Just because I didn’t talk about the Army (or the Air Force, Navy (my service) or Coast Guard), but just the Marines, on last week’s show, does not mean that I don’t love all you guys, MAN!  I love all my brothers and sisters in arms (spies and gumshoes, too!).  Just don’t have time to get to it all in a one-hour  weekly show.  Now, Ranger Dude 7, there’s lots of room for heroes out there…

Here’s the beef from ‘Ranger Dude 7′:

Frank….

Your comments today regarding the Marine’s and their hand-off to a small U.S. Army training unit in Anbar Iraq were very one-sided. I realize you are a big fan of the Marines but you should really take a moment to compliment the other services. I have a number of Marine friends on active duty and non of them would trade their 7 month deployments for a soldier’s 12-15 month deployments. The U.S. Army is carrying the majority of the wars (OIF & OEF) on their backs.

In addition, the Marines have not been outside of the wire in Anbar since last July and it’s the Iraqi Army who is doing all the patrolling.

The Marines also had serious problems in Anbar including the Haditha and the Blackwater contractor incidents.

Keep in mind that in the 1st battle of Fallujah (Irag) the Marines failed to take their objective. Months later they finally were able to do that with the help of soldiers from the U.S. Army’s 1st. ID.

In Afghanistan, the Marine SOF unit was kicked out of the country by the local Army commander for being unprofessional.

In my humble opinion you very susceptible to Marine propaganda.

Quick “Need to Know!” response: Ranger Dude 7 (and 1-6), DON’T BE HATIN’ ON YOUR BROTHERS-IN-ARMS.  KEEP IT POSITIVE.  ONE TEAM, ONE FIGHT; NOT, ONE-TEAM FIGHTING EACH OTHER.  EVERYONE GETS THEIR DAY IN THE SUN, EXCEPT OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS WHO WILL NEVER SEE ANOTHER SUNRISE ON EARTH… THE FALLEN.  HONOR EACH OTHER, DON’T TEAR EACH OTHER DOWN.  PLEASE.  THANK YOU, RANGER DUDE 7 FOR YOUR SERVICE, SACRIFICE AND HEROICS AND, NEXT TIME YOU SEE A MARINE, SAILOR, OR AIRMAN, THANK THEM, TOO, EVEN IF YOU FEEL THEIR CONTRIBUTION DESERVES NOT THE ATTENTION OF YOUR OWN.  GOD BLESS, FRANK

From the Vaults of the Obvious:

Gee, who didn’t see this one coming?… and GITMO remains open, and Elvis and Bruce Lee are still dead…

AP/WASH POST REPORT –

By COLLEEN LONG and TOM HAYS
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 30, 2010; 9:36 AM

NEW YORK — A letter and a speech may have doomed plans to bring the Sept. 11 terror trial to New York.

The letter written by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Washington earlier this month set a whopping $200-million-a-year price tag to secure the city during the trial – more than double the original estimate. The speech by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly detailed a planned lockdown of lower Manhattan certain to set new standards for gridlock.

The resulting political and public outcry has forced the Obama administration to consider looking for a friendlier home for the high-profile trial, even as the legitimacy of the New York Police Department’s security plan and its estimated cost goes unchallenged.

Read the rest here.

Sleeping with the enemy… another fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

The Guardian, UK – Beijing says it will suspend military exchanges with the US and impose sanctions on arms companies

The Chinese government has announced retaliatory measures over a planned sale of advanced US weaponry to Taiwan.

China‘s defence ministry said it would suspend military exchanges with the US, impose sanctions on companies selling arms to Taiwan and review wider co-operation on international issues.

The confrontation over the $6.3bn (£4bn) arms sale to Taiwan – a self-governing island that Beijing considers part of its sovereign territory – threatens to strain a relationship already troubled by disputes about internet censorship and trade.

The planned arms sales, announced by the US military yesterday, could hinder Washington’s efforts to win Chinese support for sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme and exacerbate disputes over the standoff between Beijing and internet giant Google over censorship.

The state-run Xinhua news agency cited the defence ministry as saying the suspension was due to the “severe harm” of the arms sales on relations between the US and China.

Included in the proposed arms deal are two Osprey mine-hunting ships, 60 Black Hawk helicopters, missiles, machine guns and ammunition, night vision gear, radar equipment and information technology.

“This is definitely going to cause considerable tension in the relationship,” a US official who has served in China told the Guardian. The official added that relations between the US, China and Taiwan had improved in the past two years under Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou.

Officially the US downplayed the threat to the bilateral relationship, claiming that the sale would not alter the balance in the region.

The sale indicates that Barack Obama will continue the US policy of maintaining the diplomatic status quo between China and Taiwan, while providing the island with weapons to deter Chinese military action. In 2008, for example, the Pentagon announced the sale of $6.4bn in aircraft and missiles.

“We have worked through these issues before,” a state department official said. “We will work through them again.

“This is a clear demonstration of the commitment that this administration has to provide Taiwan the defensive weapons it needs. We think this action contributes to maintaining security and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

The announcement comes in an unusually tense period between China and the US, which maintain close economic links. Last week the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, called on Beijing to investigate claims by Google of a co-ordinated attack on the email accounts of rights activists that originated in China.

She likened Chinese online censorship to the rise of communist Europe, warning that an “information curtain” threatened to descend on the world unless action to protect internet freedom was taken.

Beijing called the charges baseless and said Clinton’s remarks hurt the relationship between the two countries.

With the miserable state of the US economy contributing to tension with China, America’s largest creditor nation, the US public and members of Congress are becoming restless for action on China’s rights record.

China and Taiwan have had an uneasy relationship since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Taiwan maintains significant defence capabilities, in large part due to decades of arms purchases from the US. Its primary military mission remains defence against aggression from China, which has not renounced the use of force against to the island.

