the Wednesday Edition

Looks like specific threats forced British Military leaders to send him home not allow him to lead his men into battle. I think this is a horrible mistake on the part of the higher-ups. I believe pulling him out of the fight is a win for the terrorists. It looks to them that by making wild threats they can change the course of military affairs. Seems a bit limp wristed to me for the future Prince of Whales to be watching from the sidlines when he is a well trained troop commander.

Can you imagine the blood orgy that would erupt if we left Iraq any time soon?

BASRA, Iraq (CNN) — British and Iraqi soldiers raided an Iraqi police station Monday in the southern city of Basra where they suspected a rogue police unit was planning to kill 76 prisoners.

“The serious crimes unit themselves were guilty of serious crimes,” said British Maj. Charlie Burbridge.

Burbridge said the rogue unit “would take people in the middle of the night and they would never appear again.”

Perhaps some sort of Sunni ritual for the soon to be martyred Saddam?

After the prisoners were removed, the soldiers destroyed the Jamiyat police station, Burbridge said.

Now where is the AP going to find it’s sources?

The House International Relations investigative subcommittee is about to release a report its been working on for two years concerning questions left unanswered after the investigation into the 1995 Oaklahoma City bombing: Congress rebukes FBI’s Okla. City probe

The subcommittee’s report will conclude there is no doubt McVeigh and Nichols were the main perpetrators, and it discloses for the first time that Nichols confirmed to House investigators he participated in the robbery of an Arkansas gun dealer that provided the proceeds for the attack.

There have long been questions about that robbery because the FBI concluded McVeigh was in another state at the time it occurred.

The report also sharply criticizes the FBI for failing to be curious enough to pursue credible information that foreign or U.S. citizens may have had contact with Nichols or McVeigh and could have assisted their plot.

I wonder if this had anything to do with it… funny, 4 months to the day after the bombing.

The report rebukes the FBI for not fully pursuing leads suggesting other suspects may have provided support to McVeigh and Nichols before their truck bomb killed 168 people in the main federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

The report says the inadequacy of the bureau’s work was exposed two years ago when some bombing evidence overlooked for 10 years was discovered in a home linked to Nichols that had been searched repeatedly by agents.

Here’s some background links:

Rohrabacher’s report cites several leads the subcommittee believes were not fully investigated, including:

_Information that McVeigh called a German citizen living at a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma two weeks before the bombing and that two witnesses saw the men together before the bombing.

_Witness accounts that another man was seen with McVeigh around the time of the bombing. The FBI originally looked for another suspect it named John Doe 2, even providing a sketch, but abruptly dropped that line of inquiry. The subcommittee concludes that decision was a mistake.

_Findings in AP articles in 2003 and 2004 that indicated the FBI had gathered some evidence suggesting a group of neo-Nazi bank robbers may have been tied to McVeigh. The subcommittee interviewed three of those robbers, and all denied a connection. A fourth member of the gang died and a fifth member could not be located by Congress.

_Phone record and witness testimony that persons associated with Middle Eastern terrorism in the Philippines may have had contact with Nichols, and that Nichols took a book about explosives to the Philippines. The FBI and Filipino police spent months investigating such a connection, but ruled it out.

_Information from a former TV reporter concerning an Iraqi national who was in Oklahoma around the time of the bombing. (SEE JOHN DOE 2 LINK)

In Fallujah, Hobbits are making a difference. Don’t take my word for it, ask a Marine:

“Use of intelligence is at the heart of this generation of warfare,” said the 1/24th’s commanding officer, Maj. Daniel Whisnant of Kalamazoo, himself a former intelligence officer. “The Hobbits are key to that.”

Don’t do it man!

Weddings, funerals and other gatherings are easy targets for suicide bombers.

At least five wedding receptions were attacked during the past year. On Oct. 31, a suicide car bomber hit a wedding party in Baghdad and killed 23 people, including nine children gathered outside the bride’s home.

Despite the violence, the urge to marry remains strong. The Justice Ministry said it recorded 258,250 marriages last year, only 4,295 fewer than in 2004. Figures for this year have not been released.

You may wind up as one of the unlucky ones. 5 out of 258,250 just ain’t worth the risk!

