Got this from a friend of mine stationed in Af’stan. Have a laugh - or a cringe!

1. You run in terror from a controlled detonation your first week, then
stand in the open to watch real mortars landing, a month later.

2. The most intimate contact you’ve had in months is with the shower
curtain.

3. Your most successful pick-up line is “I’ve got a vehicle”.

4. All the Air Force people look like glow-in-the-dark Power Rangers and
you can’t see the Army Folks.

5. Your 6:00 am wake-up call is “BOOM” Alarm Red, Alarm Red, Alarm Red”.

6. They actually give weapons to the Air Force personnel.

7. You give directions using T-Wall & Bunker murals.

8. You realize AAFES is their own country, and can print their own
money.

9. The amount of sand in your boots is only surpassed by the amount in
your nose.

10. Something as simple as taking a shower or going to the bathroom at
2:00 in the morning requires preparation equal to the Apollo moon
landing.

11. The Texas Style Brisket is not from Texas, is not brisket, and has
no style.

12. You are watching a “chick-flick” with 300 guys with machine guns.

13. Your internet connection is twice as slow as your old dial-up
connection back home, and you’re paying twice as much.

14. Your lying under your bed in your IBA writing to your spouse, “No,
nothing exciting happened today” and you mean it.

15. You can buy a car or truck from the on post AAFES, but paper towels
are nowhere to be found.

16. You live in a gated community, but your home is still a trailer.

17. You are caught way over the speed limit and you are only going 22
MPH.

18. During Alarm Red someone jumps out of the bunker to tell you to get
your hands out of your pockets.

19. Your idea of a night on the town is going to another DFAC.

20. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence, but you still
wouldn’t want to be on that side of the fence.

21. Dusting the furniture has a whole new meaning.

22. “Pimp my Ride” means putting doors on your Hummer.

23. U2 is hitting the charts again.

24. The local community holds fireworks displays every night in your
honor.

25. Driving over the curb seems totally natural.

26. The outcome of the war hinges on how you wear your reflective belt.

27. You see a guy in full battle rattle driving a Humvee trying not to
spill his latte’.

28. It feels normal to dry your hands at the DFAC with toilet paper.

29. Your idea of a clear day is when you can see the perimeter of the
base from where you’re at.

30. The dust on the dashboard of your vehicle is an inch think, but you
don’t even notice it.

31. You don’t even notice T-walls anymore.

32. Cold water from the shower is only possible after 1 Oct.

33. Getting your laundry back from the contractor is a big deal.

34. A 105-degree day in the summer actually feels cool.

35. You don’t even notice an F-16 taking off anymore.

36. You don’t stop what you’re doing anymore, when you hear automatic
gun fire coming from the perimeter.

37. You used to think that F-16’s, doing afterburner take-offs, were
cool. Now it just pisses you off.

38. Without even looking outside, you know that the weather sucks,
because you weren’t woke up all night from the roar of the F-16’s.

Photo from AP

From the AP:

A woman accused of helping recruit dozens of female suicide bombers looked into the camera and described the process: trolling society for likely candidates and then patiently converting the women from troubled souls into deadly attackers.

The accounts, in a video released Tuesday by Iraq police, offer a rare glimpse into the networks used to find and train the women bombers who have become one of the insurgents’ most effective weapons as they struggle under increasing crackdowns.

In a separate prison interview with The Associated Press, with interrogators nearby, the woman said she was part of a plot in which young women were raped and then sent to her for matronly advice. She said she would try to persuade the victims to become suicide bombers as their only escape from the shame and to reclaim their honor.

As brainwashed as the Islamic ummah is, it would be very easy to convert these women into murderers for the sake of honor. After all, if your only other choice is having your father/uncle/brother kill you for adultery, then why not go out with a bang?

I keep looking at this old hag’s picture, and I can’t help but thinking of another famous Muslim woman…

Here is a series of utterly paranoid lectures by a Muslim religious figure who has a hat large enough to conceal the huge amount of LSD he must be taking via some kind of special apparatus in there. The bit at the end is especially funny.

