Shooting at Fort Hood

Bottom Line Up Front:

My Battalion took 4 KIA, 11 WIA. My company lost no Soldiers, but has two in the hospital.

There's no way I can write about this on any of the blogs that are connected to my real name because I disagree intensely with the Official Party Line.



Read the disclaimer at the bottom of this page. Not Kidding.

Next disclaimer:

The vast majority of Muslims in the United States Army (and our sister services) are perfectly good Soldiers who do their duty, much as I did mine in Kosovo, though I intensely disagreed with that mission, primarily on religious grounds.

A few, though, seem to hold opinions like this:

There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that "IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE" and Allah (SWT) knows best.

This should have raised red flags. It didn't.

He prayed at a radical mosque that was attended by 9/11 hijackers.

He presented creepy "briefings" described thus (and obtained by the WaPo):

"Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don't believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat.

"And I said to the psychiatrist, but this cold be a very interesting informational session, right? Where he's educating everybody about the Koran. He said but what disturbed everybody was that Hasan seemed to believe these things. And actually, a Muslim in the audience, a psychiatrist, raised his hand and said, excuse me. But I'm a Muslim and I do not believe these things in the Koran, and then I don't believe what you say the Koran says. And then Hasan didn't say, well, I'm just giving you one point of view. He basically just stared the guy down."

That should have raised red flags. It didn't--at least not officially. No formal complaints were made, for fear of appearing "disciminatory"

He had a spotty work record, and at least one coworker avoided sending referrals his way.

At some point, he attempted to contact al-Qaeda. The FBI knew, but there are questions about what they did with that information. Finger pointing and bureaucratic ass-covering has already begun.

He walked into the medical clinic attached to the Soldier Readiness Center (formerly the Sportsdome, a sports bar). The clinic is actually a separate building some 100 meters or so from the Sportsdome building. He opened fire with a pistol lauded by a media disinformation campaign as being more lethal than it really is, and shot 54 Soldiers after shouting Allah Akbar, or 'Allah is Great', a typical battlecry for Islamic militants. An eyewitness that I have met and know somewhat gives his take. Eventually he was taken down by MPs and DA civilian police officers.

Evidence mounts that this action was deliberately planned, complete with stereotypical 'suicide' preparations.

The lawyers are already playing delaying games and attempting to do their job of keeping this failed suicide from being railroaded--as if there is any doubt about the eventual outcome of a trial. The only question in my mind is whether he will do as his lawyers will undoubtedly insist and claim an insanity defense, or whether he will stand on his convictions.

Many in the media rushing to a defense of PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I'll link to a Wall Street Journal counter-argument rather than gracing 'Dr. Phil' with a link. Let me just say that anyone with the faintest acquaintance with real PTSD (brought on by trauma, you know) would disagree vehemently. I will provide one summarized clinical study and leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.

Mayor Daley thinks it's because America has too many guns. Seriously?

I would ask that before reading further, you take a moment to read the various links. This essay is incomplete without the information contained in these links. Once you're done, we can move onto my opinion.

Whether the United States admits the reality or not, our opposition to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and similar groups places us in the position of being at war with Islam, from the point of view of certain schools of Islamic thought. In overthrowing Muslim governments, in attacking "the Faithful", and in attempting to set up functional "Westernized" states, we have placed ourselves in opposition to the schools of thought characterized variously as Deobandi, Wahabbi, or Salafist. We are also in direct opposition to Iran's state-sponsored imams who push for a Sharia-ruled Shi'a state which includes southern Iraq, and for whom Muqtada al-Sadr has frequently as a sock puppet.

These schools of thought are characterized by an adherence not merely to the Koran, but to the Hadiths and Sharia law. Highly scholastic and legalistic, they emphasis Islamic unity and guarding the 'ulemma' against impurity in word, deed, and thought, whether the impurity is competing schools of Islam or generalized "Western influences."

