Matt Maupin Found in Iraq
March 30, 2008
AP
Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin
BATAVIA, Ohio — The father of a soldier listed as missing-captured in Iraq since 2004 says the military has informed him that his son’s remains were found in Iraq.
Keith Maupin says an Army general told him Sunday that DNA was used to identify the remains of his son, Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin, who went by “Matt.”
Matt Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was captured April 9, 2004, after his fuel convoy was ambushed west of Baghdad.
Arab television network Al-Jazeera aired a videotape a week later showing Maupin sitting on the floor surrounded by five masked men holding automatic rifles.
That June, Al-Jazeera aired another tape purporting to show a U.S. soldier being shot. But the dark and grainy tape showed only the back of the victim’s head and not the actual shooting.
uhm..
March 28, 2008
I don’t know how to contact you, Euphoric admin.
I think you should never leave bigdump avaible to reach from public. You should restore your database.
Your site security is tooo low
Sorry. Just a test :| I’m not a hacker. I’m a designer T__T
Standing in My Rain
March 25, 2008
Written for my second mother, Suezi Lanham. Love you, Mom.
Still You Served
March 25, 2008
Written for a special Marine I know, who to me embodies all that a warrior should be.
Ryan’s Song
March 25, 2008
Written in memory of Ryan Bishop, a soldier from the 10th Mountain Division who was killed in Iraq.
Over There
March 25, 2008
Written in 2006 for the men of the 75th Ranger Regiment Association. God bless those men and their many sacrifices.
Eat it All!
March 24, 2008
Originally uploaded by euphoriadev
What have I been doing instead of blogging? I’ve been feeding birds in an aviary. You’d be surprised how calming it is. I highly recommend it.
Surge of Optimism
March 24, 2008
A recent poll of Iraqis suggests a more favorable view of Americans, and more importantly, of the structures of democracy.
Iraqis
regard their safety, well-being, and prospects as substantially
improved compared to last summer (when the surge was in progress), and
last spring (when it was just beginning), according to a newly released
poll of 2,228 Iraqis conducted by D3 Systems and KA Research, Ltd. on behalf of a consortium of new organizations, including ABC News and the BBC News.
Americans
read Iraqi polls in terms of how much “they” like “us.” And in this
context, it is pleasing to note that we are uniformly more liked, or
less hated, by Iraqis of all regions and sects, according to the
consortium’s post-surge survey. But the purpose of American polity in
Iraq is not to poll the “Arab street,” but to structure that street so
that its opinion matters. A more instructive approach, therefore,
focuses on how Iraqis regard the structures of their new democracy.
Taken
February 12-20, 2008, this was the first major post-surge survey of
Iraqis. Its scope and methodology are comparable to polls that the
ABC/BBC consortium commissioned in March and August of 2007.
Compared
to last summer, the percentage of Iraqis who regard their own security
as good has risen 19 points, from 43 percent to 62 percent. The
percentage of persons who describe their own life as “going well” has
risen 16 points, from 39 percent to 55 percent. Sixty-five percent of
Iraqis now describe the availability of household necessities as good,
compared to 39 percent last summer.
In
August 2007, Iraqis expecting things to get worse over the next year
outnumbered those expecting things to get better by a margin of 39
percent to 29 percent. Since then, civilian casualties have fallen by
60 percent. In the post-surge survey, the optimists out-polled the
pessimists, 45 percent to 19 percent.
The optimism reported in
the survey is particularly impressive given its methodology. The
ABC/BBC consortium sample contains 30 percent Sunni Arabs. This
“sample” stands in marked contrast to population estimates by the
Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress and the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency. The latter estimates that Sunni Arabs
comprise 12 percent to 22 percent of Iraq’s population.
The
decision to exclude religion and ethnic weighting to a sample of Iraqis
that is 30 percent Sunni Arab has put the ABC/BBC survey series at odds
with other major Iraq pollsters, notably Oxford Research Group and
Opinion Research Business. The decision seems particularly odd, given
the fulsome coverage afforded the Sunni refugee crisis by both ABC and
BBC — the flight of several million Sunni Arabs to Jordan, Syria, and
other nations following the overthrow of Saddam.
The
result has been a series of ABC/BBC polls substantially more
pessimistic than others of equal scope. Sunni Arab tribes controlled
most things under the Baathists; Sunni Arabs had the most to lose when
the regime was overthrown. They have suffered from the invasion itself,
from the inevitable Shiite/Kurd ascendancy, and from the brutal
“anti-collaboration” machinations of al-Qaeda. Their polled opinions
reflect this experience.
An
example of the influence of the consortium’s liberal estimate of Sunni
Arab population is as follows. The ABC/BBC poll reported last spring
that by a 51 percent to 49 percent margin, Iraqis considered attacks on
coalition troops “acceptable.” This finding was derived from three
components: Sunnis, who “accepted” such attacks by 93 percent to 6
percent; Shiites, who rejected such attacks 65 percent to 35 percent;
and Kurds, who opposed anti-coalition violence 93 percent to 7 percent.