Posted by James Cohen for Right Girl

This movie is rather excellent. Please do watch the whole thing and then decide how you feel about the US Iraq mission. I tend to agree with Chris Hitchens. If for no other reason than humanitarian alone Saddam had to be removed.
Posted by James Cohen for Right Girl

I just watched the Daily Show. Ok, I do that from time to time… who doesn’t? Stewart had on Lara Logan of CBS news, talking about her time embedded in Iraq. And that’s where Stewart lost the show. She ranted (politely, in her British way) about how hard the soldiers work, and how ignored they feel, and what a disgrace that should be to the American people.

I will look for a video to share with the rest of you. I was so happy to see a member of the MSM support the soldiers, and put the average American to shame for being “bored five years later” by what they hear.

Video provided by Dennis in the comments.

Five years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, his memory lives on through wrist watches as people in his home town and birth village seek reminders of a time of safety, jobs and cheap living.

In Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit, north of Baghdad, watches featuring an image of the former Iraqi leader on the dial sell like hot cakes to a mostly older crowd, while younger shoppers like to try them on and pose, watch seller Hamad Younes said.

“People love these Saddam watches,” said Younes of the timepieces, which have a starting price of 100 dollars. “They never stay in stock more than two or three days. The people of Tikrit love Saddam,” he said.

We must remember in our fight against Islam (notice I didn’t say something twee like “militant Islam”… that’s because Islam is, by its very nature, militant) that we are not just fighting the men. The women are equally dangerous.

A MUSLIM leader who claimed he was preaching at a mosque when he was really carrying out a brutal rape was jailed for ten years yesterday.

Abdul Mukin Khalisadar, 26, held a knife to his victim’s throat as he attacked her in her home.

He persuaded seven men to back up his story that he had been in the mosque at the time.

Khalisadar later admitted raping the 27-year-old.

Seven members of East London Mosque admitted perverting justice and got 12 months each.

Burka-clad women in the public gallery yelled abuse at the judge — and one screamed that the victim was a prostitute.

And…

A female suicide bomber detonated her explosives-laden vest near a Shiite shrine killing at least 41 people on Monday in the central Iraqi city of Karbala, police and health officials told AFP.

At least 73 people were wounded in the blast which occurred near the revered Imam Hussein shrine, said a medic at Karbala general hosptial.

The bomber was a woman, a local police officer said on condition of anonymity, adding that she blew herself up near the shrine among a crowd of people.

H/t: Religion of Peace

If you’re not reading Religion of Peace daily, you ought to be. It’s a great aggregator of news from all over the globe, collecting stories of Muslim atrocities.

Update: More on that rape, from above. Pretty damn disgusting. What an animal.

She was accosted by Khalisadar who forced his way past her as she opened the door.

“I’m going to rape you,” he said twice. She said she was pregnant with twins, which was not true but she was trying to stop the assault.

He forced her to perform a sex act, and threatened to kill her when she tried to escape. He held a knife to her throat, saying: “You love your Daddy.”

Traces of his semen were found on the victim’s body and clothes. She was also left with bruises on her arms, leg and face.

There was an appeal on the BBC’s Crimewatch programme but the assault remained unsolved for almost a year.

The article also claims that he was a teaching assistant for a while. Nice. You want this guy near your kids? I swear, the UK makes such a big deal out of background checks for people who are to be working with children, but this just says to me that they don’t mean a damn thing.

Eleven charges of possessing photographs of child abuse are not being proceeded with at present.

Life in Iraq is tough:

“Truly, life was in color and now it is in black and white. I feel like it is a game of musical chairs we used to play with others. … One time you are hit with the chair; another time, someone else is. Now, my son and I are out of the game completely, completely.”

I shudder to think how they play Pin the Tail on the Donkey…

THE acting director of a Baghdad psychiatric hospital has been arrested on suspicion of supplying al-Qaeda in Iraq with the mentally impaired women who were used to blow up two markets in the city on February 1, killing about 100 people.

Again it’s a member of the medical profession who seeks to harm others through the use of explosives. I doubt it’s just to drum up business.

Perhaps someone from that part of the world can enlighten me: Do Middle Eastern doctors take the Hypocratic Oath? If they do, I must say this adds to the proof that no one - not even other Muslims - can trust any word or action from a Muslim.

An insight into the way al-Qaeda thinks came in a letter written by one of its leaders in Anbar province that the US military seized in November and released in part on Sunday. “It is possible to use doctors working in private hospitals and where the infidels/apostates are treated who have serious conditions to be injected with (air bubbles) that will kill them,” it said.

