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I had to watch this video again because I was so shocked that a TV news reporter was openly defending the terrorist mastermind of Al Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, but that is exactly what CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre does in the video.

I am going to summarize and put in quotes exactly what McIntyre had to say in regards to the bumbling al-Zarqawi trying to fire an American M249 Squad Automatic Weapon in a propaganda video:

The M249 machine has a “heavy trigger and is not easy to fire” making it “understandable” why he would “have trouble firing it” because the weapon requires “specific training” and “he is probably not trained to fire American weapons.”

To see the video for yourself you need to go to the CNN.com website and go to the Watch Video section and select the US Mocks al-Zarqawi Video in that section.  Sorry there is no specific link to access the video that I could find.  You will have to use the CNN.com website.

Anyway the M249 is not that difficult to fire.  In the Army we teach 18 year old privates who’s only weapons knowledge is playing Duck Hunt on the Nintendo, how to fire this weapon in no time.  Plus people with weapons experience know that if your weapon is jamming to pull back the charging handle to clear the chamber.  Zarqawi had to get someone to show him how to pull back a charging handle on the weapon.  This just makes me wonder how often he is actually handling weapons?  He is probably just like all the other Al Qaida big wigs, sending out kids filled with propaganda about 72 virgins to do their dirty work while they sit back make propaganda videos, collect the money coming in, and in Zarqawi’s case, buy new American made tennis shoes.

This report though just begs the question of who’s side are these US reporters on?  How in world can any journalist, especially an American journalist defend a brutal killer like Zarqawi and keep a straight face like Jamie McIntyre does?  I think these reporters are so used to watering down anything positive that CENTCOM puts out that he doesn’t even realize how ridiculous he sounds.  Is CNN becoming another Al Jazeera?

Some how I just don’t see this happening any time soon:

Korea, China and Japan have agreed to start joint research at government level on introducing an Asian single currency comparable to the euro. Finance Minister Han Duck-soo made the agreement with his Chinese counterpart Jin Renqing and Japan¿s Sadakazu Tanigaki on the sidelines of the 39th annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in India.

This is the first time governments have decided to make concrete efforts toward the launch of the Asian currency unit (ACU), which only exists as a theoretical construct. So far, calls have mostly come from the private sector.

These guys can’t even agree on who owns what worthless rocks in the middle of the ocean or who did what to who historically much less agree on sharing a common currency.  I’m fairly confident that a combination of xenophobia and nationalism will sink this idea for quite some time.

A statement like this one from the new (anti)Unification Minister Lee Jong-seok definitely qualifies you to be a useful idiot (from the Korea Liberator):

¿At least since 2000 when we began providing assistance to the North, no one there has been starving to death,¿ Lee said.

¿ UniFiction Minister Lee Jong-Seok

Read the rest of the Korea Liberator report on the other fibs Lee has been caught passing.  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but this guy may actually be worse than former Unification Minister Chung Dong-young.

The Chosun Ilbo featured an article in Foreign Policy magazine that has rankings for the sustainability of the different countries in the world:

North Korea has been ranked 14th on a list of ¿failed states¿ compiled by the U.S. global policy journal Foreign Policy together with the Fund for Peace. The two gave countries number grades in areas like government authority, legitimacy, public peace and basic public services.

In the results published Monday, Sudan topped the list for being in the middle of a civil war. It was followed by the similarly afflicted Democratic Republic of the Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Iraq and Zimbabwe. Among the 148 countries, 11 in the top 20 were African nations.

Take a look at this map:

I have to wonder about the data to create this map when the US and most of Europe are not considered sustainable governments?

The United States economy did just fine today after the protests by illegal immigrants.  The protesters called the rallies a day without immigrants which is an absolute farce because the one’s protesting are “illegal” immigrants, not immigrants which is a big difference.  If all the legal immigrants in America didn’t go to work than that would cause problems.  Some of these legal immigrants are taking a stand against these illegals:

A group of Hispanic Americans calling themselves, “You Don’t Speak for Me,” participated in a Washington news conference Monday in support of strong border security.

Led by Ret. Army Col. Al Rodriguez, the coalition formed to dispel the impression that all Hispanic Americans support those who are trying to disrupt the nation on May 1.

“As the demands of illegal aliens and their supporters become ever more shrilled and outrageous, the silent majority of Americans are remaining silent no longer. We are proud and delighted that will give a voice to the millions of hard-working, law-abiding Hispanic Americans whose views are too often misrepresented,” said Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which organized the coalition.

“These people have been telling us for a long time they hate to be treated like criminals. What they’re doing today, throughout the whole country, is behaving just like that,” Claudia Spencer, a member of You Don’t Speak for Me, told FOX News. “We feel really really offended … they are hurting everything in the United States, including us, the legal Latinos.”

I am originally from Colorado and I can tell you Hispanic-Americans there do not like the illegal immigrants because they create a negative image for the hispanic community in general plus they are taking jobs that many legal hispanics had worked because the illegals are working for cheaper wages.  So this here really didn’t come as much of a surprise to me:

A group called “Defend Colorado Now” was holding an opposition rally Monday. That group wants to deny state services to illegal immigrants. In Colorado alone, 462 bills related to immigration or immigrants were introduced in the Legislature; only about 10 percent are expected to pass.

