He grew up rich, ultra-Conservative and ultra-Christian. He became a Navy Seal. He later founded the world’s most powerful para-military for hire, Blackwater. He became a friend of the Bush administration and raked in better than a billion dollars in contracts over 10 years.

He’s Erik Prince, and he’s tired of America and its bitching and complaining about his homicidal, gun-running company, and he’s getting out. Going to live in that shining city on a hill, Some Arab Capital:

Blackwater Founder Moves to Abu Dhabi, Records Say
By JAMES RISEN | Published: August 17, 2010

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, whose company, Blackwater Worldwide, is for sale and whose former top managers are facing criminal charges, has left the United States and moved to Abu Dhabi, according to court documents . .

Current and former colleagues said Mr. Prince hoped to focus on security work from governments in Africa and the Middle East. They also said he was bitter about the legal scrutiny and negative publicity his company had received.

Mr. Prince does not face any criminal charges, but five former top company executives have been indicted on federal weapons, conspiracy and obstruction charges. Two guards who worked for a Blackwater-affiliated company face murder charges from a 2009 shooting in Afghanistan, and the Justice Department is trying to revive its prosecution of five former Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

Yes, that’s what a great patriot does, hides in the United Arab Emirates. Because they hold traditional American values dear: democracy, freedom, and fair play. OR, more likely, ‘Your money’s good here.’ And ‘No extradition.’

Erik’s traditional values?

Erik Prince talks values, defends Blackwater at Tulip Time lunch
By PETER DAINING | Posted May 05, 2010 @ 04:10 PM

Erik Prince told a sold-out Tulip Time lunch crowd that the worth of a warrior is not best defined by his deeds, but by his enemies. The founder of Blackwater and Holland native described his own enemies as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and “noisy leftists.” . .

Prince decried Washington and its excessive government spending. He did not mention that Blackwater — now called Xe — was the beneficiary of government contracts worth more than $1 billion, many awarded without competitive bidding . .

But he also addressed his youth, saying he walked in Tulip Time parades every year from fourth grade through high school. He went to the Naval Academy, but eventually dropped out; he called the school too liberal. “As liberal as some universities may be, imagine one run by the federal government,” he said . .

Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach was accused of sexual assault by a civilian in Idaho. Idaho law enforcement interviewed him, found him to be credible and the claims to lack any merit, and they refused to act on the allegations.

Unfortunately, the military demanded to be privy to the interview record and took interest in the Colonel’s admitting to engaging in a same-sex sex act. Fehrenbach’s been under investigation ever since.

Short of his 20th year in the service, he’s not letting them try to take him out:

Officer Sues to Block His Discharge Under Gay Ban
By JAMES DAO | August 11, 2010

. . On Wednesday, Colonel Fehrenbach’s lawyers filed papers in Idaho federal court requesting a temporary order blocking his discharge. The petition contends that a discharge would violate Colonel Fehrenbach’s rights, cause him irreparable harm and fail to meet standards established in a 2008 federal court ruling on don’t ask, don’t tell.

Good for him. Nobody’s asked him, he’s never told anyone. That is, outside of Idaho police who, understandably, should be accommodated the truth given a sexual assault investigation.

Openly serving gay military people have rallied around the case because Col. Fehrenbach isn’t just hoping for the best — he’s attacking the military for their illegal and destructive behavior:

Under new regulations issued by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates this year, “don’t ask” investigations must be based on information from credible sources. Colonel Fehrenbach’s lawyers argue that the credibility of his accuser is clearly undermined by the dismissal of the sexual assault case.

His lawyers also assert that his case underscores the ways the ban hurts military readiness, the very thing it is supposed to protect. They say that Colonel Fehrenbach’s performance reviews were consistently glowing, including his most recent one, which says he was a “proven leader” who “raised morale” in his unit, according to papers filed by his lawyers.

If Fehrenbach’s case is as it seems, it’s a good one. What do the government have to fall back upon? What have they ever really had to fall back upon, other than free-floating fear? Unease?

. . During his 19 years in the service, Colonel Fehrenbach says, he deployed six times as a weapons systems officer, in charge of finding targets and guiding bombs or missiles. He flew combat missions over Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. “I would love to get back into the cockpit and deploy again,” he said.

Jim Hoft, Ape-way Stunt-twit, re-posts a ‘breaking story’ coming by way of Dumfuckistan: The Taliban are training monkeys to shoot AK-47s at American soldiers.

