Thursday, September 13, 2007

Houssein Zorkot, a Dearborn, Michigan Muslim Medical student Captured w/ loaded AK-47 in Hemlock Park

News you will not find in any of the Dead Brain Main stream media is this item from Dearborn, Michigan, a city with one of the highest Muslim populations, of a MEDICAL student and MUSLIM hanging out in the city park dressed in black uniform with war paint on his face armed with a fully loaded AK-47 assault rifle. Coincidence? (aka coinkadink:"the noteworthy alignment of two or more events or circumstances without obvious causal connection.")

The Dearborn mayor apparently thinks so and just so members of the Dead Brains media don't get the wrong idea he has directed Dearborn police chief to forward all media inquires to his office.

The mayor is concerned that the pure "coincidence" of yet another Muslim medical student found, dressed for combat the Saturday before 9/11, in the city park with a loaded AK might be misconstrued as yet another 9/11 terrorist attack on the city. When it is a possiblity that the baby Orc has a grudge against park squirrels since they mugged him for his nuts. Hey! It could happen. So don't jump to conclusions. Help a fellow mayor just trying to do his job.

The mayor is on guard against any wrong ideas that you might be tempted to get about the appearance and intentions of one, Houssein Zorkot, now being held in jail with bail set at one million dollars CASH--no 10 per cent bonds. Cash. American Dinero .

No worries, mate. Despite the fact that Dearborn police found Houssein Zorkot computer chock full of Jihad sites and alleged vows of

allegiance

to do or die the deaf and dumb media is not interested. So do not trouble yourself mayor. The dead brains mainstream media is too busy yawning as the coverage for this terrorist incidence so far extends to one shopper newspaper Press & Guide A Heritage Newspaper Twice Weekly Publication
, one local TV station, two major blog websites and one inconsequential blogspot so far down the food chain that when it rains there--- its' called whale piss:

ARREST: COMFORTING. Events underlying the arrest not so

ARREST: COMFORTING. Events underlying the arrest not so comforting: A 26-year-old Dearborn resident, Houssein Zorkot, was arraigned in 19th District Court Tuesday on several felony charges, including carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent. Zorkot, a third-year medical student at Wayne State University, was allegedly armed with an AK-4...
Instapundit.com (v.2) -

Dearborn, Michigan: Muslim caught in park with AK-47 assault rifle

DEARBORN - Houssein Zorkot, a 26-year-old Dearborn resident, was arraigned Tuesday in 19th District Court on multiple felony charges, including carrying a dangerous weapon with unlawful intent — a five-year felony. Zorkot, a third-year medical student at Wayne State University, was allegedly armed with an A...JIHAD WATCH

Press & Guide

"Zorkot, a third-year medical student at Wayne State University, was allegedly armed with an AK-47 assault rifle and dressed in black clothing with camouflage paint covering his face when he was arrested Saturday in Hemlock Park.

According to police, Zorkot was observed attempting to leave the park in a black SUV after officers had received reports of a man carrying a rifle in the area. He was placed under arrest and is scheduled to undergo a preliminary examination at 9 a.m. Sept. 21 in 19th District Court.

Zorkot has also been charged with one count of possession of a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle and one count of felony firearm. He remains in custody on a $1 million bond (cash, no 10 percent)."

Monday, September 10, 2007

Former USMC Cpl Marco Martinez, winner of the NAVY CROSS, has new bio' book "Hard Corps" out this Month


















MARCO MARTINEZ, the first Hispanic American since Vietnam to be awarded the Navy Cross and the first Marine to receive that honor in the War on Terror. From in New Mexico, moved to So. CA and attends a community college while working full-time in nuclear security.

"Hard Corps- From Gangster to Marine Hero
" ,due out Sept 25th, is the biography of Marco Martinez about his life hanging out his gangsta' homies until he meets a U.S. Marine Corps recruiter at his high school. The citation for his medal already reads like a book itself--- "Hard Corps" is on my must read list.


His Navy Cross Citation:

Citation:
For extraordinary heroism while serving as 1st Fire Team Leader, 2nd Squad, 1st Platoon, Company G, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM on 12 April 2003. Responding to a call to reinforce his Platoon that was ambushed, Corporal Martinez effectively deployed his team under fire in supporting positions for a squad assault. After his squad leader was wounded, he took control and led the assault through a tree line where the ambush originated. As his squad advanced to secure successive enemy positions, it received sustained small arms fire from a nearby building. Enduring intense enemy fire and without regard for his own personal safety, Corporal Martinez launched a captured enemy rocket propelled grenade into the building temporarily silencing the enemy and allowing a wounded Marine to be evacuated and receive medical treatment. After receiving additional fire, he single-handedly assaulted the building and killed four enemy soldiers with a grenade and his rifle. By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, unlimited courage in the face of heavy enemy fire, and utmost devotion to duty, Corporal Martinez reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Osama Bin Laden Speech To the Unbelievers

Thanks to Wolf Pangloss who made the text of the Bin Laden speech available at his blog. If you have ever tried to work from a pdf. file you would appreciate what great karma points he has earned today.

All praise is due to Allah, who built the heavens and earth in justice, and created man as a favor and grace from Him. And from His ways is that the days rotate between the people, and from His Law is retaliation in kind: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and the killer is killed. And all praise is due to Allah, who awakened His slaves’ desire for the Garden, and all of them will enter it except those who refuse. And whoever obeys Him alone in all of his affairs will enter the Garden, and whoever disobeys Him will have refused.As for what comes after: Peace be upon he who follows the Guidance. People of America: I shall be speaking to you on important topics which concern you, so lend me your ears. I begin by discussing the war which is between us and some of its repercussions for us and you.

To preface, I say: despite America being the greatest economic power and possessing the most powerful and up-to-date military arsenal as well; and despite it spending on this war and its army more than the entire world spends on its armies; and despite it being the major state influencing the policies of the world, as if it has a monopoly on the unjust right of veto; despite all of this, 19 young men were able - by the grace of Allah, the Most High - to change the direction of its compass. And in fact, the subject of the Mujahideen has become an inseparable part of the speech of your leader, and the effects and signs of that are not hidden.

Since the 11th, many of America’s policies have come under the influence of the Mujahideen, and that is by the grace of Allah, the Most High. And as a result, the people discovered the truth about it, its reputation worsened, its prestige was broken globally and it was bled dry economically, even if our interests overlap with the interests of the major corporations and also with those of the neoconservatives, despite the differing intentions.

And for your information media, during the first years of the war, lost its credibility and manifested itself as a tool of the colonialist empires, and its condition has often been worse than the condition of the media of the dictatorial regimes which march in the caravan of the single leader.

Then Bush talks about his working with al-Maliki and his government to spread freedom in Iraq but he is in fact is working with the leaders of one sect against another sect, in the belief that this will quickly decide the war in his favor.

And thus, what is called the civil war came into being and matters worsened at his hands before getting out of his control and him becoming like the one who plows and sows the sea: he harvests nothing but failure.

So these are some of the results of the freedom about whose spreading he is talking to you. And then the backtracking of Bush on his insistence on not giving the United Nations expanded jurisdiction in Iraq is an implicit admission of his loss and defeat there.

And among the most important items contained in Bush’s speeches since the events of the 11th is that the Americans have no options but to continue this war. This tone is in fact an echoing of the words of neoconservatives like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Richard Perle, the latter having said previously that the Americans have no choice in front of them other than to continue the war or face a holocaust.

I say, refuting this unjust statement, that the morality and culture of the holocaust is your culture, not our culture. In fact, burning living beings is forbidden in our religion, even if they be small like the ant, so what of man?! The holocaust of the Jews was carried out by your brethren in the middle of Europe, but had it been closer to our countries, most of the Jews would have been saved by takng refuge with us. And my proof for that is in what your brothers, the Spanish, did when they set up the horrible courts of the Inquisition to try Muslims and Jews, when the Jews only found safe shelter by taking refuge in our countries. And that is why the Jewish community in Morocco today is one of the largest communities in the world. They are alive with us and we have not incinerated them, but we are a people who don’t sleep under oppression and reject humiliation and disgrace, and we take revenge on the people of tyranny and aggression, and the blood of the Muslims will not be spilled with impunity, and the morrow is night for he who awaits.

Also, your Christian brothers have been living among us for 14 centuries in Egypt alone, there are millions of Christians whom we have not incinerated and shall not incinerate. But the fact is, there is a continuing and biased campaign being waged against us for a long time now by your politicians and many of your writers by way of your media, especially Hollywood, for the purpose of misrepresenting Islam and its adherents to drive you away from the true religion. The genocide of peoples and their holocausts took place at your hands: only a few specimens of Red Indians were spared, and just a few days ago, the Japanese observed the 62nd anniversary of the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by your nuclear weapons.