The US recognises Beijing as the sole legal government but maintains significant unofficial links with Taipei. The US does not support Taiwanese independence and opposes unilateral action by either side to alter the status quo. Taiwan maintains an economic and cultural representative in Washington.

Frank Wuco, Need to Know – In a typically astute observation, Byron York, writing for the Washington Examiner, points out a number of follies in the Justice Department’s belief that the U.S. justice system can set such a fine example of justice that, someday, the eventual result will be an epiphany by those who would be radicalized, that they will somehow aspire to be just like us… a tragically naive and potentially fatal article of faith.  Faith in what?  I have a few points of my own:

• Faith, again, that by setting an example for all the world to see (of how fair is our criminal justice system), we will be admired by all as a fair and just society, to which all will naturally want to aspire.
• Faith that our efforts to afford the strident protection given to U.S. citizens, persons, and entities in our constitution and our legal system will inspire retrogressive Islamic societies to transform themselves according to the progressive example we are laboring to set.
• Faith that the justice delivered in U.S. civil courts will mete out a result that can be considered more fair and complete than justice meted out in a controlled tribunal specifically designed for enemy combatants and foreign terrorists… and that this result will be admired and appreciated by all.
• Faith that only in Eric Holder’s world of justice, will the skivvie-bomber, Abdulmutallab, be afforded a presentation of his entire self, so important to believers in victimology.  People like Holder cannot accept that scum like Abdulmutallab have rationally determined that they are actively participating in their own criminal justice system and are obligated to jihad as a means of preparing the earth for the final judgement of God. Couldn’t be, right?  After all, Holder has Islamic advisers who assure him that Abdulmutallab has been brainwashed into practicing a perverted rendering of Islam, a natural outgrowth of his anger over America’s unfair dominance in the world.  Poor thing, Abdulmutallab.  He needs, no deserves, a rigorous defense to show that he is a victim, perhaps angry at the West for its disenfranchisement of the Muslim world… that demons like Abdulmutallab, young and vulnerable, are not responsible for their actions, all a natural backlash against the economic and political domination by the West over the Muslim world.  That by highlighting Abdulmutallab’s grievances via a rigorous defense during a public trial, the U.S. can be held up by Holder as the supreme evildoer whose actions around the globe drive people to utter radicalism.  And, that Holder, in the end delivered a more complete and real form of justice to a foreign terrorist.

In the end, a free and fair “criminal” trial for Abdulmutallab (and KSM and other former GITMO detainees) will provide the biggest platform to Abdulmutallab as the victim of U.S. global domination and oppression and to the undeniably egocentric citizen of the world, Holder.  He is, at best, ambivalent to the concept of bias against foreign terrorists and worse, downright hostile to the concept of American exceptionalism and placing the mortal protection of his own citizens over the emotional well being of our enemies and the opinions of foreign critics.

Byron York, Washington Examiner – It seems like a pretty simple question. Who made the decision to charge Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused terrorist arrested for trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day, as an everyday criminal, as opposed to an enemy combatant?

After all, Abdulmutallab was trained by al Qaeda, equipped with an al Qaeda-made bomb, and dispatched by al Qaeda to bring down the airliner and its 278 passengers. Even though the Obama administration has mostly abandoned the term “war on terror,” the president himself has said clearly that the United States is at war with al Qaeda. So who decided to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian, read him the Miranda warning, and provide him with a government-paid lawyer — giving him the right to remain silent and denying the United States potentially valuable intelligence that might have been gained by a military-style interrogation?

This week that simple question — Who? — became more complicated after several of the administration’s top anti-terrorism officials testified on Capitol Hill. The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Michael Leiter, said he wasn’t consulted before the decision was made. The director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, said he wasn’t consulted, either. The secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, said she wasn’t consulted. And the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, said he wasn’t consulted.

“The decision was made by the agents on the ground,” Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, referring to the officials who apprehended Abdulmutallab when the plane landed in Detroit. American agents questioned the accused terrorist briefly before he was taken to a hospital to be treated for burns suffered in the attempt to set off explosives hidden in his underwear. After that, Mueller testified, “in consultation with the Department of Justice and others in the administration,” the agents read him his rights.

Read the entire article here.

This is just bad… all the way around.  Lights are coming on.

Sky News – The double agent who killed seven CIA agents in a suicide attack in Afghanistan has said in a video message from beyond the grave that he passed US intelligence to the Taliban.

He highlighted the death of Pakistani Taliban supreme commander Baitullah Mehsud, killed by a CIA missile strike in August.

In the video, al Balawi appeared to mock reports he had ever worked for Jordanian or US intelligence.

Pakistani TV station AAJ, which ran the footage, quoted him as saying he “shared all secrets of Jordanian and American intelligence with his companions”.

It showed Al Balawi, who killed the CIA staff when he blew himself up in a meeting, sitting alongside the new leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Hakimullah Mehsud.

“We will never forget the blood of our emir Baitullah Mehsud. We will always demand revenge for him inside America and outside,” he said, addressing the “enemies of God” and Jordanian intelligence.

“It is an obligation of the emigrants who were welcomed by the emir.”

Al Balawi, a 32-year-old Jordanian doctor, was recruited by Jordanian intelligence after they believed he had been ‘turned’ to support US efforts against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

It is thought al Balawi was recruited to help capture or kill Ayman al Zawahri, an Egyptian doctor who is Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man, but was instead working for al Qaeda.

Al Balawi, wearing traditional Afghan dress, spoke in Arabic during the minute-and-a-half broadcast.

Several extremist Islamic websites linked to the video.

He ended the clip by saying the Taliban under the leadership of Hakimullah would continue fighting until victory.