Robert Chalmers could not disappoint his judgmental peers and risk losing his cache with the lemmings; hence he commiserated with intellectual frauds like Charles Johnson and an unnamed journalist who actually attempted amateur Geller psychoanalysis (as if), but Chalmers chose not to speak to the people I actually work with, like Robert Spencer, Pamela Hall, James Lafferty, etc. And while he claims to have read my book, there is nothing in this piece that speaks to anything that was in my book. Chalmers uses the Soros-funded smear machine Media Matters as his research source, instead of the 20,000 posts I have written, or the hundreds of articles and now two books (my new one will be released September 6th). He does not mention the freedom buses, the lawsuits, the rallies, the work with apostates, the Aqsa Parvez Memorial grove -- just asinine (and not funny) snark.
The tone was set and the point of view was written before we met. Chalmers proves a big disappointment, and his rambling and at times nonsensical conversation is reflected in disjointed and random musings (i.e., the "Gordon" non-sequitur reminded me of Dan Rather's, "what's the frequency Kenneth?") Perhaps he's just burned out -- the inevitable toll of rock'n'roll journalism. Although that doesn't account for his insistent, ugly anti-Israel questions, which reflects darkly on his decaying soul, whatever is left of it.
Robert Chalmers meets Pamela Geller, queen of the extremist bloggers
As for calling me that favorite left wing term smear term "extremist," I say tired and old and meaningless. *Yawn* I expect more originality.
"If an uncompromising stand is to be smeared as 'extremism,' then that smear is directed at any devotion to values, any loyalty to principles, any profound conviction, any consistency, any steadfastness, any passion, any dedication to an unbreached, inviolate truth -- any man of integrity." -- Ayn Rand in " 'Extremism' or The Art of Smearing", Chapter 17 ofCapitalism: The Unknown Ideal
"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!"-- Karl Hess and Barry Goldwater; attribution to Cicero
I am not going to fisk this. Big waste of time.
It does bear noting that the article is ranked number one in most popular and most emailed.
Pamela Geller: American patriot or extremist firebrand?
Robert Chalmers meets the right-wing blogger to find out Sunday, 15 May 2011
Among the many new things I have learnt from the work of Pamela Geller is that President Obama reputedly used to knock around with a crack whore.
"That," the author, blogger and broadcaster insists, "is not what I said. You are taking this out of context. The post [on her website atlasshrugs.com] was pointing out how people were reporting lie after lie about Sarah Palin. I said to myself, there is so much about Obama wedon't print. In his youth," she continues, repeating a story for which there exists absolutely no foundation, "he supposedly liked a girl who was a crack whore. I never reported it as fact. They say all these vile things about Palin but do we ever talk about Obama and the crack whore?"The incredibly libellous post, entitled: "IT'S TIME TO EXPOSE THE TRUTH ABOUT OBAMA" appeared on 1 August 2009. "Why not tell the truth about Obama and his reported strange sexual predilections?" Geller wrote. "It is well known that he allegedly was involved with a crack whore in his youth. Very seedy stuff ... Find the ho, give her a show! Obama allegedly trafficked in some very deviant practices."
You may not have encountered the writing of Geller, one of the more controversial ascending stars of the American extreme right. Politicised, as she says, by the events of 9/11, she inspired, then orchestrated, opposition to the construction of the planned Muslim cultural centre two blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center, which Geller named the "Ground Zero Mosque". A pivotal figure in the so-called "birther" movement, she has – in common with other robustly conservative figures such as Donald Trump, broadcaster Glenn Beck and her writing partner Robert Spencer – tirelessly queried details of President Obama's ancestry, and hence his entitlement to office. Geller still has many questions in this area, despite the recent release of the "long form" of the president's birth certificate, proving that he was born in the American state of Hawaii.
A glance at her voluminous blog reveals her disdain for institutions such as the UN (for employing "child-raping peacekeepers") The New York Times ("Jew-haters") and other famously subversive voices such as that of our own Sun newspaper (for whom "Jewkilling is OK, everything else is terror") and Pope Benedict XVI ("Maybe Jew-hating," she writes with reference to the German pontiff, "obliterates rational thought"). She didn't like the way Campbell's Soup went about producing a halal recipe and has described liberal Jews as "self-hating wretches". An infamous post on Atlas Shrugs suggesting that Barack Obama was the love-child of Malcolm X was, Geller insists, not written by her. The image she posted of Obama urinating on an American flag was "a very well-circulated cartoon – so what?"
"I believe you once said that President Obama 'wants jihad to win'."