Further, these schools of thought tend to label even Muslims who disagree as 'apostates', subject to being killed when and where convenient just as we 'unbelievers' are. They emphasise pan-Islamic unity based around a largely Arabic cultural milleu at the expense of local culture and traditions, and deny the validity of any allegiance to a state other than one that meets their criteria of being 'truly' Islamic.

This form of Islam is incompatible with military service, and indeed with citizenship in the United States. It directly contradicts the oaths sworn by military members to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" and to "bear true faith and allegiance to the same." When the United States was struggling against Communism during the Cold War, we did not allow Communists to enlist in the United States Army. Why do we permit our enemies to enlist in the Army today?

Commentators of various ideological stripes have asked how this was possible on a military installation. The answers are very simple. Fort Hood has tens of thousands of people entering the gate daily. It would be simply impossible to search each vehicle. We rely on Soldiers registering their cars on post, and presenting identification when they enter the post. A serving officer stationed at Fort Hood would be required to register his vehicle and get a post sticker shortly after arriving. And of course he is required to make sure his ID card is up to date. No security measure exists on the books to stop a Soldier stationed at Fort Hood from coming on post. Once he gets on post, very few Soldiers, other than MPs on law enforcement duty, carry their weapons around the installation. Of course there are Soldiers going to rifle ranges and similiar training, but live ammunition is tightly controlled to maintain accountability. Under Federal Law, no personally owned firearms may be carried on post. Once Major Hassan got on post, the only question was when and where was he going to carry out his attack.

The choice of target is part of what convinces me this was political/religious. Recall that for an adherent of many types of Islam there is no difference between politics and religion -- sharia is derived from the Koran and the Hadiths, and these are both legal and religious pronouncements, with proper forms of prayer right next to decrees on inheritance.

The Soldier Readiness Center prepared Soldiers administratively and medically for deployment. I updated the power of attorney for my wife, and could have updated my will had I desired to do so. I verified emergency contact data and how I want my life insurance distributed. I got an HIV test and a flumist and made sure my other immunizations were up to date. Other Soldiers got smallpox and anthrax and so forth. The SRC is a bottleneck in deployment preparations. No other target could easily concentrate deploying Soldiers, impact deploying units, and potentially delay deployments without an attack requiring explosives. Among other indicators, it was the perfection of this choice that makes me doubt the theory that Major Hassan just 'snapped' or was otherwise mentally ill. A "crazy" person would not be capable of precision targeting. A man who had decided that he could no longer bear the contradictions of his Islamic beliefs and the reality of the world is capable of that targeting. A man who decided that he was tired of pretending to be something he was not, who finally decided to stand up for his beliefs--as incomprehensible as they are to a normal Westerner--is capable of that.

My belief is that Major Hassan was exposed to radicalized forms of Islamic belief and at some point, possibly very early, he adopted these beliefs. He could not stand the contradictions inherent in his role as an officer in the United States Army. He decided to attack his enemy in a manner calculated to inflict maximum damage while almost ensuring his status as a Shaheed.

He was not 'crazy' or 'insane' in the clinical sense of being so mentally ill that he could not tell right from wrong, unless you wish to use the definition that Islam is in and of itself a form of mental illness, an argument which has some validity from a Western point of view.

He was merely our enemy.

Now, lessons learned from this, and how to prevent.

Lesson one: Political correctness needs to die a horrible death. While many Islamic Soldiers serve the United States faithfully and loyally, Muslim Soldiers (or indeed, any Soldier) who repeatedly attacks the foreign policy of the United States, our government, or make statements supporting our enemies, must be scrutinized. Their coworkers must be free to point out dangerous indicators without fear of having a career-ending Equal Opportunity complaint lodged against them . The standards of proof must be lowered so that it takes something less than 54 casualties to take action.

Lesson two: The advice of Muslim Soldiers should be solicited in putting together some information for Commanders and for Muslim Soldiers. This should lay out, in Islamic terms, the arguments for loyalty to a nation that permits freedom of worship and the arguments for combat against our enemies. A Christian Soldier struggling with a religious qualm regarding the morality of killing has plenty of resources to turn to, there are Christian chaplains all over the place. Where does a Muslim Soldier go?