Tell me that “Religion of Peace” bullshit again…

Hell froze over.

Iraq: Sisters behead uncle and aunt in front of their children - because he wore Western-style trousers

Forty-nine Iraqi “criminals” have been killed in three separate raids in Sadr City in the capital, Baghdad, the US military says.

That’s a headline on the BBC website. Note the scare quotes around the word criminals.

“The operation’s objective was an individual reported to be a long-time Special Groups member specialising in kidnapping operations,” it said.

Iraqi sources said women and children were among those killed, but the US said it was not aware of this.

Iraqi sources? What kind of sources? Is it the Iraqi government? Not exactly…

An official loyal to Moqtada Sadr said the attack was “simply barbaric”.

“Most of those killed and wounded were women, children and elderly men which shows the indiscriminate monstrosity of the attacks on this crowded area,” Abdul-Mehdi al-Muteyri told Reuters news agency.

The BBC feels the burden of proof should be on the American military to prove that those killed were indeed “criminals”, but has no trouble at all believing the henchmen of a known thug and terrorist. Disgusting.

It’s Thanksgiving in Canada (Hey, we killed Indians, too, dammit, and we want our turkey day! Why should those pesky Yanks have all the fun?), so I thought it might be nice to do a quick roundup of things we should be thankful for.

The Canadian dollar closed at $1.02 US on Friday. It’s been 33 years since we reached parity or above - I wasn’t even born the last time!

The Canadian jobless rate is at a 33-year low low of 5.9%.

The surge is working, whether Pelosi & Co. like it or not.

The so-called surge has emboldened Iraqis, who now are showing unprecedented cooperation with American troops in an effort to rid their neighborhoods of dangerous madmen.

The US economy added 110,000 more jobs in September, after adding 89,000 in August. Damn that George Bush - he keeps pulling the rug out under the naysayers!

“It certainly doesn’t look like an economy that’s losing momentum,” said John Ryding, chief U.S. economist at Bear Stearns Cos. in New York.

So while I might be a Negative Nancy much of the time on this blog, I thought today was a good chance to point out a few things that are benefiting us. Things we should be thankful for. Feel free to add more in the comments.

Graphic and heartbreaking, the Daily Mail has a story in their Femail section about honor killings in Iraq. Be warned - there are pictures of a girl who was stoned to death for dating a boy outside her denomination.

A teenage girl lies dead on the ground in a pool of her own blood.

Her once groomed hair is cast across her face like a rag doll’s, her skirt pulled up to complete her humiliation.

In another image, she is seen lying on her side, her face battered and bloodied, barely recognisable.

The concrete block used to smash in her face lies next to her.

Du’a Khalil Aswad was beaten, kicked and stoned for 30 minutes at the hands of a lynch mob before one of her attackers launched a carefully aimed fatal blow.

America is trying to bring civilizaztion to savages, and we moan about the length of time it’s taking. I suggest we make ourselves good and comfortable - this is going to take a while.

Via LGF:

The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain’s youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

Would those be the same members of the audience who would have rioted has Britain used it’s dusty spine to free its sailors instead of humbly accepting them as a “gift”? Would those be the same members of the audience who protest holding signs that say “Behead those who insult Islam”? Because I assure you, it would not be the members of the audience whose fathers and grandfathers fought for Her Majesty themselves. It would not be the average middle-classman who understands that the freedoms they enjoy did not just spring up from a wild mushroom or something.

“The BBC has behaved in a cowardly fashion by pulling the plug on the project altogether,” said a source close to the project. “It began to have second thoughts last year as the war in Iraq deteriorated. It felt it couldn’t show anything with a degree of positivity about the conflict.

“It needed to tell stories about Iraq which reflected the fact that some members of the audience didn’t approve of what was going on. Obviously a story about Johnson Beharry could never do that. You couldn’t have a scene where he suddenly turned around and denounced the war because he just wouldn’t do that.

“The film is now on hold and it will only make it to the screen if another broadcaster picks it up.”

Here’s hoping a more patriotic station backs it. The so-called “British” Broadcasting Corporation has no room for the good news out of Iraq. Only the bad.

