COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Friday, February 09, 2007

Update: Is this video report a phony? Is it staged?

This is an update of this post. When I first posted it, I was surprised at the cameramen continuing the filming and not getting shot. Several of the posters pointed out that they thought this was staged. I looked again and believe it may be staged. Give us your opinions and spread this to other sites for the purpose of exposing it to further scrutiny.





36 comments:

  1. yea Bob, instead of a "drug free school zone", they create a "school free drug zone".

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  2. It wouldn't surprise me if that whole burning school sequence had been staged. Something about the way the Police "ambush" the Taliban, just didn't look right.

    Of course, my problem is that I've don't trust any of them or the British reporter.

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  3. Same impression here, Whit.

    The camera crew would (should) have been seen filming a few people crawling around, shot and bleeding but the "bad guys" got clean away. apparently.

    ... didn't set up the attack very well, did they?

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  4. That DNA ... ?

    I's called Islam!

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  5. Same sentiments here.

    Scene 1: "School in flames"

    (enter left) Taliban: (screaming incoherently)

    Looks like a play to me.

    That Afghan police in the video chose to apply a heavy-handed approach to Taliban operatives is not surprising. Funny that the voice-over dismisses them in a single word - "shambles". Not to mention "firing indiscriminately" at Taliban operatives.

    deuce is right - it's the culture. However "Western-trained" and "professional" the Afghan police may be trained, don't expect them to show mercy to the bastards who's trying to screw their country up. We should be glad they're on our side.

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  6. The NY Post has a piece by Amir Taheri.

    Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's chief theoretician, has repeatedly said that the key aim of his so-called jihad in Iraq is to force the Americans to run away, as the Soviets did from Afghanistan in 1989.

    The reference to Afghanistan is interesting. The "Arab Afghans," of which al Qaeda is the most notorious group, played no more than a cameo role in driving the Soviets out. And the Taliban - a group created by Pakistan five years after the Soviet departure - never fought the Communists.

    The Communist regime in Kabul was overthrown by an alliance of a Tajik guerrilla army (led by Ahmad Shah Massoud) and a Communist militia - whose leader, the Uzbek Abdul-Rashid Dostum, had decided to switch sides. Years later, Dostum told me that he decided to switch when his Moscow "contacts" told him that the new Soviet elite under Mikhail Gorbachev was no longer interested in Afghanistan's fate. ..."


    aQ was formed by Egyptians and Sauds, the Taliban by the Pakistani. Sunni Mohammedans, to a man.

    The US now chafes at the bit, to take on Shia militias in Iraq and the Mullahs of Iran. The Shia enemies of the Sauds and Taliban. While funding Pakistan which funnels cash to continued Taliban operations.

    There is something Orwellian about that picture.

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  8. Meanwhile, the defense secretary has been getting a lukewarm response here to his plea for allies to send more troops and aid for a spring offensive in Afghanistan.

    Gates said the U.S. made no additional commitments for more troops of its own. He recently extended the tour of a brigade in Afghanistan, where the U.S. has 27,000 troops _ the most since the war began in 2001.

    U.S. and NATO military leaders in recent months have repeatedly called on alliance members to send reinforcements and lift restrictions on where their troops can serve. On Thursday, Gates secured smaller offers from some nations, but he met resistance from key allies.

    France and Germany are questioning the wisdom of sending more soldiers, while Spain, Italy and Turkey have also been wary of providing more troops.

    "When the Russians were in Afghanistan, they had 100,000 soldiers there and they did not win," German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung told reporters.

    The meeting in southern Spain did produce some offers, however.

    Lithuania, which already has 130 troops in Afghanistan, offered to send an unspecified number of special forces, helping to fill a key shortfall.

    Germany says it will provide six Tornado reconnaissance jets but not significantly augment its 3,000 troops in the north. The Italian government said it would send a much-needed transport plane and some unmanned surveillance aircraft, but it is struggling to secure parliamentary backing for the finances needed to maintain a contingent of 1,950.

    Spain also said it would send four unmanned planes and more instructors to help the Afghan army.