"I don't know if he wants it to win, but he is certainly Islamophiliac. He is certainly aiding jihad."
To help discourage him, Geller has provided a one-click link from her site to what she describes as "pornographic" photographs of Obama's late mother. These are actually rather sad black-and-white pictures no more offensive than the images on hand-cranked peep-show machines from the early 20th century.
The Southern Poverty Law Centre, the US's leading political watchdog group, has classified "Stop Islamization of America" (the group she founded with professional partner Robert Spencer) as a hate organisation. She continues to defend Radovan Karadzic, whose trial she has likened to the Nuremberg hearings. Geller speaks fondly of kindred spirits such as the far-right English Defence League (EDL) and the Dutch extremist Geert Wilders, whose rhetoric recently resulted in what she calls a heresy trial.
"Wilders is generally regarded as a racist lunatic, isn't he?"
He is, Geller insists, a "lovely man. In Pakistan, you speak against Islam and you are put to death. Here in the West, your character is assassinated. You are a racistislamophobe-republicantimuslimbigot." The speed, not to say pride, with which she delivers what has become a one-word catchphrase, is undeniably impressive. "You get called something enough times," she smiles, "you say it plenty fast."
The intensity, if not the ethnic focus, of her views on national identity, recalls the correspondence between H Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, in the course of which they discuss "the Jewish problem" [ie there are Jews, some of them in England]. On the evidence of her writing alone, you might assume its author to be a male octogenarian in tweeds carrying a 12-bore.
But Geller (whose blog carries video of opponents, referring to what they perceive to be the results of cosmetic surgery, screaming: "whore – your face is melting") looks younger than her 53 years. She arrives for our meeting at Manhattan's Four Seasons Hotel wearing tight jeans, boldly luxuriant eyelash extensions and a quantity of mascara and eyeshadow that wouldn't have looked out of place in the days when, as she recalls, she used to dance to the Cramps at clubs such as CBGB's.
She occasionally records video blogs wearing a bikini. In one clip, which defends another prominent right-wing activist Ann Coulter, Geller performs an a cappella version of Morrissey's "Some Girls are Bigger than Others" while stroking a small dog.
A practised and articulate guest speaker on TV channels including Fox News and CBS, she isn't fond of the American media, dominated as it is by "Obama's serfs". Recently, Geller tells me, she declined an interview request from the BBC. She switches on a digital recorder. "Normally," she says, "I don't have to use this." But she's dealing with "a lefty newspaper" which carries reports by Robert Fisk.
Whatever you might think of Pamela Geller, you can't accuse her of lacking courage. Her website reproduced cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, first published in 2005 by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which led to an attempt on the life of artist Kurt Westergaard.
"Going through my notes," I tell her, "I find you quoted as asking: 'Does Obama know anybody that isn't wacky, radical, militant, Judeophobe, Socialist, Marxist and Paedophile?' Next to which I appear to have written: 'Possibly Diana Krall.'"
"Actually I didn't say that but I did say something that echoes that, so I don't have a problem. There is no one in his cabinet that is not radical."
America, argues Geller (she uses the noun to apply to the United States rather than the whole continent), is at war with evil – a force whose most pernicious incarnation is Islam, or to be more precise, "creeping Sharia". Towards the end of what turns out to be an animated two-hour conversation I will ask her whether, had her contributions been articulated on a public stage in the UK, she would have been arrested. Under British law, she says she doesn't know. "In Holland," she concedes, "probably."
She recalls how Terry Jones, a fundamentalist minister, achieved international fame after he declared he was going to burn the Koran, an action he performed in Florida, in March. "Who cares if some fringe pastor is going to burn a Koran? You burn a Bible, nobody says 'Boo.'"
"Can you think of any good Muslims?" I ask her. "Because reading your book – The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America [co-authored with Robert Spencer]– I can't find any."
"That's not true. I love Muslims. I hate an extreme ideology that oppresses women... we have seen a 1,400-year history of 270 million victims of jihadi wars."
Geller doesn't mind, she insists, what anybody regards as sacred. "I don't care if you worship a stone," she says. "I don't care if you worship a little rock."
"How did you know about Gordon?" I ask her. "I left him in the hotel room."
The writer, who is, remarkably, not without a sense of irony, permits herself a smile.
"I can think of one Muslim of my acquaintance – Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens," I tell her, "who I don't believe would hurt a fly."
"No. But he has said some things."
"As he's often explained, he was very naive at that time and he was entrapped by a British newspaper. He's said that he would not repeat or endorse those statements as reported, and I believe him."
"OK."
"So who are the good Muslims that you know?"