Lesson three: When a Muslim Soldier does give these warning signs that he cannot reconcile service in the US Army with his version of his faith, he needs to be given the boot. Unceremoniously and without veteran's benefits, a GI Bill, or the other benefits of military service. Thanks for playing, don't let the door hit you on the way out, and oh, by the way, you really don't need to be permitted to purchase firearms in this country. Ever.

Will this discourage some Muslim Soldiers from enlisting or reenlisting? Probably. Not the good ones. Will it be foolproof? Probably not. Is it a complete program in all the endless bureaucratic glory that a complete program would entail? Nope. Does it come close to infringing on freedom of religion? Not in the least--although it denies freedom of religion to an interpretation of Islam that is fundamentally incompatible with the United States Constitution. But that type of religion DOES need to be infringed upon because it is a threat to the body politic.

The Constitution is not a mutual suicide pact. When someone finds a loophole and exploits it to kill us, then the loophole should be closed.

Israel and Hamas

"If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I would do everything to stop that, and would expect Israel to do the same thing."

Glad to know that someone else sees things in Israel more or less the way I do. If someone shoots rockets at civilians, then the answer is to attack those people until you force them do your will-namely, stop shooting rockets at a bare minimum.

Israel's Defense Minister calls this a "war to the bitter end" although you can take that a few different ways. Certainly Israel will be at war with Islamic nitwits until the end of time unless they nuke all their neighbors, but one wonders if this sort of thing is grandstanding for the press, or if Israel seriously intends to go in and clean out the rat's nest that is the Gaza Strip.

Among other things, Hamas's ability to take control of the Gaza Strip and use it as a base for strikes against Israel bodes poorly for a real forward movement in terms of the creation of the eventual state of Palestine. As the Wall Street Journal observes, Israel cannot afford to allow the West Bank to be used in this manner, and cannot trust the Palestinians to NOT permit loons like Hamas to use an truly sovereign Palestine as a base for terrorist operations against Israel. Hence it is truly in the interests of the Palestinian people to repudiate Hamas and to allow Israel to crush it and permit a more representative and rational organization to assume control.

After all, what is Hamas's purpose? To "raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine, for under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned."

"The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day?

"This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement."

"Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. "Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know."

"Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed."

"There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."

Who would want a neighbor like that? Is it any surprise that Israel is done playing games? There's a summarized timeline of the current spate of fighting here, and another here. What's amusing is the number of stories that have figures for Palestinian casualties, freely provided by Hamas (without independant verification) but you have to scrounge to find numbers of rockets fired into Israel or number of casualties inflicted. This story gives some numbers, but I can't find the answer to some of the basic questions of this conflict. After all, if some idiots in the press and world leaders are criticizing Israel for "disproportionate" response, then what are the numbers? Or are we supposed to just take their word that it's "disproprtionate"? At least some outlets are recognizing that Hamas is shooting at Israel, but carefully limit reports of Israeli casualties to "since December 24th" or "since the truce expired". How many rockets and mortars were fired during the "truce" and to what effect? How many before the "truce"? After some Goggle-fu, I found a partial answer in a Canadian news story, all the way down at the bottom where there is an acknowledgement that "according to Israel's Foreign Ministry, 17 people have been killed in attacks from Gaza in 2008, including nine civilians and eight soldiers. Six of the dead were killed by rockets." Yet another instance of media bias, which is so unsuprising it hardly bears remarking on.