    Gates said that after nearly five years at war with the Taliban, this spring will be critical because it could give the people of the country more hope.

    "Each spring for the last several years, the Taliban have been more aggressive and there has been an increasing level of violence," he said. "There is a consensus on the part of the ministers that it is important that this year we knock the Taliban back."

    The end of winter has traditionally brought an upsurge in attacks by Taliban militants in Afghanistan. U.S. commanders have already predicted that this spring will be even more violent than last year, when a record number of attacks included nearly 140 suicide bombings.

    About 15,000 of the American troops are serving in the NATO-led force, which now totals about 36,000, while the other 12,000 are special operations forces or are training Afghan troops.


    Knock 'em back!
    knock 'em back!
    WAY BACK!!!

    Look at the numbers of our European allies deployments.

    30 million Pashtuns.
    Who we gonna call?

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  9. GWB "Justice" sent letter recommending that Border Agents be held in Jail, not bail, on appeal.

    GWB appointed Judge sentenced the Agents.

    GWB agent went to Mexico to give Drug smuggler immunity.

    GWB Homeland "Security" workers LIED TO CONGRESS about agents (Mexicans) "Wanting to shoot some Mexicans."

    Drug Smuggler was NOT shot in Butt or Back, but in side, having fought repeatedly with agents.

    Ballistics tests have NOT linked Drug Smuggler's wounds with Agents Weapons!

    Investigation here was initiated by a conspiracy between a friend of the Smuggler on the investigation with the smuggler's family in Mexico!

    Much much more, all indicating the corruption and lawlessness of the Bush Admin.

    Outlaw Bush should be impeached so Dick Cheney can bring the law back on the side of our Soldiers, Agents, and CITIZENS!
    ...and restore the Country's/Citizen's SECURITY.

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  10. Ballistics data don't support charge against border agents

    "Thank You for your donation support and prayers" from Joe, Nacho & Monica

    If you want to talk to Joe call 915-779-8666
    Please read Joes letter to congress!

    Accounting of our debts, not including incidental expenses.
    Over 250,000.00 in loss of earnings and legal fees.

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  11. The Ramos family has been burdened for 19 Months without Nacho's pay.

    Nacho has a wife three young children, they have to sell their house after spending their life savings on the court case.

    His father in law Joe has also spent his retirement at age 64 on the case.

    Please donate and it goes 100% directly to the family account.

    Feel free to call. Joe Loya 915-779-8666 oe EMAIL: laJoe@sbcglobal.net

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  12. While in Anbar, steve @ threatswatch, reports the Six Enemy Tribes of Anbar still are.
    The police recruits, not from the SETA's 300,000 people.

    Now the other Tribes, well over 20 of them, make up the other 700,000 Anbarites. From that population base 3,000 policemen have been recruited, with slots open for that many more. Iraqi Army recruitment has been very light. According to the Marine General's comments last week.
    In a population with over 40% unemployment, not good recruiting results.

    Who would control Anbar, if we left? Not the Federals, that seems evident, but which group of Tribes would dominate & where?

    Why have the SETA still not been targeted, are we still trying to "buy them off"?

    Big carrot, little stick.

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  13. Killed three on the road north of Tucson. Almost all the roads, in AZ, are unpaved dirt roads.

    Folks pulled over by men with assualt rifles, three killed, same or more wounded. Some kidnapped.

    There are no armed Mohammedans cruising the backroads of AZ, no threat from them, to my daughter.

    But these armed guerillas, one toting an AK met a National Guardsmen last month, have free run of the frontier. Upon meeting the armed infiltrator the Guardsmen redeployed, while calling for Border Patrol agents to take action against the armed infiltrators. After the chance face to face with the retreating Guardsmen the guerilla force moved south, back into Mexico.

    Danger lurks on the frontier, more now than ever before. Not even during the early heydays of drug running was there anarchy and lawlessness, like this.

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  14. Meanwhile, in Mosul, US firepower is used against armed men in the employee of US allies:

    BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. helicopters on Friday mistakenly killed at least five Kurdish troops, a group that Washington hopes to enlist as a partner to help secure Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

    The Kurdish deaths occurred about midnight in eastern Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. The U.S. military said the airstrike was targeting al-Qaida fighters, but later issued an apology, saying the five men killed had been identified as Kurdish police.

