They Voted Against Victory

Today, the House of Representatives voted to pass resolution 861. A resolution declaring support for victory in the war on terror and the war in Iraq. The vote was 256 in favor, 153 against.

RESOLUTION

Declaring that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary.

Whereas the United States and its allies are engaged in a Global War on Terror, a long and demanding struggle against an adversary that is driven by hatred of American values and that is committed to imposing, by the use of terror, its repressive ideology throughout the world;

Whereas for the past two decades, terrorists have used violence in a futile attempt to intimidate the United States;

Whereas it is essential to the security of the American people and to world security that the United States, together with its allies, take the battle to the terrorists and to those who provide them assistance;

Whereas the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other terrorists failed to stop free elections in Afghanistan and the first popularly-elected President in that nation’s history has taken office;

Whereas the continued determination of Afghanistan, the United States, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will be required to sustain a sovereign, free, and secure Afghanistan;

Whereas the steadfast resolve of the United States and its partners since September 11, 2001, helped persuade the government of Libya to surrender its weapons of mass destruction;

Whereas by early 2003 Saddam Hussein and his criminal, Ba’athist regime in Iraq, which had supported terrorists, constituted a threat against global peace and security and was in violation of mandatory United Nations Security Council Resolutions;

Whereas the mission of the United States and its Coalition partners, having removed Saddam Hussein and his regime from power, is to establish a sovereign, free, secure, and united Iraq at peace with its neighbors;

Whereas the terrorists have declared Iraq to be the central front in their war against all who oppose their ideology;

Whereas the Iraqi people, with the help of the United States and other Coalition partners, have formed a permanent, representative government under a newly ratified constitution;

Whereas the terrorists seek to destroy the new unity government because it threatens the terrorists’ aspirations for Iraq and the broader Middle East;

Whereas United States Armed Forces, in coordination with Iraqi security forces and Coalition and other friendly forces, have scored impressive victories in Iraq including finding and killing the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi;

Whereas Iraqi security forces are, over time, taking over from United States and Coalition forces a growing proportion of independent operations and increasingly lead the fight to secure Iraq;

Whereas the United States and Coalition servicemembers and civilians and the members of the Iraqi security forces and those assisting them who have made the ultimate sacrifice or been wounded in Iraq have done so nobly, in the cause of freedom; and

Whereas the United States and its Coalition partners will continue to support Iraq as part of the Global War on Terror: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) honors all those Americans who have taken an active part in the Global War on Terror, whether as first responders protecting the homeland, as servicemembers overseas, as diplomats and intelligence officers, or in other roles;

(2) honors the sacrifices of the United States Armed Forces and of partners in the Coalition, and of the Iraqis and Afghans who fight alongside them, especially those who have fallen or been wounded in the struggle, and honors as well the sacrifices of their families and of others who risk their lives to help defend freedom;

(3) declares that it is not in the national security interest of the United States to set an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment of United States Armed Forces from Iraq;

(4) declares that the United States is committed to the completion of the mission to create a sovereign, free, secure, and united Iraq;

(5) congratulates Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki and the Iraqi people on the courage they have shown by participating, in increasing millions, in the elections of 2005 and on the formation of the first government under Iraq’s new constitution;

(6) calls upon the nations of the world to promote global peace and security by standing with the United States and other Coalition partners to support the efforts of the Iraqi and Afghan people to live in freedom; and

(7) declares that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the noble struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary.

I’ll update this post later with the full names of congressman who voted against victory in the GWOT and in Iraq, but for now you can view the raw roll call results from the House clerk’s office.

Here is the complete list of congressman who voted against victory in the GWOT and in Iraq. Write your congressman a letter and ask them one or more of the following questions:

• How they [the Democratic party] plan to protect American citizens around the World when the Islamo-fascists, emboldened by our defeat in Iraq, take the initiative and step up their efforts?
• How they plan to protect American families when the terrorists in Iraq follow our troops home?
• How they plan to deal with a depressed economy that will surely follow a defeat in Iraq?
• If the going gets tougher in Afghanistan, and by all indications it will, how quickly will they withdraw troops from that country?
• How they plan to defend the country against a nuclear armed Iran once the Iranians realize America doesn’t keep its promises?
• How they plan to deal with a re-armed Libya and the extremist takeover of the government in Pakistan?
• How they’ll sleep at night knowing that Iraqi civilians are being slaughtered by anti–government Sunni Arabs in retaliation for cooperating with the coalition, as had happened to the Shia after the first Gulf war?