Only the double-weight of Sunnis in the sample allowed news
organizations to report (as many did) that most Iraqis approved
anti-coalition violence.
In
the current survey, Iraqis overall oppose such attacks 57 percent to 42
percent. The percentage of Sunnis who find anti-coalition violence
unacceptable has increased from 6 percent to 37 percent. But once
again, the double weight given to the 62 percent of Sunnis who continue
to approve of anti-coalition violence — at least in the abstract —
attenuates the reported improvement in relations between Iraqis and the
coalition.
Do Iraqis love us? No.
The Multi-National Force (MNF) is an army of occupation, and 99 percent
of Iraqis polled want it to leave. They just don’t want it to leave
anytime soon.
Fifty-nine
percent of those polled want coalition troops to stay until security is
restored, the government is stable, and/or the Iraqi security forces
are stronger, while another 4 percent wanted Coalition troops to stay
indefinitely. Support for a continued MNF presence increased among both
Shiites and Sunnis.
There are some specific reasons why Iraqis, who do not love us, want us to hang around:
66 percent want our security assistance “in terms of Turkey”;
68 percent want our security assistance “in terms of Iran”;
73 percent want our help in reconstruction;
76 percent want our help in training and equipping the Iraqi army; and
80 percent want us “participating in security operations against al-Qaeda or foreign Jihadis in Iraq.”
The
important results of this poll relate not to how Iraqis regard us, but
to how they regard the institutions we have mentored, and the
reconciliation we are fostering. Here are some of the consortium’s
post-surge findings:
Attitude toward a “Unified Iraq, with one central government in Baghdad”: 66 percent positive, up 8 percent since last spring;
Confidence in Iraqi national army: 65 percent, up 4 percent since last spring;
Confidence in Iraqi police: 67 percent, up 3 percent since last spring;
Confidence in local militia groups: 22 percent, down 14 percent since last spring;
Confidence in the anti-al-Qaeda “Awakening Groups” among Sunni Arabs: 73 percent;
Confidence in the anti-al-Qaeda “Awakening Groups” among Shi’ite Arabs: 60 percent;
Overall
support for allowing former mid- and low-level Baathists to take
government jobs: 69 percent, up from 56 percent last spring;
Shiite
support for allowing former mid- and low-level Baathists to take
government jobs: 63 percent, up from 35 percent last spring;
Support for the right of previous residents to re-occupy homes expropriated during the insurgency: 88 percent;
Opposition to the separation of Iraqis along religious or ethnic lines: 92 percent.
In short, cohesion is in, jihad is out; the new institutions are gaining popular support.
The
Western fascination with the vagaries of the Arab street has been
misplaced due to the totalitarian nature of most Middle Eastern
societies. The Coalition’s challenge is to create power structures in
which the “Arab street” finally matters. This implies the destruction
of the masks through which Arab opinion has been filtered in the 20th
century: Marxism, pan-Arab nationalism, and jihadism.
The end game is not for “us” to help “them,” but for them to effectively help themselves.
— Richard Nadler is president of the Americas Majority Foundation.
WTF, MATE?!
March 23, 2008
Yeah, I know. The site looks like Nancy Pelosi’s face without makeup. My monkeys are working on it. In the meantime, go listen to last night’s Front Line. Oh, and keep in mind that since we were bashing Winter Soldier, IVAW, and other weenie traitors, of course the show got cut off halfway through so there’s a bit of a dead spot. Just hang on…it comes back.
Moonbats on Parade
March 19, 2008
TSO over at The Sniper has a fantastic laugh today. He works on K Street in Washington, D.C., and he had some visitors over his lunch hour.
A couple of things.
1) You people simply have no musical potential. I mean none. I realize you’re working with a bucket, but I’m thinking rhythm is not your strong suit. I’m Irish, I know lack of rhythm.
2) Your marching also sucks. It’s 9 to the front, 6 to the rear people. Eyes straight ahead. Now, some of you look borderline deformed, walking all Quasimodo style, but for the love of Spongebob, try to synchronize.
3) The F word is not what it once was. And whoever spent the better part of the last month finding rhymes for it needs to get off mom and dad’s dime. Seriously, you ain’t a poet, and everyone knows it. It gave me fits, because you rhyme like comprehensive immigration reform.
Read the whole thing. It’s worth it.
Wordpress 2.5 is a Dream
March 19, 2008
Oh, yes, it is. You can download the new release candidate here, and give it a shot. So far, very stable, very good-looking, and VERY smooth.
An Infantry Officer
March 19, 2008
Paul Rieckhoff spent nearly a year walking patrols as an infantry officer in Baghdad. He saw soldiers dying, his squad leader lost his legs, and he witnessed problems with missing supplies. But when he returned to the United States in 2004, the biggest news story was that Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed during the Super Bowl halftime show.