"Secular Muslims."
"Isn't that a bit of an oxymoron?"
"No. If you adhere to the Koran... the last chapters are very violent."
"Have you read Deuteronomy? Ask Saladin what he thought about Richard I."
"But there was an enlightenment. Islam has had no enlightenment. You cannot criticise Islam. You cannot speak candidly of Islam..."
"You seem to be giving it a good go."
"Listen, you think it's easy being me, dear? I get threats. I have my contacts at law enforcement."
Geller has even managed to fall out with former sympathiser Zuhdi Jasser, an Arizona-based critic of what he terms "political Islam". Jasser, once a lieutenant commander in the US Navy and no shrinking liberal, is a regular guest on shows hosted by attack dogs of conservative broadcasting, such as Sean Hannity – a man who, even Pamela Geller concedes, "is right-wing".
"Geller and Robert Spencer's comments... show that they are against any solution from within the House of Islam," wrote Jasser, who is of Syrian descent, earlier this year. "This only aids and abets all Islamists. But that doesn't matter if their target includes all Muslims and their only viable solution is conversion of one-fifth of the world's population."
Everything in Geller's motivation comes back to 9/11. One of the many ways in which the United States was changed forever by the atrocity was a more widespread acceptability of the kind of hateful diatribe that had previously been the preserve of a handful of shock jocks.
Five years ago, referring to 9/11 widows who opposed George W Bush, Ann Coulter told NBC's The Today Show: "They believe the entire country is required to marinate in their personal agony. These broads are millionaires, lionised on TV, k revelling in their status. I have never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."
In May 2010 Geller began her campaign against the project then called Cordoba House (a title she considered deliberately offensive in its evocation of the Moorish conquest of Spain) and now named Park 51. As currently planned, it would involve the construction of a 13-storey building on the site of a damaged factory a tenth of a mile away from the World Trade Center. Its advocates, such as chief organiser Imam Rauf, assert that – housing as it would a memorial, theatre, swimming pool and baseball court as well as a prayer site – it is neither at Ground Zero, nor a mosque.
The title of her blog on 6 May last year read: "MONSTER MOSQUE PUSHES AHEAD IN SHADOW OF WORLD TRADE CENTER ISLAMIC DEATH AND DESTRUCTION." She raised funds for posters on New York buses, which depicted an image of the burning towers, with the slogan: "Why There?" Her campaign was supported by the New York Post and resolute conservatives such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich.
Geller has recently completed work on a film called The Ground Zero Mosque: The Second Wave of the 9/11 Attack. "The Ground Zero Mosque is deeply insulting, deliberately provocative and offensive," she argues. "To build a megamosque in a building that was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks is the height of insensitivity."
Among the people likely to visit the facility, I suggest, "will be honest believers, some of whom lost relatives and fellow Muslims in the attack".
"I don't separate the Muslims that died from the non-Muslims. Many moderate Muslims," she asserts, correctly, "are against it. It is an Islamic pattern to build triumphal mosques on the cherished sites..."
"Pardon?"
"Let me finish, sir. On the cherished sites of conquered lands. There has not been one mosque of reconciliation, ever, on the site of a jihadi attack."
"Maybe this is a good chance to start."
"I don't think you are going to get it from Imam Rauf."
Geller launches into a swift character assassination of the imam, who said recently: "If I'd known that this would happen; that the project would cause this kind of pain, I wouldn't have done it."
"No matter how [Geller mouths the word "fucking"] much we progress, the human condition never changes. The battle is eternal and the battle is between good and evil. I think the fundamental problem today is the inability, or reluctance, to distinguish between good and evil."
She has carried the fight all over the world, from New York to the Black Country. Geller learnt of reports of clashes in April 2010 between right-wing demonstrators and West Midlands police in Dudley, during protests against an application to build what she blogged was a "Monster Mosque".
"Senior EDL leadership," she wrote in the 5 May 2010 issue of the conservative online magazine American Thinker, "informed me that thousands of Muslims began rioting in Dudley... showing the true face of Islam." Muslims, she went on, in what may come as news to residents in Sue Lawley's home town, "are policing the streets in cars... and the dhimmi [non-Muslim living under Sharia law] Dudley police are doing nothing about it."