    Kurdish officials put the casualty toll at eight killed and six wounded, and said the men were guarding a branch of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan _ led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, a key supporter of U.S. efforts in Iraq.

    The U.S. military said the attack was launched after ground forces identified armed men in a bunker near a building they thought was being used to make bombs. The troops called for the men to put down their weapons in Arabic and Kurdish and fired warning shots before helicopters fired at the bunker, the military said.

    Mahmoud Othman, a prominent Kurdish lawmaker who is not a PUK member but has strong ties to the community, said that for U.S. troops, the incident amounted to "attacking the people who support them."

    "This is not a good sign for the new security plan that they (U.S. forces) have started," Othman said.

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  15. "Foot Pirates" often kill Mexicans smuggling drugs North to reap the spoils, leaving "randomly killed" Mexicans in their wake.

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  16. (GWB Can Hint Darkly that we don't cotton to "Vigilantes")

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  17. That would be you, me, the National Gaurd, and Border Agents.

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  18. Gore offers prize to anyone that invents something to remove 1 Billion Tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.

    I am offering a 1 Billion Dollar Prize to anyone that invents something to control the radiation cycles of the Sun.

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  19. rufus could tell us how many of acres of switchgrass that would take, see if it pencils out.

    I guess that farmer Al has enough money, from his family's tabacco ventures, to fund that kind of extravegant effort. Unless he does not plan to pay.

    Restructure the ag business across Columbia, change the dependency, exchanging heroin for methadone, then claiming to be clean.

    850 gallons of ethanol per acre of sugar per annum, in Brazil, that's the premier commercial utilization, to date. Takes alot of acres of switchgrass to be a really viable alternative to gasoline.

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  20. WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court blocked the Pentagon on Friday from transferring an American citizen to an Iraqi court to face charges he supported terrorists and insurgents.

    A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled that Shawqi Omar, a citizen of both Jordan and the United States who once served in the Minnesota National Guard, has a right to argue for his release before a U.S. court.

    By a 2-1 vote, the panel upheld an injunction issued last year by U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina here that barred the U.S. military from turning Omar over for trial in an Iraqi court.

    Omar was captured in Iraq in 2004 by U.S. forces during a raid on associates of Iraq al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. air strike in 2006. Omar is being held at Camp Bucca, a prison in southern Iraq, where he has been held for over two years without formal charges and, his family says, without access to counsel.

    The U.S. military, which says Omar was harboring insurgents and had bomb-making materials at the time of his arrest, decided in 2005 to transfer him to the Central Criminal Court of Iraq for investigation and trial, but has been blocked by the U.S. court injunction.


    Lots of tidbits of info in the above. Another exNational Guardsman mohammedan.
    Jordanian passport, as well as US.

    Ain't life a bitch, two years, he has not spoke to a lawyer yet. Ain't that a shame. Guess we cannot bring him back to the States, bet he was not mirandized.

    Wonder when or if the DoD will want to transfer other US citizens to the Iraqi for criminal trial?
    Marines, Army, rapists, murderers.

    Should this young Marine stand trial in Iraq? I would think not, he claims to have been following orders, orders he considered, as a Corporal to be legal.

    Should Corporals, Generals or Iraqi Judges decide what is legal?
    Before or after the fact.

    Handing US citizens to foreign governments, what weak sisters.

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  21. CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. -- Military prosecutors must restart their case against a Marine corporal who made the stunning decision to withdraw his guilty plea for the murder of an unarmed Iraqi civilian.

    Cpl. Trent Thomas, 25, told a judge Thursday he no longer believes he is guilty and was following a lawful order. He had earlier pleaded guilty to several charges, including kidnapping and murder.


    WaPo tells the tale, who did what and what not. Some above the Cpl., in the Chain of Command, have pled out, another awaits trial.

    Should DoD turn these Marines over to the Iraqi, for Justice to be dispensed?
    Any more or less so than they should turn over any other US citizen?