The Israelis are of the opinion that this hubbub is sponsored by Iran for Iran's purposes. While everyone operating in reality is keenly away that Hizbollah is Iamnutjob's sock puppet, the case is less clear-cut with Hamas. Hamas is a Sunni organization intending to set up a Sunni Muslim Brotherhood-inspired shari-governed state to replace Israel after they kill all the Israelis. (Don't believe me, I linked to their founding and governing document above). Iran wants to see Shia Islamic revolution engulf the Middle East. But don't be fooled by a simplistic analysis of sectarian loyalties in this game. Enemy of my enemy is a time-honored principle in the Middle East (for precisely as long as is convenient). It would be hard to pin down proof short of the Israelis capturing intact rockets with shipping documents pointing to Iran, as has been done by US forces in Iraq. However, it's plausible and in line with Iran's usual methods.

Oh, and the quote at the top of this entry?

Barrack Hussein Obama, Prez-Elect. It's a funny world, isn't it, when we are agreeing on something.

Hiatus, Again

Well, sorry about the Lack Of Content recently. Been busy at work, and then there was a little tiff about my LJ. Seems my Chain of Command dislikes being blogged about.

Anyway, there is no indication that anyone knows about this blog, given that one of my Fearless Leader's main talking points was about how terrible it is that I have political opinions. I'm sure I'd be up on charges if this could be linked to me. I've scrubbed the profile of significant identifying information, and gone back a couple dozen posts and cleaned those up. I'll ensure that any political stuff comes back here. I took a while off from maintaining this blog Just In Case, and because I was so pissed off I couldn't see straight. Once I wrote that attempting to clamp down on bloggers will discourage those who want to play by the rules and support the Army, while providing no deterrent effect what so ever to those who want to buck the system. I'd like to have been wrong.

I'm going to have to be extremely careful regarding my identity, especially given the relative openness that I used to wear as a badge of pride and a counter-argument to those who argued that only anonymous bloggers could post without sacrificing their careers. I guess I was wrong about that. Oh, well.

Complexity

Complexity of the "Increase troops in Afghanistan" meme.

Complexity of the "Shut down Gitmo" meme.

Further commentary on Iraq in the same vein as my previous post.

I'm moving this week, or I'd put a little more value-added to these.

Obama and Iraq

I know that it is conventional, received wisdom that BHO's victory has nothing to do with Iraq. It's amusing how the pundits can have conventional wisdom in such a short time, but this is the era of the insta-poll, where we can call a state with 3% of the vote counted and where opinion polls, regardless of methodology or bias, are revered as former generations revered Holy Writ.

I am inclined to disagree in that BHO wouldn't have been viable candidate without the anti-victory crowd.[1] He consistently hammered the theme that he wouldn't have invaded Iraq in the first place, although to his credit his voting record supports that notion, unlike the vast majority of the legislators that make that claim today. And while at the end the credit crisis and so forth took over Iraq in public conciousness (most notably through the media's refusal to run positive stories which means Iraq virtually disappeared from the evening news), those folks are most passionate about getting out of Iraq NOW are in the forefront of the Changey-Hopey-Dopey crowd.

BHO promised specifically to withdraw US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of office, "establish regularity in deployments"[2], and end stop-loss. He also want to push more forces into Afghanistan, although how he would manage this in the near future is unclear. After we pull everyone out of Iraq and "establish regularity" it might be possible to do so with the dwell times he seems to support.

Never mind that the generals and diplomats are putting together an agreement to stay there until 2011, with faster withdrawl always an option. Give us a little wiggle room, you might say. There's still a lot of hemming and hawing, and the process was fraught with the usual histronics and drama attendant on any Middle Eastern negotion, but it seems to be on track to pass the Iraqi Parliment.

Meanwhile, in Baghdad, they have started removing the "Stay Back 100m or you will get shot" signs from the back of US vehicles. Believe it or not, posting those signs was originally a 'hearts and minds' initiative compared to the TTP in 2003, which basically worked out to 'shoot tailgaters, use warning shorts if they aren't too close or if you see kids in the car'. If you need an explanation as to why this is significant, you haven't thought about it hard enough. It means that the suicide car bombings against moving convoys are no longer a serious threat, which acccords with the information I was seeing during my brief stay there a few months ago.