Because all or most of the above scenarios are likely to occur if America cuts and runs from Iraq too early.

And now for the complete list…

Posted on: June 16, 2006 , by newyank  • Trackback
Filed in: Counter Terrorism, Domestic Politics, Iraqi Freedom . •  2 Comments  • .

Murtha to be Called to Account

From the Washington Times:

A criminal defense attorney for a Marine under investigation in the Haditha killings says he will call a senior Democratic congressman as a trial witness, if his client is charged, to find out who told the lawmaker that U.S. troops are guilty of cold-blooded murder.

Read: Marine may call Murtha as witness

All I can say is; it’s about time someone called Congressman Murtha to account for his irresponsible statements. Any fair-minded person would have given investigators and the military justice system time to complete the investigation and trial before rushing to judgment.

This congressman is clearly using the situation to score political points before the investigation is complete and before a trial has been conducted. I suppose that’s the best time to get your shots in–before the true facts are made public.

Posted on: June 15, 2006 , by newyank  • Trackback
Filed in: Domestic Politics, Iraqi Freedom . •  No Comments  • .

Hot for Teacher Update

If you’re coming here in search of nude photos of Austin, Texas school teacher, Tamara Hoover, you’ve come to the wrong place. The images photographs were taken by a very talented artist named Celesta Danger. Here photos are online at her Flickr website. However, she has since removed many of the controversial images from her website. Here’s an excerpt posted by her on Tamara Hoover’s blog:

“After Tamara was fired from her job as an AISD high school art teacher, I am removing many images of her for the time being. With all the media attention, I am now seen as a pornographer and unfortunately, I’m getting many porn collectors and those wishing to use and post my images of Tamara in a crude, lascivious manner and not to mention the Austin American Statesman running an article this morning noting how quick and easy it was for them to break into my Flickr account and access my Private images.

I’ve received much criticism about my homosexual relationship with Tamara, removing my images, posting my images, and just being a poor artist in general. It is important to note that none of the criticism I’ve received has affected my decision take down some of our images.”

In my opinion, the images I saw were tastefully done. Just because I’m a conservative doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate good artistic images when I see them. Furthermore, I don’t see any reason why Ms. Hoover or Ms. Danger should be subject to so much criticism. According to the Austin American Statesmen story (you need to register to access it), the school district requires their employees to adhere to a moral turpitude clause:

Hoover defended her actions in a blog by saying that the pictures are not pornography but “artistic photography” and that she neither knew nor had any control over which photographs were posted by the photographer.

The school district’s policies regarding employee behavior include a moral turpitude clause that prohibits “base, vile, or depraved acts that are intended to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of the actor.”

Based on what I’ve seen, those images don’t seem to cross any lines. Ms. Hoover’s mistake was to allow a link between her MySpace website and the Flickr website belonging to Celesta Danger. It is common knowledge that the MySpace blogosphere is largely populated by high school aged kids. So it was more than likely that her photos would’ve been discovered by one of her students.

UPDATE: Kudos to the Gullible Skeptic for finding this video.

Posted on: June 14, 2006 , by newyank  • Trackback
Filed in: Miscellaneous . •  2 Comments  • .

Hot for Teacher

The bloggers at Jawa and Interested Participant posted a little something about Austin, Texas teacher Ms. Hoover, who was recently terminated from her teaching position because of nude photos of herself on a myspace.com website.

The controversial photos were taken by Celesta Danger and are available on her Flickr website in addition to dozens more. The images that lead to Ms. Hoover’s dismissal are a very small fraction of the entire “Tamara” collection. Which, in my opinion, is very well done indeed? On balance, Ms. Danger appears to be a very talented artist.

More:

Ms. Hoover is looking for help in her fight against the school district.

And by some accounts, she seemed like a great teacher.

Posted on: June 13, 2006 , by newyank  • Trackback
Filed in: Miscellaneous . •  3 Comments  • .

Punishment for Freedom

This is actually an update to my last post, Iranian Police Detain 70 at Women’s Rights Protest.

• Freedon in Picture has many more images from the women’s rights march.
• Mansour Nasiri’s photo-blog has some hi-res images of the protest.
• Gateway Pundit has also been tracking this story here.

