WASHINGTON (AP) - There’s no practical way for U.S. troops to seal Afghanistan’s vast border with Pakistan and stop all Taliban fighters from slipping through, so they are focusing on defending vulnerable towns and fighting insurgents on Afghan soil, a U.S. military commander said Tuesday.

Army Col. Viet Luong said that “to secure the border in the traditional sense” would “take an inordinate amount of resources.” He said it also would require far more cooperation from the tribes inside Pakistan who often provide Taliban fighters safe passage.

Other senior U.S. military officials have said they hope the Pakistan military does more to shut down Taliban hideouts. But the U.S. has denied reports that American forces are pushing to expand special operations raids inside Pakistan’s tribal areas to target militants.

“It’s naive to say that we can stop . . . forces coming through the border,” said Luong, who oversees troops in a part of eastern Afghanistan that includes the volatile Khost province and 162 miles of border.

Full Story Here:
Commander: US can’t seal Afghan-Pakistan border

Let’s face facts and call it like it really is; we can’t seal our own border.

On December 8, 1941 the United States declared war on Japan, and on December 11, 1941 the United States declared war on Germany. We entered World War II.

Germany unconditionally surrendered on May 7, 1945. On August 14, 1945 Japan surrendered unconditionally as well.

In three years and 8 months WWII was effectively fought, and won, and came to an end, with Germany and Japan now considered to be our friends and allies.

The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001. The Iraq War, Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20, 2003.

We have been engaged in Afghanistan for 9 years and 2 months, and there is no definitive victory in sight. We have been in Iraq for 7 years and 9 months, and while some claim that Iraq has been pacified, the Iraqis still suffer homicide bombings on an almost daily basis.

Let me point out, both Afghanistan and Iraq are approximately the same size in square miles as is the state of Texas. These are NOT WWII engagements. They are regional engagements and for some strange reason, a nation that entered, fought and brought a definitive end to WWII can’t seem to bring regional battles to a victorious conclusion.

We aren’t fighting an organized, uniformed enemy, we are fighting an ideology. We are fighting radical Islam. That is to say, contrary to what Hussein Obama says, we ARE at war with Islam and its members.

Part of the problem with winning an uncontested victory in Afghanistan is the fact that as much as some of the various sects hate each other, they hate America even more.

WASHINGTON — Rival militant organizations on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border have increasingly been teaming up in deadly raids, in what military and intelligence officials say is the insurgents’ latest attempt to regain the initiative after months of withering attacks from American and allied forces.

Full Story Here:
Insurgents Set Aside Rivalries on Afghan Border

We can’t get a consensus on anything here in the USA, but tribal leaders and their followers, can work out their differences as they consolidate joint resources to kill Americans.

We, on the other hand, have no desire to engage in an all out war, be it Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else.

Make NO mistake, our troops are more than willing to go anywhere we need them to go. They will do whatever they are allowed to do. They will break things, they will make a terrible mess of the entire area and kill anything big enough to die.

IF they are allowed to do so…

Sadly, our troops are willing, but the U.S. government, the President and the DoD don’t seem to have a bit of FIGHT in them. They are worried about ‘world opinion’, they are concerned about political correctness and collateral damages, so concerned that our troops are under orders to NOT place non-combatants in danger.

There’s a serious *catch* to that philosophy, when you’re fighting an enemy that is an insurgency, when your enemy is wearing the same garments as is every other resident of whatever nation you are in, when nearly everyone, good guys and bad, are armed to the teeth and carrying AK-47′s, just how in the hell do our troops know who the enemy really is?

Is Ed Rendell right? Have we become a nation of *wussies*?

Granted, Rendell is talking about a football game, but did he hit a true note with that statement? Has our leadership become an administration of wussies?

“My biggest beef is that this is part of what’s happened in this country,” Rendell said in an interview on 97.5 radio in Philly. “I think we’ve become wussies. … We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.” SOURCE

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ROME (AP) - A loosely linked movement of European anarchists who want to bring down state and financial institutions is becoming more violent and coordinated after decades out of the spotlight, and may be responding to social tensions spawned by the continent’s financial crisis, security experts say.

Italian police said Tuesday that letter bombs were sent to three embassies in Rome by Italian anarchists in solidarity with jailed Greek anarchists, who had asked their comrades to organize and coordinate a global “revolutionary war.”

Identical package bombs exploded at the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome on Dec. 23, badly wounding the two people who opened them. A third bomb was safely defused at the Greek Embassy on Monday.

“We’re striking again, and we do so in response to the appeal launched by our Greek companions,” the Italian group known as the Informal Anarchist Federation wrote in a claim of responsibility for the third bomb that was released by police here Tuesday.

Full Story Here:
European anarchists grow more violent, coordinated

Anarchists are also becoming very active right here in the United States.

For those that don’t know what anarchy, or anarchism truly are, or are all about, these are the definitions from the fine folks at Dictionary.com.

anarchy – noun

1. a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.

2. a person who seeks to overturn by violence all constituted forms and institutions of society and government, with no purpose of establishing any other system of order in the place of that destroyed.

3. a person who promotes disorder or excites revolt against any established rule, law, or custom.

anarchism –noun

1. a doctrine urging the abolition of government or governmental restraint as the indispensable condition for full social and political liberty.

2. the methods or practices of anarchists, as the use of violence to undermine government.

I visit a lot of political, government and police sites. Some lean to the right, some lean to the left, some shoot down the middle and some fall everywhere in between. I read the articles, but most importantly, I read the comments. The author of the original story gives you a look into his/her beliefs and desires regarding the direction they wish to see America take.

The comments on those stories tends to give the reader a look into the hearts and minds of the American public.

I have long defined myself as a Conservative libertarian, a *little l* libertarian.