And among the things which catch the eye of the one who considers the repercussions of your unjust war against Iraq is the failure of your democratic system, despite it raising of the slogans of justice, liberty, equality and humanitarianism. It has not only failed to achieve these things, it has actually destroyed these and other concepts with its weapons - especially in Iraq and Afghanistan - in a brazen fashion, to replace them with fear, destruction, killing, hunger, illness, displacement and more than a million orphans in Baghdad alone, not to mention hundreds of thousands of widows. American statistics speak of the killing of more than 650,000 of the people of Iraq as a result of the war and its repercussions.

People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of the tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven’t made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there, which has led to the vast majority of you being afflicted with disappointment.

And here is the gist of the matter, so one should pause, think and reflect: why have the Democrats failed to stop this war, despite them being the majority?

I will come back to reply to this question after raising another question, which is:

Why are the leaders of the White House keen to start wars and wage them around the world, and make use of every possible opportunity through which they can reach this purpose, occasionally even creating justifications based on deception and blatant lies, as you saw Iraq?

In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation.

And so Kennedy was killed, and al-Qaeda wasn’t present at that time, but rather, those corporations were the primary beneficiary from his killing. And the war continued after that for approximately one decade. But after it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, Rumsfeld. And even more incredible than that is that Bush picked him as secretary of defense in his first term after picking Cheney as his vice-president, Powell as secretary of state and Armitage as Powell’s deputy, despite their horrific and bloody history of murdering humans. So that was a clear signal that his administration - the administration of the generals - didn’t have as its main concern the serving of humanity, but rather, was interested in bringing about new massacres. Yet in spite of that, you permitted Bush to complete his first term, and stranger still, chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you - with your full knowledge and consent - to continue to murder our people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Then you claim to be innocent! This innocence of yours is like my innocence of the blood of your sons of the 11th - were I to claim such a thing. But it is impossible for me to humor any of you in the arrogance and indifference you show for the lives of humans outside America, or for me to humor your leaders in their lying, as the entire world knows they have the lion’s share of that. These morals aren’t our morals. What I want to emphasize here is that not taking past war criminals to account led to them repeating that crime of killing humanity without right and waging this unjust war in Mesopotamia, and as a result, here are the oppressed ones today continuing to take their right from you.

This war was entirely unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. And among the most capable of those from your side who speak to you on this topic and on the manufacturing of public opinion is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn’t like those who give advice. The entire world came out in unprecedented demonstrations to warn against waging the war and describe its true nature in eloquent terms like “no to spilling red blood for black oil,” yet he paid them no heed. It is time for humankind to know that talk of the rights of man and freedom are lies produced by the White House and its allies in Europe to deceive humans, take control of their destinies and subjugate them.

So in answer to the question about the causes of the Democrats’ failure to stop the war, I say: they are the same reasons which led to the failure of former president Kennedy to stop the Vietnam war. Those with real power and influence are those with the most capital. And since the democratic system permits major corporations to back candidates, be they presidential or congressional, there shouldn’t be any cause for astonishment - and there isn’t any - in the Democrats’ failure to stop the war. And you’re the ones who have the saying which goes, “Money talks.” And I tell you: after the failure of your representatives in the Democratic Party to implement your desire to stop the war, you can still carry anti-war placards and spread out in the streets of major cities, then go back to your homes, but that will be of no use and will lead to the prolonging of the war.

However, there are two solutions for stopping it. The first is from our side, and it is to continue to escalate the killing and fighting against you. That is our duty, and our brothers are carrying it out, and I ask Allah to grant them resolve and victory. And the second solution is from your side. It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of the democratic system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations.

And with that, it has become clear to all that they are the real tyrannical terrorists. In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations, yet despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistic speaks of the death and displacement of the millions of human beings because of that, especially in Africa. This greatest of plagues and most dangerous of threats to the lives of humans is taking place in an accelerating fashion as the world is being dominated by the democratic system, which confirms its massive failure to protect humans and their interests from the greed and avarice of the major corporations and their representatives.

And despite this brazen attack on the people, the leaders of the West - especially Bush, Blair, Sarkozy and Brown - still talk about freedom and human rights with a flagrant disregard for the intellects of human beings. So is there a form of terrorism stronger, clearer and more dangerous than this? This is why I tell you: as you liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism, you should liberate yourselves form the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system.

If you were to ponder it well, you would find that in the end, it is a system harsher and fiercer than your systems in the Middle Ages. The capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of “globalization” in order to protect democracy.

And Iraq and Afghanistan and their tragedies; and the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes; and the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa: all of this is but one side of this global system.

So it is imperative that you free yourselves from all of that and search for an alternative, upright methodology in which it is not the business of any class of humanity to lay down its own laws to its own advantage at the expense of the other classes as is the case with you, since the essence of man-made positive laws is that they serve the interests of those with the capital and thus make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The infallible methodology is the methodology of Allah, the Most High, who created the heavens and earth and created the Creation and is the Most Kind and All-Informed and the Knower of the souls of His slaves and the methodology that best suits them.

You believe with absolute certainty that you believe in Allah, and you are full of conviction of this belief, so much that you have written this belief of yours on your dollar.

But the truth is that you are mistaken in this belief of yours. The impartial judge knows that belief in Allah requires straightness in the following of His methodology, and accordingly, total obedience must be to the orders and prohibitions of Allah Alone in all aspects of life.

So how about you when you associate others with Him in your beliefs and separate state from religion, then claim that you are believers?!

What you have done is clear loss and manifest polytheism, and I will give you a parable of polytheism, as parables summarize and clarify speech.

I tell you: its parable is the parable of a man who owns a shop and hires a worker and tells him, “Sell and give me the money,” but he makes sales and gives the money to someone other than the owner. So who of you would approve of that?

You believe that Allah is your Lord and your Creator and the Creator of this earth and that it is His property, then you work on His earth and property without His orders and without obeying Him, and you legislate in contradiction to His Law and methodology.

This work of yours is the greatest form of polytheism and is rebellion against obedience to Allah with which the believer becomes an unbeliever, even if he obeys Allah in some of his other orders. Allah, the Most High, sent down His orders in His Sacred Books like the Torah and Evangel and sent with them the Messengers (Allah’s prayers and peace be upon them) as bearers of good news to the people.

And everyone who believes in them and complies with them is a believer from the people of the Garden. Then when the men of knowledge altered the words of Allah, the Most High, and sold them for a paltry price, as the rabbis did with the Torah and the monks with the Evangel, Allah sent down his final Book, the magnificent Quran, and safeguarded it from being added to or subtracted from by the hands of men, and in it is a complete methodology for the lives of all people.

And our holding firm to this magnificent Book is the secret of our strength and winning of the war against you despite the fewness of our numbers and materiel.

And if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer in this regard.

Don’t be turned away from Islam by the terrible situation of the Muslims today, for our rulers in general abandoned Islam many decades ago, but our forefathers were the leaders and pioneers of the world for many centuries, when they held firmly to Islam.

And before concluding, I tell you: there has been an increase in the thinkers who study events and happenings, and on the basis of their study, they have declared the approach of the collapse of that American Empire.

Among them is the European banker who anticipated the fall of the Soviet Union, which indeed fell. And it would benefit you to read what he wrote about what comes after the empire in regard to the United States of America. I also want to bring to your attention that among the greatest reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union was their being afflicted with their leader Brezhnev, who was overtaken by pride and arrogance and refused to look at the facts on the ground. From the first year of the Afghanistan invasion, reports indicated that the Russians were losing the war, but he refused to acknowledge this, lest it go down in his personal history as a defeat, even though refusal to acknowledge defeat not only doesn’t do anything to change the facts for thinking people, but also exacerbates the problem and increases the losses. And how similar is your position today to their position approximately two decades ago. The mistakes of Brezhnev are being repeated by Bush, who - when asked about the date of his withdrawing of forces from Iraq - said in effect that the withdrawal will not be during his reign, bur rather, during the reign of the one who succeeds him. And the significance of those words is not hidden.

