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Barack Obama: A Crack Head

I have said it once and I will say it again, Barack Obama may be capable of being a good president, I don't know, but there simply are not enough people in the U.S. who are willing to vote a black man into office.

Here's a piece of belated advice for Barack Obama. If you have hopes of becoming the first Black president you might not want to be the first candidate to admit you have done cocaine. If the cards are stacked against you, don't add fuel to the fire.

If Obama does somehow become president he will be the third president in a row to admit to (or be strongly suspected of) past drug use. Wow, if that's not the American dream I don't know what is.

Lets Pick A Fight

A little over a year ago when I first heard Iran's name pop up in, "should we attack them" talk, I thought what most reasonable human beings thought. "What are you crazy?!" I thought that it was irrelevant and hypothetical talk coaxed by panels of pundits. With the U.S.'s current situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, having their hands tied, how could the most uninformed person find it at all conceivable? Since then I have watched those hypothetical talks mutate into a certifiable possibility. I have chosen not to presume whether or not Iran is a genuine threat to the United States, however if they truly are the administration is still on the verge of a terrible mistake. For the United States the world stage must be dealt with like a wild, but caged, dog. Meaning if you are fighting one wild dog who has his teeth clenched onto your arm, don't proceed to release the caged dog from his cage. Finish the first dog with your free arm and once he is finished you may move on to the caged dog, if absolutely necessary. The cost to the U.S., Iran, their neighbors and the world would be far too great.

The last year has been like watching a train approach a school bus full of children, reflected by the latest headlines...

Iran's supreme leader said Thursday that if the United States were to attack Iran, the country would respond by striking U.S. interests all over the world — the latest sharp exchange in an escalating standoff between the two countries.

The best way to deal with Iran is to play smart, slow down the pace of incendiary talk, engage in a dialogue through foreign intermediaries and allow the approaching storm time to blow over even if the talks are superfluous. Basically stall!

Now here is the question, is the momentum of a conflict with Iran moving too quickly to be stopped? I hope so.

From The Belly Of The Beast Pt. 2

Of the stories I've heard from Iraq this one is the most disturbing. Several months ago I hinted at the fact that I had met soldiers who had done terrible things in Iraq but before I tell you the story allow me to put on a disclaimer.

Don't E-mail me telling me to report this guy to the authorities and its my moral obligation and blah blah blah etc. First of all he's not my buddy, I cant remember his name and I wouldn't know how to get a hold of him even if I wanted, so all the moral police can kiss my booty!

I met this guy randomly who started chatting with me and wouldn't stop, we will refer to him as "Billy Bob". Billy Bob seemed a little....umm strange. You know the type, when they are talking you are thinking, "wow something is REALLY wrong with this guy, how am I going to get out of this?"

Billy Bob had just come back from Iraq after being injured, apparently he was doing house sweeps when he walked in on an insurgent making a whole bunch of bombs. Deciding not to go without taking some infidel soldiers with him, the insurgent bomb maker chose to detonate the bomb next to him as Billy Bob approached. The insurgents brains and intestines flew all over the place. Billy was thrown across the room and when he woke up he found his left arm and left leg torn open down to exposed bone.

Before he was injured Billy fought in the Marines for almost a year and he took pictures of everything, he showed me most of them on his iPod. I have to give it to him, this guy is a very talented photographer but unfortunately his picture taking included snapshots of almost everyone he killed and he was so casual about it. "Oh here is another guy I killed, he came out of the woods with a rocket launcher but I shot him about 5 times in the head before he could fire."

I looked at him and he had this crazy look in his eyes and a crazed smile, I asked him "whats the worst thing you saw there?" He told me one morning they were exchanging gun fire with insurgents in a house about 400 yards away but they couldn't see the shooters and after 3 hours of shooting the firing showed no signs of slowing down or stopping, so he and his buddies made the decision to fire a missile into the house that would penetrate the walls and explode on the inside in order to kill everyone in the building. They launched the missile and the shooting stopped, 3 days later they walked back to the house to inspect what or who they had killed. They found no insurgents inside only a pregnant women laying on the ground, riddled with metal fragments. The sun had baked her body, turning her skin black and forcing the baby out of her womb and onto the floor. His remark to me was, "I regret everyday that I didn't have my camera on me that day, I wanted a picture of it". He had no explanation or guess as to where the insurgents who fired on them had gone and he had no remorse for the woman and child they had killed.