Once upon a time, when I was in ar-Ramadi with COL McFadden's 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division (side note: my old BC just got picked up for full bird, go him), the strategy was to push units out of the big FOBs and into neighborhoods, setting up COPs (Combat Outposts) and JSS (Joint Security Stations). The idea was to get agressively involved in the neighborhoods and create a real sense of security among the inhabitants rather than just aimlessly patrolling at random intervals. Being Engineers, my unit built a Metric Boatload of these pocket fortresses. This was a precursor to the strategy that the Surge intended to use, neatly summarized by Grim. The idea is/was to push in, establish a security climate, train Iraqis to do that job, and then get the hell out of the neighborhoods because that shit is both dangerous and manpower-intensive. Eventually the Iraqis are going to have to do the job.

Think about it--suppose you were an Iraqi. Wouldn't you rather have men of your own town in an Iraqi police organization patrolling the streets doing law-and-order work than Americans out looking for a shootout? So while you might be (and probably would be) pretty grateful to get rid of the terrorists (who finance their terrorism through extortion, do remember) it's a step forward to get IPs doing the job.

Of course, when the AP writes about it, it's "abandoning — deliberately and with little public notice — a centerpiece of the widely acclaimed strategy it adopted nearly two years ago to turn the tide against the insurgency." There is a grudging acknowledgement down five paragraphs that this was always the plan, but the rest of the article is a lot of hedging and speculation.

Another interesting indicator is the number of insurgents coming in and deciding they don't want to play on the wrong side anymore. JD has an interesting article on a JAM-SGC leader. National Reconcilliation it ain't (yet) but it is moving in the right direction.

The question is not whether or not we will stay in Iraq for 100 Years. Some Americans will stay in Iraq for 100 years (providing neither we nor the Iraqis suffer total collapse) in the same way that there are US Soldiers working with many militaries around the world as trainers and in joint operations and training operations. The question is whether the main combat units will withdraw on a three year schedule that can be sped up as circumstances permit, or on a 16 month schedule that becomes a millstone around Obama's neck if the Iraqi security forces are not ready to take over all of Baghdad and Mosul and other less secure areas.

This also affects how BHO will be able to fulfill some of his other promises, promises to rebuild an Army whose equipment is in dire need of refit and replacement, and whose force levels were clearly cut too low during the heady Clinton years and not built up under Bush as soon as they were needed. An Army nursing a stab-in-the-back syndrome and suffering from a perception of failure is not nearly as quick to rebuild as an Army that achieves a hard-won success at great cost.

As a side note, I question BHO's ability to rebuild the Army from an equipment standpoint, given that a precipitous withdrawl would likely result in transfer of a good bit of equipment to the IA, necessitating replacement of that equipment stateside. BHO has also come out against the next generation of combat vehicles, currently being developed as the Future Combat System. Given his social programs and the inclinations of supporters in Congress, I doubt we'll see serious refit and reset of existing equipment sets either.

Well, we'll see.






[1] Anyone not clinically insane is anti-war. The so-called "anti-war" crowd prefers immediate "peace" to victory. The rest of us want peace through victory because we believe it to be more lasting and favorable. Hence they are 'anti-victory' whether though a hatred of America, lack of belief in the concept of victory, or because they are irrationally convinced that victory is simply impossible.
[2] Deployments not driven by ongoing commitments are driven by contingencies. The only way to "establish regularity" is to consistently and regularly back down from challenges and refuse to use military power that had been forecasted specifically well in advance. It is, simply put, an impossibility.

Barak and the 2nd Amendment

I have a fairly rigid position on the Second Amendment. It has nothing to do with anything but this:

The Constitution of the United States of America says:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Shall Not Be Infringed.

This is a codification of the pre-existing right that all free men had and have to defend themselves, their families, their property, their community, and their society at large. It also serves as a check on governmental ambition, the natural inclination of political 'elites' to adopt a paternalist attitude and enact schemes they see fit, regardless of the will of the body politic.

This explains why many Democrats disapprove of the Second Amendment.