And here I say: it would benefit you to listen to the poignant messages of your soldiers in Iraq, who are paying - with their blood, nerves and scattered limbs - the price for these sorts of irresponsible statements. Among them is the eloquent message of Joshua which he sent by way of the media, in which he wipes the tears from his eyes and describes American politicians in harsh terms and invites them to join him there for a few days. Perhaps his message will find in you an attentive year so you can rescue him and more than 150,000 of your sons there who are tasting the two bitterest things:

If they leave their barracks, the mines devour them, and if they refuse to leave, rulings are passed against them. Thus the only options left in front of them are to commit suicide or cry, both of which are from the severest of afflictions. So is there anything more men can do after crying and killing themselves to make you respond to them? They are doing that out of the severity of the humiliation, fear and terror which they are suffering. It is severer than what the slaves used to suffer at your hands centuries ago, and it is as if some of them have gone from one slavery to another slavery more severe and harmful, even if it be in the fancy dress of the Defense Department’s financial enticements.

So do you feel the greatness of their sufferings?

To conclude, I invite you to embrace Islam, for the greatest mistake one can make in this world and one which is uncorrectable is to die while not surrendering to Allah, the Most High, in all aspects of one’s life - i.e. to die outside of Islam. And Islam means gain for you in this first life and the next, final life. The true religion is a mercy for people in their lives, filling their hearts with serenity and calm.

There is a message for you in the Mujahideen: the entire world is in pursuit of them, yet their hearts, by the grace of Allah, are satisfied and tranquil. The true religion also puts peoples’ lives in order with its laws; protects their needs and interests; refines their goals; protects them from evils; and guarantees for them entrance into Paradise in the hereafter through their obedience to Allah and sincere worship of Him Alone.

And it will also achieve your desire to stop the war as a consequence, because as soon as the warmongering owners of the major corporations realize that you have lost confidence in your democratic system and begun to search for an alternative, and that this alternative is Islam, they will run to you to please you and achieve what you want to steer you away from Islam. So your true compliance with Islam will deprive them of the opportunity to defraud the peoples and take their money under numerous pretexts, like arms deals and so on.

There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zakat (alms) totaling only 2.5%. So beware of the deception of those with the capital. And with your earnest reading about Islam from its pristine sources, you will arrive at an important truth, which is that the religion of all of the Prophets (peace and blessings of Allah be upon them) is one, and that its essence is submission to the orders of Allah Alone in all aspects of life, even if their Shari’ahs [Laws] differ.

And did you know that the name of the Prophet of Allah Jesus and his mother (peace and blessings of Allah be on them both) are mentioned in the Noble Quran dozens of times, and that in the Quran there is a chapter whose name is “Maryam,” i.e. Mary, daughter of ‘Imran and mother of Jesus (peace and blessings of Allah be upon them both)? It tells the story of her becoming pregnant with the Prophet of Allah Jesus (peace and blessings of Allah be upon them both), and in its confirmation of her chastity and purity, in contrast to the fabrications of the Jews against her. Whoever wishes to find that out for himself must listen to the verse of this magnificent chapter: one of the just kings of the Christians - the Negus - listened to some of its verses and his eyes welled up with tears and he said something which should be reflected on for a long time by those sincere in their search for the truth.

He said, “verily, this and what Jesus brought come from one lantern”: i.e. that the magnificent Quran and the Evangel are both from Allah, the Most High; and every just and intelligent one of you who reflects of the Quran will definitely arrive at this truth. It also must be noted that Allah has preserved the Quran from the alterations of man. And reading in order to become acquainted with Islam only requires a little effort, and those of you who are guided will profit greatly. And peace be upon he who follows the Guidance.

The End

Friday, September 07, 2007

"It remains the greatest of honors to serve with you.":David H. Petraeus, General, United States Army Commanding

HEADQUARTERS MULTI-NATIONAL FORCE – IRAQ BAGHDAD, IRAQ APO AE
7 September 2007
Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and Civilians of Multi-National Force-Iraq We are now over two-and-a-half months into the surge of offensive operations made possible by the surge of forces, and I want to share with you my view of how I think we’re doing. This letter is a bit longer than previous ones, since I feel you deserve a detailed description of what I believe we have – and have not – accomplished, as Ambassador Crocker and I finalize the assessment we will provide shortly to Congress. Up front, my sense is that we have achieved tactical momentum and wrested the initiative from our enemies in a number of areas of Iraq. The result has been progress in the security arena, although it has, as you know, been uneven. Additionally, as you all appreciate very well, innumerable tasks remain and much hard work lies ahead. We are, in short, a long way from the goal line, but we do have the ball and we are driving down the field. We face a situation that is exceedingly complex. Al Qaeda, associated insurgent groups, and militia extremists, some supported by Iran, continue to carry out attacks on us, our Iraqi partners, and the Iraqi civilians we seek to secure. We have to contend with the relentless pace of operations, the crushing heat, and the emotions that we all experience during long deployments and tough combat. And we operate against a backdrop of limited Iraqi government capacity, institutions trying to rebuild, and various forms of corruption. All of this takes place in a climate of distrust and fear that stems from the sectarian violence that did so much damage to the fabric of Iraqi society in 2006 and into 2007, not to mention the decades of repression under Saddam’s brutal regime. Tragically, sectarian violence continues to cause death and displacement in Baghdad and elsewhere, albeit at considerably reduced levels from 8 months ago, due, in large part, to your hard work and sacrifice together with our Iraqi counterparts. In spite of these challenges, our operations – particularly the offensive operations we have conducted since mid-June – have helped produce progress in many areas on the ground. In fact, the number of attacks across the country has declined in 8 of the past 11 weeks, reaching during the last week in August a level not seen since June 2006. This trend is not just a result of greater numbers of Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces; it also reflects your determination, courage, and skill in conducting counterinsurgency operations. By taking the fight to the enemy, you have killed or captured dozens of leaders and thousands of members of Al Qaeda-Iraq and extremist militia elements, you have taken many of Al Qaeda’s former sanctuaries away from them, and you have dismantled a number of their car bomb and improvised explosive device networks. By living among the population with our Iraqi partners, you have been holding the areas you have cleared. By helping Iraqis reestablish basic services and local governance, you have helped exploit the security gains. And by partnering closely with Iraqi Security Forces, you have been strengthening Iraqi elements that will one day have sole responsibility for protecting their population. Indeed, while Iraqi forces clearly remain a work in progree, Iraqi soldiers and police are very much in the fight, and they continue to sustain losses that are two to three times our losses. We are also building momentum in an emerging area of considerable importance – local reconciliation. Local Iraqi leaders are coming forward, opposing extremists, and establishing provisional units of neighborhood security volunteers. With growing Government of Iraq support, these volunteers are being integrated into legitimate institutions to help improve local security. While this concept is playing out differently in various areas across Iraq, it is grounded in a desire shared by increasing numbers of Iraqis – to oppose extremist elements and their ideologies. This is very significant, as many of you know first-hand, extremists cannot survive without the support of the population. The popular rejection of Al Qaeda and its ideology has, for example, helped transform Anbar Province this year from one of the most dangerous areas of Iraq to one of the safest. The popular rejection has helped Coalition and Iraqi Forces take away other areas from Al Qaeda as well, and we are seeing a spread of this sentiment in an ever-increasing number of Sunni areas. Now, in fact, we are also seeing a desire to reject extremists emerge in many Shi’a areas. The progress has not, to be sure, been uniform across Baghdad or across Iraq. Accomplishments in some areas – for example, in Ramadi and in Anbar Province – have been greater than any of us might have predicted six months ago. The achievements in some other areas – for example, in some particularly challenging Baghdad neighborhoods and in reducing overall civilian casualties, especially those caused by periodic, barbaric Al Qaeda bombings – have not been as dramatic. However, the overall trajectory has been encouraging, especially when compared to the situation at the height of the sectarian violence in late 2006 and early 2007. Many of us hoped this summer would be a time of tangible political progress at the national level as well. One of the justifications for the surge, after all, was that it would help create the space for Iraqi leaders to tackle the tough questions and agree on key pieces of “national reconciliation” legislation. It has not worked out as we had hoped. All participants, Iraqi and coalition alike, are dissatisfied by the halting progress on major legislative initiatives such as the oil framework law, revenue sharing, and de-ba’athification reform. At the same time, however, our appreciation of what this legislation represents for Iraqi leaders has grown. These laws are truly fundamental in nature and will help determine how Iraqis will share power and resources in the new Iraq. While much work remains to be done before these critical issues are resolved, the seriousness with which Iraqi leaders came together at their summit in late August has given hope that they are up to the task before them, even if it is clearly taking more time than we initially expected. In the coming months, our coalition’s countries and all Iraqis will continue to depend on each of you and on our Iraqi counterparts to keep the pressure on the extremists, to help security and strengthen the rule of law for all Iraqis, to work with the Government of Iraq to integrate volunteers into local security and national institutions, to assist with the restoration and improvement of basic services, and to continue the development of conditions that foster reconciliation. For our part, Ambassador Crocker and I will continue to do everything in our power to help the Prime Minister and the Government of Iraq achieve the meaningful results that will ensure that your sacrifices and those of your comrades help produce sustainable security for Iraq over the long term. A stable and secure Iraq that denies extremists a safe haven and has a government that is representative of and responsive to all Iraqis helps protect the vital interests of our coalition countries. A stable and secure Iraq will also benefit Iraq’s citizens and Iraq’s neighbors alike, bringing clam to a region full of challenges and employing iraq’s human capital and natural resource blessings for the benefit of all. As I noted at the outset of this letter, over the next few days, Ambassador Crocker and I will share with the U.S. Congress and the American people our assessment of the situation in Iraq. I will also describe the recommendations I have provided to my chain of command. I will go before Congress conscious of the strain on our forces, the sacrifices that you and your families are making, the gains we have made in Iraq, the challenges that remain, and the importance of building on what we and our Iraqi counterparts have fought so hard to achieve. Thanks once again for what each of you continue to do. Our Nations have asked much of you and your families.