No, not kidding. Hoft, familiar with his ugly peon fans, baits their trap with a ‘Muslims are monkeys, right?’ prompt, and the troglodytes ran with it exactly as you’d expect:

Taliban Training Killer Monkeys to Shoot Americans
Posted by Jim Hoft on Friday, July 9, 2010, 3:48 PM

Allahu Akbar!

Yes, I’m aware that that is not a monkey, it’s a chimpanzee. More:

The Taliban is reportedly training monkeys to shoot American soldiers. Dallas Blog reported:

“‘The People’s Daily of China reports that, ‘reporters from the media agency spotted and took photos of a few ‘monkey soldiers’ holding AK-47 rifles and Bren light machine guns in the Waziristan tribal region near the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The report and photos have been widely spread by media agencies and Web sites across the world.’”

Comments:

Looks like Obama. So the Taliban, Obama’s hommies, are training Obama to kill republicans. Figures, that was his plan since his birth. THat’s his destiny.

Those were not monkeys… That was a photo of the new black panther party.

Monkeys are measurably more intelligent than mohammedans.

Actually, mohanmmedans are grandsons of monkeys and pigs.

Wait until ACORN finds out about this.

I don’t know: In St. Louis and other large urban areas, monkeys kill each other every night over the last beer or some drug deal, or just because one looks at another in a funny manner.

I can’t say many do it for Allah, but they do it with abandon…

They are already doing this in Philadelphia.

Of course, the New York Post has picked up on the ‘news’ and composed a likeness of one of the new recruits:

Several sources are repeating the claim: The Taliban executed a seven year-old boy because they thought he was spying for the Karzai government.

The original source for this is the Karzai government itself. So, you might wanna slug a pile of salt while eyeing the reports:

Taliban execute 7-year-old Afghan boy accused of spying
Jun 9, 2010, 12:25 GMT

Kabul – Suspected Taliban militants executed a 7-year-old boy in southern Afghanistan after accusing him of spying for the government, a provincial official said Wednesday.

The child was captured by the militants in Sangin district of southern province of Helmand on Tuesday, Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said.

‘The militants killed the 7-year-old boy in Heratiyan village of the district, on charges of espionage for Afghan government,’ Ahmadi said, citing information provided to police by relatives.

. . and . .

June 10, 2010 5:04 AM
Taliban Hangs Afghan Boy, 7, for Spying

Taliban militants accused a seven-year-old boy of spying and hanged him earlier this week in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province, a local government official tells CBS News.

Provincial government spokesman Daud Ahmadi confirmed the incident which took place on Tuesday in the Taliban stronghold of Sangin, in Helmand. Ahmadi told CBS News’ Fazul Rahim the boy was hanged in public after a Taliban commander read a verdict out loud, accusing the youth of spying for international forces.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Thursday that, if confirmed by his national government, the hanging would be “heart breaking and shocking.”

Karzai spoke in Kabul at a joint news conference with Britain’s new Prime Minister David Cameron, who was in town for his first visit as head of state. Cameron said the alleged hanging would be a “horrific crime… a crime against humanity,” if proven.

The hanging comes as a Taliban commander in neighboring Kandahar province — the Taliban’s traditional home territory — tells CBS News that a suicide attack on a wedding party that left 40 people dead was “collective punishment” for villagers standing up to the Islamic militants’ control in the region.

A Taliban commander in the region told CBS Thursday he was unaware of the alleged hanging in Helmand.

. . and . .

Taliban militants execute Afghan child
19:30, June 09, 2010

Taliban militants fighting the Afghan government in the latest wave of violent attacks have executed a seven-year-old child in their hotbed Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, Daud Ahmadi the spokesman for provincial administration said Wednesday.

“The armed Taliban rebels kidnapped an innocent seven years old and executed him in Sarewan Qala area of Sangin district on Tuesday,”Ahmadi told Xinhua.

The militants hang up the body of the child on a tree, he said.

March 14, 2010

Barack Obama, former CIA agent
By Deanna Spingola

I recently had the pleasure of talking with Dr. James David Manning who has been ministering to the people of Harlem since 1981 . .

Actual bio quote: 'Deanna Spingola has been a quilt designer and is the author of two books.'

Dr. Manning heads the Columbia Obama Treason Trial which is scheduled for May 14-19, 2010 at the ATLAH building at 38 West 123rd Street in ATLAH, New York, 10027 . .

