Baby Noor Rescuers Get Anne Frank Award

Something to warm the heart on a Sunday evening:

Baby Noor Rescuers Get Anne Frank Award

By Moni Basu

They followed their Christian principles and helped save a Muslim baby.

Now a humanitarian organization upholding the legacy of a famous Jewish girl is honoring the Georgia Army National Guard soldiers who shuttled Baby Noor out of the slums of Abu Ghraib for medical treatment in America.

"That's the way things ought to be," said 1st Lt. Jeff Morgan, a Douglas County engineering inspector who is one of eight soldiers who will receive the Spirit of Anne Frank Outstanding Citizen Award in New York on Monday. "It's a very special thing.

"Normally National Guardsmen would not get such an award," Morgan said. "It's an honor."

The Anne Frank Center decided to recognize the Georgia soldiers because their actions were in line with the legacy of the Jewish girl who perished at the Bergen-Belsen death camp under Nazi Germany, said the center's development director Mary Geary.

Unwanted Product Placement

This NY Times story demonstrates that "product placement" isn't always a good thing:

HIBHIB, Iraq, June 10 — In the ruins of the palm-shaded home where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi spent his final moments lay the scraps of a life.

There was a leaflet from the Council of Holy Warriors, the militant organization that Mr. Zarqawi's group, Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, claimed to have joined.

A page from an Arabic edition of Newsweek magazine, dated May 2, fluttered in the dirt. A flattened carton of Crown pineapple juice lay nearby. A half-used tube of Deep Heat balm offered "Fast Relief From Muscle Aches and Pains."

The bits and pieces scattered Saturday through the ruins in Hibhib were the remains of the American airstrike that killed Mr. Zarqawi and five others Wednesday, when a pair of 500-pound bombs obliterated the brick house and left a crater 40 feet wide and deep.

"A big hole, sir," said Sgt. Maj. Gary Rimpley, 46, of Penrose, Colo., who reached the scene shortly after the bombing.

Meanwhile North Korea threatens

North Korea (DPRK) threatens US "spy planes" as noted here.

Back in 1969, the DPRK shot down a U.S. EC-121 as remembered here. This was preceded by the attack and capture of USS Pueblo (AGER-2) in 1968 as remembered here. And by the DPRK here.

War of Attrition

Rear Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the commander at Guantanamo, on three inmates discovered to have hanged themselves using their clothing and sheets to fashion makeshift nooses:

"They are smart, they are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."

Threat Deflation, The Perils Of....

Chap has a great point when he notes the perils of threat deflation (as well as threat inflation). One needs to find a balance of analysis when considering what path to take strategically and tactically with regard to a relationship with China. So the flip side to the military industrial complex’s thirst for a new “peer competitor”/Cold War would be the businessmen who see no wrong in China whatsoever and only want to proceed full speed ahead with China, outright ignoring and/or stifling concerns about human rights (especially religious and ethnic rights), rule of law, environmental devastation, China’s disturbing proliferation regime, unexplained arms buildup, endemic corruption and China’s avoidance of a stakeholder role in the current globalization system.
Interestingly though, right after these two sides, you have the human rights advocates who blindly push for a Chinese democracy without any real concept of what it would be, how it would work and what kind of effect it would have on inflammatory nationalism, ethnic cleansing and capitalism unhinged.
Most people seem to ignore the fact that China (much like India) is an empire.....

Arguments

My attempt at constructing a chronological look at coverage of the Haditha incident is ongoing. I'm not opening comments there until it's complete, but I offer these two excerpts for feedback from anyone who'd care to comment here.

Much has been said about a Reuters cameraman being in Haditha at the time, focused on the lack of original massacre reports from that source. However, the Reuters story says "the town has been virtually shut down for the past two days as US and Iraqi forces try to impose order", indicating limited mobility for that cameraman. Claims that the "bodies in the street" quote is inconsistent with other reports are also mistaken - there were several attacks in Haditha that day and even in this case it's known that several Iraqis were shot by coalition forces in the streets. Additional reports that this cameraman had previously been detained by coalition forces have no apparent bearing on this story.

A December report on the Iraqi elections quotes a member of the Hammurabi Group discussing voter turn out. Several reports have questioned why the issue of the Haditha incident wasn't raised by this individual at that time. However, as should be obvious, lack of reference to that event in the election story is no evidence that he did not attempt to do so.

But feel free to convince me I'm wrong (or right). That's why I put these here.

Re: Marine's Accounts

I've got some analysis here.

Our friend Allah offers a bit more than quotes from the story too.

Noted, Quoted

Linked in Steve's entry below, but worthy of more exposure:

ABU DHABI — The US troops in Iraq do not carry out target killing of civilians in the war-torn country, Hoshyar Zebari, Iraqi Foreign Minister, has asserted.

‘The US forces do not kill civilians. Yes, civilians got killed in Haditha and other places but it is the terrorists who target civilians in Iraq,” said Zebari, to a question posed by Khaleej Times on measures adopted by his government to protect civilians.

Z.A.S.=Zarqawi Avoidance Syndrome

The formative years for me were a large part taken up by the mid-to-late 70s and the national nadir that all represents. As a young’un I remember seeing “The Wind and the Lion” and wishing that we could be THAT America (invented as it was), and not the Carter America that seemed, to me at least, the worst possible reaction to just about everything. National security, music, clothing, cars…what? Tell me there was anything of any use to that time but the Farrah Faucett poster?

Anyway, I think we may be getting close.

Members of an armed Fatah militia which claimed to have kidnapped an Israeli Saturday transferred the individual in question, a U.S. citizen, to the custody of the Palestinian Authority before dawn Sunday.

The PA security forces subsequently handed the American over to the Israel Defense Forces. Defense officials believe once the militants discovered the person was indeed an American citizen, they took steps to end the matter quickly.

“Apparently, the kidnappers did not want to end up like Zarqawi,” a defense official said.

Marines' Accounts of Haditha

Front Page of Sunday's Washington Post. Read it all here: Marine Says Rules Were Followed. Credit to the Washington Post for the front page coverage. My first question:

Puckett said that while Wuterich was evaluating the scene, Marines noticed a white, unmarked car full of "military-aged men" lingering near the bomb site. When Marines ordered the men to stop, they ran; Puckett said it was standard procedure at the time for the Marines to shoot suspicious people fleeing a bombing, and the Marines opened fire, killing four or five men.

"The first thing he thought was it could be a vehicle-borne bomb or these guys could be ready to do a drive-by shooting," Puckett said, explaining that the Marines were on alert for such coordinated, multi-stage attacks.

Iraqis in the Haditha neighborhood interviewed in recent weeks said the vehicle was a taxi carrying a group of students to their homes and that the driver tried to back away from the site, fleeing in fear. One account said that the Marines shot the men while they were still in the car.

It's 7:15 in the morning. The bomb has just went off. I don't know Iraqi culture, but do students take taxi's to school? Second thing, why would students be in a taxi going "to their homes" at 7:15?

More here and here. See the Update with the Iraqi FM's words on US forces and civilians.