Canadian Terror Arrests

Allah has been following the story closely.

I wonder if "domestic surveillance" was used to bust up this group? No doubt Canadians will be outraged at the threat to civil liberties if so.

Spanish Medallions

Barcepundit:

¿DID YOU KNOW that the Zapatero administration (you know, the "no blood for oil", "Bush is killing innocents" and "let's get out of this illegal war" one) just gave Spain's highest military decoration to... gasp... can hardly say it... to... to the US Army Chief of Staff? Yes, the chief of staff of an army that, on behalf of Bu$hitler and his cronies, entered in Iraq and killed innocent civilians, tortured and murdered with no restraint, all based on a long stream of lies.

Overheard

A story on Marine Capt. James Kimber, recently relieved of command of a company of Marines in Iraq.

Kimber said he was told he was being relieved because of comments his Marines made to a British news crew that spent five weeks with his India Company. The report aired by Sky News in Britain included one Marine under his command criticizing the Iraqi security forces he was training, and another berating a subordinate after a Humvee had rolled over in a traffic accident.

Kimber has filed a rebuttal to the decision to relieve him of his command, taking issue with the Marine Corps' interpretation of the Sky News video, which his lawyer said forms the lion's share of the case against Kimber.

But Capt Kimber was relieved a the same time as two other officers, "Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani and Capt. Luke McConnell, were directly responsible for the dozen or so Marines under investigation for the Haditha shootings".

And Kimber was involved in combat nearby:

But that day, at about the same time, Iraqi insurgents attacked all three Marine companies patrolling in the Haditha area--one of them commanded by Kimber. He said he could hear over his radio the shots being fired during a running gun battle in Haditha. "They weren't just Marine weapons. You can tell from the sound," he said.

Worth noting:

As for questions about whether battle stress affected the Marines, Kimber said his company was exhausted after its first two months in Iraq; the fighting and patrolling were non-stop, he said.

After that, however, Marines were given a three-day break every nine days.

One of those three days, he said, was devoted to sessions "on escalation of force, rules of engagement."

Training on use of force

"This was a huge thing that we hit on in our training," he said, "that this was not Fallujah. That there are going to be innocent people here. If you don't win the battle for the people, you're not going to win the counterinsurgency fight."