The CIA needed Muslims or others who were fluent in Farsi and who could easily blend into the Muslim environment in the Middle East. The CIA persuaded Columbia University to extend their foreign student program to Obama, now a Columbia student, so that he might travel to Pakistan and enroll in the universities around Karachi in addition to the Patrice Lumumba School in Moscow . .

Obama, as an undercover agent, was the lead agent in the arms and money supply for the CIA-trained Taliban Army against the Soviet Army war machine. His actions were integral to the Taliban’s success in their opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Obama, it is publicly acknowledged, went to Pakistan in 1981. There is no way of knowing how often Obama traveled between Pakistan and Russia. According to Dr. Manning, Obama was an interpreter for the CIA during the war in Afghanistan. When Obama completed his CIA operations in the mid 1980s and returned to the U.S. he persuaded the State Department to maneuver his entrance into Harvard Law School . .

Pakistani Reports Capture of Taliban Leader
By PIR ZUBAIR SHAH and DEXTER FILKINS
Published: February 22, 2010

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In another blow to the Taliban senior leadership, Pakistani authorities have captured Mullah Abdul Kabir, a member of the group’s inner circle and a leading military commander against American forces in eastern Afghanistan, according to a Pakistani intelligence official . .

Mullah Kabir was detained several days ago in Nawshera, in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, the Pakistani official said, speaking on condition of anonymity . .

The capture of Mullah Kabir appeared to be a strictly Pakistani operation, and Pakistani officials appeared to be keeping Mullah Kabir’s arrest a closely held secret, even from their American allies.

Mullah Kabir is a longtime associate of Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s founder. He was the governor of Nangarhar Province, in eastern Afghanistan, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. Since then, he has overseen military operations in eastern Afghanistan, including those in Kunar, Nangarhar, Nuristan and Laghman Provinces.”

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes

Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the U.S. military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army…

Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions “have always been there” and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.”

I wasn’t buying that this has been tradition for the U.S. military. So I called up the registrar at the local war museum and asked him to take a look at the remains of their World War II rifle collection, and WHADDYAKNOW:

Is Obama about to speak? Then look at me! Over here!

Dick Cheney slams President Obama for projecting ‘weakness’
By MIKE ALLEN & JIM VANDEHEI | 12/1/09 5:40 PM EST

MCLEAN, Va. — On the eve of the unveiling of the nation’s new Afghanistan policy, former Vice President Dick Cheney slammed President Barack Obama for projecting “weakness” to adversaries and warned that more workaday Afghans will side with the Taliban if they think the United States is heading for the exits.

In a 90-minute interview at his suburban Washington house, Cheney said the president’s “agonizing” about Afghanistan strategy “has consequences for your forces in the field.”

“I begin to get nervous when I see the commander in chief making decisions apparently for what I would describe as small ‘p’ political reasons, where he’s trying to balance off different competing groups in society,” Cheney said.

“Every time he delays, defers, debates, changes his position, it begins to raise questions: Is the commander in chief really behind what they’ve been asked to do?”

What a load of garbage from a guy famous for a fatal inability to make the right decision, by whatever means. Dick Cheney, the guy who was unable to protect America during 9/11. Who then retaliated by attacking Bumfuckistan Mesopotamia, killing 4,00 Americans. I can’t believe this moron is popping his head out and his mouth off in his own version of political whack-a-mole. Dangerous, incompetent and classless, what a trifecta.

Meanwhile, the guy who runs the War in Afghanistan, Republican hero General McChrystal, issued a statement commenting on Obama’s address and the ‘dithering’ review:

“The Afghanistan-Pakistan review led by the President has provided me with a clear military mission and the resources to accomplish our task. The clarity, commitment and resolve outlined in the President’s address are critical steps toward bringing security to Afghanistan and eliminating terrorist safe havens that threaten regional and global security.

“The NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) objective is equally clear: We will work toward improved security for Afghanistan and the transfer of responsibility to Afghan security forces as rapidly as conditions allow. In the meantime, our Afghan partners need the support of Coalition forces while we grow and develop the capacity of the Afghan army and police. That will be the main focus of our campaign in the months ahead.

“The 42 other nations of the Coalition will benefit from a strengthened U.S. commitment, as success in Afghanistan must be an international, integrated civil-military effort – from our security and training capacity to the governance and economic development assistance that sustains long-term stability. The concerted commitment of the international community will prevail in bringing real change to Afghanistan — a secure and stable environment that allows for effective governance, improved economic opportunity and the freedom of every Afghan to choose how they live.