To me, it didn’t appear as if the protest devolved into a bloody battle between police, Islamist hardliners and the protestors. However, it is evident that the Regime’s henchmen were aggressive, used excessive force and tactics designed to terrorize the women.

History shows us; when a repressive government attempts to forcefully quell the desire for people to be free, it inevitably backfires. It may not happen right-away but when a country’s citizens desire freedom, it’s not a matter of if, but when.

Posted on: June 13, 2006 , by newyank  • Trackback
Filed in: International, Iran Watch . •  No Comments  • .

Iranian Police Detain 70 at Women’s Rights Protest

Teheran: June 12th more than 5,000 women along with their supporters took to the streets to march in support of women’s rights. Not long after the event began, Iranian police and islamists attacked the crowd arresting some 70 protestors and possibly beating countless others.

Why haven’t we heard a word denouncing the Iranian regime from “human rights” groups like Code Pink. Aren’t these organizations supposed to stand up for the human rights of people all over the world. I guess it only matters when the United States, or rather President Bush, is involved.

(Iran Press News):

Islamic Regime’s thugs attack and assault attendants of the peaceful Women’s March

In the early moments of the demonstration it is reported that 70 people were arrested but according to eye-witnesses, the regime’s forces carted mini-buses and vans full, of mainly women protestors, who were driven away to unknown locations.

Many of the regime’s guards and agents were dressed in plain-clothes and passed themselves off as demonstrators until they began to attack and beat the protestors. They had batons, tear and pepper gases as well as all kinds of other chemical agents that make people sick and disables their breathing and vision which was continuously launched into the crowd. The regime’s new tactic in their so-called attempt at a “kinder, gentler” way of treating protestors is to send out armed, green-clad female thugs and have them beat women demonstrators.

Read the IPN story here.

This is how Reuters ran the story (via Khaleej Times):

70 detained at Iranian protest over women’s rights

TEHERAN - Iranian police detained 70 people at a demonstration in favour of women’s rights, the judiciary said on Tuesday, adding it was ready to review reports that the police had beaten some demonstrators. About 100 women had gathered in central Teheran on Monday to protest against what they called the Islamic Republic’s discriminatory laws against women.

Some men joined them at the gathering, which the judiciary said was “illegal”.

A Reuters correspondent at the protest saw women and men being put into buses and others being beaten back with batons.

Justice Minister Jamal Karimirad said 42 of those detained were women.

The whole Reuters scoop is here.

Posted on: June 13, 2006 , by newyank  • Trackback
Filed in: International, Iran Watch . •  1 Comment  • .

Jihadis by the Book

Little Green Footballs just posted an interesting tale of recently arrested Canadian Jihadis taking plays directly from the al-Qaeda training manual.

Posted on: June 13, 2006 , by newyank  • Trackback
Filed in: Canada, Counter Terrorism, al-Qaeda . •  No Comments  • .

Send Hachette Filipacchi Media Our Collective Kick

(H/T: Huntress)

This is a follow-up to my post, French Media Company Dishonors American Soldiers, regarding the company’s misuse of copyright material owned by Michael Yon. Commentary and information began to surface across the blogosphere in response to Michael’s original post which caused a predictable amount of public pressure on HFM to work to rectify the situation. Since then there have been a number of developments:

More than 1000 blogs were commenting on or linking to the topic on Michael’s website forcing HFM to the bargaining table. In response HFM threatened to sue Michael for defamation. Of course, you should never threaten a blogger.

Michael has put together a good summary, so I’m just going to post it verbatim below:

• The pressure created by the blogosphere worked so well at shocking them, HFM’s first response to was to insinuate a threat to sue Michael Yon for defamation. When he disclosed that publicly, it backfired on HFM because that company is only concerned with selling its magazines and anything that interferes with that gets the attention of top executives.
• Another indication of how concerned the company is with the PR of this experience, is that their primary focus was to get Michael Yon to post what THEY had written about the settlement on Friday last, but he instead posted what he could live with by way of a statement about the settlement on Monday. And over the weekend, they used every outlet they could to make it look like Michael not only settled the terms to resolve their infringement but also that he was part of their effort to promote the magazine, about which he continues to assert:

“The only thing shocking is its lameness, and the only thing it proves is how low a French mega-media publishing conglomerate, Hachette Filipacchi, will stoop in order to squeeze two bucks out of its sneering mockery of others.”