The “Defend Colorado Now” group is mainly composed of Hispanic-Americans who are trying to protect US Workers rights in the state.  Here is a picture of the group:

I think the important thing to remember about this is that American citizens like Defend Colorado Now, who are angered by all illegals making demands that they have no right to demand should not direct their anger at the protesters.  Think about it, you can’t blame them for wanting to come to America and they now have the media and the politicians on their side so they feel the momentum shifting to where if they conduct enough protests they may be able to shift public opinion to make their amnesty demands reality.  However, the only way their demands become reality is if the spineless politicians allow it to happen.  These spineless politicians all see a possible voting block for their political interests if they give these people the amnesty they are demanding.  So that is why I say don’t blame the protesters, blame the politicians and their media accomplices that allowing these people to feel they have the right to demand amnesty.

I have been working on my wife’s legal citizenship for three years now and she entered the country as a legal immigrant.  These illegals protesting today feel that they have the right to cut in front of my wife in the citizenship line because of their strength in numbers that has the politicians running scared.

So I am sitting here watching all this nonsense on TV and the whole time I am thinking, where are the Asians?  Why aren’t they protesting?  Why aren’t Asian immigrants not included in these amnesty demands?  With the large Chinese and Korean communities in the United States you would think that the Asian community in the US would be screaming mad that the latino community is getting such special treatment in possibly receiving amnesty.  But then again the Asian community was working Monday making ends meet and contributing to the betterment of the United States unlike the hundreds of thousands who were out protesting and doing nothing.

Is this the best the anti-US hate groups can do to rally people on a weekend none the less?:

Two groups of protesters gathered near Yongsan and the ministry to protest plans by South Korea and the United States to move the U.S. Forces Korea headquarters south and triple the size of Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, according to Korean police at Yongsan-gu station.

The first group of 80 people gathered closer to Gate 5 from 8:30 to 10 a.m., police said. The second, larger group of about 300, many apparently college students, gathered near the ministry’s entrance to protest both the Humphreys expansion and tuition costs, police said.

What I find funny about these people is that they are probably the same people who used to protest about Yongsan needing to be moved out of Seoul.  Now that Yongsan is preparing to relocate they are now protesting that as well.  So the bottom line is that no matter what USFK does you can’t win with these people, so that just makes them rather irrelevant.

You know how Koreans always have to compare some place or somebody to something overseas before it can become famous in Korea, such as BOA being Korea’s Britney Spears or Cheju being Korea’s Hawaii.  Well, now Brian over at Cathartidae has compiled a list of Who’s Who in Korea.  So now you will be able to keep all the Korea’s Backstreet Boys and Korea’s Justin Timberlakes straight.

Korean-American golfer Michelle Wie has landed in Korea and apparently the reception was quite large.  No word if she needed riot police yet:

American golfer Michelle Wie received a rapturous reception on Saturday when she arrived in South Korea her parents’ home country, for her latest brush with male opposition next week.

The Hawaiian-born 16-year-old, the top draw at the Asian Tour’s SK Telecom Open at the Sky 72 Golf Club in Incheon starting on Thursday, was met by hundreds of reporters, cameramen and well wishers.

“I never imagined this many people would show up to welcome me,” Yonhap News quoted Wie as telling a news conference. “I’m so glad to be back. I want to try lots of Korean food.

If Wie misses the cut like she usually does in these tournaments, she will have plenty of time to eat Korean food.  So far Wie doesn’t appear to be having the same amount of fan fare as during Hines Ward’s trip to Korea last month despite her father’s actions to show Wie as being a true Korean.  I wonder if this is why Koreans maybe aren’t jumping on the Wie bandwagon as much as Ward’s:

Wie, despite her U.S. nationality, has overshadowed South Korean women players in popularity even as some surged to LPGA Tour title success, while the Hawaiian has gone without a major title.

Four South Koreans have now tasted major success with Pak Se-ri getting the ball rolling in 1998 and Grace Park following suit at the 2004 Kraft Nabisco Championship.

Wie hasn’t won a major golf tournament yet professionally and yet she is much more famous than all the other female Korean golfers combined though they have won numerous championships between themselves.  It has to be frustrating for those Korean female golfers to be continuously upstaged by a 16 year old that has won nothing, even in their own country.

This is one sicko:

A recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism in combat action in Afghanistan ended his 19-year career here Friday after pleading guilty to three counts of child pornography and soliciting sex from a 13-year-old girl.

Tech. Sgt. Theodore D. Mirich, 39, a flight engineer with the 33rd Rescue Squadron, was sentenced to 60 months confinement, a bad-conduct discharge and reduction in rank to E-1 at the end of a daylong general court-martial.

This is what the guy did:

During the trial, the judge privately reviewed 40 photographs obtained from Mirich¿ computer that depicted children in various sexual positions with adults. He also considered a lengthy stipulation of facts in which Mirich admitted to downloading and sharing child pornography between Aug. 1, 2003, and Dec. 29, 2005.