I tell Geller that I'd assumed that the experience of meeting her would be similar to an uncomfortable afternoon I once spent with Arianna Huffington. That was when the Greek-American thinker was in her right-wing, Newt Gingrich period, before she performed a remarkable volte face and established herself as a prominent liberal and founded the left-leaning news website The Huffington Post. Geller isn't flattered by this at all, and it's true that the two women could hardly be more different. Huffington always looked like a Republican vice-president's wife, and seemed, at least back then, more driven by ambition than ideals. Geller, by contrast – quite amazingly, given the nature of her beliefs – has the ability to laugh at herself and, as I mentioned to a well-known journalist who has studied her ascent, has a strange habit, even at the most intense moments of disagreement, of flashing you a look of what I can only describe as girlish vulnerability.
"Pamela Geller is a Ground Zero in herself," he replied. "Angry yet fragile. Just occasionally, that flash in her eyes that you mention betrays what I interpreted as a longing to be loved. I sensed a deep insecurity in her; the time I spent with her left me feeling deeply uncomfortable."
Geller grew up in the affluent New York suburb of Hewlett Harbor, Long Island, the daughter of Reuben, a textile entrepreneur who she describes as "a tough guy from the old school".
"Like John Wayne?"
"Well... from the Frank Sinatra era. Robert Mitchum. You know: masculine."
Of her three sisters, two are doctors, one a teacher.
"Do they share your views?"
Politically, Geller says, "we are all on the same page".
As a young woman, she was heavily influenced by Atlas Shrugged, the 1957 novel by Ayn Rand, which praised the virtues of individualism, as opposed to state intervention.
In the 1980s she worked in marketing at the New York Daily News, then became a senior executive at The New York Observer. Her enthusiasms back then were fashion and music. (Geller, who has four children, left the Observer in 1994 to look after her family.)
Before 9/11, she says, she was "more socially liberal".
She began blogging on littlegreenfootballs.com, run by the professional musician and software expert Charles Johnson. Between 2004 and 2007, she posted thousands of entries. "She was always as reactionary," he tells me, "as you see her now."
Johnson, who, as that remark would suggest, does not share Geller's opinions, is described as a "mental patient" on Atlas Shrugs.
"I know Pamela Geller often calls me crazy," he told me. "But I'm not the one who talks about the president's birth certificate being faked or says that he's the illegitimate son of Malcolm X, and I'm not the one who defends a war criminal and makes alliances with white supremacist groups. That would be Ms Geller. She has a very long record of absolute lunacy, mixed with bigotry and racism and I am far from the only person to point this out."
These days, she expresses a view of the superiority of her nation reminiscent of the more entrenched kind of British patriot in the golden age of Empire. "What would be the good," Geller asks, "of subjecting America to international norms? America has always been a light to the world."
There is no reason, in other words, for the United States to account for its actions to the International Criminal Court, or the UN.
"I can see how that's a very attractive view of the world," I tell her, "but I find it difficult to accept the USA as the embodiment of perfection that all other nations should aspire to" – a recurrent theme in Geller's writing.
"I don't care what other nations do. I don't care about them. I care about America."
In order to "get America", she argues, "you have to grow up in America. Obama is missing the DNA of the USA. It's just not in him," she adds, like a missionary speaking of a heathen who has never heard the name of Christ. "Through no fault of his own."
The USA, Geller believes, is unique and superior to any other nation. "America is not an ethnicity, it's not a creed, it's not a colour, it's a shared value system. And in order to get it, you have to have grown up here, or yearn for it."
"If I was from Bruges and talked like that about Belgium, what would you think?"
"All power to you."
"I think you'd assume that I'd gone off my rocker."
"Why?"
"Because I would be elevating respect for a nation beyond what most people would regard as sane."
"Respect for an ideal is insane?"
"But what you mean by America and what [say] Steve Earle or Randy Newman mean by America are two very different things."
"That's the beauty of America."
The day before we met, I'd entered the words "Pamela Geller" and "mad" into a search engine.
"You come in at 606,000 hits. That's just behind King George III; he scores 771,000 and he talked to trees."
"Yeah," Geller replies, "but he was cured of that, wasn't he?"
One American she does consider "crazy" is the legendary comedian Dick Gregory: role model for Richard Pryor, diet coach to Muhammad Ali and now a full-time civil-rights activist. "I talked to Gregory recently about Barack Obama," I tell her, and he said: 'Imagine what they'd have done to him if he'd been useless.' Do you see Obama as evil, or stupid?"
"I don't see him as either. I just don't see him as a man who loves America. In my book I explain that here is k a man who was raised, from the ages of six to 12 [others say six to 10] in a Muslim country [Indonesia] and who," Geller claims, "studied Islam. When he came to the States he went [back] to Hawaii, which had only become a state two years before his birth."
She has asserted that Obama visited Pakistan in 1981 looking for "jihad or drugs".
