Laura Mansfield translates new comedy tape

New video tape of Abu Yahya al Libi released by As Sahab

Abu Yahya al Libi, an Al Qaeda commander who escaped from the Bagram prison in Afghanistan in July 2005, has emerged as a rapidly rising figure in the Al Qaeda video world, with the release of a third video in as many months by Al Qaeda’s video production arm, As Sahab.

In this seventeen minute video announced on November 1, 2006, on various jihadi message boards, al Libi eulogizes his fellow Bagram escapee Farouq al Iraqi, who was killed several weeks ago in Iraq.

He calls upon Islamic scholars to join in on the battlefield of Jihad, chastising them for their lack of participation.

He claims victory over the Americans is near, asking the following questions of the US:

Here is your number one enemy after they spread their arrogance and conceit has admitted with all humiliation that its decision to go into Iraq was wrong. We ask him, how did you discover that its decision to go into Iraq was wrong and when?

Is it after your planes got tired of flying back and forth carrying thousands coffins of the dirty bodies of the soldiers who were killed by the loyal and faithful? Is it after you wasted all your billions and then found out that the money is going nowhere?

Is it after you discovered that Islamic nation is a nation of belief and principle, sacrifice and power, it is the nation that will never give up its principles, a nation that will never be led by any outsiders.

We tell you that you will discover soon that your decision to go into Afghanistan was wrong too. Know that your support to the state of Israel is wrong as well. Also know that your decision to go to the Arab peninsula, the birthplace of the message and the land of divine inspiration was wrong as well. You still admit and acknowledge that this nation is a nation of steadfastness and sacrifice and undefeated power that will never bow to its enemies despite their tyranny and arrogance. History will give you the lesson about our events, our states and our battles.

I have a real fear that Secretary Rice and her faithful followers will not respond to this video in the way that is really needs to be. Therefore, I am taking upon myself to give an honest assessment of the tape and the translation.

First, I must narrow the translation down to the relevent questions and translate them from the usual broken language of a translated text, to something that I can understand. There will be some minor paraphrasing here because of the limits of translation.

Abu Yahya al Libi wants to know four key points as far as I can tell, these are:
1) Why the Americans have finally decided to retreat from the Arab lands?
2) Is it the thousands of bodies being sent home to America?
3) Is it the billions of dollars wasted trying to uplift the Iraqi people?
4) Or is it that the Americans have finally figured out that Muslims like to live in these conditions and do not like to have modern technology. Except for the tools of war, of course.
This is followed by a rant that might have been written for any low grade action movie about how America will have to regret its involvement in the Arab world, Afganistan, the Arab world and Israel. I think it is a paraphrase of a similar rant in "Austin Powers". Or it is just something repeated to many times in these comedy shorts.

My response is: 1) The US is not retreating. A few people have been calling for surrender since Arabs flew jets into towers a few years ago, but these are the same ones who think the French have a military. Many of these same surrender monkeys also agree with the Imam in Australia that raping women is ok.
2) Thousands of bodies have been sent home. So? We liberated Europe twice and left battle fields littered with thousands more bodies. St Louis is more dangerous than Iraq! If you want to challenge us you need to do something different than we see at home. Maybe challenge us to combat instead of hiding in crowds dressed like a woman. Do you like to dress like a woman?
3) The US has spent billions on ways to make the Iraqi country into a model country for the world. It is too bad that a few men who like to hide behind women and children have been blowing up the afore mentioned women and children in a weak attempt to harm the Americans. Why are you afraid to allow them an education? Why are you afraid to let them talk back to you? Is it that you fear that you might not be able to control them if they slipped out of slavery?
4) The world knows that many Muslims are proud that they have not changed in 500 years. They live the same simple life that their ancestors always have. Too many Muslims would love to live like we do in the West, but are kept enslaved by a lack of education and an enslaving theocracy. If that is what you want, live that way. Do not force your way of life, or death as the case may be, upon your neighbors.

As for the rant: sticks and stones may break my bones, but barbarians can only threaten me. You might be able to harm or kill some of us, but we are winning this war because you only have one trick: death. The Free World is bringing in freedom and democracy. We are allowing people to think for themselves. Mot of these people like this freedom. It is only a few more years until you are finally gone. If you should live that long.

Team Hoyt - Just wow!!

Nothing to say here. Just Wow!!

(Found on blackfive.net)

Strongest Dad in the World
Rick Reilly
Sports Illustrated Issue date: June 20, 2005, p. 88

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I'm suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars -- all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much -- except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life," Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. "Put him in an institution."

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. "No way," Dick says he was told. "There's nothing going on in his brain."

"Tell him a joke," Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? "Go Bruins!" And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, "Dad, I want to do that."

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described "porker" who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. "Then it was me who was handicapped," Dick says. "I was sore for two weeks."

That day changed Rick's life. "Dad," he typed, "when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!"

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

"No way," Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, "Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?"

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? "No way," he says. Dick does it purely for "the awesome feeling" he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 -- only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

"No question about it," Rick types. "My dad is the Father of the Century."

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. "If you hadn't been in such great shape," one doctor told him, "you probably would've died 15 years ago."

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

"The thing I'd most like," Rick types, "is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once."

iowahawk: Ask The Aussie Imam

iowahawk: Ask The Aussie Imam

I love Iowahawk. :) I want some of what is in his pipe. Just check this out, if you dare!

Deadly Hezbollah chess match - Commentary - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Deadly Hezbollah chess match - Commentary - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Here I am, looking for something light hearted to read before bed and I find this. What a great laugh! Mainly because of the deep anger it has brough to me.

Once again, Muslims are dying. Now it turns out that they were killed by Hezbollah using Israeli bombs. These peaceful, Allah loving murderous terrorists hid the rockets they used to attack the civilian population of Israel in the homes of unsuspecting Lebanese civilians. I wonder how many of these families were destroyed because of this loathesome tactic?

I wonder when the Religion of Peace will start denouncing tactics like these? Or will they? Will the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) denounce Hezbollah? They have been sending cash to the cold hearted murderers who planned this, will they finally stop supporting terrorists? Of course, since CAIR has yet to condemn the sick Australian Mufti Sheikh Taj Din Al Hilaly for supporting rape, how can they be expected to denounce something as harmless as putting missles next to the baby's crib?

I was asked recently if I hate Islam. Here is my answer, in a very public place so that anyone who wants to know can look it up: No. No more than I hate the Catholic Church before the Reformation. I think that the Catholic Church was misuseing the teaching of Jesus Christ back then and it was torn asunder. I think that the members of the Religion of Peace are responsible for the majority of the violent deaths in the world today. Therefore, the Religion of Peace is not true to itself. Do I hate them? No. It is more of a disgust that they are claiming to be brothers of these scum.

I pity anyone who is foolish enough to try to explain the differences between a moderate muslim and an extreme one. The muslims themselves have a hard time, so hard that I have not heard an explanation yet. I do know that the Koran is easily divided into sections. The first is very peaceful and friendly, the second starts to get violent, and the last section is bloody. The last section also includes many renunciations of things written at the beginning.

I am not going to go into a whole reading and explaination of the Koran right now. That could take a book, not a blog. Suffice it to say that, from my readings, the Koran shifts significantly in character as it goes. The only ones allowed power are the male religious leaders, while women are kept locked in the house much as slaves.

Enough ranting for today. I need to go watch something to cheer me up. Maybe the video tribute to 9/11. At least that is honest.