Latest Fish Wrap Outrage: Private Contracters Tracking And Killing “Militants”

The NY Times is outraged! In a front page expose, today’s edition features yet another secret operation exposed because, well, because they can, and because they, like so many lefties, hate the thought of Muslim extremists having their Constitutional Rights, as extended to the entire world, violated, along with being killed without a long, drawn out civilian trial. But, don’t question their patriotism: Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants

Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants, according to military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States.

The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the officials said.

While it has been widely reported that the C.I.A. and the military are attacking operatives of Al Qaeda and others through unmanned, remote-controlled drone strikes, some American officials say they became troubled that Mr. Furlong seemed to be running an off-the-books spy operation. The officials say they are not sure who condoned and supervised his work.

Which officials? None are actually named. Besides, who, other than pusillanimous lefties, cares? It’s just fine with me that extremist Muslims, members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and any other group, are tracked and whacked. Better them than us.

It is generally considered illegal for the military to hire contractors to act as covert spies. Officials said Mr. Furlong’s secret network might have been improperly financed by diverting money from a program designed to merely gather information about the region.

It’s also generally illegal to hijack planes and fly them into buildings. It’s generally illegal for terrorists to fight without wearing a uniform of any country. It’s generally illegal to saw a humans head off while alive. You don’t see the NY Times and other liberals complaining about those. In fact, they tend to back the people who do those things.

But, hey, good news: the NY Times has just put every person in Afghanistan and Pakistan in even more danger. Kudos, Fish Wrap! Way to start the work week, giving aid and comfort to the enemy!

Unfortunately

Officials say Mr. Furlong’s operation seems to have been shut down, and he is now is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Defense Department for a number of possible offenses, including contract fraud.

At one time in our country’s past, Furlong would have been a hero for taking the fight to the enemy.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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Iraq War To Be Renamed, We Can All Thank George Bush For Staying Strong

Jake Tapper has an exclusive regarding the renaming of Operation Iraqi Freedom, which, perhaps, should be renamed “Operation Bush Was Right”

ABC News has learned that the Obama administration has decided to give the war in Iraq — currently known as Operation Iraqi Freedom — a new name.

The new name: “Operation New Dawn.”

In a February 17, 2010, memo to the Commander of Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the “requested operation name change is approved to take effect 1 September 2010, coinciding with the change of mission for U.S. forces in Iraq.”

You can read the memo — a copy of which was sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen – HERE.

Gates writes that by changing the name at the same time as the change of mission — the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. combat troops — the US is sending “a strong signal that Operation IRAQI FREEDOM has ended and our forces are operating under a new mission.”

The move, Gates writes, “also presents opportunities to synchronize strategic communication initiatives, reinforce our commitment to honor the Security Agreement, and recognize our evolving relationship with the Government of Iraq.”

After an initial “WTF?” and “President Narcissistic Neophyte is at it again,” I rethought my opposition to the name change, as it makes sense. Operation Iraqi Freedom was designed to remove Saddam while creating a new, stable, democratic government, drive out/capture terrorists, collect intelligence on terrorists (for those liberals out there, yes, there were terrorists in Iraq prior to the invasion, mostly groups aimed at Israel), secure the oil fields, and provide humanitarian relief, along with ending sanctions. Thanks to the Surge that Bush endorsed (and Obama and Biden were completely against) and made happen, the mission parameters of Operation Iraqi Freedom have been mostly met, so, yes, we can switch to new mission parameters, as Gates points out.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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Islamic radicalism blamed on “conservatism”

The stupid definition of conservatism as “opposition to change” is still something of a reality-defying mantra among Leftists — despite conservatives often being major agents of change — from Benjamin Disraeli to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. And if George Bush’s movement of American power into two countries of the Middle East is not a major policy change, I would like to know what would be. It is Obama who hasn’t changed that, for all his talk of change.

The idea of conservatives being opponents of change is quite laughable, in fact. Every single conservative that I have ever met has got a HEAP of things he would like to see changed in the society about him. Conservatives are opponents of the brainless ideas of Leftism but that is far from being opponents of change — much though Leftists might like to think otherwise.

But, in terms of the stupid Leftist definition, it does make some slight sense to describe Islamic fundamentalists as “conservative” — though one could argue much more reasonably that Islamists are in fact reactionaries: Far from opposing change they want the major change of a sudden and violent return to 7th century ways.

However you look at it, the violent authoritarianism advocated by Islamists has NOTHING in common with the individual liberty orientation of American conservatives. So it is just Leftist propaganda to claim some basic similarity between American Christian conservatives and Islamists. But calling Christian conservatives “Taleban” is in fact a fairly common Leftist form of abuse — dare I call it “hate speech”?

