Blackmail bombing

I shudder in horror every time I read one of these stories, and it's way too often. It's nearly beyond my capacity to imagine what it must be like to be in this poor man's situation. I've excerpted the complete article from DefenseLink:

Soldiers Rescue Man Blackmailed into Suicide-Bombing Mission
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 1, 2005 – Task Force Baghdad soldiers this morning rescued a man apparently blackmailed into a suicide-bombing mission by terrorist master Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The man exploded his red Kia sedan roughly 15 feet from a barrier to a coalition base in east Baghdad, Iraq. The car bomb failed to detonate properly and the vehicle caught on fire. Soldiers manning the gate reacted quickly and saved the driver, coalition officials said in a release.

An initial investigation revealed that terrorists had kidnapped the driver's family and that he was forced to carry out this suicide-bombing mission to protect his wife and children, coalition officials said.

No soldiers were injured in the attack. The driver is being treated at a military hospital and is cooperating with authorities.

"This is another case where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has to extort men to carry out his indiscriminate slaughtering," said Army Col. Joe DiSalvo, commander of 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division. "He can't recruit volunteers. (So) he is resorting to forcing Iraqi civilians to carry out these mission by threatening harm to kidnapped family members."

Officials released no more information on the fate of the man's family.

Metaphorical left

In a new column at the Weekly Standard, Mirengoff launches right into it. I've excerpted the first few paragraphs below, but don't miss reading the whole thing:

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY professor Alex Hinton has warned that our government's prosecution of the war on terror may be causing us to resemble the Khmer Rouge, the genocidal gang that once ran Cambodia. In a piece titled "Lessons from killing fields of Cambodia--30 years on," published in the Christian Science Monitor last month, Hinton concluded that "the Khmer Rouge teach us difficult lessons about ourselves and the world in which we live." The chief lesson, according to Hinton, is that we risk heading down "their path to evil" through our conduct "right now in the war on terror." Hinton's piece, of little consequence in its own right, represents a specimen of the left's use of the war on terror to deconstruct American values.

To negate Hinton's bizarre analogy, one need only recall the history of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror. Hinton, without irony, does this himself. The Cambodian government, he notes, collectivized production and consumption, forced essentially its "entire population" into backbreaking and unceasing labor, abolished freedom of worship, cut off contact between its citizens and the outside world, attempted to control what the public "ate and did every day," and — oh yes — caused the death of more than 1.7 million of the country's 8 million inhabitants.

Inasmuch as the U.S. government has done none of the above, in what respect does Hinton think we are coming to resemble the Cambodian mass murderers? Well, for one thing we are not always politically correct. Hinton notes that most of us have "used euphemisms and stereotypes, followed instructions better questioned, succumbed to peer pressure, disparaged others, and become desensitized to the suffering of others." Not only that, but we have "turned a blind eye to what our government should not be doing." Specifically (and this is the only specific Hinton supplies) our government has engaged in torture, as did the Khmer Rouge. But we have we hardly turned a "blind eye" to this. The disgraceful conduct at Abu Ghraib was widely condemned; indeed, our government began investigating the matter even before it came to light. Where's the Cambodian analog? More fundamentally, it would be obscene to compare the actions at Abu Ghraib with genocide. In fact, Hinton presents no evidence that our government has intentionally killed even one foreign terrorist in our custody, much less 1.7 million of its citizens.

Good news from Afghanistan

Chrenkoff is back with another wonderful roundup of the good news from Afghanistan — and once again, almost none of it has been presented to us by the MSM...

There's little better at 5 am in the morning than a nice cup of coffee and one of Chrenkoff's roundups. Ahhhh...that's the way to get ready for a day at work!

Strange rocks

From Astronomy Picture of the Day (click on the picture for a larger view):

Explanation: What the history of the outcropping of rock called Methuselah? The unusual rock group is visible on the left of the above image taken by the robot Spirit rover current exploring Mars. Methuselah was discovered while maneuvering over hilly terrain and shows unusual multiple layering that caught the attention of the rover science team. Since the above representative color image was taken about three weeks ago, Spirit has moved in to get a closer look. Also visible in the above image are another rock outcrop dubbed Larry's Lookout on the upper right and a larger Clark Hill in the left background. On the far right is a more distant peak of the Columbia Hills.

Nepalese doings

Robert Mayer (blogging at Publius Pundit) has a theory about predicting when a revolution will succeed: when the "protest babes" show up, the revolution is about to be won. Hence his conclusion about the democratic revolution in Nepal, as the protest babes (like the one at right) are there.

Three months ago, King Gyanendra seized power and declared a state of emergency. The state of emergency was lifted on Saturday, but the king still holds all power. Yesterday there was a large protest for democracy, where the babes showed up. Even if you don't completely subscribe to Mr. Mayer's theory, it's all still good news. Read his post (linked above) for all the details...

Quote for the day

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

   Aristotle