Left 'Toon Lane

Europe - The New Terror Front? What I said to the BBC.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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On occasion, I am a guest on the BBC program World Have Your Say and yesterday the topic was Michael Chertoff's statements about how Europe was the next platform for terrorists. Chertoff wants the EU to adopt America's Patriot Act and other civil right stripping laws and programs.

Suffice it to say, Europe is cheesed-off.

The question put to the guests was "Should Americans be afraid of Europe?"

My response was "no." I think, and most guests agreed, Europe isn't the problem, the Bush Administration is. Chances are I will go my entire life without ever meeting someone from Al Qaeda, however there is a big chance I will be confronted by someone from MS13 - a street gang primarily populated by Hispanics. During the last month in North Carolina there have been four murders by MS13 members for their ritualized initiations. Their modus operandi is to approach an random bystander and ask them for directions, then shoot them in the face.

MS13 is not the only criminal street gang operating in America - we still have the Crips, the Bloods, and the White Aryan Resistance.

Scholars have published study after study pointing to crime being an intersection of poverty and lack of education opportunity. You solve these two things with social programs, not with a War on Drugs or a War on Terror.

MS13, the KKK and Al Qaeda are all progenies of the same problem. However, that problem is not Europe.

Labels: al qaeda, cartoons, comics, eu, europe, humor, Michael Chertoff, ms13, politics, war on terror, webcomics

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What happened to Al Qaeda in Baghdad?

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing

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Go read this full bore, 100% Bingo article by Kossack, Brandon Friedman. From the diary...

As U.S. casualties have continued to drop, many people on the anti-Bush side of the aisle have begun to quietly panic in recent days over this question: "Could George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan have possibly been right about the surge?"

Simply put, the answer is no. The surge is not working and George W. Bush and Frederick Kagan were not right. Despite what right-wing blogs are saying, and despite what conservative observers are noting, the plunge in violence is actually the result of an Iraqi political decision made by and implemented by Iraqis—and the drop has little to do with the "surge"—an infusion of 30,000 troops (which wouldn’t fill a Major League stadium) into Baghdad, a city of six million people.

What’s happening is really simple—and it’s happening in plain sight, in the traditional media. But it just so happens that, as far as I can tell, no one is connecting the dots.

As Friedman points out, The Madhi Army went into a state of cease fire and the violence greatly retracted.

Here is my question, where is Al Qaeda? We have been told for months about Al Qaeda being in Iraq and Bush Administration has been trumpeting Al Qaeda as a reason for extending the war in Iraq.

Following that line of questioning, where are the Iranian elements? You know, the Iranians that have flooded Baghdad over the years with the sole purposes to kill Americans? What happened to them?

Maybe the Iranians and Al Qaeda weren't there to begin with? Maybe this really was a civil war?

It isn't the first time Bush claimed something was in Iraq and it turned out it wasn't there. Anyone remember the weapons of mass destruction?

Labels: al qaeda, cartoons, comics, humor, iran, iraq, madhi army, politics, war on terror, webcomics, wmd

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Neil Diamond is Bad For America!

Crossposted from Town Called Dobson & My Left Wing

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Not really, but since Hillary has a theme song now, I guess Al Qaeda probably has one also.

I wonder if it played for their graduation ceremonies?

A video showing about 300 men and boys as young as 12 at an Al Qaeda training camp is creating fears, ABC News says, that suicide missions are being deployed to Canada and other countries.

But such fears were met with caution and skepticism yesterday by security officials and analysts.

"Of course it's a concern," Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told reporters of the video aired Monday on ABC News. "We've always said that Canada is not immune to threats of terrorism."

The video showed a graduation ceremony for a training camp for Afghanistan's Taliban movement, ABC News said.

The recruits were organized in four "teams" to be deployed on supposed suicide missions in Canada, the United States, Germany and Great Britain.

"These Americans, Canadians, British and Germans come here to Afghanistan from faraway places," Taliban military commander Mansoor Dadullah said to the crowd. "Why shouldn't we go after them?"

The footage is said to have been shot by a Pakistani journalist invited to the event somewhere in the Afghan-Pakistan border region June 9.

ABC’s Brian Ross broke an exclusive story Monday and the rest of the media has paid scant attention. They also don't pay much attention to Neil Diamond. Coincidence? You decide.