It remains the greatest of honors to serve with you.


Sincerely, s/ David H. Petraeus General, United States Army Commanding -----

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

We are at war with the Islamic Republic of Iran-The road to Peace leads right thru beautiful downtown Tehran

The shitty end of the stick is always the last to be picked up. Kenneth R. Timmerman of Front Page says it's time, Mr. President.



The Islamic Republic of Iran has been waging war against America in Iraq from the very first days of U.S. military operations against Saddam Hussein. And yet, until just recently, no one in the U.S. government has been willing to acknowledge this openly.

Iran began planning operations to undermine an eventual U.S. invasion of Iraq many months before U.S. military forces arrived in the region in late 2002.

As I will reveal in my upcoming book, Shadow Warriors, one aspect of this forward-looking Iranian planning became apparent as U.S. troops were rolling toward Baghdad.

Whereas the United States was still relying on a Commando Solo aircraft to beam crude Arabic-language radio programming into Iraq, the Iranians unrolled a whole series of slick, Arabic language television stations that blanketed the entire country with anti-U.S. propaganda.

The effect on Iraqi public opinion was devastating. At one point, Iran had 42 radio and TV stations in Arabic beaming into Iraq, whereas the U.S.-led coalition had just one.

A new report jointly sponsored by the Weekly Standard and the Institute for the Study of War, released last week, provides extraordinary new details of Iran’s propaganda, intelligence, and military offensive against the U.S. presence in Iraq since those early days of the war.

Kimberly Kagan has done yeoman’s work in pulling together information released in dribs and drabs in recent months by U.S. military spokesmen in Iraq.

Here are just a few of the main points she covers in great detail in this dense 32 page report:

• Iran is using Hezbollah to train Iraqi terrorists, sending top Hezbollah operatives into Iraq periodically to ensure hands-on management of their terror protégés;

• Iran has set up training camps near Tehran where they regularly graduate classes of between 20-70 terrorists, who then return to Iraq as a self-contained network to carry out terrorist operations against U.S. military and Iraqi targets;

• The Revolutionary Guards “Qods Force” is running operations in Iraq through a network of ‘secret cells” within Shia militias, whose agents assassinate key Iraqi leaders, run death squads, infiltrate government ministries, and distribute weaponry to other insurgents.

• Iran is also working with Sunni terrorist groups, include al Qaeda in Iraq and an Ansar al Islam, and has been terrorists from both groups at special camps inside Iran.

This deadly litany of Iranian actions leaves no doubt about the intentions of Iran’s leaders.

They aim to defeat us in Iraq. It’s as simple as that.

They have declared war, and intend to continue waging war until we defeat them, or they defeat us.

Judging by recent statements from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he and his fellow Revolutionary Guards officers have little doubt who is winning.

At a Tehran press conference on Tuesday, the Mighty Midget said that U.S. political influence in Iraq is “collapsing rapidly,” and he kindly offered to take our place.

"Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region,” he said. “Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap, with the help of neighbors and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation.”

Over the past nine months, U.S. military leaders in Iraq have gradually started to wake up to the enormity of Iran’s offensive operations inside Iraq, and to target Iranian networks.

The first major U.S. counter-strike took place last December, when the U.S. arrested a top Revolutionary Guards officer in Baghdad and started to learn of Iran’s extensive intelligence and terrorist networks in Iraq during bedside chats with the gentle Iranian.

Already then, I noted on this page that “Victory in Iraq cannot come until the United States makes it clear to Iran – even more than Syria, since the Syrians will take their lead from Tehran – that we will no longer tolerate their intervention in Iraqi affairs.”

That remains true today, and our failure to send a tough message to Tehran and utterly smash their networks in Iraq and their support structures in Iran has only encouraged them to step up attacks on U.S. forces.

U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker has acknowledged that since the U.S. agreed to talk with Iran about Iraq, Iranian operations in Iraq have gone “up and not down.” The more we talk, the quicker they shoot.

Since the spring, when Sunni tribal leaders started coming over to the coalition and deserting al Qaeda, we have had significant successes against these Iranian terror networts. But they have received little attention in the press – and for good reason: the State Department has been desperate to hush up Iran’s deadly war against America, in the vain hope they can still negotiate an end of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

Kimberly Kagan notes that since March 2007, the U.S. has detained, captured, or killed a significant number of Iranian agents and their proxies in Iraq.

These included:

• Qayis Khazali, an Iraqi promoted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to head their “special groups” inside Iraq. Khazali and his brother, Laith, were captured in March.

• Ali Musa Daqduq, a top Lebanese Hezbollah operative sent by Iran to organize and train secret Iranian cells in Iraq. He was captured by the U.S. on March 20, 2007.

• Abu Yaser al Shibani, the deputy commander of an Iranian network that supplied money, access to the IRGC, and Iranian-made Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP). He was captured on April 20, 2007.

• Azhar Dulaymi, the mastermind of the Jan. 20 raid in Karbala that killed five U.S. soldiers. He was killed by U.S. Special Forces on May 19, 2007;

Since May, more than a dozen additional “high-value” individuals trained in Iran and used by Iran to run their “secret cells” inside Iraq have been killed or detained.

And yet, despite these successes by the U.S. military, the Iranians keep sending more agents, more explosives, and training new Iraqi terrorists.

Mr. President, it’s time to call this by its name.

We are at war. And it’s not just the abstract War on Terror.

We are at war with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In Tehran, they know this. And they gloat when we refuse to recognize it and continue to say how eager we are to talk to them.

In his talk with conservative bloggers last week, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol argued that President Bush and the Pentagon need to do a better job of selling the war, especially now that our generals in Iraq believe they are on the way to utterly destroying the insurgency.

But the first step toward “selling” the war is acknowledging the simple fact that we are at war. With Iran.

In his column last Thursday, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius revealed that the State Department and Democrats in Congress conspired in the fall of 2004 to block a secret CIA program to defeat Iranian efforts to influence the Iraqi elections.

It seems that House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was briefed on the top secret Presidential finding as Minority Leader at the time, was more concerned with defeating President Bush than in defeating Iran.

We should not be surprised by this news.

As last week’s United Press International/Zogby poll showed, the national security glue that used to unite the two parties against foreign threats has been burned away by the Baghdad sun.

Despite all the facts now being reported out of Iraq of U.S. military victories, the poll found that 66% of Democrats believed the Iraq war is “lost,” as compared to just 9% of Republicans.

So now it’s official. Republicans are the Party of Victory, and Democrats the Party of Surrender.

Mr. President: it’s time to stop pandering to the Party of Surrender, unless it’s your own rendition you are seeking to negotiate.

We are at war, and Americans are not quitters, despite what Nancy Pelosi believes.

So let’s roll.


Kenneth R. Timmerman was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize along with John Bolton for his work on Iran. He is Executive Director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran, and author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum: 2005).

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

CIC in Al-Anbar Province, Iraq.

Following are President Bush's remarks to U.S. troops on arriving Monday at Al-Asad Air Base in Al-Anbar Province, Iraq. IBD

Thank you all. General, thank you very much. It's an honor to be with you.

As you know, today is Labor Day back home, so I thought I'd come by to thank you for all your hard work.