Mirich also admitted that he sent obscene photos of himself to the daughter of a Marine gunnery sergeant living on Kadena, and solicited her to have sex with him.

Just makes you wonder how a guy with 19 years of service would even fathom doing something like this, but then again it makes you wonder how long he has been getting away with it too?

I just got back from watching the powerful United 93 movie that reenacts the fateful events of September 11, 2001 based around the people on United Flight 93 that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after the passengers fought against the hijackers and prevented the plane from hitting it’s designated target which is believed to be the US Capitol building.  This was actually the first time I went to a movie theater where policemen were positioned around the theater.  Viewers will leave the theater feeling angry at the terrorists but not enough to cause trouble in the theater as I am presuming was the reason police were at the movie.

The movie opens up showing the actions of the people on United 93 arriving at the airport and the crew of the plane beginning preparations for the flight that day.  The actors that play the roles of all these people all seem so normal.  There are no larger than life Sylvester Stallones or Brad Pitts in this movie, just normal people doing normal every day things.  This movie really brought the life the fact that real people died that day.  To often people look at the victims of 9/11 as just some distant statistic, much like US military casualties in Iraq are used as a statistic to justify one’s political leanings, while ignoring the fact real people died to make that statistic.

The face most Americans remember from the hijackers was that of Mohamed Atta, but besides that very little was known about them.  This movie gives the terrorists a face and it was quite scary.  These 9/11 terrorists were scarier than any Taliban fighter because they look like you or me.  The movie further brings the terrorists to live by showing them washing and praying in the hotel and than arriving and checking in through security at the airport before carrying out their mission.

The movie also simultaneously shows in tragic detail the bureaucratic confusion that was gripping the FAA and the US Air Force at the time.  The FAA personnel much like the flight 93 passengers were also very well portrayed as just normal people going about their day when the hijackings happened.  People will leave this movie shaking their heads at how little prepared both the FAA and the Air Force were to handle anything like 9/11.  Initially FAA managers would not believe any planes had been hijacked.  When they finally realized the planes had in fact been hijacked, no one was willing to make a decision about whether to scramble fighter planes and when they finally did get the planes airborne no one could decide whether to shoot down the hijacked planes or not.  Everyone ended up waiting for the President to make a decision, but by the time the decision to shoot down the hijacked aircraft was made the planes had already hit their targets.  The authorities were doing everything they could, but there was just no governmental system in place to deal with what was going on.  One leaves the movie hoping that these bureaurcratic and systematic problems have been corrected by now.

The portrayal of the actions before the crash of flight 93 is really eye opening and heartbreaking at the same time.  When the hijackers first sprung into action they just stabbed random people in the first class section and the rest of the first class passengers ran back to the economy section of the plane where two hijackers kept the passengers detained by one of the terrorists posing as having a bomb.  The other two hijackers break into the cockpit by holding a knife to a flight attendants neck.  Once the pilots opened the door the two terrorists immediately attacked and killed the pilots and seized control of the plane.

One of the most sickening portions of the movie was when after they killed the pilots and took control of the plane one of the terrorists tells the other that the flight attendant is needed anymore and he then says an Islamic prayer while the woman is pleading for her life and then sacrifices her to Allah by ripping out her throat with the knife.  That is probably the scene I will remember more than any other in the movie because it shows who these people really are.  Since September 11th Americans have become so desensitized to who the terrorists really are, with all the “Islam is the religion of peace” talk and America is the real villains in the War on Terror.  That scene just shows that we are fighting a war against religious fanatics that no matter how much you want to appease and plead for peace with them they will still rip out your throat.

At the back of the plane the passengers begin placing calls on the airphones to their families.  Hearing the reenactment of those phone calls is truly heartbreaking to listen to.  Through these phone calls the passengers learned of the planes that flew into the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon.  The passengers now know this is a suicide mission and decide to gather weapons to attack the terrorists with.  The passenger led by Todd Beamer and Mark Bingham spring their attack and subdue the two terrorists in the back of the plane and then they did something I didn’t even know, they actually did break into the cockpit.  They busted open the cockpit door and were fighting with the two terrorists inside the airplane for control of the plane before it crashed.  These passengers were truly heroes and should rightfully be remembered as so.

The director of the movie Paul Greengrass did an excellent job in creating this movie.  I think the fact that he is British helped because a Hollywood director would have politicized the movie which would have been a shame.  Greengrass in great detail stuck to recreating the events that day by using the airport security camera footage, cockpit voice recordings, and the passengers phone calls during the hijacking.  Sticking to the facts is powerful enough and doesn’t need a political message attached to it.

These same terrorists from flight 93 are the same Zarquawi terrorists randomly blowing up and killing civilians and children in Iraq right now.  It is important that people don’t forget this.  There is only one way to deal with them and that is to kill them before they rip out your throat.  After watching the movie you feel September 11th all over again.  Just like watching Saving Private Ryan was not good for some World War II vets this movie may not be good for those with personal connections to 9/11.  However, for everyone else this movie will remind people of the fact that we are fighting religious extremists bent on killing us and like the passengers on United 93, we are the good guys and never forget it.