• Yon has said that their spin on the settlement was “like them saying that because I didn’t walk out on a lousy concert I gave the band a standing ovation.”
• Yon not only didn’t agree to be any part of the effort to sell a magazine that he feels is an insult to the American military, he demanded they stop all such activity. They responded with false claims that this was part of the settlement, and then they offered to pay Yon $20,000 more for the promotion uses, but only by taking the money from the donation they’d agreed to give Fisher House.
• They were trying to develop some immunity from any further bad publicity about this by enticing Yon to sell out knowingly so they could smear him and turn public opinion against him.
• Because this company cannot understand anything except making money at any turn by any means and without any scruples, they have never been able to “get” what this is really about. They don’t have principles, they don’t work from values, so they don’t understand what people are all upset about… they don’t get how incensed people are that they launched a sleazebag magazine for which they’d already had extremely limited interest from advertisers and for which sales predictions were dismal, by deliberately using an attack on American soldiers as a way to sell copies. They did it deliberately on Memorial Day.
• They had a publicity event in Washington DC JUST THIS WEEKEND to explain that the cover story was their way of showing they are also a serious political, hard news magazine… (of course, that doesn’t explain the two spreads on rectal exams, decaying corpses or bloody disembodied chicken heads…) They think because many Americans have doubts about the war in Iraq, they also don’t support their military. They are dead wrong, all the polls show that, but it is just another indication that this French company doesn’t not understand or respect American consumers.
• During negotiations, Yon learned that HFM had also used (without his permission) his iconic photo on the cover of the March issue of CHOC, the 2 year old French language magazine upon which SHOCK is based. That magazine sold 350,000 copies—in France. They tried—at the last minute—to slip that into the deal which was hammered out for the SHOCK magazine. Yon refused that outright.

They really seem to think we are idiots who will believe anything they say because they are magazine publishers… they apparently were on a month long vacation when the blogosphere handed mainstream media Rathergate…they claim to be launching a magazine that will be internet based but they were totally shocked by the reaction of the bloggers…

In order to send this company a message about American consumers, we need to make sure that we are able to harness the power of the blogs and focus it in a sustained way. Its important then that bloggers link to the “Make Yourself Heard” page and let us know they’ve done so (there is a field they can do this right on the page) and we’ll cross link.

It’s also important that bloggers who post on this and link to the page encourage their readers to “Communicate displeasure” and specifically that they encourage people to take a minute and sign up for the petition and complete the form that captures what actions they took. We know HFM will be trying to spin this as a big nothing… they have a “let them eat cake” attitude about angry people protesting the way they do business.

But if we can get people to report their efforts, this will prevent HFM from trying to minimize the impact of the blogosphere or from distorting the facts. For example, we know that almost 1000 bloggers have posted on this, so we should have 5 to 8 thousand people signed up for the petition and reporting on what actions they have taken to communicate their opinions to HFM. But we don’t –so we need to encourage people who have already called or emailed or stopped buying HFM magazines to visit the page and let us know what they did.

HFM’s last threat was to portray Yon and this campaign as “crazy” and by extension to depict the protesters as disorganized and ultimately trivial. But Yon and other top bloggers are also reaching out to mainstream media and especially to freelance photographers, illustrators and writers who are frequently bullied by media behemoths, and with people also encouraged to contact local newspapers, radio and television stations, we can collectively insure that any attempt HFM makes to discredit this effort will be transparent and will actually be just the latest example of HFM executives acting in ways that prove the veracity of our growing list of complaints about this dinosaur stomping all over our newsstands with its sneering disdain for its American customers (except of course for their dollars.)

At the end of the day as long as they sell magazines they consider themselves on the winning side of the dispute. But every magazine they sell has at least one (and often many more than that) quality alternative, so people can participate in this communiqué without risking falling behind on fashion, automotive, photography, celebrity gossip, home decorating or teen idol news and trends. This is a painless protest now that the Make Yourself Heard page is up and updating continuously. A series of clicks enables people to send emails to all the key players right from one page. Samples of the letters others have sent are right there on the page. We even have bilingual visitors working on translations of the materials into a range of languages so that people from the 41 countries in which HFM does business can participate in sending them a message about the importance of respecting their readers.

Quick recap:

1. Go directly to the Petition form
2. Read more at the Make Yourself Heard Page
3. Michael Yon’s original post
4. Hachette Filipacchi Media’s website

Posted on: June 12, 2006 , by newyank  • Trackback
Filed in: Media Bias . •  No Comments  • .