Barak Hussein Obama would like you, the conservative or moderate individual who owns a firearm (or three) to believe that he supports your right to own and bear your firearm. Or at least, that's what his current story is.

Check out his campaign website's "Sportsmen for Obama."

“He will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport and use guns for the purposes of hunting and target shooting.”

Ummm. . . Wow. I don't give a flying fuck about hunting or target shooting, and that has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. Nice twist.

Let's hop in the way-back machine, and let's talk about the Joyce Foundation.

The junior senator from Illinois does NOT want you to know how far his current statements and his historical actions diverge.

Obama spent eight years on the board of the Joyce Foundation, which paid him more than $70,000. During that time he and the rest of the board met quarterly to award grants. $2.7 million dollars went to groups dedicated to opposing the Second Amendment, including Ban Handguns Now and the Violence Policy Center.

"As the most aggressive group in the gun control movement, the VPC has a record of policy successes on the federal, state, and local levels—including first revealing the threat posed by gun shows, drastically reducing the number of gun dealers, banning the possession of guns by domestic violence offenders, and exposing gun industry marketing to women and even children."

Push the Fast Forward to 1996. Barack Obama is running for State Senator. His campaign is given a survey by a liberal political action group. Here are his answers. They are all enlightening about what Mr. Obama believes when under minimal media scrutiny and running for an office where his constituents will be largely rich liberal just like him. But the relevant questions are:

Do you support state legislation to:
a. ban the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns? Yes.
b. ban assault weapons? Yes.
c. mandatory waiting periods and background checks? Yes.

There is some discussion on this survey -- Mr. Obama has since claimed that it was filled out by a staffer. There is also some evidence he is prevaricating.

“I always believed those to be his views,” she said, adding some members of the board argued that Obama’s 1996 answers were “what he really believes in, and he’s tailoring it now to make himself more palatable as a nationwide candidate.” -- Aviva Patt, IVI-IPO treasurer.

Once he was elected:

He voted to permit retired police officers to concealed carry:
"I didn't find that [vote] surprising. I am consistently on record and will continue to be on record as opposing concealed carry. This was a narrow exception in an exceptional circumstance where a retired police officer might find himself vulnerable as a consequence of the work he has previously done--and had been trained extensively in the proper use of firearms."

2004 Debate:
"Let's be honest. Mr. Keyes does not believe in common gun control measures like the assault weapons bill. Mr. Keyes does not believe in any limits from what I can tell with respect to the possession of guns, including assault weapons that have only one purpose, to kill people. I think it is a scandal that this president did not authorize a renewal of the assault weapons ban."

SB 2165:
He also opposed letting people use a self-defense argument if charged with violating local handgun bans by using weapons in their homes. The bill was a reaction to a Chicago-area man who, after shooting an intruder, was charged with a handgun violation.

Principles that Obama supports on gun issues:
Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.
Increase state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms.
Require manufacturers to provide child-safety locks with firearms.
-- 1998 IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test Jul 2, 1998

Audacity of Hope:
"I believe in keeping guns out of our inner cities, and that our leaders must say so in the face of the gun manfuacturer's lobby."

In the US Senate:
Voted Against the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act; Bill S 397 ; vote number 2005-219 on Jul 29, 2005

He voted to ban nearly all rifle ammunition:
A bill that on the surface seems harmless, but only if you don't understand firearms.
``(iii) a projectile that may be used in a handgun and that the Attorney General determines, under section 926(d), to be capable of penetrating body armor; or

A projectile that MAY be used in a handgun. There's no inherent objection to chambering pistols for what is normally rifle ammunition--provided that the handgun is big enough or the rifle round is small enough. There's a significant market for 5.56mm handguns, and that round will definitely penetrate Level I body armor. It's a back door to be used to bludgeon ammunition makers into shutting up shop. Thank God it didn't pass.