"That was a joke."
On a more serious note, Geller has claimed that: "The only reason there is any semblance of peace around the world is because of the military presence of the US."
Considering her nation's recent military excursions to Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, can she point to any place where its intervention can be said to have worked? Libya, she says, was "a disaster. I don't see what we're doing there at all."
"Would it bother you if the Americans had gone in there purely because of the oil?"
"Of course not. Why would it bother me?"
"Thousands of civilian dead?"
"They're dying anyway. Isn't that what we're doing, saving them? Why not get oil at the same time? Why is China getting Iraq's oil? Our blood," she adds, in a phrase which might have come from the Crusades, or indeed The Sopranos: "our treasure."
The phrase "war on terror" I suggest, has been a catastrophe in the way that it's given carte blanche to any nation with enemies.
"It's not [a war on] terror. It's a war on jihad."
"Where has it worked? In Iraq?"
"Iraq is now a fledgling democracy."
"It's a basket case. They have no fresh water; they have no electricity."
"You telling me Iraq was the height of civilisation prior?"
"If you define civilisation by being able to turn on the tap."
"Over there," Geller replies, "maybe that is how they define it."
"Is there anything Israel has done that you're ashamed of?"
"Only Oslo," she says (referring to the 1993 accord which allowed for the creation of the Palestinian National Authority). "And surrendering in instalments."
"The Jenin Massacre" – a term commonly used to describe the Israeli Defence Force's April 2002 entry into a West Bank refugee camp, in bulldozers – was, she believes, Palestinian "propaganda".
"How about Tom Hurndall, the peace volunteer shot by the IDF while he was trying to pull an infant to safety?" Hurndall, who was wearing an orange fluorescent jacket, died in 2004 after spending nine months in a coma; the sniper responsible was sentenced to 11-and-a-half years for manslaughter, of which he will serve eight, by an Israeli court.
"I don't believe that. I don't believe the Israelis ever fire where there is no threat."
Geller would like to see more settlers in the Occupied Territories (though neither of the last two nouns are ones she would recognise).
"It's not 'settlers'. It's the Jewish homeland. Settler is an anti-semitic term."
"How about Joe McCarthy [the senator responsible for the Communist witch trials of the 1950s]? How do you feel about him?"
"McCarthy was right. He went overboard, but he was right. The Communists were infiltrating and they have been very successful here in America."
"Let's talk about people who are white and racist."
"I don't know any."
"[The South African white supremacist] Eugène Terre'Blanche? I've seen you described as a supporter of his."
"He was viciously murdered. I never knew who he was, but when he was hacked to death, I condemned it. I have no interest in his ideology."
"Can you think of any others, apart from Hitler?"
"No. Because I don't travel in those circles."
"I mean from history."
"I guess the Ku Klux Klan."
"I guess."
"No, I'm saying that. But I don't believe in white supremacism. Islamic supremacism is the threat I see right now."
Read the rest of the hit piece here.
Two obvious mistakes on Chalmers part -- it's Obama in 2012, not 2011.
And this, "I don't care if you worship a stone." He edited out the rest of the sentence...."just don't stone me with it." Atlas readers know my quote well. Chalmers obviously just. doesn't. get. it.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
OBAMA'S BOYS: MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD OFFICIAL TELLS WASHINGTON POST THAT US, EUROPE "EXPORTED HITLER'S CONFLICT TO OUR LAND"
Obama's Muslim boys in the hood are flexing their muscles in Egypt. Thanks to President Obama.
If it's "stolen land" that the murderous, bloodthirsty crybabies are whining about, I'd think twice -- everywhere they are is stolen, if you want to be tehnically and historically accurate. Before Muhammad slaughtered, expelled and annihilated the tribes of Medina, that was Jewish land.
How Muslims stole Jewish Property: As Muslims mark 'Nakba Day,' history shows Jews were dispossessed of all their assets after escaping Muslim countries between 1944-1964
As for Hitler's conflict, once again the whitewashers forget the leading role that the grand mufti (leader of the Muslim people) took in the Holocaust . He was conducting pogroms against the Jews (and the Armenians) long before Hitler had perfected his craft. Please scroll this link now: The Mufti of Jerusalem: Islam's Role in the Holocaust
The idea that Muslims lived in peace with Jews prior to Israel is a vile, bloody lie. The quran commands the annihilation of the Jews, and the Muslims have been pursuing that goal for 1,400 years. More on Islamic Jew-hatred as commanded in Islam here. The Muslim death cry "Khybar, Khybar, ya Yahood, jaish Mohammed sa ya'ud" is howled anywhere and everywhere Muslim supremacists live. It refers to the Arabian oasis of Khybar, where Mohammed's followers attacked and enslaved its Jewish inhabitants in the year 628. "Khybar, Khybar, oh Jews, Mohammed's Army will return."
