PHILIPPINES: No Deals With Communist Kidnappers

On Strategy Page:

July 27, 2004: Soldiers and police continue to search for the long suspected, but never seen, Jemaah Islamiah terrorist training camp that is supposed to be on Mindanao island. Army intelligence believes that there are at least sixty Jemaah Islamiah members involved, most of them from nearby Indonesia. Members if a radical element in the MILF is supposed to be helping out. Some American Special Forces troops are on Mindanao helping with training, and trying to find the rumored terrorist camp.

MILF, in this case, stands for Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Just read the whole Strategy Page page. Filled with all sorts of info about terrorism in the Philippines. Who would’ve guessed?

Jordanian Firm Withdraws From Iraq

In an effort to gain the release of two kidnapped truck drivers, a Jordanian construction firm has agreed to pull out of Iraq.

Fayez Saad al-Udwan and Mohammad Ahmed Salama al-Manaya’a — who work as drivers for the private company Daoud and Partners — were kidnapped Monday by a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Corps in Iraq. The group warned the pair would be killed within 72 hours unless their employer withdrew from Iraq and stopped cooperating with U.S forces.

The weird part is

Earlier Tuesday, relatives of the hostages had threatened to behead the al-Ouweiss and kill all the company’s staff if the firm did not immediately meet the kidnappers’ demand to withdraw.

“We told the firm’s executive director, Rami al-Ouweiss, that if he does not comply with the kidnappers’ demands today, his company and the lives of his employees will not be spared,” said al-Udwan’s brother, Omar.

Al-Manaya’a's father, Ahmed Salama, said: “We will chop off the head of the firm’s director if he doesn’t heed our demands to completely cease his operation in Iraq.” (emphasis mine)

Very honorable. I realize that the family is in a very tight spot, but isn’t that a bit extreme? (via The Command Post)

Thoughts?

I was shocked by the front page at MSNBC this morning:

I was even more shocked by the title of the actual story:

Was this for real? Had MSNBC.com been hacked by the VRWC? Had a GOP-designed computer virus sent me to FoxNews.com when I opened up MSNBC? Not only was this poll getting coverage, it was getting top billing. And the explanation was simple and to-the-point. Results were compared to previous results. In a Washington Post article, no less.

The survey suggests that the stakes for Kerry and the Democrats as they began their convention in Boston could not be higher. In barely a month, Kerry has lost ground to President Bush on every top voting issue in this year’s election.

A growing proportion of voters say Bush and not Kerry is the candidate who most closely shares their values, and four in 10 believe the Democrat is “too liberal.” Bush has even narrowed the gap on which candidate better understands their problems, an area in which Kerry has led.

Is this for real? Simple reporting on a poll and straighforward analysis of the results, with previous results and trends noted?

Alas, it isn’t.

Next paragraph:

The poll suggests that negative ads by the Bush-Cheney campaign that have been airing since early March, as well as attacks by Republican officials, have been increasingly successful in planting the image of Kerry as an unreliable leader who flip-flops on the issues — perceptions that Democrats will work hard to reverse at their convention.

So it’s the mean Republicans who are responsible for voters’ uncertainty. It’s negative political ads that are responsible for the image of Kerry flip-flopping on the issues.

Sigh…

Teresa Heinz Kerry Tells Pittsburgh Reporter To “Shove It”

I’m sure you’ve heard all about it. Teresa Heinz Kerry, shortly after giving a speech urging a return to civility in American politics, told a reporter from a conservative newspaper to “shove it”:

“We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics,” she told her fellow Pennsylvanians at a Sunday night reception at the Massachusetts Statehouse.

Minutes later, Colin McNickle, the editorial page editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, questioned her on exactly what she meant by the term “un-American,” according to a tape of the encounter recorded by WTAE Channel 4 Action News.

Heinz Kerry said “I didn’t say that” several times to McNickle. She then turned to confer with Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and others. When she faced McNickle again a short time later, he continued to question her, and she replied, “You said something I didn’t say. Now shove it.”

According to the video clip on the site, Hillary Clinton approves.

I think a lot of Americans are going to say, ‘Good for you! You go girl!’ And that certainly is how I feel about it.

Now, if I had said last week that a prominent figure in the Kerry campaign would tell a reporter to “shove it” and that Hillary Clinton would publicly support the move, you would have said I was a Right-Wing loon. I might have been, and I might still be. But I would have been right.

Please explain to me how this is just a bunch of hot air stirred up by Republicans.

UPDATE: The NY Times isn’t even sure that she said “un-American”. That makes them and Teresa.