MY ROCKIN' BLOGGER NOMINATIONS

The Rockin’ Blogger nominations have been going around for a while now, and I was recently nominated, much to my surprise.  So, I have some of my own.  Here they are:

WISHING AND HOPING, PRAYING AND BELIEVING – This journal is written by my lifetime sweetheart, Nelishia, but that’s not the reason I nominated her – really!  I was reading her journal before we even met and she has been through some things that wouldn’t be experienced by most in three lifetimes.  This journal is very inspirational as it documents her faith in God pulling her through it all.

 

 

BEHIND THE CURTAIN OF DECEPTION – Stargazer2052 not only tackles issues that you don’t find in the mainstream media, but gives contact information for our politicians in Washington.  Some would call him an activist, I call him an American who loves our country.

RAVEN’S LAMENT – An excellent journal with beautiful graphics from a Native American’s point of view.  Indigo covers other things too, and has a lot of wisdom.

 

DAUGHTERS OF THE SHADOW MEN – She’s already been nominated once, but I had to include Gerry in this.  Another excellent journal by a talented writer.  A great read.

 

 

NORTHERN TRIP – This may not be exactly according to the rules of Hoyle because he nominated me, but I had to nominate Guido.  His journal is well written and very educational.

ROCKIN' MAN BLOGGER NOMINATION - I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!

This is just a quick entry today, but not about any issues.  I just checked my e-mail and I have been nominated for a Rockin' Man Blogger award by Guido/NORTHERN TRIP!  I'm not bragging, I just couldn't let this go by without acknowledging it.  I REALLY didn't expect this at all, especially since I just started this journal.  I didn't start it with the idea of getting any recognition at all. 

I wanted to thank Guido for the honor of nominating me.  Stop by his journal - it's very thought provoking and interesting reading.

Thanks again, Guido!

 

Tags: Rocking Man Blogger, United Kingdom, Freedom of Speech

THINGS ABOUT THE WAR YOU WON'T SEE IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA

We are all hit with a barrage of "news" from Iraq.  Isn't it interesting, though, that we never hear about the good things that are happening there.  To find the positive accounts, one has to dig.  Finding the negative? No problem.  I think we have this backwards, but this isn't surprising from the mainstream media.  I am including a few of the positive things that have and are taking place there.  Here are some excerpts from the diary of a soldier stationed in Iraq, Captain Dan Sukman:

"August 14, 2006 - One major accomplishment is the turning over of the city of Mahamadiyah to the Iraqi forces there. Nearly 10 months ago, the police force was practically non-existent, and the Iraqi army presence was negligible. Today, we had another ceremony where we gave the security responsibility of Mahamadiyah to the Iraqi army. If I had told you 10 months ago the Iraqi army would be ready to take control of the city, I'd have been locked up in a padded room. This really reflects the hard work of our MiTTs [military transition teams] and battalion that have been working in Mahamadiyah over the past year.

July 15

 

A lot of people ask, "Where are the good news stories?" or "Where are the success stories?"

Here you go:

Our brigade took another step forward today. We turned over another portion of our AO [area of operation] to the Iraqi army in South Baghdad. It's a small step; it won't make national headlines, but it's steps like these that will eventually have us all on our way out of here.

Each time we turn over territory to the Iraqi army, it really represents the culmination of an enormous amount of hard work, both by our U.S. soldiers and the Iraqi soldiers.

As I discussed previously, this war is a marathon, not a sprint; fighting a counterinsurgency takes time; it measured in inches. We did not turn over the entire city of Baghdad to the Iraqi army, but we are a little closer today."

Well said.  You can read his entire diary on the Fox News website.  Here's more, this time from the Defend America website: "FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan, July 13, 2007 — Afghan engineers teamed up with the facilities engineer team here to complete a host of construction projects to include a “play ground,” a Mosque roof, and an ammunition holding area.