The massacre of Jews by Muslims in Hebron in 1929. One of many jihads against the Jewish people.
Is the media willing to report or capable of reporting the facts of history, and of exposing these outrageous Islamic lies?
Muslim Brotherhood official tells Washington Post US, Europe 'exported Hitler's conflict to our land'
Yitzhak Benhorin
WASHINGTON- "My dream is to live together as we did before the state of Israel. We lived in peace. We were never in conflict. Americans and Europeans exported the conflict created by Hitler to our land," said Essam El-Erian, a senior member of the Muslim brotherhood's Egypt branch.
In an interview with the Washington Post, El-Erian calimed his organization does not threaten Israel, and is not interested in annulling the peace accord with the Jewish State. Commenting on the ongoing clashes between Israel and the Palestinians, El-Erian noted that Israel was punishing the Palestinians for the Jewish Holocaust during World War II.Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt (Photo: AFP
"The Holocaust was a massacre against a race, against a religion—it is a really big crime, but we were never accused of it. Why do the Palestinians pay the price of Nazis?" he said. El-Erian stressed that the Muslim Brotherhood has no intention of canceling the peace treaty with Israel. "A new parliament would make that decision. The army says frankly, and we say it also: We cannot cancel a treaty by a verbal decision. Treaties have regulations and must be respected from both sides. When one side doesn't respect the treaty, the international community must obligate it to do so."
Saturday, May 14, 2011
"ARAB SPRING" SAME AS IT EVER WAS, SAME AS IT EVER WAS
WAR DOGS!
I love the idea of dogs going after jihadis -- dogs, love it. Great post over at FP: (hat tip Carl)
Dogs have been fighting alongside U.S. soldiers for more than 100 years, seeing combat in the Civil War and World War I. But their service was informal; only in 1942 were canines officially inducted into the U.S. Army. Today, they're a central part of U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan -- as of early 2010 the U.S. Army had 2,800 active-duty dogs deployed (the largest canine contingent in the world). And these numbers will continue to grow as these dogs become an ever-more-vital military asset.
So it should come as no surprise that among the 79 commandos involved in Operation Neptune Spear that resulted in Osama bin Laden's killing, there was one dog -- the elite of the four-legged variety. And though the dog in question remains an enigma -- another mysterious detail of the still-unfolding narrative of that historic mission -- there should be little reason to speculate about why there was a dog involved: Man's best friend is a pretty fearsome warrior.
Above, a U.S. soldier with the 10th Special Forces Group and his dog leap off the ramp of a CH-47 Chinook helicopter during water training over the Gulf of Mexico as part of exercise Emerald Warrior on March 1.
Tech. Sgt. Manuel J. Martinez, U.S. Air Force/ DoD
Daredevil dogs: The question of how the dog got into bin Laden's compound is no puzzle -- the same way the special ops team did, by being lowered from an MH-60s helicopter. In fact, U.S. Air Force dogs have been airborne for decades, though the earliest flying dogs accompanied Soviet forces in the 1930s.
Dogs usually jump in tandem with their trainers, but when properly outfitted with flotation vests they can make short jumps into water on their own. A U.S. Navy SEAL, Mike Forsythe, and his dog, Cara -- pictured above -- recently broke the world record for "highest man/dog parachute deployment" by jumping from 30,100 feet.
Courtesy K9 Storm Inc.
The scent of war: According to Mike Dowling, a former Marine Corps dog handler who served in Iraq, there's a simple explanation for why the Navy SEALs took a dog along on the Osama raid: "A dog's brain is dominated by olfactory senses." In fact, Dowling says, a dog can have up to 225 million olfactory receptors in their nose -- the part of their brain devoted to scent is 40 times greater than that of a human.
"When you're going on a mission," Dowling says, "a raid or a patrol, insurgents are sneaky -- they like to hide stuff from you. But a dog can smell them. .... [Think about] Saddam Hussein ... what if Osama had been [hiding] in a hole in the ground? A dog could find that. A dog could alert them to where he's hiding because of the incredible scent capabilities. ... You can only see what you can see. You can't see what you don't see. A dog can see it through his nose."
Above U.S. Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade wait for helicopter transport as part of Operation Khanjar at Camp Dwyer in Helmand Province in Afghanistan on July 2, 2009.
