Royal Marines Working Hard

The Daily Telegraph: Taliban lose 130 in three day battle with Royal Marines

A force of 700 troops from 42 Commando along with Danish and Afghan troops swooped on the Taliban base of Marjah in a helicopter air assault that took three waves to offload the men.

...

Only two commandos were injured during Operation Blue Sword compared to an estimated 200 to 300 Taliban wounded. It is believed that the enemy dead included a Mullah regarded as a “high value target” by the military.

The Taliban were said to have been so determined to hold onto the stronghold that reinforcements were called for from the Pakistan border 160 miles away.

130 Taliban dead, 2 British wounded.

Secret War: SAS and Delta

The Telegraph of London:

More than 3,500 insurgents have been "taken off the streets of Baghdad" by the elite British force in a series of audacious "Black Ops" over the past two years.

It is understood that while the majority of the terrorists were captured, several hundred, who were mainly members of the organisation known as "al-Qa'eda in Iraq" have been killed by the SAS.

The SAS is part of a highly secretive unit called "Task Force Black" which also includes Delta Force, the US equivalent of the SAS.

"The place can work"

From just about the only one on the ground in Iraq who has gotten it right.

Michael Yon - One Step Forward:

2008 in Iraq might go well. I believe, based on up-close observations, that there will be sharp fighting in the first few months of the new year, and that may cause the uninformed to lose faith because our casualties may rise as a result. But Iraq, it can work. The place can work. This is not a vindication for any of the people who made all the mistakes that nearly made this outcome impossible. But our collective and justifiable anger at all of them should not blind us to the fact that the capable hands now at the controls are producing results that we should all be supportive of and relieved by.

SAS Secret Wars

This is for the "progressive" bloggers who were eager to depict the British as retreating from southern Iraq:

A 16-man assault team moved in, including four SAS snipers whose usual weapon is an AWS rifle with telescopic sights. Smaller than a standard sniper rifle and with a range of only 300 yards, its shot sounds like an air gun.

Three snipers would each target one bomber; the fourth was to take out any bomber who did not go down immediately. Behind the SAS a quick reaction force of paratroopers and bomb disposal experts waited.

In the rising heat of a July morning, the team lay hidden around the safe house. An Arabic-speaking intelligence officer, monitoring the voices inside, warned: “Targets preparing to exit.” The snipers readied themselves. When all three bombers were in clear sight, the commander gave the order to fire. The sniper rifles were barely heard as the bombers jerked and hit the ground.

U.S. and British Special Forces:

THE usual number of UK special forces in Baghdad is close to 400 men: a single 60-man SAS “sabre” squadron; a company of paratroopers, Royal Marine commandos and RAF Regiment personnel from the Special Forces Support Group; a squadron from the Special Reconnaissance Regiment; and a squadron of radio monitoring experts from 18 (UKSF) Signal Regiment. They also have specialist signallers from 264 (SAS) Signal Squadron, specially fitted-out RAF Chinook helicopters from 7 Squadron and C-130 Hercules transport aircraft from 47 Squadron.

The US has about 47,000 “special forces”; but only about 1,200, including Delta Force and Seal Team Six, are comparable to British special forces units.

And yet some of the operational differences, if true, are embarrassing for American Special Ops:

“The problem from the start was that operational training and procedures for the top UK and US special operations forces are vastly different,” one British source said.

In Iraq, British special forces aim to merge into the background, driving battered local cars and wearing cheap clothes bought in markets. They looked on aghast at their US colleagues who initially drove around in new Dodge pickups.

“We used to laugh when we saw the Americans around the green zone,” one source said. “They would be wearing designer jeans, heavy boots and T-shirts - that was their idea of local dress. To a man they would all have pistols strapped to each leg with black plastic holster and webbing, and of course they would be wearing the latest shades. We called it ‘living the dream’.”

From Secret War of the SAS

1,220,580 Iraqi Civilians Dead, Says British POLL!

Incredulous Poll results flaunted by DailyKos: One Million-Plus Violent Iraqi Deaths (So Far)

This from a "respected British marketing firm."

Gauging Iraqi civilian deaths from a poll... Hmm, where have we seen this before?

If they weren't grasping at straws before, they are now.

By my (very) unscientific estimate, if you assume 5 years of war (a generous estimate) X 365 days a year = 1,825 days since the war began, and divide that number by the 1,220,580 deaths this poll claims, you come to:

668.8 deaths per day!

The website Iraq Casualty Count currently reflects 477 deaths for the month of September.

Are the many U.S. media reports and Iraqi Health Ministry tallies wildly underestimating the deaths, or is this British poll promoted by DailyKos agenda driven and wildly off the mark?

Use your own sound judgement.

