talker Chester Nez. “I’m really happy about it.”

~~~

“When we went into the Marine Corps, we didn’t know what it was that we were going to do,” said Nez. “But after we got out of boot camp and went to a place called Camp Elliot … and there was the first time we found out that we was to use our own language to translate in the combat area.

“All of the 29 Marines that I went in [with], we got together and made a code in our own language. There were over 400 or 500 words that we made up at that time. We memorized them and everything was up here,” Nez said, pointing to his head.

“And nobody knew. The Japanese pulled all of their hair out trying to decipher the code. But it’s one of the hardest languages to learn, that’s why it was never decoded or deciphered.”

But like their ancestors and our warriors today, these quiet heroes never demanded recognition, nor craved the spotlight. Yet for posterity, such a breed of Americans should not be lost to history and their stories buried.

“They really weren’t given any special recognition,” Melson** said. “Most of them I don’t think wanted special recognition, other than that they had done their duty and they had survived, because there was a lot of people that they knew who did not survive.”

[**Mata musing: Chuck Melson, chief historian for the U.S. Marine Corps]

“This was a chapter of our military history that has not been given sufficient attention, and there are some real genuine heroes here who deserve recognition,” said Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, who sponsored the congressional resolution to honor the code talkers. The Navajo reservation is in New Mexico and Arizona.

Such is the stuff of American heroes. And the Code Talkers stand tall amongst the best of them this Veterans Day. Many in this nation owe our very existance to their superb service, for it may have been our parents or grandparents who’s lives they saved. We are forever grateful for their innovative skills, and their dedication to fight for their homeland against foreign enemies.

We on the Right knew instinctively what the media and this administration’s reaction to the most recent case of (not so) Sudden Jihadi Syndrome that occurred at Fort Hood. We knew without prompting that they would attempt to diminish the rage and anger that they knew was dwelling in the hearts of all patriotic, and life-loving Americans as they saw the event unfold. They wrongly assumed that we angered-Americans would seek out and “punish” the first Moslem we stumbled upon. This assumption on their part has angered us almost as much as the actual murders did. Are we not to be angry at whoever killed 12 of our finest, standing unarmed, and unsuspecting in their skivvies? Are we so little though-of, that they assume we are on the razors edge of abandoning of our law-abiding, Judeo-Christian culture for one of animalistic revenge? Those 20%’ers made those assumptions. They label our anger misplaced, and they label us as savages, equal or worse than the shooter, even though a grand total of ONE Moslem has been killed in vigilante-style revenge in 40 years, and only after 911, and that person is now in prison for life.

According to my numbers, the score is now 1 dead Moslem vs. approx 3500 dead Americans killed on our own soil, beginning with a certain Moslem killing a certain Kennedy, all the way through last weeks carnage.

There is certainly many Islamist’s living here at least verbally willing to continue this mayhem as taught by Mohammed. We read their words in their blogs, and we hear them on the corners of New York and Dearborn. We see them in our colleges, and yet we protect them via our laws and our customs. In some cases, we even pay their way here and pay their tuition, while our taxes help them with medical care and foodstamps if necessary.

In the minds of these tough-talkers, we do these things not because we are benevolent, but because we either “owe” them for being unbelievers, or we are simply stupid fools. In most polls taken, these verbal wanna-be Jihadi’s make up about 15-25% of Moslems worldwide. Here in America, the worse numbers show about 1-2%. Considering there are approximately 3 million Moslems living here, the potential numbers of Warriors for Allah is still significant, even if we assume only 1% of those would actually carry out jihad.

So what’s stopping them? The other 80% of us are, including the cops, and the FBI. They know full well that this isn’t England, and not only do we have armed cops, we have an armed to-the-teeth populace, and that together we can stop them fairly quickly. Strange as it sounds, Fort Hood might be “safer” for a Jihadi than my local Oak Ridge Mall is, because all of the soldier’s weapons are in lockers. But mine, and many others are on our collective hips. They may talk the big talk about martyrdom, but when it all goes down, they don’t want to die before making a big-enough splash to be counted among the “heroes” of Jihadville. They know that for as multiculturally blind as our politicians, teachers and commentators are, a big section of us still have it in us to fight, as the folks on flight 93 showed.