That’s because I can’t embrace the full platform of the Libertarian party. I don’t care if you believe that your drug use doesn’t hurt anyone but you, it’s still drug use and it’s still illegal. In fact, the very idea that YOUR drug use hurts no one but you is a total fallacy, one made up by persons intent on making illicit drugs LEGAL.

Smaller government, personal responsibility, acceptance of others and their freedom to live their lives as they see fit, all of that I can accept. You can pretty much do as you please, as long as it doesn’t hurt me, my family, my community, state or nation. Knock yourself out.

Drug usage, YOUR drug usage, affects me, and every other non-user in America. Your drug usage causes wrecks on the streets and highways of this nation. Your drug use leads to increased medical costs for taxpayers. Drug users, hard users, rarely have a job or healthcare, but they always have money for drugs. Usually their drug income originates from the labors of others, as the druggies steal from hard working Americans to pay for their habits. That affects ME!

Your drug usage finances the drug cartels and organizations of Mexico, Central and South America and S.E. Asia. Your drug use, indirectly, leads to the murders, kidnapping and torture of people in other parts of the world. How’s that for YOUR actions, your drug use, not affecting others?

I have encountered far too many hard core Libertarians (borderline anarchists) that are so intent on the idea that ALL drugs need to be made legal for all consenting adults that I am sick of it.

I see many Libertarians that are truly anarchists in their ideas that the Police Officers of this nation are the enemy and are infringing on them, and their self perceived God given right, to waste their minds and bodies, and in the process, endanger a nation full of non-users by their careless and reckless actions while stoned on their drugs of choice. These people only have one desire, to consume huge amounts of what they call recreational narcotics and damn the rest of us.

I see, and hear those that claim the Police Officers of this nation are the scum of the earth and are nothing more than NAZI enforcers and Fascists. All because those Police Officers are enforcing the laws of the land.

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Local woman one of 2 to live after getting deadly infection

There was a time last year when the lining of Lisa Mallet’s lungs were as thin as a sheet of Bible paper and every cough would rip right through them. That was in August 2009, months before she would know that she would become one of few known survivors of “Iraqibacter.�?

On Aug. 17, 2009, Mallet, then 21, said she was at home with her 5-year-old son Keith and felt like she had a fever. She was 26 weeks pregnant and her husband, Cody Mallet, an Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office deputy, was on patrol.

“At 2 a.m. I got a phone call that something was wrong,�? Cody Mallet said. “We stayed in the hospital two nights before they diagnosed her with pneumonia. On that third day she told us she was tired of breathing and we knew this was bad.�?

Lisa Mallet, right, enjoys Christmas with her family this year after surviving a rare bacterial infection a year ago. Mallet is one of only two documented survivors of the deadly infection nicknamed Iraqibacter.

Day four an emergency C-Section was scheduled to take baby Carson who weighed only 3 pounds at the time of his birth. He was transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Lafayette while his mother lay in a hospital bed unaware she gave birth to her second son.

A team of doctors, seeing that the pneumonia was not improving, changed their diagnosis to pulmonary edema and decided to put her into a paralytic coma so her body could rest and rebuild itself.

“She only got worse,�? Cody Mallet said.

A third diagnosis, this time acute respiratory distress syndrome, and Lisa continued to decline — fast.

She was transferred to Lafayette General Medical Center, a trip that took only nine minutes but doctors were not confident she would survive the trip.

She was supposed to be in her deepest comatose state but she remembers, she said.

“I remember they (her family) were all yelling at me ‘You’re not alone’,�? Lisa Mallet said. “They wanted someone at the hospital when I left and someone in Lafayette when I got there so I knew I wasn’t alone.�?

In Lafayette, the diagnosis process started all over again, Cody Mallet said. The family was told she had a less than 2 percent chance of surviving.

Her lungs collapsed in Lafayette and doctors decided she must have H1N1. She was quarantined.

With a wife quarantined at one hospital and a preemie baby in NICU across town, Cody Mallet was running on empty. He would come home to Coteau to shower, change clothes and go to work. When he got off of work, it was back to Lafayette, first to see baby Carson then to see his wife. He did this every day for more than 45 days. He had to work, he said, to pay the bills. He said the Sheriff’s Office was gracious and lenient during this time, understanding when he was late or had to miss a shift. His checks were never short though, he said.

Cody Mallet didn’t get to hold baby Carson until he was two months old, he said.

After being diagnosed with H1N1, Lisa Mallet developed ventilated assisted pneumonia, which stuck with her as her lungs collapsed again.

“It was a roller coaster,�? Cody Mallet said. “The doc called us in and told us she contracted a very serious bacterial infection called acinetobacter bumanii nicknamed “Iraqibacter�? because it is believed to come from the soil in Iraq and brought to the states on the boots of the troops returning from war.�?

Many people are believed to carry the bacteria, doctors said, but only immuno-compromised people fall victim to its debilitating effects.

“This thing was super bad and not very popular,�? Cody Mallet said. “It’s multi drug-resistant and the few drugs that can be used are so toxic that they could kill you.�?

Doctors at Women’s and Children’s Hospital, familiar with what baby Carson’s mom was going through, called him the “miracle baby.�?

After his premature birth he was on a ventilator for only six hours before he began breathing on his own.

“They didn’t understand how he didn’t show signs of the infection,�? Cody Mallet said.

Lisa Mallet did not respond to the first three antibiotics doctors used. The fourth, which doctors could only administer for five days because of its lethal nature, seemed to work.

“One day she would be better, than the next she’d be worse until finally she just kept getting better,�? Cody Mallet said.

On Sept. 20, 2009, Lisa Mallet awoke for the first time since the ordeal began.

“How long have I been asleep,�? she said she asked. “Where is my baby?�?

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