Update: As a commenter on LGF put it: "They completely turn off their suspension of disbelief." (Thanks Hillary)

Update: My (very) unscientific calculations were off. I gave the pollsters too much credit. Their numbers would actually imply 743.35 deaths per day!

Update: Harry Reid is a believer: "Nothing has changed since the surge started. Today, now we learn that 1 million Iraqis have been killed since the war started. A million. That’s pretty hard to comprehend…" (H/T LGF reader)

The British Leave Basra

...as planned for months.

But to read the "progressive" blogosphere accounts of the pull out, you would think they were beating a hasty retreat: Basra Withdrawal: Read It There, Read It Here, and Basra Pullout Story Breaks Into The US Press.

But Gateway Pundit outlines the misreporting by the media:

"British troops quitting Iraqi city of Basra"

"Iraqi joy at British 'defeat' as Bush makes surprise visit to Baghdad"

Iraqi joy at British 'defeat' in Basra

These are British media outlets. Have they discovered a sacred duty to misreport the British withdrawal with shouts of ecstasy?

The withdrawal was planned for years, writes Gateway Pundit:

The Brits were planning on reducing troop levels all along based on progress of the Iraqi forces and stabilization of the region.The reason British troops have been able to decrease their numbers is because of the progress in the region. It is not because the UK forces were defeated.And, the British troop reduction is no secret. Great Britain announced their plans several times since 2003.

Whose side are the media on?

A Russian Conspiracy - Theory

Shocking.

Is Putin the capricious autocrat we think he is, or the victim of a concerted effort by his political opponents to bring him down?

It is turning out those in exile and desperate to get back into power are the ones who would use murder as a propaganda tool. And if this is the case, then why would they not use nuclear material smuggled through London to disrupt Russia and begin the take over of Russia one such Oligarch, Boris Berezovsky, has openly called for.

And:

What if these people were right, that it was the Oligarch’s trying to stain Putin so they could garner support for a coup? Putin has what he needs and can get what he wants. He is not facing election. He has no motive outside the conspiracy fantasies of people with no proof. On the flip side, we have the words of these Oligarchs stating their plans. And we know, as the article points out, they are the ones who truly gained from the publicity surrounding these deaths. Publicity they paid PR firms to help promote.

So is Putin the victim? He's not so innocent, and not so shy about using heavy-handed tactics, says American Thinker:

Last Friday, another act of war took place in the skies over the Caucasus, when a Russian aircraft violated the Republic of Georgia's airspace and was fired on by the country's air defense forces. Prior to this latest incident, Russia violated Georgian airspace no fewer than three times within as many weeks, including one instance of a deliberate missile attack against a Georgian-NATO radar site.

H/T PJM

More Positive Iraq News Rolling In

Civilian Reconstruction: Iraqi Infrastructure Gets Major Boost- Electricity Situation Improves- 33 Schools Built:

The ministry of building and housing has built 33 schools in a number of provinces. These schools are part of a group of 70 elementary schools planned in various areas. This ministry has also completed 80% of housing project ‘Sebaa Ibkar’ in Baghdad. This project contains 48 apartment buildings, schools, commercial buildings and parking lots.

Fighting al Qaeda: IA General: 537 Al Qaeda Killed Or Captured Since June 19

Diala, Aug 24, (VOI) – A total 237 gunmen were killed and 300 wanted others arrested in security operations Arrowhead Ripper and Lightning Hammer in Diala province, 57 km north of Baghdad, since June 19, an Iraqi security official said on Friday.

More bad news for AQ from Strategy Page: Al Qaeda Fades From Iraq

the most compelling bit of new on al Qaedas demise in Iraq is the changing composition of the hostiles there. At the beginning of the year, about 70 percent of terror attacks were by al Qaeda, and their Sunni Arab allies. Now, only about fifty percent of , a lower number of, those attacks are al Qaeda. The rest are Iranian supported Shia Arab groups, who are also trying to establish a religious dictatorship in Iraq (one run by Shias, not by Sunnis, as al Qaeda wants.) Al Qaeda is taking a major beating because so many Sunni Arab tribes have turned on it.

More reasons to stay: “Our troops have earned more time.” Democratic Rep. Brian Baird, fresh from Iraq:

The invasion of Iraq may be one of the worst foreign-policy mistakes in the history of our nation. As tragic and costly as that mistake has been, a precipitous or premature withdrawal of our forces now has the potential to turn the initial errors into an even greater problem just as success looks possible.

and

to walk away now from the recent gains would be to lose all the progress that has been purchased at such a dear price in lives and dollars. As one soldier said to me, “We have lost so many good people and invested so much, It just doesn’t make sense to quit now when we’re finally making progress. I want to go home as much as anyone else, but I want this mission to succeed and I’m willing to do what it takes. I just want to know the people back home know we’re making progress and support us.”