Some of you might be asking; Yeah, but for how long? The “long race” between those who will submit and those who will never submit is for a different discussion, but I know in my heart, the finish line is a long way off. There is another shorter, more pressing race going on between those of us who will fight when cornered, and those of us who will lash out because we perceive that our government is doing nothing to mitigate the potential for our harm. If several back-to-back episodes of solitary or small-group attacks occur, and we get the same sort of condescending pap we saw in this latest round, I sadly feel the odds of those who will lash-out against innocent Moslems will increase exponentially.

It is the race between “lashers” and the cornered that I focus on in this screed, and what our present “leaders” should be doing about it. We already know what they are NOT doing about it, and how ham-handed they’ve been in lecturing us to “behave” in light of what we’ve been seeing these past 40 years on our own soil.

More than any president we’ve ever had, Obama has the opportunity to nip two bad buds at once: The fed up zealot-vigilante, and the wanna-be holy-Jihadi.

Obama has an “in” with the Moslem populace of this country, and some say the world. His attendance of Islamic schools during childhood, and his kind words toward it, gives him credence when he talks about the faith, like no other previous president has ever had.

He needs to come out forcefully against Sunni Wahabism, and Shia Khomenism in one grand speech. (It is the speech he should have given in Egypt, but didn’t.) He can talk directly to the Moslems in this country, and give them a clear choice: Peaceful Islam, or prison/deportation.

He needs to back it up by having Congress and the Senate give the FBI, the police, and the courts the power to remove those who espouse violent Islam from our midst, instead of waiting for them to act out their twisted beliefs. He could even define all religious-based violence as akin to present (1st-amendment-questionable) hate-crime laws against minorities and gays. They hide behind our First Amendment to spread their filth, when we all know that this filth motivates others to their cause. There are some who will bring up the freedom of religion aspect of the Constitution. To those he should remind them of the history of Utah statehood, and how they had to denounce polygamy before they were admitted to the Union, and once in, they could not re-instate it. The Bushido religion of Imperial Japan is not allowed here, and neither is the virgin sacrifice of the Mayans, so there IS precedence for religious controls by the State. After all, Obama sure was quick to publicly condemn the man who shot and killed an abortion doctor, and rightfully took his religious extremism to task.

There of course needs to be solid demarcation lines within these laws, so that only calls-to-violence is prosecuted, and there needs to be zero-tolerance for this filth within our government and military. The lawyers can find a way.

Obama could pull this off, because he not only has some credibility within the Islamic community, he also will be supported by the media, and the 20%’ers. Of course the ACLU might put up some token resistance, but we all know it will be muted at best. Bush tried the tact of morally separating the peaceful from the violent, but because he was NOT a progressive-socialist, he was spit upon for even attempting it, even though he got the (un-reported) support of many peaceful Moslems in the country for shining a light on what they themselves are up against.

These religious extremists, primarily of the Islamic sort, need to be treated like the Klan was in the 70’s. Obama should emphasize their intolerance of gays, of Blacks, of women, of atheist’s. Include every bias close to the heart of Progressives everywhere. If he did all these things, he would be re-elected by a landslide by both the Left and Right, and the vigilante would be forever in his hole.

We are beginning to see what happens when the authorities treat Islamists with kid gloves. We are seeing the rise of un-healthy nationalism in England and Europe. We will see more of this, and I feel strongly, that mass violence will occur there within 5 years. It will not be pretty, and it will escalate. Multiculturalism will have failed, and good, positive acceptance along with it.

We can safely assume that Obama will not do what truly needs to be done in this regard. Some cynics might say that these Leftists actually want the rabid-nativist to rise up in a violent fashion, so that the Left can pointedly vilify them, and gain political power. I personally think that the Left is simply ignorant, and see historical Western/American culture as an impediment to their “progress”. I also see radical Islam using that same ignorance as a tool to kill us with. And by “us”, I mean moonbats and wingnuts, Black and White, gay and straight, men and women, etc and etc.

In light of the fact that Obama will never lift a finger to mitigate the fears of the fed-up among us, and that the Islamist knows he will never speak truthfully about their 7th-century outlook on life, we can expect many more incidents of solo and small-group attacks. Followed by acts of miss-directed vigilantism. Followed up with an over-reaction by government against all of us.

