This and That...

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ISIS Attempting To Encircle Baghdad Before Laying Siege To The City

(This is the same strategy they used in 2006 when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the group's emir, the main difference now is they will be fighting the hapless Iraqi army instead of the U.S. military)

Via Long War Journal:
The lightning advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham and its allies from Mosul to the outskirts of Samarra, as well as its capture of several towns in eastern Diyala, all over the course of several days, appears to be part of a greater strategy to surround the capital of Baghdad before laying siege to it. This plan, to take over the "belt" region outside of Baghdad and cut off the capital, appears to be the same strategy used by the ISIS' predecessor back in 2006.

The 2006 plan, which was drawn up by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the forerunner of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham (ISIS), was discovered after the US found a crude map on the body of Abu Musab al Zarqawi, al Qaeda in Iraq's leader who was killed by US forces in Baqubah in June 2006. The "Baghdad belts" map was released by Multinational Forces-Iraq during its offensive to liberate vast areas under al Qaeda/ISI control in 2007 and 2008.

Zarqawi's plan was to seize control of the outer provinces and Baghdad's belts, or key areas surrounding the capital. The ISI would then use its bases in the belts to control access to Baghdad and funnel money, weapons, car bombs, and fighters into the city. The ISI also planned to strangle the US helicopter air lanes by emplacing anti-aircraft cells along known routes in the belts areas around Baghdad.

In the ISI's 2006 plan, the Baghdad belts were divided into five regions: the "Southern Belt," which included northern Babil and southern Diyala provinces; the "Western belt," which included eastern Anbar province and the Thar Thar area; the "Northern belt," which included southern Salahaddin province and cities such as Taji; the "Diyala belt," which included Baqubah and Khalis; and the "Eastern belt," which included the rural areas east of Baghdad.

Watching the ISIS' operations today, it appears the group is attempting to implement a strategy which is very similar, if not identical, to the previous one. This should come as no surprise; Nasser al Din Allah Abu Suleiman, ISIS' current war minister, was a leader in al Qaeda in Iraq/ISI when the Baghdad belt strategy was implemented. Suleiman was appointed by al Qaeda in May 2010 to serve as the terror group's top military commander after his predecessor, Abu Ayyub al Masri, was killed in a raid by Iraqi and US forces in April 2010.

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Iranian Quds Force Arrives In Baghdad: "We Are Here To Defend This City"

(Good yuck... they will probably throw down there uniforms and join ISIS.  Baghdad is predominately Shia as is most of the country south and east of it, many Iraqi Shia have/had longstanding ties to Iran, Al Maliki spent years in exile in Iran.
As far as ISIS "sweeping through" any place, most of what they "swept through " was Sunni dominated area's that have never had any love for the Shia or Maliki's predominantly Shia central government, the populations in those areas look at the ISIS as almost liberators rather than conquerors.  That's why sh!t happened the way it did, the government's army and security forces knew they had nothing but enemies surrounding them so they were never going to make a stand over those pieces of dirt.)

[Warph]

MARINE STUNS A TEA PARTY WITH THE FOURTH VERSE OF THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER

In this classic video, a Marine with a powerful voice stunned a patriotic crowd in 2010 by singing the stirring fourth verse of The Star Spangled Banner, which many Americans have never heard.

A look at Francis Scott Key's soaring lyrics, first written in 1814 and made our national anthem in 1931, shows it is not just a pleasant ode to our flag that can be sung at sporting events and on the Fourth of July, but is a vision for the United States.

Here are the full lyrics:
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?
And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

That's what I'm talking about! Happy Flag Day!

[redcliffsw]

Let's remember those who stood for the Constitution


                                       

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Great site, Red... these flags should not be forgotten on Flag Day as they are part of American History.  Many men died for these flags.

Confederate Flags:
Battle Flag of Northern Virginia (Left),
and the First Confederate National Flag (Right)

[Warph]

Liberals.  Too Stupid To "Get It"

It's true that for a time, I was a registered Democrat.  But even then, I never called myself a liberal.  Because I came of age in the 1960s, I associated liberals with the punks I knew who called cops "pigs," called soldiers "baby killers" and used any and all means to dodge the draft, and then had the hypocrisy to announce they did so because they were avowed pacifists.

Being in my 20s myself, I knew these people and I knew it was fear of battle or being bossed around by top sergeants, typically tough guys from the South, that motivated them to head off either to Canada or to one of the many left-wing shrinks who were willing to lie about their mental disorders and or verify they were homosexuals.

Fifty years later, they're still hypocrites, but instead of being college students, they're running colleges, TV networks, movie studios, solar panel companies and the New York Times.  And, what's more, they continue to lie.  Most recently, a sample of journalists lied to a pollster about their political affiliation, a mere 28% admitting to being Democrats and 50% claiming to be registered Independents.

Inasmuch as we already know that at least 90% of those in the news game always vote for liberals and that their campaign contributions are even more lopsided than that, you have to wonder why they even bother lying about something as transparent as their political bias.  All you really have to do is turn on the network news or pick up a daily newspaper, Time magazine, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair or any of the slick glossies devoted to fashion and cosmetics, to realize that they should, by all rights, be paid directly by the DNC for their propaganda efforts

It doesn't happen too often, but every once in a while someone forwards something to me from the Internet that I haven't seen before and that actually grabs my attention. In this case, it was a series of ways that one could easily identify a liberal.  I mean aside from asking them if they happen to be journalists, judges, social workers, teachers, professors, illegal aliens, actors, musicians or convicted felons.

Here it is, with a few of my own modifications:
(1) A liberal is someone who thinks Republicans are waging a war on women, but that the Muslim world isn't.

(2) A liberal is someone who says to a pregnant woman: "Don't smoke, it'll hurt your baby," but tells her it's quite okay to abort that same baby.

