Always on duty

This part of America will always be with us. Time to work on the awards citation...

Steven Zegrean, 51, reportedly an out-of-work painter who is estranged from his family, opened fire in the casino, wounding four people, authorities said. He was reloading his 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun when he was tackled by off-duty law enforcement officers, two military men and casino security officers, said Koenig, a former public safety officer from Ballwin, Mo.

Las Vegas police spokesman Bill Cassell said Zegrean was taken down with the assistance of National Guardsman Justin Lampert of Crosby, N.D.; Navy reservist David James of Jacksonville, Fla.; and brothers Robert and Paul Ura, special agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, among others.

Tools of War

via NRO

Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow inadvertently caused enormous damage to the American effort in South Vietnam—making them the most harmful journalists in American history. The leading American journalists in Vietnam during 1963.......Most of the information they passed on was false or misleading, owing in part to their heavy reliance on a Reuters stringer named Pham Xuan An who was actually a secret Communist agent.

One has to wonder how much of the information coming out of Iraq is being provided by stringers working for the 'other' side. Saddams buddies studied Vietnam closely.

The Enemy (Why We Must Succeed) (warning: graphic)

From Michael Yon's latest dispatch:

Since my reporting of the massacre at the al Hamari village, many readers at home have asked how anyone can know that al Qaeda actually performed the massacre. The question is a very good one, and one that I posed from the first hour to Iraqis and Americans while trying to ascertain facts about the killings.

*****

Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.

At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family.

The whole thing HERE

Be not too discouraged, for Michael also reports on PROGRESS, SUCCESS and the now happy smiling children of Baqubah...