I wonder if someday Obama will ever come to the realization that the American/Western society he so despises and apologizes for, is the same one, and the only one, that made him possible?

Morgan Styke, 5, stands in a formation with her dad, Sgt. Jeremy Charlet, at a dismissal ceremony for his NG unit Monday at the Civic Center in New Ulm, Minn. The New Ulm-based 125th Field Artillary HQ and HQ Battery unit returned home after 22 months of active duty.
john Cross, Mankato (Minn.) Free Press, via AP

To all those who have served in our Armed Forces and to all those currently serving, a heartfelt

Stresses at Fort Hood Were Likely Intense for Hasan

The Washington Post:

At Walter Reed, a palpable strain on mental-health system

And on and on.

Day after day since the terrorist acts of Hasan we have been inundated with calls from out MSM and the Democrats that this was all one man going crazy. Why did he go crazy? Well, because of the strain of treating those with PTSD.

Now even treating PTSD will give you PTSD. Nevermind the thousands of men and women who have listened to these horrors day in and day out as they treated our wounded soldiers….and they never picked up a gun to kill innocent life. Nevermind the thousands of soldiers who came back from war and did not murder 13 people.

No….it’s not because he wanted to terrorize the populace to effectively stop the “war against Islam.”

He just snapped.

It is an example of political correctness. And all the warnings that people had had in advance and not reported is an example of how political correctness isn’t only a moral abomination, it’s also a danger.

Perfect example is from The U.S. Army’s top general:

“What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.”

Who in the hell said anything about trying to destroy diversity inside our military? What many of us are saying is that when there are signs that someone is an extremist…take action.

Rich Lowry:

If Casey says that after 13 people die, imagine what pressures there were in the military to honor Hasan’s contribution to diversity before he killed. Hasan’s fellow students told the Associated Press that, despite his anti-American rants, “a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.”

And there you have it. No one complained when, at a conference where he was supposed to give a medical presentation, he gave this instead:

The Koranic World View as it Related to Muslims in the U.S. Military (pdf)

Robert from Jihad Watch on the presentation:

Note the copious quoting of the Koran; the explanation of the doctrine of abrogation (citing Koran 2:106 and 16:101), which usually Islamic apologists in the West dismiss as an invention of “Islamophobes”; and the explanations of defensive and offensive jihad.

Islamic spokesmen in the U.S., if anyone asks them to comment on this at all, will dismiss it as an “extremist” interpretation of Islam and claim that no Muslims in the U.S., not one, believe in this understanding of Islam. But I guarantee you that none of the, not one, will offer a specific alternative explanation of the verses he cites, or of his doctrine of jihad, or of his understanding of Islam.

Why wasn’t he stopped during this presentation? I mean its a sign of an extremist when he acted like this but no one said anything due to fear of being labeled a racist or islamaphobe.

How about contacting terrorists? Should that be looked into before violence happens?

U.S. intelligence agencies learned an Army psychiatrist contacted an Islamist sympathetic to al Qaeda and they relayed the information to authorities before the man allegedly went on a shooting spree that killed 13 people in Texas last week, U.S. officials said on Monday.

While the agencies were monitoring contacts by Anwar al-Awlaki, a fiery, anti-American cleric in Yemen who sympathized with al Qaeda, they came across some communications late last year with the shooting suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, U.S. government officials said.

They said the information was given to federal authorities who determined that Hasan’s writings were largely consistent with his academic work, offering no hint that he was planning an attack or was following orders from anyone…

~~~

The 10 to 20 communications between Hasan and the cleric continued into 2009. That prompted authorities to look into Hasan, the officials said. But they decided the matter did not warrant an investigation.

~~~

In August 2009, Hasan purchased two firearms that he used to carry out the attack, but the government officials said that U.S. law does not permit them to connect that purchase information with the other intelligence they had.

The Democrats put up the Gorelick Wall (pdf), tried to shut down FISA, outed successful secret programs in place to stop extremists, and now they, and their lackeys in the MSM are making apologies for an act of terror committed on American soil.

Disgusting.

More here.