IVAW Weenies Smacked Down
March 13, 2008
IVAW has suspended the membership of one zealot who threatened to bomb the next GOE event, and terminated another one who threatened to “waste” pro-military activists. As someone who routinely received correspondence from these and other members of IVAW that included some pretty graphic descriptions of violence towards me and the rest of GOE they were interested in pursuing, I’m having a hard time suppressing a chuckle at the knowledge that their daddy just spanked them. Their exposure has just begun, however. There is plenty more information to come out about IVAW and their activities.
While I still disagree wholeheartedly with IVAW’s political stance, their cowardice, and their willingness to betray those who still serve, I will applaud them for at least disengaging themselves from this type of idiocy. Knappenberger and De Wald were loose cannons; they were dangerous, uninformed, and far too arrogant for their own good.
Kudos to the IVAW for cutting them off. Now if they could just pull their own personal honor out of the gutter maybe we’d get somewhere.
They Don’t Support the Troops–Ever.
March 13, 2008
Berkeley “thinker” explains that any support for the troops is bad–even if they’re friends or relatives.
Berkeley, CA–Every so often we read something that is so evil, so disgusting, and so vile that it stays with us after it’s read, like some kind of curse we can’t shake in our minds. This article is one of those vile things.
Kenneth Thiesen, of the Berzerkley Observer, wrote a piece called “Why I Don’t Support the Troops.” Interestingly enough, he gets one thing right:
It is objectively impossible to support the troops of the imperialist military forces of the U.S. and at the same time oppose the wars in which they fight.
Well, no kidding. We’ve been telling you people that for a while now. You telling us you don’t support the troops isn’t really news to us. It’s just letting us know to step up the fight, because you’re obviously comfortable enough now that you don’t feel the need to hide behind the tired old “I support the troops but not the war” platitude. You’re bombing recruiting offices, for crying out loud. We know you don’t support the troops.
Theisen, however, is not content to say he doesn’t support the troops. He’s not happy just to say he opposes the war in Iraq. He has a whole list of “gems” that he shares with the equally-idiotic Berkeley population:
- “We need to oppose the recruitment of men and women into the military. We need to support resisters within the military who have realized what they are doing and now choose to resist the role of the U.S. military. ”
- “We need to expose that those in the U.S. military are trained to be part of a ‘killing machine…’ The bottom line is that even if these people are relatives or friends, you can not support the troops without also supporting the objective role that these troops play in the imperialist system.”
- “United States troops are acting as destructive and murderous forces of invasion and occupation.”
- “Those of us who oppose the unjust wars of the Bush regime must struggle with those in the military and those that support them to expose what role the troops objectively play. Supporting the troops engaged in making war against other nations and people on behalf of U.S. imperialism is not acceptable.”
At least they’re being honest about it now. It’s nothing we didn’t already know, just by looking at their actions: Bombings, defecation on the flag, how they treat veterans. They hate our nation, hate our military, and therefore by definition they hate those of us who support them.
Only one problem…we’re not going anywhere, and we will continue to stand for our men and women in uniform.
Thanks to LGF for the tip.
Technorati Tags: Berkeley, liberal, idiot
Captured FARC Documents Link Democrats to Terror Group
March 13, 2008
GatewayPundit is all over this one, and rightfully so. The bottom line is that we’ve got full-blown Middle East terror pretty close to home. Expect the MSM to bury this. The documents link Democrats in the U.S. to FARC…and FARC to Middle East terror.
In this photo released by Colombia’s Presidency police chief Gen. Oscar Naranjo shows documents recovered from the computer of the senior commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC, killed in Ecuador during a press conference at the presidential palace in Bogota, Monday, March 3, 2008. According to Naranjo some files recovered from a laptop owned by the rebel leader known as Raul Reyes, who was killed Saturday in an operation by Colombian security forces just over the border in Ecuador, reveal that the guerillas sent money to Hugo Chavez when he was a jailed coup leader before being elected Venezuela’s president and that Chavez had recently paid US$ 300 million to the FARC. (AP Photo-Cesar Carrion)
What Colombian investigators found on the FARC terror leader’s computer:
– FARC connections with Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa
– Records of $300 million offerings from Hugo Chavez
– Thank you notes from Hugo Chavez dating back to 1992
– Uranium purchasing records
– Admit to killing the sister of former President Cesar Gaviria
– Admit to planting a 2003 car bomb killing 36 at a Bogota upper crust club
– Directions on how to make a Dirty Bomb
– Letter to Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi asking for cash to buy surface-to-air missiles
– Meetings with “gringos” about Barack Obama
– Information on Russian illegal arms dealer Viktor Bout who was later captured
– FARC funding Correa’s campaign
– Cuban links to FARC
…And, more.
Of course, the fact that these twits are in the terror game up to their eyeballs doesn’t make liberals’ fascination with them any less. The anti-war nutjobs are still frothing at the mouth in desire. Idiots.
Technorati Tags: terrorism, FARC, liberal, democrat, obama, clinton
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