In His Own Words:



Nice Tapdance

For more, check out:
gunowners.org
ontheissues.org
snubnoseinfo
Buckeye Firearms Association
The NRA

Not Quite Theoretical

You know, there's some foofraw going back and forth about a fellow named Bill Ayers and his relationship with Barak Obama.

To understand why this makes some people a mite twitchy, there's a fairly illuminating piece written by a fellow whom Bill Ayers tried to kill for the crime of being born the son of a judge

The same Bill Ayers, who gave an interview some seven years ago headlined, "No Regrets"

Let's poke around his website:

"There is no one better positioned than the late Edward Said to offer advice on the conduct of intellectual life."

There's enough gems in the politics tab that I really don't have to show my work when I dismiss Ayers as another communist who hasn't figured out that shit just doesn't work in the Real World.

Or how about a quote from an old (well, back in January) essay,

The dominant narrative in contemporary school reform is once again focused on exclusion and disadvantage, race and class, black and white. ‘Across the US,’ the National Governor’s Association declared in 2005, ‘a gap in academic achievement persists between minority and disadvantaged students and their white counterparts.’ This is the commonly referenced and popularly understood ‘racial achievement gap,’ and it drives education policy at every level. Interestingly, whether heartfelt or self-satisfied, the narrative never mentions the monster in the room: white supremacy….Gloria Ladson-Billings upends all of this with an elegant reversal: there is no achievement gap, she argues, but actually a glancing reflection of something deeper and more profound—America has a profound education debt. The educational inequities that began with the annihilation of native peoples and the enslavement of Africans, the conquest of the continent and the importation of both free labor and serfs, transformed into apartheid education, something anemic, inferior, inadequate, and oppressive. Over decades and centuries the debt has accumulated and is passed from generation to generation, and it continues to grow and pile up.”

. . .

The mind boggles.

Barak Obama started his political career as a handpicked successor to State Senator Alice Palmer, who was moving on to a run at Congress. He was first introduced by her at the home of Bill Ayers. This is 1995. Mr. Ayers contributed a fairly insignificant $200 to the campaign.

Meanwhile, Mr. Ayers was busily harassing inner-city schools with a "Chicago Annenberg Challenge" organization.

At least one teacher characterized it as, "At best, they are irrelevant wanderers. At worst, they are teacher bashers and ideologues pushing a political line while collecting political patronage."

For a quick post-mortem on the effectiveness of this organization,

"The CAC also funded the creation the Consortium of Chicago School Research (CCSR),
in parallel with the two operational arms, the Board and the Collaborative. This arm was
to conduct research on the impact of the CAC’s funding on student outcomes. In 2003 the
final technical report of the CCSR on the CAC was published.

"The “bottom line” according to the report was that the CAC did not achieve its goal of
improvement in student academic achievement and nonacademic outcomes. While
student test scores improved in the so-called Annenberg Schools that received some of
the $160 million disbursed in the six years from 1995 to 2001,

“This was similar to improvement across the system…. There were no statistically
significant differences in student achievement between Annenberg schools and
demographically similar non-Annenberg schools. This indicates that there was no
Annenberg effect on achievement.”

"The study cited four factors that helped explain the failure. These included:
1. Shortcomings in the design and implementation of the Challenge;
2. Lack of capacity among the External Partners to promote school development;
3. Lack of ability and commitment among schools to engage in the work of the
Challenge; and
4. Lack of external support and “countervailing system forces” that detracted from
or conflicted with schools’ efforts to develop through the Challenge.

"The report identified the political conflict between the Local School Council promotion
efforts of the CAC – such as the $2 million Leadership Development Initiative - as a
possible factor hindering a positive impact on student achievement."

As everyone and their second cousin knows by now, Barak Obama sat on the board of the CAC with Bill Ayers. Details are sketchy about some things -due in no small part to stonewalling of unsympathetic individuals attempting to access records, A number of bloggers have attempted to detail it in more detail, but there are a lot of questions simply unanswerable at this time. What is for sure is that Barak Obama is outright lying when he characterizes Bill Ayers as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" and nothing more.