The President of Iraq understands that the recomendations of stuffed shirts who never left the Green Zone while visiting Iraq do not take into consideration the people who will be most adversely effected by its findings.

“It is not respecting the desire of the Iraqi people to control its army and to be able to rearm and train Iraqi forces under the leadership of the Iraqi government,” he said during an interview with several reporters in his office in Baghdad.

And you have to love this:

Talabani was the most senior government official to take a stand against the report, which has also come under sharp criticism from American conservatives who claim it amounts to a veiled surrender in the war against terror.

So how much more senior do you get than president? And just how “veiled” is this report? From what I gather from reading it is Defeat, Redeploy, Screw the Iraqis, Quagmire, and did I mention Retreat?

“If you read this report, one would think that it is written for a young, small colony that they are imposing these conditions on,” Talabani said. “We are a sovereign country.”

What is the deal with our wonderful friends at the AP? Don’t they know when to say when? This report on the escape of Saddam’s nephew is hard enough to believe considering the source but what I found by doing a couple of Google searches blows my mind.
It starts reasonably enough:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A nephew of Saddam Hussein serving a life sentence for financing insurgents and possessing bombs escaped from prison Saturday in northern Iraq with the help of a police officer, authorities said.

Pretty straight forward so far but the obligatory deathcount that has nothing to do with the main story comes along next, as usual:

Sectarian attacks killed at least 20 people, including five who died in a suicide car bombing outside a Shiite shrine in Karbala, police said. Officers also found 39 bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad that apparently were victims of revenge killings by Sunni Arabs and Shiites.

Revenge killings by Sunni Arabs and Shiites? Are they working together now?

The escape by Saddam’s nephew underlined one of the problems facing the U.S. military as it tries to train enough Iraqi security personnel so U.S. troops can go home: the ability of Sunni Arab insurgents and Shiite militiamen to infiltrate Iraqi police forces.

OK, now Sunnis are insurgents while Shiites are militiamen.
Anyhow, lets get to the “authorities” mentioned in that first paragraph:

Ayman Sabawi, son of Saddam’s half brother Sabawi Ibrahim Hassan al-Tikriti, escaped from a prison 45 miles west of the northern city of Mosul in the afternoon with the help of a policeman, said a local police commander, Brig. Abdul Karim al-Jubouri.

Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman, confirmed the escape but declined to discuss any details.

We’ve heard all about the problems verifying the mysterious Brig. Abdul-Karim Khalaf @ Michelle Malkin, Hotair, Gateway and all the rest, but I found it strange that both of the characters in the above paragraphs had the same first names.

I am by no means an expert on middle eastern naming schemes and that combination may be as common as Bobby-Joe and Peggy-Sue are in these parts but it stuck in my craw.

I wanted to see how many articles referenced these two Brigadiers at the same time so I ran this search on Google. Pretty much all of them referenced a Dec 8th article by Daniel Wagner, the AP “journalist” who wrote the above article… until I clicked this link.

Now get this, it references police Brig. Khalaf al-Jubouri.

What? is this some horrible muslim mutant? A quick search of that name and I got 10 pages of links mostly referencing the (mostly cached) Nov 24th “6 doused sunnis” article. And on top of that, he’s referenced in the caption of a photo taken by none other than our old friend, AP photog Mohammed Ibrahim who was detained by Coalition forces back back in April.

A tangled web indeed!

Here are my Favorite stories of the week as reported by some of my favorite bloggers.

Captin Ed takes the Washington Post to task over biased and deceptive reporting regarding possible Mobile Chemical Weapons Labs found in Iraq. It seems you have to read MSM stories from bottom to top to get the whole story which condradicts the headline. Great links as always in the good Captain’s piece.

Gateway Pundit explains why the BBC issued a “Kiss Warning” to tourists in Malaysia.

Rusty @ the Jawa Report has all the info on a “hit list” of apostates to the Religion of Peace. Check it out and see if you know any of these poor saps.

Michelle Malkin has an excellent report on the possible detention of AP stringer and Johnny on the spot Jihadist photographer Bilal Hussein.

Joey @ Cabal of Doom links to an excellent piece in the WSJ regarding the treatment of scientists who don’t toe the “Global Warming” line.

Charles @ LGF posts the chilling transcript of the final moments of United Flight 93 as passengers struggled with thier hijackers.