the Wednesday Edition

The Ethiopian Army has come to the rescue against the Somali-Taliban asshats by dropping bombs on the two main airports around Somalia’s largest city. According to this AP story Mogadishu International Airport had its single runway and a building used by Islamic forces damaged and Baledogle Airport was also hit. These are great strategic moves since both fields have been key supply links for arms from Iran, Syria and Eritrea.

Sunday marked the first time Ethiopia has acknowledged that its troops are fighting in Somalia, though witnesses had been reporting their presence for weeks. Ethiopia supports Somalia’s U.N.-backed government, which has been losing ground to the Islamists since June.

“Our defense force has been forced to enter a war to defend against the attacks from extremists and anti-Ethiopian forces and to protect the sovereignty of the land,” Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said in a television address Sunday night. “Our intention is to win this war as soon as possible.”

Ethiopia dropped bombs on several towns held by the Council of Islamic Courts and its soldiers used artillery and tanks elsewhere. No reliable casualty reports were immediately available.

Remember the the Islamists called jihad on Ethiopia many times over the last few months:

MOGADISHU, Somalia Ethiopian troops briefly entered a strategic hilltop town in Somalia Monday alongside government fighters, residents and Islamic militia said, and Somalia’s radical Islamic forces declared a holy war against Ethiopia.

“I urge all the Somali people to wage holy war against the Ethiopians,” said top Islamic leader Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, wearing combat fatigues and holding aloft an AK47 assault rifle. “We need action rather than words,” he told a brief news conference in Mogadishu, the capital his forces hold.

But you have love the Ethiopian replies like this:

ADDIS ABABA, Dec 23 (Reuters) - Ethiopia said on Saturday an appeal to foreign Muslim fighters by Somalia’s Islamists proved the “extremism” of the movement Addis Ababa accuses of being run by al Qaeda-linked militants.

“If wishes were horses, the extremists in the Islamic Courts Union would have attacked Addis Ababa by now,” Ambassador Solomon Abede, Foreign Ministry spokesman, told Reuters. “Their declaration appealing to foreign Muslim fighters to help in war against Ethiopia proves their extremist behaviour.”

The Godfather of Soul checked out early this morning at the age of 73.

“Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I’m saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me,” he told the AP in 2003.

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)

Yes, I’m sitting alone on Christmas eve, watching over my flock of servers to make sure they don’t go astray. I don’t mine the solitude so much and what the hell? I’m out of here @ 9pm so I’m not missing much. I got to watch my beloved Bears beat my beloved Lions in a barn-burner of a match in which neither team shined like the North Star over Bethlehem some 2000 years ago.

In fact, a lot has changed in Bethlehem since then:

Bethlehem’s tourist industry has been hit hard by the last six years of Israeli-Palestinian violence and by the barrier, which Israel began building in 2002, but also by internal Palestinian friction.

This Christmas is the first under a Palestinian Authority governed by the militant Islamic group Hamas. To alleviate Christian fears ahead of the holiday, Hamas promised that it would send $50,000 to decorate Manger Square in the center of town for the holiday. It was not clear if the money ever arrived.

The gloom seemed even worse for those closest to the Church of the Nativity:

Standing outside his empty souvenir shop, George Baboul said this is the “worst Christmas” he has seen in more than 30 years. Baboul’s shop, the “Bethlehem Star Store,” is in a prime location, at the side of the Church of the Nativity, but he said there is no business.

“No tourists are coming,” said Baboul, 72, who opened the shop in 1967. “I don’t know what’s the reason for that. There are no problems, Bethlehem is safe, but tourists are afraid to come.”

Heh, there are no problems:

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — George Baboul, the proprietor of a dusty souvenir shop that has seen better days, has watched his children grow up and, one by one, move abroad. Only the youngest remains.

“There’s no work, no jobs for the kids to build their future,” said Baboul, a Palestinian Christian. “There’s no peace in the Middle East, especially here.”

Well, its the thought that counts anyway.

Merry Christmas one and all

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.”

Hugo Chavez is pleased but impatient about forming an EU-like body in South America.

The leaders agreed to form a study group in Rio de Janeiro to look at the possibility of creating a continent-wide union, and even a South American parliament.

WTF is the matter with these people?

The result left fiery Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, long an agitator for the region taking a greater role on the world stage, pleased but impatient.

“We need a political Viagra,” Chavez said. “Look, we make decisions and we don’t have the power to execute them. They’re stuck in these pyramids of paper.”

Just what the world needs right now. We need that fence NOW!

New Taliban rules target Afghan teachers By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer Sat Dec 9, 2:26 PM ET

KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban gunmen who murdered two teachers in eastern Afghanistan early Saturday were only following their rules: Teachers receive a warning, then a beating, and if they continue to teach must be killed.

Fiji coup chief runs ads to fill Cabinet

SUVA, Fiji - Fiji’s coup leader ran want ads in local newspapers Saturday to fill vacant Cabinet jobs, trying to piece together a new government for the south Pacific country.

Army chief Frank Bainimarama has removed a swathe of senior civil servants, including top police officers, saying he is weeding out corruption entrenched in the administration of ousted Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase.“Applicants must be of outstanding character and without any criminal records,” the advertisements noted, asking aspirants to submit applications at military headquarters by Tuesday. “Each must not have been declared bankrupt.”