His latter-day minions are pretty damn cowardly. Think about it. Osama is hiding in a cave on the Pak/Af’stan border. Moqtada al Sadr has been hiding since the surge was announced. Even the “secular” Saddam Hussein was found in a spiderhole, wretched and filthy, not having seen the sun in weeks. These are the people that are leading resistance? How could anyone be foolish enough to follow them and do their bidding?

The orders [to resist the surge] come from a diminished Sadr, who still has yet to poke his head above ground in Iraq since the beginning of the surge. At first, he fled to Iran supposedly to hold strategy meetings with senior Mahdi Army commanders and to consult with his Iranian allies, but most suspected he bugged out before the Americans could seize him and his most loyal followers.

Sad, sad, sad.

The bodies of 14 policemen were found Friday northeast of Baghdad after an al-Qaida-affilated Sunni group said it abducted members of a government security force in retaliation for the rape of a Sunni woman by members of the Shiite-dominated police.

How do we know the charge is bogus? Because if it were real, the woman would have been killed, not the Iraqi police.

I expected the Democrats in the United States to vote in favor of having our asses kicked by Jihadis in Iraq, but the fact that 17 so-called Republicans also voted for our defeat adds brutal insult to fatal injury.

“Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush, announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq,” the resolution said.

Just when Moqtada al Sadr is on the run, hiding out with his heathen homeboys in Iran, congress pulls the rug out from under the surge. Cowardliness has long been a hallmark of the Democratic party (think Jimmy Carter), but the idea that the party who was willing to lose lives by the tens of thousands to fight for equality for all men in 1860 has become as yellow as the donkeys in 2007 is depressing and disgusting. If I were a US voter, living in a district represented by one of the 17 people who had lost their nerve, their patriotism and their balls, I would be organizing a lynch mob. Lucky for them, I’m not. So in lieu of lynching (which just creates bad press anyway), people who live in these districts need to stand up and make their outrage heard. Write, call, scream outside their office if need be (expect to get carted to a mental ward if you try this, unless you are in a large group - then it’s a protest).

So who is on the black list (or should that be yellow list)? Who ought to be ostracized for not backing those men currently serving thousands of miles away, facing death and destruction on all sides, including now - sadly - the home front?

Mike Castle - Delaware
Howard Coble - North Carolina 6th
Tom Davis - Virginia’s 11th
John J. Duncan Jr. - Tennessee’s 2nd
Phil English - Pennsylvania’s 3rd
Wayne Gilchrist - Maryland’s 1st
Bob Inglis - South Carolina’s 4th
Tim Johnson - Illinois’ 15th (I wonder what Abraham Lincoln would say)
Walter B. Jones - North Carolina’s 3rd
Ric Keller - Florida’s 8th
Mark Kirk - Illinois’ 10th (I wonder what Abraham Lincoln would say)
Stephen LaTourette - Ohio’s 14th
Ron Paul - Texas’ 14th
Tom Petri - Wisconsin’s 6th
Jim Ramstad - Minnesota’s 3rd
Fred Upton - Michigan’s 6th
Jim Walsh - New York’s 25th

All men (if they can still be called that). Maybe they need to spend a little quality time with some Blue Star mothers from their districts. They can explain to those fine ladies why they feel that those women’s sons are not worth supporting.

Further to this, there is a new website out called Victory Caucus. I have chosen to participate in this site as a contributer - as a non-American, it is the only way I can be involved. Not for me the phonecalls to congressmen, or the letter-writing campaigns. But please, those of you who are American voters, please visit Victory Caucus and learn how to get involved in the process of victory in Iraq, victory over terror, and victory in 2008.

That would be to make the other guy turn tail and run. America isn’t a country of cowards, ready to run away in fear. America is a country that stands strong in the face of adversity until the bad guy cries “uncle!”

According to senior military officials, al Sadr left Baghdad two to three weeks ago and fled to Tehran, Iran, where he has family.

Al Sadr commands the Mahdi army, one of the most formidable insurgent militias in Iraq, and his move coincides with the announced U.S. troop surge in Baghdad.

Sources believe al Sadr is worried about an increase of 20,000 U.S. troops in the Iraqi capital. One official told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz, “He is scared he will get a JDAM [bomb] dropped on his house.”

And someone will steal his ruby slippers. Heh. The Democrats and other cowards in America and around the world can moan and cry about sending twenty thousand more troops over, but the very fact that Moqtada al Sadr is scared at just the prospect of it proves that it’s the right thing to do.