The Afghans have assisted in the many facets of the engineer processes. This included supervising the contracted equipment projects, as well as doing some small project design work.  Since the start of the program, our expectations are greatly increasing. They have a lot of knowledge. My civilian engineers were pleasantly surprised by their expertise,” said Army Lt. Col. Mark Jacobsen, facilities engineer team leader, from Gresham, Ore.  The Afghan engineers, from the Khowst Province and Paktia, are proud to be part of the Coalition team.  'We want to work for the Coalition forces,” said Abdullah, one of the Afghan engineers who graduated from Kabul University Engineering Facility. “The rebuilding of Afghanistan and the security situation are important to us and our country. We are building good relationships with the Coalition engineering teams.' "

Want to hear more?  This is from an article written by Austin Bay dated March 13, 2007 for Real Clear Politics: "The chattering class nostrum that Free Iraq and its coalition allies have "lost the Iraq war" is so blatantly wrong it would be a source of laughter were human life and hope-inspiring liberty not at such terrible risk. 

In January 2003, I argued that toppling Saddam's tyranny in Iraq would do two things: begin the process of fostering political choice (democracy) in the Middle East and bring al-Qaida onto a battlefield not of its choosing. Moreover, that battlefield would be largely manned by Muslim allies, exposing the great fractures within Islam and the Middle East that al-Qaida's strategists tried to mask by portraying America as "the enemy."

Credit the Iraqi people with taking the opportunity by conducting three honest, open, democratic elections. In May 2006, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki formed a democratically elected, consensus-seeking government not simply in Mesopotamia but in the heart of the politically dysfunctional Middle East.

That's an astonishing achievement.

Al-Qaida's now-deceased emir in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, understood the stakes. In a message to al-Qaida (intercepted by theCoalition in February 2004), Zarqawi wrote that after Iraqis run their own government, U.S. troops will remain, "but the sons of this land will be the authority. ... This is the democracy. We will have no pretexts." Iraq's new army and police will link with the people "by lineage, blood and appearance."

The terrorists and tyrants understand. It's a shame America's chatterers don't.

Unable to defeat coalition soldiers or dim liberty's appeal, Zarqawi and his terror clique chose Iraqi civilians as their target. They concluded that an Islamic sectarian war between Shia and Sunni was the only way al-Qaida would avoid defeat. That might entail temporarily placing a secular Saddam-type tyrant in power -- hence the short-term cooperation with thugs from the former regime. Al-Qaida and the Saddamists bet their bombs would break the Iraqi people. That has not happened. They know their resiliency is a stinging rebuke of terror and tyranny."

You can read these articles in their entirety on these websites.  With a little digging, and unfortunately you have to dig to get the good news about it, you can find much more that give a true picture of what has happened and what is happening.  One major benefit we have from taking THEIR game to THEIR playing field (which they REALLY did not want) is that we haven't been hit again on American soil.  Yes, we have acts of terrorism going on there, but that's the point.  It's THERE, not HERE.

I salute all of our men and women in the U. S. Armed Forces that have made this happen, and the extraordinary job they do everyday . . . for US.

 

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Tags: Iraq War, RealClearPolitics, Fox News, Defend America, U.S. Armed Forces

SEPTEMBER 11TH

First, I would like to thank those who have stopped by and commented in my new journal.  I really appreciate each of you taking the time to visit.

As the first thing I would like to talk about, I am going back to Sepetember 11th.  I know we have heard so much about this unprovoked attack, but there are some things I think are worth pointing out.  We can never afford to forget although most Americans obviously have.