MANPREET ROMANA/AFP/Getty Images
It's not the gear that makes the dog: Military working dogs (MWDs in Army parlance) may not enjoy all the privileges of being full-fledged soldiers, but the U.S. military no longer considers them mere equipment. (The war dogs deployed to Vietnam during that conflict were classified as "surplus equipment" and left behind.) Today, MWDs are outfitted with equipment of their own -- a range of specialized gear that includes Doggles (protective eye wear), body armor, life vests, gas masks, long-range GPS-equipped vests, and high-tech canine "flak jackets."
Photo Courtesy of K9 Storm Inc.
In August 2010, The Register, a British online tech publication, reported that "top-secret, super-elite U.S. Navy SEAL special forces are to deploy heavily armoured bulletproof dogs equipped with infrared nightsight cameras and an 'intruder communication system' able to penetrate concrete walls." The article also reported that the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Group had "awarded an $86,000 contract to Canadian firm K9 Storm Inc. for the supply of 'Canine Tactical Assault Vests' for wear by SEAL dogs." The K9 catalogue boasts an array of high-tech canine devices, from storm lights to long lines and leads to an assortment of vests -- assault, aerial insertion, and patrol-SWAT -- which are rated from "excellent" to "good" in protecting the animal from harm due to everything from bullets to ice picks.
Photo Courtesy of K9 Storm Inc.
Lethal weapons: Not all military dogs are trained to kill. According to the U.S. Air Force, a dog only enters advanced training after a basic obedience program is successfully completed. The focus of this more intensive training is "controlled aggressiveness" in which the dog is "taught to find a suspect or hostile person in a building or open area; to attack, without command, someone who is attacking its handler; to cease an attack upon command at any point after an attack command has been given..." Make no mistake, these animals can be lethal weapons: "The average German Shepherd's bite exerts between 400 and 700 pounds of pressure," according to the U.S. Air Force.
Above, a U.S. Army soldier trains an attack dog at Camp Forward Operating Base Wilson in Zari district in southern Kandahar province on Oct. 21, 2010.
MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images
Fierce protectors: Military dogs and their handlers often form deep bonds -- it's an essential part of the canine-handler relationship that is specifically built into their training regimen. The personal attachments are often so intense that it can take weeks of training before a dog can begin working with a new handler.
Not only are these dogs fierce assault weapons, they are loyal guardians. When Private First Class Colton Rusk was shot after his unit came under Taliban sniper fire during a routine patrol in Afghanistan, Rusk's bomb-sniffing dog, Eli, crawled on top of his body, attacking anyone -- including Rusk's fellow Marines -- who tried to come near him. Rusk did not survive the assault, but Eli was granted early retirement so he could live with Rusk's family.
In the photo above, Staff Sgt. Erick Martinez, a military dog handler uses an over-the-shoulder carry to hold his dog, Argo II, at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, on March 4. The exercise helps build trust, loyalty, and teamwork.
U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Allen Stokes
The nose knows: A canine's olfactory powers are well known -- dogs are now even being used to sniff out rare types of cancer -- and that natural ability hasn't gone unnoticed by the U.S. military. When President Barack Obama traveled to Asia last fall, an elite team of 30 bomb-sniffing dogs were part of his security entourage. (All in all, it was a pretty cushy assignment: The dogs stayed in 5-star hotels and rode in vehicles tailored to their comfort and safety.)
More remarkable still are vapor-wake dogs. Scientists at Auburn University's College of Veterinary Medicine have genetically bred and specially trained canines to not only detect stationary bombs or bomb-making materials, but identify and alert their handler to the movingscent of explosive devices and materials left behind in the air, say, as a suicide bomber walked through a crowd -- all without ever tipping off the perpetrator. While not as expensive as some military-trained dogs, the cost of breeding and training these dogs cost is not cheap at around $20,000 each.
Above, U.S. sergeant Matthew Templet and his bomb-sniffing dog Basco search for the explosives in an abandoned house in Haji Ghaffar village during a clearance patrol in Zari district of Kandahar province on Dec. 27, 2010.
BEHROUZ MEHRI/AFP/Getty Images
The best of the best: U.S. and allied forces have been fighting a losing battle against improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan. In the first eight months of 2010 there were more roadside bombs in Afghanistan than in the same period in 2009.
In October 2010, the Pentagon announced that after six years and $19 billion spent in the attempt to build the ultimate bomb detector technology, dogs were still the most accurate sniffers around. The rate of detection with the Pentagon's fanciest equipment -- drones and aerial detectors -- was a 50 percent success rate, but when a dog was involved it rose 30 percent.