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  22. Did the Jihadi lose 400? If so we're winning. Did we KIA 100 insurgents, we'd be breaking even. If less than 40 it would just be an accelerated indication of failure.

    There is a reason there is a blanket being on those numbers, rufus. It is not to empower the enemy, but to keep the US Public with the mushrooms.

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  23. U.S evidently bombing the you know what out of Afgan. since first of Feb. Nice article in USAToday about the Rover system.....

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  24. Passed out drowned in their own puke.

    That's how all the great ones die.

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  25. On looking at that clip again, I agree it is staged. That is why the cameraman survived.

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  26. Gag,
    You talking about the ROVER III?

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  27. Deuce,

    This is a blatant attempt at manufactured news. I hope you contact Charles over at LGF and get this further exposure.

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  28. rufus mention 1,400 gal gallons per annum for Florida croplands.
    No way I thought. It is possible, but not likely. The reasearch is found in two excellent sites, both of which reference the work of Dave Bransby of Auburn University.
    He seems to have done the long term reasearch on the subject.
    Ten year averages show 15 tons per annum per acre of switchgrass, which equates to 1,500 gallons.

    So 100 gallons are reported produced per ton of dried product.

    This report from dtn
    Bransby reminded farmers that when producing switchgrass they are growing it for quantity for ethanol and want maximum dry matter yield. Composition is irrelevant. If they are growing it for livestock feed, earlier harvest is better since composition and quality (protein and nutrients) are important.

    The crop can yield three to four tons per acre on CRP (conservation reserve program) land that is usually marginal and unmanaged, five to six tons per acre in the north with fertilizer and seven to eight tons in the south with fertilizer.

    "It is easy to get four tons with no fertilizer," Bransby said, but by adding 50 pounds of nitrogen per acre, yield can be pushed another one to two tons per acre. That application is half or less of the amount of fertilizer applied to corn.

    Farmers will grow what they can get paid for and, according to Bransby, they will grow switchgrass for ethanol production if it is priced right. "The farmer has to make money and right now they are being paid $50 to $60 per ton for switchgrass as hay. If they can continue to get that amount, it is a reasonable expectation that they will make money growing it for ethanol."


    The story does say that the 15 ton per annum production was not a commercial effort, but a labor intense experiment.
    It goes on to compare ethanol production costs of corn and switch grass. Wouldn't nobody be growin corn, for ethanol, based on those numbers.

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  29. I reposted this to encourage more scrutiny to see if it is in fact staged.

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  30. first thing I notice in the video is the precise use of 'foreign army', and 'occupying force', in reference to the US and UK military.

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  31. yes, quite clearly staged.

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  32. Yep. That has to be staged. Or else it is the world's bravest cameraman.

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  33. Gateway Pundit has not only placed the Elephant Bar on his blogroll, he has also graciously given the EB top billing in his latest thread. Regulars here might consider giving Gateway Pundit a warm, earnest word of thanks, as rufus did in this instance and I have done elsewhere.

    TaliWood Strikes in Lashkar Gar

    Read Comments

    Gateway Pundit is a stickler for good manners sans profanity, so be warned.

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  34. At the moment Gateway Pundit is having issues accepting comments. When he is back up, I hope someone here will post the following for me.

    "As a regular commenter at the Elephant Bar, please accept my thanks for the entry of that blog onto your roll and the conspicuous billing it at the head of this thread.

    If you have had the time to peruse the Elephant Bar, you may have been struck by the quality of discourse. Also, you may have been shocked by the rough and tumble. Many regulars there have had military service, some still are serving, and some few have relatives and friends in active service downrange. Consequently, as with any military bar, the conversation can be salty and downright profane. The owners, Deuce and Whit, purposefully set out to create a site that would serve the same function as officers' and enlisted clubs used to serve, i.e. a place without boundaries, encouraging unexpurgated raw opinion. Newcomers need not fear, however, anyone willing to present an opinion reasonably will be instantly embraced.

    Again, thanks for your kind "endorsement" and thanks for the outstanding work you do at high volume.

    One final thought, watch rufus and me; he hails from the Bootheel and I from the Old Lead Belt."

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