One of the main things I would like to mention is that this was nothing new.  Terrorist attacks against the United States have been taking place for years and years.  The traditional U. S. response?  Nothing.  That's exactly why it continued unabated.  There is a timeline of terrorism on the U. S. ARMY'S website that provides a number of examples of terroristic acts from 1960 - 2006. Be sure to click on this link and read the entire timeline to get the impact.  It's well worth the time to get the full impact of terrorism since these incidents are not mentioned in the mainstream media. This includes attacks against other countries besides the United States.  The U. S. response at the most was filing a "formal protest".  That was a real deterrent!!!  Our government tried negotiations.  Negotiate with terrorists?  They don't know the meaning of the word.  As far as the terror organizations and the countries that provided funding and training for them were concerned, the U. S. would do absolutely nothing to stop it.  So it went on.  Many died.  Then September 11th, it was brought home to us in a big way.  Over 3,000 people died that day in a cowardly, unprovoked attack.  Al-Qaeda and the countries that were behind them did not expect what happened next.  President Bush's speech was probably seen as just more U. S. rhetoric.  Instead, what I had been saying should have been done since I was in junior high school (which gives you an idea of how many years I'm talking about!) was finally done.  In the words of a Marine, "we took the ballgame to THEIR five yard line."  This is something that they did not anticipate and were no doubt shocked to say the least.  The Taliban in Afghanistan was dismantled.  Sadam Hussein's regime was toppled.  Both were training grounds and sources of funding for terrorist attacks against the United States.

Which brings me to my next point - there are those that say that our going into Iraq was unjustified.  It was every bit justified.  Afghanistan was only half the equation if that much.  Here is an exerpt from THE WEEKLY STANDARD (this links to the entire article) published January 16, 2006:  

"THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.

The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis."

This is something you will NEVER hear in the mainstream media.  The idea in the media is to discredit the Bush administration and the War on Terror.  This is why you never hear about the good things that have happened there since the liberation of Iraq.  All you hear is a body count.  What the Weekly Standard reported is what the War on Terror was all about.  Stopping further terrorist acts.  The only way to do that is AT THE SOURCE.  Terrorist organizations are not poor financially as has been reported by the major news outlets.  They are very well financed in order to obtain the weapons and training.  Another lie perpetrated on the American public has been the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction (WMD's).  Just the name of this war will tell anyone that WMD's were not what this was about.  Even so, here is another exerpt from the same article in the Weekly Standard:  "Most of the 50,000 translated documents relate directly to weapons of mass destruction programs and scientists . . ."  Really?  If we were to believe the mainstream media, this was just something concocted by the Bush Administration to go into Iraq.  Now it's coming out that there were WMD's.  Major fringe benefit of eliminating this horrible regime.  I agree with the author of the article that these documents should be made public.  They're not all translated yet, but as they become available, I think they should be released.  I urge you to read this article in its entirety for yourself.

One of the purposes of this journal is to inspire thought.  If you disagree with me, at least you have to think about WHY you disagree.  Please read these sources for yourself and draw your own conclusions instead of just taking my word for it.  Thank you for reading. 

 

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INTRODUCING MY NEW JOURNAL

This is a new journal that I have wanted to do to share my views and give the "news behind the news".  Before anyone takes the title the wrong way, I'm not saying that the First Amendment is not politcally correct.  I chose the name of my journal because I will be exercising my rights under the First Amendment.  There are those who do not believe that conservatives are entitled to First Amendment protection.  But, then again, when you hear the term "conservative", especially in the media, you don't have to read between the lines much at all to figure out they really mean fundamental Christians.  The all out attack by the liberal factions in our country on conservative values is why First Amendment guarantees do not seem to apply equally without this highly publicized minority loudly criticizing, deriding, and attempting to discredit.  The second part of my title just means that the values that I believe in, the morals and values that our great country was founded on, are no longer "politically correct."  However, that does not change what's right and what's wrong.

I hope this journal will prove informative as I will research news items about issues that affect us all.  These will be items that you most likely will not hear in the main stream media.  The media only reports those things they want you to know about and suppresses other vital issues.  I welcome comments from liberals.  One thing, though.  Liberals leaving comments will be subject to rebuttal.  And that's the point.  I hope all of us, conservative and liberal, can have an enjoyable experience here while exercising our freedom of speech.  The First Amendment will apply equally here.

Tags: First Amendment;Constitution;conservative;liberal;news