And the icing:

Now, more than ever, Britain must stay in Iraq

The new comfort zone for many politicians and leader-writers appears to be the notion that if Britain withdraws its troops from Iraq and sends all the freed-up forces to Afghanistan, then all will be well. Siren voices are insisting that honour would be satisfied by such a move and we would still be pulling our weight in what Gordon Brown refuses to call ‘the war on terror’ or ‘the war against Islamist extremism’. Afghanistan, say those voices, is the crucial place to be engaging al-Qa’eda. Iraq is a sideshow.

This is no comfort zone at all. The war against Islamist extremism is indivisible. ‘The thought that Afghanistan is somehow a more righteous war is absurd,’ General Jack Keane told me this week. Keane is the soldier who helped devise present US policy in Iraq and has been critical of the British performance in southern Iraq.

Al-Qa’eda is an international criminal organisation that declared war on the West in the 1990s, and is determined to subjugate us. If we cut and run from one crucial battleground, it will be a betrayal of our allies in both America and Iraq and a victory for all Islamist extremism, Shia as well as Sunni. Moqtada al Sadr, the Shiite leader in southern Iraq, was crowing in the Independent only this week that his militia had driven the British out.

~ Liberal British journalist William Shawcross

(Via PJM)

Not bad for a day's worth of news.

Russian Diplomacy

...as my father called it.

NATO jets tail Russian aircraft for second time in a week

RAF MILDENHALL, England — For the second time in less than a week, NATO air forces scrambled fighter jets on Friday in response to Russian aircraft straying toward — and allegedly into — British airspace.

Officials from Norway and Britain confirmed Friday they dispatched fighter jets four days after a contingent of Norwegian F-16s and British Tornados shadowed a set of Russian aircraft traveling toward British airspace.

The Russians are cranky over their expelled "diplomats" (read: Attaches, spies) because of the egregious poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko.

The Russian reaction is infantile and futile.

"Viddy well, little brother. Viddy well."

Old but good:

"Appy-polly-loggies. I had something of a pain in my gulliver so I had to sleep. I was not awakened when I gave orders for awakening."

A reader commented on my earlier post about Harry Potter and the politics of Denial that:

PM Brown should be made to watch this movie daily, if only for its message that refusing to name something doesn't make it go away...

I agree. However, sitting Prime Minister Gordown Brown in a chair to watch Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a 2 and a half hour film which exemplifies/mirrors/parallels his stubborn myopic political correct attitude regarding the Islamic terrorist threat may require some creativity...


Ominous portentous quote:

"Initiative comes to thems that wait."

~ A Clockwork Orange

The Typhoon Takes Flight In Britain

SKY News:

Britain's controversial new Typhoon fighter has finally entered service with the RAF.

Although most agree that the U.S. F-22 Raptor is superior.

What's up Doc?

The Ryskind Sketchbook:

Who Should Control Knighthood?

The best I've seen on the Rushdie Knighthood Affair yet:

It should not be - It should not be a matter - we should not have our distribution ofhonors controlled by and affected by considerations of how it will go down amongst the mullahs in Tehran. That is completely wrong.

Dead on.

Iran's Sycophants Getting Slammed

Raids target Iranian aid to insurgents in Iraq

and

Meanwhile, The Brits Are Also Conducting A Major Assault On Iran’s Forces:

The battle between the Brits and IA and Iranian terror groups including large elements of the Mahdi Army, was just the opening salvo in a large ongoing operation to hammer Iran’s terror offensive in Southern Iraq, particularly along the Iraq/Iran border.

All of the above only heightens the absurdity of Mohammed ElBaradei's remarks that it would be "an act of madness" to attack Iran. WE'RE ALREADY AT WAR WITH IRAN.

A Peaceful Religion in D Minor

A British Orchestral performance by Sir John Tavener is set to debut. It is titled The Beautiful Names, based on the 99 names of Allah (Yes, really). The BBC writes:

The Beautiful Names sets the 99 names for Allah as culled from the Qu’ran, sung in Arabic. ‘Inspiration for the piece came to me as a vision,’ says Tavener, ‘and the music just came to me immediately I saw the Arabic word’.

The programming guide has more:

The Divine names fall into two categories, those of majesty and those of mercy. Each set of 11 Names are separated by outbursts of the Supreme Name.

During the radio interview I heard this morning on the BBC World Service, Tavener blithely mentioned the "bad name" given to Islam.

Apparently, Tavener has been too busy artfully stringing together "Allah the majestic" and "Allah the merciful" in Arabic to percussion and wood instruments to have been paying much attention to the news. If he had, he would have read the reports of a recent spike in Honor Killings in Britain, or the present call for Sir Salman Rushdie's death by Muslims, and their burning of the Queen in effigy.

I can only wonder if Tavener included poetic Arabic translations of dhimmi and infidel in his epic score.