DMITRY KOSTYUKOV/AFP/Getty Images
A canine surge: Over the last two years, there has been an effort to rapidly increase the number IED detection dogs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Currently, the Marine Corps has 170 bomb-sniffing dogs, but has plans to deploy as many as 600 dogs to their program before September 2012. In late 2010 the Marines have also awarded a contract to American K-9 Interdiction for "as much as $35 million" to train and kennel their dogs.
In February, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos stated that he'd like to see "a dog with every patrol."
Above, U.S. Marines attached to 1st Battalion, 6th regiment, Charlie Company relax with their bomb-sniffing dogs Books and Good one in Huskers camp on the outskirts of Marjah in central Helmand on Jan. 25, 2010.
CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty Images
For more war dogs -- from puppies to parachute jumps -- see the sequel: War Dog II.
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All free people should stand with Israel thanks to Robert
Israel is on the front line of the global jihad. All lovers of freedom must stand with her.Run, Sarah, run!
JUDGE PROTECTS MUSLIM JEW-HATERS, ISSUES GAG ORDER
I hope that Americans are getting as sick of the "special treatment" Islamic supremacists get as I am. They shut those of us up who expose their agenda and use the courts to protect their incitement to violence and oppression.
California Judge Peter Wilson has issued a gag order in the case of the twelve Muslim Jew-haters who were arrested for their Nazi-like intimidation and thuggery at a lecture at UC Irvine where Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren came to talk about U.S.-Israel relations.
Oren was interrupted 10 times while trying to give his speech before 500 people at the UCI Student Center, where there was heavy security. Oren took a 20 minute break after the fourth protest, asked for hospitality and resumed his speech, only to be interrupted again by young men yelling at him every few minutes. Many members of the audience also applauded Oren.
Judge issues gag order in Muslim ‘Irvine 11' case The Orange County Register (hat tip Jean)
SANTA ANA – A judge Friday issued a gag order for both sides in the case of Muslim students charged with disrupting a 2010 speech by an Israeli diplomat at UC Irvine.
Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter J. Wilson's ruling came in response to a motion by defense attorneys filed earlier this month seeking to bar prosecutors from making any more public statements about the case.
Mohamed Abdelgany, center, one of the 11 Muslim students being charged with disrupting the speech of an Israeli diplomat at the campus last year were arraigned in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana April 15, 2011. All 11 pleaded not guilty.SAM GANGWER, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTERLawyers for the students, known as the "Irvine 11," argued in court papers that prosecutors have violated their clients' rights to a fair trial by making "ethically irresponsible" public statements, including wrongly branding the students anti-Semitic and declaring them guilty.
Deputy District Attorney Stephan Sauer objected to Wilson's order, arguing that the students can use "surrogates" at events "to malign the integrity of the District Attorney's Office."
The court's protective order bars all parties, attorneys, law enforcement agencies, judicial employees and others associated with the case from releasing any information about the matter to the public until the case is over or another order is issued.
Wilson also denied a defense request to compel the District Attorney's Office to remove from its website and iPhone app documents prosecutors filed in opposition to removing the office from the case. Students' attorneys argued that portions of the information already out there could be inadmissible at trial.
"Putting exhibits out there on the web is not what transparency is all about," attorney Lane Liroff said.
Another defense attorney, Jacqueline Goodman, called the exhibits already in the public domain "terribly prejudicial."
"It does no good to say no more when the worst of it is already out there," she said.
Prosecutors said they are unaware of any "privileged" information that has been publicly posted.
Wilson said he found no need to go back and "sanitize the record."
"I don't believe this calls for surgical incision on either side," he said.
In February, the defendants filed a motion asking Wilson to remove the district attorney from the case, saying prosecutors illegally issued subpoenas and referred to the case internally as the "UCI Muslim Case," a term they say is evidence of "religious bias" against them. A hearing on that motion is set for June 17.
Prosecutors have denied having any religious or ethnic bias and say the accusations have little merit.
"You have to do some real mental gymnastics to figure out what they're trying to say," Susan Kang Schroeder, chief of staff for the Orange County district attorney has said. "We don't prosecute people based on their religion or ethnicity; we prosecute people who violate the law, and this case is a clear violation of the law."
In April, the 11 current and former university students pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges for disrupting the speech last year by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, after which all were arrested, cited and released. The case has spawned widespread reaction and garnered national attention.
Each student is charged with one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to disturb a meeting and one misdemeanor count of the disturbance of a meeting. If convicted, each faces a sentence that could include probation with community service or fines or up to six months in jail.
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