Every day — every day — you show bravery under incredibly difficult circumstances. Every day you're doing work on the sands of Anbar that is making it safer in the streets of America. And every day the United States of America is grateful for what you're doing.

I want you to tell your families the commander in chief stopped by to say hello, and he said, I'm incredibly proud to be the commander in chief of such a great group of men and women.

I'm keeping pretty good company, as you can see. I brought out the A Team so they could be with the folks who are making a significant difference in this war against these radicals and extremists. In Anbar you're seeing firsthand the dramatic differences that can come when the Iraqis are more secure. In other words, you're seeing success.

You see Sunnis who once fought side by side with al-Qaida against coalition troops now fighting side by side with coalition troops against al-Qaida. Anbar is a huge province. It was once written off as lost. It is now one of the safest places in Iraq.

Because of your hard work, because of your bravery and sacrifice, you are denying al-Qaida a safe haven from which to plot and plan and carry out attacks against the United States of America. What you're doing here is making this country safer, and I thank you for your hard work.

The surge of operations that began in June is improving security throughout Iraq. The military successes are paving the way for the political reconciliation and economic progress the Iraqis need to transform their country.

When Iraqis feel safe in their own homes and neighborhoods, they can focus their efforts on building a stable, civil society with functioning government structures at the local and provincial and national levels. And that's important, because a free Iraq, an Iraq that's an ally against these extremists and murderers, will be a major defeat for the terrorists.

Earlier today I met with some of the tribal sheiks here in Anbar. It was a really interesting meeting. And at the table were the leaders of the central government, as well. They told me that the kind of bottom-up progress that your efforts are bringing to Anbar is vital to the success and stability of a free Iraq.

See, Iraqis need this stability to build a more peaceful future. And America needs this stability to prevent the chaos that allows the terrorists to set up bases from which they can plot and plan attacks on our homeland.

The very people that you helped the Iraqis defeat in Anbar swore allegiance to the man that ordered the attack on the United States of America. What happens here in Anbar matters to the security of the United States.

And so I thank you for your sacrifice. I thank you for volunteering in the face of danger. I thank you for your courage and your bravery. Every day you are successful here in Iraq draws nearer to the day when America can begin calling you and your fellow servicemen and women home.

But I want to tell you this about the decision — about my decision about troop levels. Those decisions will be based on a calm assessment by our military commanders on the conditions on the ground — not a nervous reaction by Washington politicians to poll results in the media.

In other words, when we begin to draw down troops from Iraq, it will be from a position of strength and success, not from a position of fear and failure. To do otherwise would embolden our enemies and make it more likely that they would attack us at home.

If we let our enemies back us out of Iraq, we will more likely face them in America. If we don't want to hear their footsteps back home, we have to keep them on their heels over here. And that's exactly what you're doing, and America is safer for it.

In Anbar you're doing this hard work every day. We've all come to say thank you. We've come to tell you the American people are standing with you. They're grateful for your sacrifice. As commander in chief, I'm proud to be in your presence on this Labor Day. I ask for God's blessings on you and your family, and may God continue to bless America. Thank you.

USMC Sgt. Jeremiah Workman-NAVY CROSS

Today, we have the same story from three different shops. LCpl H. Golden, MCRD PI, Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes, and WAPO's Peter Carlson. It is Jack Burton's opinion that you can never do enough to offset the traitorious rants of the Hollywood Left slanders of tim robbins and brian depalma.
Especially brian depalma's redacted,










U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Jeremiah Workman, a drill instructor with Delta Company, 2nd Recruit Training Battalion, receives the Navy Cross Medal from Brig. Gen. Richard T. Tryon, commanding general, Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island/Eastern Recruiting Region, May 12. Workman received the award for actions performed while deployed to Iraq in 2004. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Troy Loveless




By Lance Cpl. Heather Golden
Parris Island

PARRIS ISLAND, S.C., May 26, 2006 —The Marine Corps has a long tradition of excellence in the line of duty. Marines stretching from 1775 to present times are recognized and remembered for their selfless acts and quick thinking on and off the battlefield. On May 12, another Marine was recognized for his actions.

Sgt. Jeremiah Workman, a drill instructor with Delta Company, 2nd Recruit Training Battalion, and native of Richwood, Va., received the Navy Cross, second in prestige only to the Medal of Honor, during the recruit graduation ceremony at Peatross Parade Deck May 12, for actions while on deployment in Fallujah, Iraq, in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2004.

According to the citation, he was awarded for extraordinary heroism, while serving as a squad leader for the Mortar Platoon, Weapons Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 1, 1st Marine Division, Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Workman, exemplifying the old adage "no man left behind," repeatedly exposed himself to a hail of enemy fire to retrieve isolated Marines trapped inside an insurgent-infested building.

Ignoring heavy enemy fire and a storm of grenades raining down on his position, Workman fearlessly laid down enough cover fire to allow the trapped Marines to escape.

After seeing the first group of wounded Marines safely to a neighboring yard, Workman rallied additional Marines to his side and provided more cover fire for an attack into the building to rescue other Marines still trapped. He continued to fire even after receiving numerous shrapnel wounds to his arms and legs after a grenade exploded in front of him, stated his citation.

Workman's efforts did not stop after the second rescue attack. Ignoring his wounds, Workman once again united his team for a final assault strike into the building to retrieve remaining Marines and to clear the building of insurgents.
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Cpl. Jeremiah Workman
Navy Cross
3rd Battalion, 5th Marines
By Jeff Schogol
Stars and Stripes

When Cpl. Jeremiah Workman heard the Squad Automatic Weapon open up, he didn’t think much of it.

But when he heard the AK-47 going off, he and the rest of his squad knew something was wrong.

And by the time they ran to the house in Fallujah, Iraq, where Marines were trapped inside, the gunfire was intense.

Workman, 23, said he stepped inside the house and saw two sergeants trying to talk to the Marines upstairs.

The bullets were hitting so close to the head of one of the sergeants that Workman screamed for him to get down.

The three went outside where Workman learned that about six Marines were trapped in the home.

After coming up with a plan, they were joined by a lieutenant who led between eight and 11 Marines toward the home, said Workman, then with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines.

“As soon as we get to the front door, the lieutenant backs out of the way … He peels off the stack, so now I’m first, and I’m just thinking, ‘Oh [expletive],’ ” said Workman, of Marion, Ohio.

When the Marines got to the staircase, the lieutenant told Workman to go up on the count of three. As soon as Workman started running up the stairs, bullets started to fly.

“It was like one of them damn cartoons where they shoot at the feet and the cartoon dances. I mean literally, it was right on my ass as I was running up the stairs,” he said.

By the time he got to a landing that offered cover, Workman realized that none of his fellow Marines had been able to make it up the stairs.

Workman said he saw three of the Marines trapped inside, but he was unable to yell to them over all the noise.

After being ordered to come back down the stairs, he dived down the staircase to rejoin the rest of the Marines.

“I got back down and they picked me up and the lieutenant’s like, I’m going to throw a grenade up there to soften them up,” Workman said.

Of course, the grenade bounced back down the stairs, but Workman and the others were able to take cover before it went off.

The Marines then made a second assault up the stairs, and this time all of the Marines made it up, Workman said. By this time, the three trapped Marines he had seen were gone.

He would later learn that they had made it to the roof in an attempt to escape.

Workman and about three other Marines were now firing at the insurgents. He was so close to another Marine’s weapon that he was getting showered with the brass casings.

During the firefight, Workman would have to put down his rifle as fellow Marines handed him grenades to throw.

“I felt naked. To throw the grenade, I’d have to let my rifle down and then throw it, and that was one of the most awful feelings ever, was not having my rifle up. You felt like you were vulnerable.”

After he grabbed his rifle to start shooting again, an insurgent tossed a bright yellow grenade at them. It landed a few feet from the Marines.

“I had enough time to, like, shield my head. I yelled ‘Grenade!’ and it went off.”

He said felt like someone had hit him in the leg with a baseball bat, but otherwise he was unhurt.

But the Marines were running low on ammunition, so they had to run downstairs and outside the house.

Once outside, Workman ran into one of the Marines who had been trapped inside the house. The man was bleeding and stumbling, so Workman dragged him to safety.

Afterward, he went back into the house and started firing and tossing grenades at the insurgents.

While making his way up the stairs, he heard a “God-awful, blood-curdling scream” from behind him.

One of his buddies had been hit in the arm with an armor-piercing AK-47 round.

“His arm was damn near gone. I mean, it completely blew his tricep out, so he has no — he’s trying to fire his rifle with one arm, and he’s not quitting.”