Merciful? Ask the Jews about merciful Islam. Ask Iraqis. Ask Indians. Heck, ask Palestinians about the present streak of mercy doled out by the 'Party of God.'

Like Rome, this is how nations crumble from within.

"Praise" for Londonistan

Iowahawk has some fun at the expense of Michael Hodges: London's Swinging Again - Like a Scimitar!

Presently, Muslim students sometimes perform less well than non-Muslim students, but only if you limit performance measurement to racism-tinged subjects, like maths. In subjects that are more attuned to a Muslim ethos, such as reciting the Quran whilst being beaten with a stick, Muslim students outperformed their non-Muslim counterparts 78% to 11% in a recent study by the Ministry of Schools.

Impressive New British Submarine

Britain launches massive sub that can hear a ship from across the Atlantic

Astute's sonar is so advanced that if she was lying in the English Channel she would be able to detect ships leaving New York harbour 3,000 nautical miles away (although the details of how she can do this are classified).

The nuclear reactor will never need refuelling, and with an ability to make oxygen and drinking water out of sea water, the sub could stay underwater for its entire 25-year lifespan were it not for the needs of the crew.

Simply amazing.

Liberalism v Islamism in Britain

Melanie Phillips: Liberalism v Islamism [Excerpt]:

Liberalism is the creed of modernity. The driving force behind the Islamic jihad is the fight against liberalism and modernity. All the iconic conflicts — Iraq, Israel, Kashmir, Chechnya, Sudan —are secondary to the fundamental aim of the jihad to prevent liberalism and modernity from destroying Islam.

and

In Britain in 1980, a book called 'The Islamic Movement in the West' by Khuram Murad advocated an 'organised struggle to change the existing society into an Islamic society…and make Islam…supreme and dominant especially in the socio-political spheres…' A Muslim Brotherhood document seized in Switzerland in 2001, known as 'The Project', outlined a twelve-point strategy to 'establish an Islamic government on earth'. And the Brotherhood has now set up an intricate network of bodies across Europe to put all this into action.

Many Muslims in Britain and around the world are deeply opposed to this; indeed Muslims are the most numerous victims of the jihad. That's why I use the term Islamism, to distinguish those who believe in Islamic conquest from those who merely draw upon Islam for spiritual sustenance. But at the same time, it is false to deny that Islamism is the dominant force in the Muslim and Arab world, false to deny that it is radicalising millions of Muslims in the west, and false to deny the huge inroads it has made into western society through this pincer movement of terrorism and cultural pressure.

But many in the west do deny it. They ignore the clear evidence of the goal of Islamising the west. They choose to believe instead that the reason for Islamist terror lies in the wrongs the west has done to the Islamic world —Iraq or Palestine, discrimination or Islamophobia. Indeed, even to speak in this way is to invite the deadly label of Islamophobia — a term invented to shut down legitimate and vital debate about Islamism. Far from defending core liberal values that are thus singled out for destruction, such people thus side with or appease those who attack them. So Europe — bastion of free speech — attacked those newspapers which published and re-published the Mohammed cartoons. And liberals committed to human rights march on the streets of London, behind banners saying Free Iraq and Free Palestine, shoulder to shoulder with Islamists who believe in death to gays.

Why is a liberal society so reluctant to defend its own most cherished values of freedom and tolerance? The answer, I suggest, lies both in the intrinsic nature of liberalism — and also in what I would call our dominant culture of corrupted liberalism, in which true liberal values have actually been turned on their heads.

She continues, examining 'multiculturalism,' the 'limits of tolerance,' and 'what should be done' and the 'problem:'

The problem is that we seem to suffer from the innate weakness of liberalism while failing to benefit from its strengths. Those strengths lie in its claim to universalism, its governing belief that liberty and equality are the inalienable rights of human beings everywhere. But we don't uphold this because multiculturalism tells us it's wrong to impose our standards on those who don't share them.

At the same time, we have the innate weakness of liberalism in spades. We see everything through the prism of the profound liberal delusion that the world is governed by reason and that all people have goodwill. This means that liberals cannot grasp that some of the things that divide people are insuperable barriers and are not susceptible to reason. They cannot acknowledge the transcendent and irreducible nature of religious fanaticism. They think instead that everything is subject to negotiation and compromise. So their instinct is to reach out to Islamists to reason with them, to draw the poison of this extremism by giving it rewards and inducements that will play to the fanatic's self-interest and turn him into a pillar of western society. That is why liberals do appeasement; and Britain, the cradle of liberalism, does it better than anyone else.

The struggle continues on our shores as well.

End of an era

Daily Mail:

PC brigade ban pin-ups on RAF jets - in case they offend women and Muslims

The Litvinenko Twist

The Belmont Club: The Wilderness of Mirrors

Was it the KGB?
Or MI6?
Lugovoy?
A Double-cross?
An accident?

Whew.