“We face many challenges in Afghanistan, but our efforts are sustained by one unassailable reality: neither the Afghan people nor the international community want Afghanistan to remain a sanctuary for terror and violence. The coalition is encouraged by President Obama’s commitment and we remain resolute to empowering the Afghan people to reject the insurgency and build their own future.”

Spot on, again, Dick, dead center in reality. And by forcing a time table upon the corrupt Afghan government, they either straighten up or fail of their own accord, not that you’d think of these things. Because you just move to the right on everything, which makes you about as smart as a one-legged insect.

Go ahead Dick, take another shot: how about that Khalid Sheikh Muhammed trial in New York?

“One of their top people will be given the opportunity — courtesy of the United States government and the Obama administration — to have a platform from which they can espouse this hateful ideology that they adhere to,” he said. “I think it’s likely to give encouragement — aid and comfort — to the enemy.”

Zacarias Moussaoui ran his mouth his whole entire civilian trial in Federal court in Virginia. Don’t you recall how emboldened Al Qaeda became? Don’t you remember how much aid and comfort it gave the enemy? Weren’t you just crushed by that? Remember how Americans were agonized by it all? No?

Zacarias Moussaoui came off like an hysterical, dogmatic clown, powerless and pathetic. [here comment on dick cheney] The moron failed, on the world stage, to do the job he was tasked to do, so now he just talks to the bricks. [here comment again]

At a time when Americans self-identify as ‘Republicans’ less than at any time in the last 8 years, they want to squeeze candidates through ‘purity’ bottlenecks? This is a good idea? Will this help attract new, and especially rare non-white, folks to their ‘pure’ Republican candidates? Doesn’t sound like it.

G.O.P. Considers ‘Purity’ Resolution for Candidates
By ADAM NAGOURNEY

The battle among Republicans over what the party should stand for — and how much it should accommodate dissenting views on important issues — is probably going to move from the states to the Republican National Committee when it holds its winter meeting this January in Honolulu.

Republican leaders are circulating a resolution listing 10 positions Republican candidates should support to demonstrate that they “espouse conservative principles and public policies” that are in opposition to “Obama’s socialist agenda.” According to the resolution, any Republican candidate who broke with the party on three or more of these issues– in votes cast, public statements made or answering a questionnaire – would be penalized by being denied party funds or the party endorsement.

What do the proposed ‘purity’ vows look like? Here:

(1) We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s “stimulus” bill;

(2) We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government run health care;

(3) We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation;

(4) We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check;

(5) We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants;

(6) We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges;

(7) We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat;

(8) We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act;

(9) We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion; and

(10) We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership.

Not only is this a bad idea for a party that’s in danger of becoming marginalized, the list itself is a complete joke, the sort of thing that insiders write for insiders to read and then cheer about. Poorly written, poorly thought out and full of flimsy talking points, it’s easily made fun of…

1.) You’d oppose Obama’s well-known stimulus bill tax cuts? 237 fricking billion dollars? Are you guys lying, or just stupid?

9.) Most ridiculous of all–do you know how many Americans die because they have no access to healthcare? It’s far past rationing, it’s full-blown denial, followed by death.

If I can trump this pathetic thing in a matter of a couple minutes, I doubt that it’ll score with centrists and outsiders who are notoriously slow to buy political pablum. And that’s whom the Republicans desperately need.

ADD: Keith Olbermann notes that this ‘purity test’ would have, in the past, excluded a bunch of half-asses like…Ronald Reagan:

Boo! Well, now John Bolton will have to advocate bombing Scandinavia, too.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for giving the world “hope for a better future” and striving for nuclear disarmament, in a surprise award that drew criticism as well as praise.

“Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee said in a citation.

The more you think about it, the more you can understand how the surprise happened. His blunt assessments of American past mistakes in foreign policy had to give people a sense of a grounded presence in the role of ‘Leader of the Free World.’ His willingness to do the same for the actors in the Middle East, including Israel, while providing an outline for the future gave people some hope that sanity and rational thought might win out, even there. His opposition to settlements backed up that philosophy.

The fact that a President who is presiding over two wars fighting terrorism, who is about to change the Afghan strategy to chasing and killing Al Qaeda over the Taliban, could still get a Palestinian official to react to the award this way says quite a bit:

…the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, welcomed the award to Obama and expressed hope that “he will be able to achieve peace in the Middle East.”