Workman and the other Marines got the wounded Marine outside, where the man demanded to go back into the house.

“I just remember, his exact words were, “Give me a [expletive] pistol!” Workman said. “He kept saying, ‘Give me a [expletive] pistol!’ This guy wanted — damn near on his death bed from loss of blood and everything else — he wanted to go back into this house with a pistol so he could keep fighting.”

He grabbed about seven magazines and ran back into the house.

Once he was inside, two insurgents ran at him and another Marine.

Workman kept hitting the bad guys, but they didn’t fall down, so he slung his M-16 and opened up with an AK-47 he had on him.

Finally, the two insurgents fell down, but then insurgents tossed another grenade at the Marines.

It blew up and knocked him down.

Workman tried standing up against a wall, but he ended up sliding down against it and throwing up.

“I thought that was death, when in fact I was just so dehydrated and so overwhelmed with everything that I just, was like, passed out,” he said.

Eventually, a major dragged Workman out of the home by his helmet.

Outside, he learned that all of the Marines were now accounted for. Three were dead.

Now the Marines sat quietly, some smoking, as they waited for the airstrike that had been called in to level the block.

His platoon commander was crying.

“I don’t know if he felt like he had failed because we had lost guys or what, but when I saw that, I started crying,” Workman said.

Now a sergeant, Workman is credited for killing more than 20 insurgents that day, but he is unsure how officials arrived at that number.

About two years later, Workman learned he would receive the Navy Cross for his actions that day in Fallujah.

“I think I almost instantly teared up, because it brought back everything, and all I could think about was the guys we lost.”



..........................................................................................30.......................................................................


By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 4, 2007; D01

Despite heavy resistance from enemy automatic weapon fire and a barrage of grenades, Corporal Workman fearlessly. . .

Jeremiah Workman stood at attention and tried to listen as the narrator read the citation that detailed what he'd done to earn the Navy Cross, an award for valor that is second only to the Medal of Honor.

. . . Corporal Workman again exposed himself to enemy fire while providing cover fire for the team when an enemy grenade exploded directly in front of him, causing shrapnel wounds to his arms and legs . . .

He was standing on the parade ground, facing a grandstand packed with hundreds of people, including his wife and his mother. Behind him were several hundred Marine recruits who were about to graduate from boot camp at Parris Island, S.C., where Workman had recently lost his job as a drill instructor after he suffered what he calls a "mental meltdown."

. . . Although injured, he led a third assault into the building, rallying his team one last time to extract isolated Marines . . .

When the narrator finished reading the story of Workman's "extraordinary heroism" in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Richard T. Tryon pinned the Navy Cross to Workman's chest and the crowd in the grandstand stood and cheered. It was a moment of well-deserved triumph, but it didn't make Workman feel any better.

"When they put that medal on me, from that point on, I sunk deeper into depression," he recalls. "Everybody says it must be awesome to win the Navy Cross. Well, as a matter of fact, it's not. I lost three guys that day, so for the longest time, I didn't even want to wear it. I'd look down at it and see three dead Marines."

Workman, 23, is sitting in a restaurant at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, where he now works, his Navy Cross ribbon pinned to his uniform, just above his heart.

"If we lost three people, why did I get an award?" he says softly. "The last thing I think is that I'm a hero."

"I enlisted two days after my 17th birthday," Workman says. "I was a junior in high school. A year later, when I graduated, they shipped me to Parris Island."

He grew up in Marion, Ohio, son of a factory worker and a housewife. A jock in high school, he wanted to be an Ohio state trooper, but you have to be 21, so he figured he'd join the Marine Corps first.

"In my eyes, the Marine Corps was the elite, the tip of the spear," Workman says. "I walked into the recruiter's office and said, 'I want to be a Marine.' I was probably the easiest person they ever talked to."

After boot camp he spent two boring years guarding nuclear submarines at a base in Georgia. In August 2003, he married his high school sweetheart, Jessica Jordan.

In September 2004, he was sent to Iraq and stationed at a base outside Fallujah, the insurgent-controlled city where four American contractors had been killed in the spring, their corpses burned, dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge.

"Fallujah -- that was no man's land," he recalls. "When we drove past, you didn't even look because you knew it was a bad place."

In November 2004, Workman's platoon, part of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, got its orders: It would join the thousands of soldiers and Marines attacking Fallujah -- Operation Phantom Fury, the largest American military action since the invasion of Iraq. First, warplanes pounded the city with bombs. Then, in a driving rain, the Marines moved in.

Workman was a squad leader in a mortar platoon. For 17 days, they hunkered down in the mud in the northwest corner of Fallujah, firing at insurgent positions.

"We killed a lot of people with those mortar rounds," he says, "but it's not personal. You don't see the guys' eyes."

By mid-December, the Marines had conquered most of Fallujah and there wasn't much need for mortar fire anymore, so Workman's platoon was split in two and sent out to patrol the city, searching houses, looking for weapons. On Dec. 22, the other half of the platoon got into a nasty firefight.

"Some Marines were wounded pretty badly, and they're all charred. It looks like they've been in a fire," Workman recalls. "They come back and we're like, 'Holy cow!' So it's our turn to go out the next morning and we're kinda nervous. That night we're all still up at 2 o'clock in the morning, scrubbing our weapons, making sure they're perfect. We all had this gut feeling that the next day, we're gonna get in some sort of fight."
Ambush in Fallujah

"It starts out like any other normal day," Workman says.

Workman commanded one team of 10 Marines; his friend, Sgt. Jarrett Kraft, commanded another.

"I take my guys on the right side of the street. Kraft takes his guys on the left side of the street," he recalls. "We search the first two houses -- same old crap, we found some guns and ammo and carried it out to the street and threw it in the Humvee."

Searching the third house, Workman heard a blast of machine-gun fire from the house across the street, where Kraft and his men ran into a group of heavily armed insurgents.

"We were pretty much ambushed by a lot of insurgents on the second floor of the house," recalls Kraft, who is now a police officer in Fresno, Calif. He also was awarded a Navy Cross for his actions that day.

"I was scared," Workman says, laughing. "I really was. . . . When you get caught in a situation like that, it's a real man check. For two seconds, you have to look in that invisible mirror that's not there and look at yourself and question yourself as a man. And say, 'Okay, I'm a corporal in the Marine Corps and I have guys that are looking up to me for leadership. What am I going to do?' . . . So I grabbed everybody in the house and we come running."

Gun smoke rose from the windows of the house across the street. Workman ordered several men to guard the outside and then led the rest inside, where a lieutenant informed them that Marines were trapped on the second floor.

"The lieutenant looks at me and says, 'We gotta get in there.' I said, 'Okay, I'll follow you.' " He laughs. They then formed a line called a "stack" at the foot of the stairway.

"The lieutenant gets out of the way. Now, I'm the front man. I don't want to be." He laughs again. "In the citation, it says that Workman went in first every time. I'll be honest: It wasn't planned that way. . . . The lieutenant says, 'On three we're gonna go.' One, two, three. Bam! He kicks me and I go running up the stairs."

As he ran, machine-gun bullets buzzed past him, but he made it to the safety of the landing, protected from insurgent fire by a thick wall. But he was alone. Nobody had followed him.

"I remember him going up the staircase," says Kraft, who had managed to escape from the second floor after the ambush. There was a lot of confusion and the second guy in the stack sort of hesitated and that kept the rest of the stack back."

"So these guys are downstairs yelling at me, 'Get back down here.' And I'm like, 'You get up here.' I'm cussing at 'em," Workman says, smiling. "But it was a lieutenant, so I pretty much have to go down. I closed my eyes and did a Superman dive down the stairs."

The fall knocked the wind out of him. His buddies stood him back up.

They formed another stack with Workman again in front. He took off. This time, everybody followed and they reached the landing safely. They crept up another set of stairs toward the second floor. Workman had almost reached the top when a yellow grenade bounced into view.

"This thing went off and it felt like somebody hit me in the leg with a baseball bat," he says. "I look back and guys were laying down, knocked over. And I go, 'Is everybody good?' . . . Pretty much everybody got hit with shrapnel but we were all able to fight."

They climbed the stairs and fired at the insurgents, who were barricaded in a bedroom. After an intense firefight, the Marines ran low on ammunition and retreated outside to reload.

By then, two of the Marines they'd come to rescue were dead. Two other Marines dropped their bodies off a porch, then jumped down after them.

"One of the Marines comes stumbling out of this yard next to the house," Workman says. "He's covered with blood. He looked like a zombie. And he just falls over. I run up and grab him."