(3) A liberal is someone who thinks Fox News lies, but Obuma doesn't.

(4) A liberal is someone who lives in a gated community or behind a high wall, but says that a border fence won't work.

(5) A liberal is someone who wails about "corporate welfare," but thinks it's great that Obuma bailed out General Motors to save union contracts and blew a billion tax dollars on certain-to-fail green energy companies in exchange for campaign contributions.

(6) A liberal is someone who protested the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and proclaimed the Patriot Act fascistic, until Barack Hussein-Insane Obuma took office.

Do liberals ever listen to themselves?  Seriously, is it possible that liberals actually believe the nonsense they go around spouting?  I mean, I understand that as majority leader of the Senate, Dirty Harry Reid has to appear to be in sync with Barack Obuma, but when in the wake of swapping five anti-American jihadists with unpronounceable names for one calling himself Bowe Bergdahl, Reid said, "I'm glad to get rid of them," did he not understand that most of us completed the thought with "and put them right back on the battlefield where they can resume killing our soldiers?"

For his part, Obuma, after comparing himself to such wartime presidents as Washington, Lincoln and FDR, said that an exchange of POWs is typical policy at the end of a war.  That must have come as surprising news to the thousands of troops still risking life and limb in Afghanistan.  As for the Taliban, they're still giggling over Obuma's announcement in 2012 that Al Qaeda was decimated.

The real tragedy of the swap is that we couldn't sweeten the deal by tossing in Barack Hussein-Insane Obuma.

How sappy are liberals?  Well, Nobel Prize-winning economist/NY Times propagandist Paul Krugman said, "The VA is proof that socialized medicine works."  Anybody care to bet that Krugman doesn't go to the VA for his medical needs?

Most of us have gotten sick and tired of hearing Obuma state that he didn't know about a scandal brewing until he read about it in a newspaper, even when, as with the VA, he was yakking about that very problem six years ago.  But even if that were the case, it would put him a leg up on most voters who, unless they watch Fox, read certain blogs or tune in talk radio, have to rely on smoke signals for their news. That should help explain why Democrats continue to win elections.

As for deserter Sgt. Bergdahl, we are told by his parents and some of the schlemiels in his hometown that he spoke like a social worker and acted like a saint, but how many social workers try to join the French Foreign Legion?  And how many saints not only desert their comrades on the battlefield, but leave hoping to sign up with the Taliban?  It's rather reminiscent of Edward Snowden, who betrayed America because of his alleged love of freedom and open societies, and then scooted off to China before receiving sanctuary in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

Next, why is it that when liberals argue for an ounce of prevention as opposed to a pound of cure, it's only when they're bemoaning the evils of alcohol, drugs and tobacco, but never when the subject happens to be abortions

The people they should be listening to are folks like Thomas Sowell, who has raised the question: "What is your fair share of what someone else has worked for?" He's also the fellow who said, "I have never understood how it is greedy to want to keep the money you have earned, but not greedy to want to take somebody else's." Another thought liberals should heed goes this way: If you've got minimum skills, minimum education, show minimum motivation and provide a minimum contribution to the workplace, why the hell should someone be forced to pay you more than you're obviously worth?

When it comes to the stagnant economy, a problem that Obuma only pays lip service to when he's trying to distract people from one of his endless scandals and his numerous end-runs around the Constitution, Katie Pavlich, writing in Townhall magazine, points out that 47.6 million Americans are now receiving food stamps from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program via their SNAP cards.

Because numbers alone generally make people's eyes glaze over, she reminds us that during the Depression, thousands of desperately hungry people lined up to receive free food at soup kitchens.  Even if we weren't around at the time, we've all seen those grainy, heart-wrenching, black and white photos of hopeless men in overcoats, wearing hats and caps, lined up to get their slabs of bread and bowls of gruel.

Thanks to modern technology, we are spared those scenes today.  But, as Ms. Pavlich, points out, if we assume that an average of 916 people can stand in a double-stacked line a quarter of a mile long, the current recipients would be standing in one that was 12,827 miles long.  Only a saint wouldn't try to take cuts before the gruel congealed.

The EPA seems to have accepted the challenge by the IRS to prove itself the most contemptible, most power-hungry, agency of the federal government.  With their endless regulations, it seems their sole mission is to bring to a grinding halt the age of the American entrepreneur, the American farmer and whatever still remains of American industry.

And at the rate they keep expanding the list of endangered species, soon the only one left unprotected will be the American taxpayer[/color]

[Warph]

The Federal Reserve Explained In 7 Minutes

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IN CASE YOU'RE THINKING OF GOING TO A HILLARY BOOK-SIGNING:
Here are the Rules

 
The prolific Caleb Howe relays this delightful set of instructions for those drones readers interested in the fascinating novel autobiographical tome entitled Profiles in Courage Bad Choices Hard Choices

On Tuesday morning, Hillary Clinton kicked off her book tour promoting new release "Hard Choices", Hillary's "I'm running for President" tome that is all the buzz this week. One of the first folks in line for a signed copy was Maggie Haberman of Politico, who tweeted the list of guidelines handed out by handlers for those waiting. Haberman tweeted a picture of those rules.

Use the bathroom before getting in line because you will lose your place. If this were a polling place Ed Schultz would call it racist disenfranchisement.

But of course, those are not the only strictures placed upon those who would stand before poor, broke Hillary. Truth Revolt has exclusively obtained the second page of the instructional guidelines and we bring them to you now.

I have not yet confirmed whether attending the book-signing required a photo ID. If so, I fully intend to notify Eric Holder that Hillary's book-signing events are raaaaaaaaacist.

Wow. They are not messing around. We recommend you change your dress, go to the bathroom, and for Pete's sake put some goggles on. It's Clinton time!

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