That’s a shocking change in attitude from the Palestinians. This is the sort of the thing the committee was probably taking into account. More:

Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland rejected suggestions from journalists that Obama was getting the prize too early, saying it recognized what he had already done over the past year.

The committee said it attached “special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons,” saying he had “created a new climate in international politics.”

That is true. And remember this? The speech in Cairo, to ‘seek a new beginning’? It was extraordinary.

That surely played a part in it, no President has ever given a speech remotely like it. And don’t forget what the entire continent of Africa feels about the guy:

Abroad, he is still widely seen around the world as an inspirational figure.

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, who had been tipped as a favorite for the prize, told Reuters that Obama was a deserving candidate and an “extraordinary example.”

Clearly, the committee wanted to get on the bandwagon with the new President to perhaps give him a little more star power and leverage in working in solving international problems. If he’s around for 8 years, his second term would be the one where real progress in the Middle East and combating nuclear proliferation could happen. This is an award more for what could happen than for what has happened, so it’s risky. It will be criticized quite a bit.

But they’re betting on a guy that’s great at getting a positive message out and been pretty good at figuring out complex problems over the long run. He’s already decided to exit Iraq, shut down Guantanamo, ban torture, change the Afghan strategy, call out Iran for its hidden enrichment facility (which resulted in its allowing inspections), criticize Israel for its shortsightedness, and shift to a more centralized, substantive role in the Middle East. Think of how radical a change that is for the ‘Leader of the Free World’ from the last eight years. That’s a good start.

And does it say much for the Peace Prize news that the reactionary, violent peoples of the world, our wingnuts included, will speak and have already spoken up about it, and despise it?

Liaqat Baluch, a senior leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, a conservative religious party in Pakistan, called the award an embarrassing “joke.”

The Taliban: “We condemn the award of the Noble Peace Prize for Obama,” he said by telephone from an undisclosed location. “We condemn the institute’s awarding him the peace prize. We condemn this year’s peace prize as unjust.”

Expect more of that from the terrorists, the obstructionists in the Middle East and our American conservatives.

What a brilliant move that would have been.

Cheney Says He Was Proponent for Military Action Against Iran

WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney hinted that, in the waning days of the Bush administration, he had pushed for a military strike to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.

“This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don’t need it to be more unstable,” Adm. Mullen said in July 2008.

So many reasons why war mongers make for terrible Presidents and Vice Presidents. Cheney’s gambit would have…

1.) Started a third war, in Iran.
2.) Pissed of the majority Shiites in Iraq, placing American military personnel in danger.
3.) Pissed off the Taliban in Afghanistan, with similar results.
4.) Provided a terrific recruiting tool to terrorists, their organizations and sympathizers world-wide.
5.) Handed Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda a giant p.r. victory, legitimating their propaganda that we are the real terrorists.
6.) Soured virtually any western-style reform efforts in the Middle East.
7.) Steeled Iran’s pursuits of nuclear capabilities ‘in defense of the nation.’
8.) Put Israel’s security in jeopardy.
9.) Forced Iran to redouble their efforts to fund and support the attacking and killing of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan.
10.) Further divided an already divided United States.

And those are just the first 10 things I could think of. Attacking Iran would have been even dumber than invading Iraq, and that’s one of the biggest fiascoes in U.S. history. Incidentally–how do you successfully end a war with Iran? How do you get out with the ‘victory’ Americans always require? They’ve got over 70 million people.

Dick Cheney is an absolutely moronic, evil human being.

I’m no military veteran, but TV talking heads shouldn’t call for the executions of our captured service men and women? Seems reasonable enough. [For more on the titanic asshole 'Bob' Peters, see here and here and here]

Pentagon furious over call for execution of captured soldier

According to NBC’s top Pentagon correspondent, the Department of Defense is furious with Fox News analyst Ralph Peters, who said on July 19 that the Taliban should murder 23-year-old Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl, captured after he strayed from his post, to save the Army “legal hassles and legal bills.”

“If this insolent wicked little man named Peters at FOX manages to turn people against this American who volunteered to serve in the military, fully aware that almost anyone in the Army can be deployed overseas, he should be arrested and tossed in prison,” King continued. “When does FOX News cross the line? This is a new age, a new time, and there is no way in Hell that Peters or FOX can cry ‘free speech’ now.”