"Workman grabbed him and dragged him down the street while the insurgents were firing down at us from the rooftop," Kraft recalls. Workman carried the wounded Marine to a couple of Humvees, where a medical corpsman began working on him. Workman saw two other Marines sprawled in the back of a Humvee: Cpl. Raleigh Smith and Lance Cpl. Eric Hillenburg.

"Hey, doc!" he yelled. "Get up here!"

"They're all right," yelled the corpsman, who was treating the Marine that Workman had dragged to safety.

"I'm yelling, 'Doc, get your ass up here!' And he's yelling, 'They're all right, dammit, leave 'em be.' And I'm like, 'Get up here!' And he says, 'They're dead, man, they're dead.' "

Workman jumped out of the Humvee. "This was the first time I'd ever seen a dead Marine, ever," he says. "It was like somebody flipped a switch, like it wasn't even me anymore. . . . I grabbed whoever's standing around and we ran back into the house. Now it's like vengeance. I want to take as many insurgents out as possible."

The house was dark, the air heavy with smoke. Workman led another charge up the stairs and ran into another grenade.

"It knocked most of us down," he says. "At this point, none of us wants to get up. We're like, 'We're gonna die here.' My buddy, he gets up and fights and I hear this horrendous scream. They hit him with an AK47 and it literally tore the whole triceps off his arm."

Workman pulled the pin on a grenade and tossed it into the bedroom where the insurgents were barricaded, and then the Marines tumbled back downstairs.

"I collapse at the bottom of the stairs," he says. "I'm, like, done. And Major [Todd] Desgrosseilliers grabbed me by the helmet and dragged me out of the house."

All the Marines were out of the building and an M1A1 tank had arrived. It blasted the house to rubble.

At least 24 insurgents were killed in the battle. The Marines lost three men -- Smith, Hillenburg and Lance Cpl. James R. Phillips.

"We went back to the makeshift morgue at Camp Fallujah," Workman says, "and we unloaded the bodies."
A Recurring Nightmare

He's been talking for over a hour, sitting in the museum at a table in Tun's Tavern -- named for the place the Marine Corps was founded. He started out with laughs but now he's serious, his green eyes sad and tired.

"The next morning I felt like I'd been in a car accident," he says. Corpsmen had pulled some shrapnel out of him, some still remains. "Everybody was pretty much wounded. And three guys were dead. . . . Eric and James lived in the same bedroom. I went into that room and there are two empty racks. Seeing the empty cots, that's when it sank in. . . . When somebody dies, you gotta get all their belongings and take it back to base camp. You're going through the pockets in their cammies, finding pictures of their girlfriend, their mom and dad."

After a few days of rest, Workman's platoon was back out, patrolling roads and manning checkpoints outside Fallujah. They remained there until April 2005. Workman didn't see much action, but he kept busy enough that he didn't think too much about the day his buddies died.

He was promoted to sergeant and he reenlisted, requesting to become a drill instructor after his return. That spring, his platoon was back at Camp Pendleton in California.

"That's when the world came crashing down," he says. "That's when you have time to think about what really happened, that they're really gone."

Jessica, his wife, was back in Ohio, attending Nationwide Beauty Academy, studying to become a hairstylist. He was in California, partying every night.

"It's easy to self-medicate with alcohol," he says. "With Marines, you're not gonna get off the plane and say, 'I need help from a psychiatrist.' We adapt by getting drunk every night."

When he arrived at drill instructor school at Parris Island that September, he stopped drinking, he says. That's when the nightmares began:

"I would dream this: a staircase, never ending. And I'm running back and forth, being chased by insurgents, and they're throwing grenades at me. And I run and I run and I run until I finally get tired and I can't go on and they catch me and they kill me. Then I'd wake up and I'd be crying and I'd have mental pictures of my guys laying in the back of that truck."

He avoided the nightmare by avoiding sleep. All day he worked as a drill instructor, all night he paced and brooded about Iraq.

"Physically, I was a drill instructor," he says. "Mentally, I was somewhere else."

One day in the spring of 2006, he marched his recruits into the mess hall and then froze, staring into space.

"I didn't see the recruits, I didn't see anything," he recalls. "People are saying, 'Hey, what's going on?' I said, 'I don't give a [bleep] about you, I don't give a [bleep] about the recruits.' . . . I went downhill from there and they sent me to mental health."
Suddenly a Hero

The doctors concluded that Workman was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. They prescribed some pills and sent him home for 10 days.

"They wanted to get me home to be with my family to mellow out," he says.

Back in Ohio, he stayed with Jessica at her parents' house. Late one night, he got out of bed and wandered into the garage.

"He was out there for a while and I thought, 'What's he doing out there?' '' Jessica remembers. "I went out there and he had my dad's rifle, and I asked him what he was doing and he said, 'I don't know why I'm here.' "

She took him inside and later that night saw him swallowing a handful of pills. "I had to literally stick my hands in his mouth and make him vomit," she recalls.

"Obviously, I probably wanted to hurt myself," Workman says. "But I don't remember much about it."

When he returned to Parris Island, he was no longer a drill instructor. Instead, he was assigned to do odd jobs, "basically like a janitor," he says.

And then he won the Navy Cross.

Suddenly, he was a hero. Reporters interviewed him. Generals posed for pictures with him. He met Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates, Ross Perot, Hillary Clinton and various other bigwigs. His home town declared Jeremiah Workman Day. Strangers begged to buy him a drink.

"Everybody else was more excited than I was," he says. "I was just slipping further into depression because I was reliving everything now. Everybody wants you to tell the story: How did you do it? How many people did you kill? I'm like, why don't you ask me to tell stories about my guys?"

His guys, Smith, Phillips and Hillenburg, haunted him. He saw them in his dreams. He saw them when he looked at his Navy Cross. They got killed and he got a medal. Did that make any sense? That summer, he had their names tattooed on his back.

"This," he says, "is what I have to put in my mind to be able to wear this medal and not be ashamed: I accepted this medal for three guys who didn't make it back. So it's really theirs."

In the fall, Workman was transferred to Quantico and stationed at the new National Museum of the Marine Corps. He walks around in his uniform, talking to tourists, sometimes posing for pictures with the ones who recognize the importance of the Navy Cross ribbon on his chest.

"I'm an ambassador for the Marine Corps, I guess," he says with a laugh.

Jessica found work as a hairstylist at a nearby spa. On February 21, she gave birth to their first child, a son, Devon.

Months ago, Workman stopped taking his medicines. "I don't want to be a pill popper," he says. "But I pay for it. I have more bad days than I probably would if I was on the medication."

"I'd rather that he was still on the medications," says Jessica. "His mood swings are so much worse. He'll be fine one minute and then he's freaking out. With PTSD, you never know. It's a roller coaster every day."
'You Don't Have a Choice'

When people call you a hero, what do you think?

He thinks for a moment. "Hero?" he says. "I almost laugh."

And then he does laugh. But he quickly gets serious. "Almost any infantry Marine would have done what I did. You don't have a choice. What are you gonna do? Not do it? And live for the rest of your life knowing that you hesitated and didn't act and more people may have died because you didn't do anything?"

He risked his life for his fellow Marines and that pleases him. "I did learn a lot about myself that day," he says. "In front of family and friends, you're the big tough Marine but . . . you always question yourself about whether you have what it takes in a situation like that. Not everybody does. I answered my own question that day. I was scared and I didn't want to do it, but I did it. That gives me some pride, I guess."

But that was then, he points out, and this is now. "I couldn't tell you if I could do it again," he says. "I would love to believe that every time something like that happened, I would do the same thing, but I don't know."

He does know one thing: He wants to go back to Iraq.

"I've volunteered. I've told everybody I can. Right now, they want to keep me here. . . . A lot of these high-ranking people think they know what's best for you. And in their minds, what's best for me is staying here and having a normal family life and going home every night. Whereas in my mind and in my heart, I want to get back into the fight."

He says: "A lot of my friends have been there three or four times. I think if I got one more tour over there, I'd feel better in the heart. I don't want to go down as a one-hit wonder."

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Monday, September 03, 2007

Howard Dean Received A Standing O' for Inviting These Worthies To Run for Office

Howard "The Scream" Dean, current Chairman of the Democratic National Convention, speaking before Muslims attending the Islamic Society of North America conference received a standing ovation for issuing his call to be all you can be and run for political office. The call issued at a conference whose featured speakers include radical Islamic leaders who envision include taking over the USA , abolishing the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution and controlling the entire world under an Islamic Caliphate.


