'Good Samaritan' Leads US Forces to Huge Iraq Weapons Cache
A few thousand more IED’s just got taken out of action:
ZUWAD KHALAF, Iraq — As the piles of missiles and rockets dug from the desert floor grew, smiles on soldiers’ faces turned to scowls of serious concern.Working on a tip from an informant, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division on Tuesday dug up more than a thousand aging rockets and missiles wrapped in plastic, some of which had been buried as recently as two weeks ago, Army officials said.
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“In our eyes, every one of these rockets represents one less IED,” said 2nd Lt. Patrick Vardaro, 23, of Norwood, Mass., a platoon leader in the division’s 187th Infantry Regiment.
Vardaro would not comment on whether there were signs the caches had been used recently to make bombs, but the service records accompanying the missiles dated to 1984, suggesting they were buried by the Iraqi military under Saddam Hussein.
Still, the plastic around some of the rockets — of Soviet, German and French origins — appeared to be fresh and had not deteriorated as it had on some of the older munitions.
But…I thought the French and Germans were pure of heart when it came to arming Saddam.
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Obviously the Congressional Black Caucus
doesn’t care about black people.
The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which slammed the Bush administration for its allegedly slow and racially insensitive response to Hurricane Katrina, has yet to spend any of the estimated $400,000 that it raised for the victims of the Aug. 29 storm. “We are collecting all the way up through the very end of the year and then our board has set aside a committee who is going to administer the funds,” Patty Rice, spokeswoman for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation (CBCF), told Cybercast News Service on Wednesday. The Foundation is an offshoot of the Congressional Black Caucus and was founded in 1976.
Where’s Kanye West when we need him?
While we’re on the subject of Katrina:
As the days following Katrina have ticked away the rhetorical residue that was left across America in the aftermath of the hurricane was formed by West’s absurd statement, coupled with intellectual giants like Louis Farrakhan (Nation of Islam), Malik Zulu Shabazz (Black Panther Party) and Damu Smith (National Black Environmental Justice Network), and multiplied over again by the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton and their media omnipresence in the hours and days following. Enough ideologues said it again and again to where they convinced the better part of black America that it was true.But according to the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, we now know exactly the opposite to be the case.
In the devastation of Katrina it was whites — not blacks — that died in the highest percentage according to population. Whites perished at a rate of +8.6 percent above the population rate. Blacks perished at -18.15 percent below their population rate. All other groups perished at a rate of -.7 percent.
Coupling these hard statistics with what we now also know of the New Orleans mayor’s negligence in not following his own hurricane evacuation protocol — and leaving some 2,000 buses unused a full 48 hours before the hurricane made landfall — makes the truth a bitter pill for the aforementioned black “leaders” to swallow.
If there was an elected leader who acted swiftly to assist the residents of New Orleans it was President Bush. His persistence was rebuffed multiple times, according to Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s recently disclosed e-mail records on the matter.
If there was an elected white politician who acted with negligence and almost defiant carelessness toward the residents of New Orleans, it was Gov. Blanco who refused federal help even a full two days after Katrina made landfall.
And if there was an elected politician whose own incompetence led to the deaths of hundreds of black residents in New Orleans — unnecessarily — it was Mayor Ray Nagin.
(thanks to JGEBGD)
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The NYT Transit Strike
This blog’s opinion: Fire Them.
UPDATE: A reader points me to this post by Professor Richard Epstein that points out President Calvn Coolidge’s position on public worker strikes. Silent Cal was a nowhere, no way, no time kind of guy on public union strikes. Reaganesque before there was such a term.
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