Its stories like these that give me a vividly ugly image of the war and sometimes I wish I didn't know any better.

From The Belly Of The Beast Pt. 1

I have been lucky enough to meet a lot of people who have lived in Iraq, still live in Iraq, have fought in Iraq or are still fighting in Iraq and the stories are amazing. Some sad, some sick, some scary. This week I will tell a few of them, consider it a multi-part series. I’ll start with this, the luckiest man on earth.

A friend of mine returned from Iraq about a year ago, his experiences were average at best, his convoy was attacked on his first mission, he drank a lot of beer and “had lots of fun”, surprisingly I hear that often. A few months into his deployment his group was sent out to inspect an abandoned hotel that was believed to have insurgents. He stepped out onto a 4^th floor balcony when he began to receive enemy fire coming from the ground approximately 200 yards away. He quickly knelt down and began to return fire, what followed was his very first fire fight. They fired back and forth at each other for around 30-45 mins, finally two insurgents came from around an adjacent building and pointed a rocket propelled grenade launcher directly at him. One man took aim while the other laid down covering fire (basically one aims while the other one shoots at anyone trying to stop him from launching the rocket). When the covering fire stopped he looked up just in time to see the insurgents fire the rocket propelled grenade. He bent down, closed his eyes and welcomed his imminent death. Several seconds went by and no explosion, still in one piece and still alive. He looked up to see the rocket tail sticking out of the wall above his head, the shell was defective and failed to detonate.

BTW: look at this space cadet fighting in sandles!!! The U.S. troops are struggling against dudes in sandles! Why?

Israel/Palestine Conflict For Sale

This is nuts and I'm surprised I didnt hear about it before. I actually stumbled onto their advertisement while I was reading the news online. Check it out!

Go Away!

2005: Danish newspaper prints cartoons depicting Muhammed, everyone goes nuts, riots, bombings, assasination plots, attacks on Danish embassies.

2007:

The Paris Grand Mosque and the Union of French Islamic Organizations are suing the satirical weekly Charline Hebdo, saying the cartoons are similar to anti-Semitic acts and Holocaust denial, which are illegal in France.

Go away already, I'm sick of this issue and the people who wont give up on it.

Well I suppose this is what we (bloggers who condemned the outrageous reactions of other arabs) wanted, you have to admit its alot better than riots and bombings.

The Weight Of The Hijab

My personal opinion about the Hijab is that if a woman wants to wear it, that's her right and if a woman doesn't want to, then that's also her right. I don't care either way simply because her choice is between her and God. Sometimes I see people who are not Muslim who strongly object to the hijab out of an apparent disgust, not for any sophisticated reason. My opinion is that those people have a personal issue with Islam and I hope they one day resolve their prejudice. Basically if someones religious dress bothers you then your issue is with that religion not the clothing.

There is a more important issue surrounding the hijab which are the exhausting expectations people who dont wear a hijab have for people who do wear it. Recently a former Egyptian model (Naira El-Sheikh ), who made headlines for choosing to wear the hijab, is making headlines again for choosing to take it off because of those expectations.

I do believe Hijab is not just a dress code, it's a statement, a behavior and an attitude that you embrace,' said Naira. Nevertheless, she said that the society 'has come to expect so much from a veiled women.'

Upon donning the veil, the woman has to adopt certain conformist behavior that include maintaining a low-profile in public and abstaining from 'casual relationships' with the opposite sex.

Although this strict understanding of the veil is not outlined by the Koran, Naira explained that she tried to strictly abide by this socially-backed 'behavioral code' when she first took the veil on.

'I drastically changed my lifestyle but still it did not fit the expectations of some hardliners from both extremes - the so-called liberals and the so-called conservatives,' she observed.

Naira wore the headscarf, but juggled baggie pants, long skirts and long-sleeved shirts to preserve her individual style. Islamic scholars still disagree about the extent of how a Muslim woman should 'cover up.'

I've seen it a thousand times myself, there will be a girl who wears a hijab and everyone expects her to walk with her head down and never speak, its disgusting.

Naira is making a long overdue statement and I only hope the "conservative" jerks in Egypt don't make her life miserable.