The ISNA Chicago Convention main speakers will include:

-- Muzammil Siddiqi - Steven Emerson's article "Muzammil the "Moderate" states that "when Siddiqi was President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in 1997, his organization received special thanks from Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook, who wrote that ISNA supported him through his jailing and extradition process, writing that such efforts 'consoled' him." As Steve Emerson's column points out, "Siddiqi has made numerous pro-jihad statements in the past and has denied that 9/11 was carried about by Muslims." Muzammil Siddiqui has been a member of Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA), whose members have been connected to Islamic extremism and terrorism.

-- Siraj Wahhaj - a character witness for convicted 1993 World Trade Center terrorist "blind sheik" Omar Rahman, and a man who reportedly called for replacing the American government with a caliphate

-- Abdalla Idris Ali - has been on the board of the American Muslim Council, an organization whose leaders have openly supported terrorist groups, such as Hamas

-- Ihsan Bagby: "we [Muslims] can never be full citizens of this country... because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country."

-- Zaid Shakir: "Every Muslim who is honest would say, I would like to see America become a Muslim country"

Sources:

Sunday, September 02, 2007

DNC Chairman Howard Dean Tells unindicted co-conspirators Islamic Society of North America :“You need to run for political office”

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told members of the ISNA that they need to run for office to achieve their goals. The ISNA is a front group for the Muslim Brotherhood whose mission statement , The Project, has plans to destroy the U.S. Constitution and replace it with a global Islamic Caliphate:

The Investigative Project on Terrorism: quotes:

  • Enablement of Islam in North America, meaning: establishing an effective and stable Islamic Movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood which adopts Muslims' causes domestically and globally, and which works to expand the observant Muslim base, aims at unifying and directing Muslims' efforts, presents Islam as a civilization alternative, and supports the global Islamic state, wherever it is.

  • In order for Islam and its Movement to become "a part of the homeland" in which it lives, "stable" in its land, "rooted" in the spirits and minds of its people, "enabled" in the live [sic] of its society and has firmly-established "organizations" on which the Islamic structure is built and with which the testimony of civilization is achieved, the Movement must plan and struggle to obtain "the keys" and the tools of this process in carry [sic] out this grand mission as a "Civilization Jihadist" responsibility which lies on the shoulders of Muslims and – on top of them – the Muslim Brotherhood in this country.

  • The process of settlement is a "Civilization-Jihadist Proecess" with all the word means. The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny except for those who chose to slack. But, would the slackers and the Mujahedeen be equal.

The Chairman has the astute nature of a sack full of hammers.

Saturday, September 01, 2007

CAIR Cares About America---NOT!

The Investor's Business Daily is the only news print paper left in America who hasn't stopped calling the shots as they see them...especially when it comes to the Islamic Front group which has bamboozled the nation for years into believing they are a civil rights groups interested in building bridges between Islam and America. IBD says: CAIR "has lost its credibility to speak honestly for any legitimate cause."

CAIR Revealed

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, August 31, 2007 4:20 PM PT

Trail Of Terror: We've wondered why the Council on American-Islamic Relations director has spurned Senate invitations to answer terror charges. Now we know.


Related Stories: Who Are CAIR's Paymasters? | CAIR's Fuzzy Math


For the first time, evidence in a major federal terror case puts CAIR's current executive director — Nihad Awad — at a Philadelphia meeting of alleged Hamas leaders that was secretly recorded by the FBI.

After the Associated Press last week reported the bombshell, CAIR denied claims of ties to Hamas. "That's one of those urban legends about CAIR," said Parvez Ahmed, CAIR's chairman. "It's fed by the right-wing, pro-Israeli blogosphere."

In fact, the evidence was revealed by an FBI agent who testified at the terror-financing trial under way in Dallas.

Her name is Lara Burns, and she's the lead investigator in the case against operators of the Holy Land Foundation, the largest Muslim charity in America. CAIR, which she says received startup funding from HLF, is named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, according to court exhibits.

President Bush froze HLF's funds after 9/11. It's now accused of being a Hamas front, and its leaders — including one of CAIR's founding directors — are on trial for allegedly funneling more than $12 million to aid Palestinian suicide-bombing operations.

Burns placed both Awad and his ethnic-Palestinian pal Omar Ahmed, who founded CAIR with Awad, at a Philly meeting last decade where she says Hamas leaders and supporters hatched a plot to disguise funds for Hamas suicide operations as charity for HLF.

According to FBI wiretaps, it was decided at the Hamas summit, which took place inside a Marriott hotel, that most of the funds collected by HLF in the future would be steered to Hamas.

Awad, like Ahmad, does not talk much about his pre-CAIR days.

But before 9/11, when Muslim groups received less scrutiny in America, he made his support for Hamas publicly known. At a March 22, 1994, symposium on the Middle East at Florida's Barry University, Awad said: "After I researched the situation inside and outside Palestine, I am in support of the Hamas movement."

Three months later, he and Ahmad founded CAIR. They promote the group as a grass-roots champion of Muslim civil rights, a "Muslim NAACP." But many of the things CAIR's leaders claim and what we later learn from the factual record don't square.

For instance, they've claimed that they get no foreign support and that their funding comes from local dues. In fact, the bulk of their support comes from two Arab countries tied to 9/11 — Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

They've claimed that the size of the Muslim population in America is 7 million. In fact, it's closer to 2 million.

They've claimed that they're mainstream American patriots, when in fact they've told Muslim audiences that they want the Quran to replace the Constitution as the "highest authority in America."

They've also claimed that they don't support terrorism, even as three senior employees have been jailed in terror-related cases.

And now this. CAIR claims to be the voice of American Muslims. If so, it's been an especially loud one. But it has lost its credibility to speak honestly for any legitimate cause.

USMC Sgt. Aubrey McDade Jr.-NAVY CROSS

From Marine Corps Times:
Sgt. Aubrey McDade Jr. was a guest of First Lady Laura Bush during the Jan. 23 State of the Union speech in Washington.

Sgt. Aubrey McDade Jr. action's Nov. 11, 2004, Fallujah, Iraq, earned him the Navy Cross, the Navy’s second highest award for valor. The medal was presented to him during a ceremony at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island, S.C., during a recruit graduation ceremony Jan. 19.

McDade, a drill instructor with Charlie Company, 1st Recruit Training Battalion, was a machine-gun squad leader with 1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, in Iraq in 2004.

On the night of Nov. 11, as the Marines in the platoon moved south into the city, they entered an alley where they immediately met a barrage of small-arms and machine-gun fire, according to McDade’s citation.

“In the opening seconds of the engagement, three Marines were seriously wounded as the well-positioned and expecting enemy pinned others down,” the citation states.

McDade “rushed from the rear of the platoon column toward the kill zone,” leading a machine-gun team into the alley to spray suppressive fire at insurgents.

The wounded Marines were pinned down under a blanket of gunfire that spewed furiously every time the other Marines tried to reach their injured comrades.

McDade told the platoon sergeant that he would get them.

“He just informed me that if I got hit he wasn’t going to be able to help me right then,” McDade said in an interview. “I wasn’t just going to let them sit out there like sitting ducks. They needed me, and I went.”

McDade, a fast-talking Houston native, described the alleyway as “real hot” as he dashed toward the first of the three injured Marines.

Using his body to cover the wounded leatherneck, McDade told him to pull his gear loose and then pulled the Marine over his shoulder.

“At first, he was on my shoulder, but there were a lot of rounds coming down the alleyway, so I kind of tossed him over,” he said.

McDade went back a second time, instructing the next wounded Marine to remove his gear before hauling him to safety.

The third Marine, a corporal killed in the alley, was also pulled from the kill zone.

‘Quick thinking’

McDade assisted in treating the Marines and aided in their medical evacuations.

“His quick thinking and aggressive actions were crucial in saving the lives of two of the three casualties,” the citation reads.

McDade said he’s tried to block out the horrors of that day.

Still, he said, “I can’t put it out of my mind.”

He said he shares what happened that day with his recruits. While other drill instructors may tell his story to their recruits early on, McDade makes a point of waiting to tell his recruits until they start going through the Crucible.

“I don’t want them to listen to me because I have a medal,” he said. “I want them to listen to me because I’m a Marine.”

When he was told he was going to be awarded the Navy Cross, he first said he didn’t want to accept the medal. He knew he’d be congratulated for receiving a medal, not for the pain and suffering he and his platoon went through in Iraq.

“This award, I’m accepting it for me, but at the same time I’m accepting it for all the Marines who go before and after me,” he said.