This is all brought to mind by the following academic journal article:

Arch.europ.sociol., L, 2 (2009), pp. 201-230.

Why are there so many Engineers among Islamic Radicals?

By Diego Gambetta & Steffen Hertog

Abstract

This article demonstrates that among violent Islamists engineers with a degree, individuals with an engineering education are three to four times more frequent than we would expect given the share of engineers among university students in Islamic countries.We then test a number of hypotheses to account for this phenomenon. We argue that a combination of two factors – engineers’ relative deprivation in the Islamic world and mindset – is the most plausible explanation.

SOURCE

It turns out that the “mindset” they identify is religious conservatism. In a summary of the article we read: “Statistical analysis of poll data on US faculty shows that the odds of being both religious and conservative are seven times greater for engineers relative to the odds of a social scientist. Engineering as a degree might also be more attractive to individuals seeking cognitive “closure” and clear cut answers – a disposition that has been empirically linked to conservative political attitudes.”

So they explicitly conflate American conservatism with the mindset that drives Jihadists. They also incidentally accept the junk-science claim that conservatives have a rigid cognitive style.

I am not going to comment on any of that right now. I already have a large historically-based paper on what is central to Anglo-Saxon conservatism here and I have a large number of academic journal articles on the claim that conservatives are mentally rigid oversimplifiers here.

But what I have said so far is criticism and there is an old axiom that bad science is driven out only by better science. So I am going to propose what I think is a better explanation of the phenomenon in question. I think it is all “cognitive dissonance”

It seems to me that engineers get intimately involved in a world of great rationality and logic. You can’t afford to let ideology dictate your design of a bridge, for instance, or the bridge might fall down. Christians are used to living in both worlds: The secular world about them and their private religious beliefs. But Muslims are not. The engineer’s mental world is quite opposed to the intense religiosity and scant regard for rationality that permeates the Muslim world. So the Muslim engineer is put into a situation of great conflict. He is thrown into a mental world that runs counter to all his religious assumptions and ways of thought. And sometimes he relieves the pressure of that — in psychologist’s terms he “reduces his cognitive dissonance” — by reasserting his Muslim identity in an explosive or extremist way. The violence of his reaction is a testimony to how great has been the dissonance and mental conflict he has been subjected to in an engineering environment

Posted by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

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What “Harsh Blow To Global Arrogance” Will Iran Deliver On Feb. 11?

Iran’s little dictator, who tends to wear a suit coat more than Obama, is making a prediction, as published in Iran Press TV

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the nation will deliver a harsh blow to the “global arrogance” on this year’s anniversary of the Islamic Revolution.

“The Islamic Revolution opened a window to liberty for the human race, which was trapped in the dead ends of materialism,” Ahmadinejad said during a cabinet meeting on Sunday.

“If the Islamic Revolution had not occurred, liberalism and Marxism would have crushed all human dignity in their power-seeking and money-grubbing claws. Nothing would have remained of human and spiritual principles,” he added.

Ahmadinejad said that in the three decades of its history, the Islamic Revolution had inspired some great developments in the world.

The Iranian president made the remarks as the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution approaches.

There are very few things the Iranian government can do to deliver a harsh blow, none of them good. The top five would be cutting off oil exports (which which would hurt them even worse, since they have to import quite a bit of refined oil, as their refining capabilities are low,) sending out waves of suicide bombers, launching a military strike on Israel (low probability if ground troops, as they would have to cross Iraq to do it, but, they could launch missiles,) detonating a nuclear weapon, and detonating a nuclear weapon in Israel.

Of course, there is also a good probability that all Ahmadinehad will do is deliver a speech. Like Obama, he isn’t able to match his rhetoric with actual actions. Thankfully, in both cases. Interestingly, the Guardian published this on Sunday

Tension between the US and Iran heightened dramatically today with the disclosure that Barack Obama is deploying a missile shield to protect American allies in the Gulf from attack by Tehran.

Could US intelligence know something about Iran’s intentions? We have ten days to wait.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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Taliban Using Less Qualified Suicide Chumps These Days

“No, no, Achmed, you’re doing it wrong”

Just a day after the London summit on Afghanistan, gunmen wearing suicide vests occupied the unfinished hotel yards from the governors’ offices and about two miles from the headquarters of British military and aid efforts in Afghanistan.

British helicopters and troops supported Afghan forces during an eight-hour battle to regain control of the building. The clash came the day after international agreement was reached to set up a trust fund to coax lower-level Taliban fighters to abandon the insurgency.

The Taliban is obviously running out of qualified candidates who are capable of following the plan to blow themselves up.

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