Something I began to notice when I got his DD214 and after reading his book (about 4 times) is that this Matthew Alexander is quite different from the Matthew Alexander I saw in his interviews. This is a very studly record for an Air Force Officer, and the book is an excellent story about an aspect of the war in Iraq that’s not often discussed. I highly recommend the book…from your local library. Unfortunately, any money you pay for the book will go into the pocket of the Matthew Alexander who was on the book tour. That Matthew Alexander is a liar and has an agenda.

He began his book tour circuit with Keith Olbermann;

There are a couple of funny things about this clip. At about 2:40 into the video, Olbermann slips up and calls Alexander by his real name – that’s how our research staff uncovered his real name. After Olbermann’s slip, it was just a process of elimination.

Obviously, Olbermann didn’t read the book, or if he did, he didn’t mind that Alexander lied about what he wrote in the book. In the interview, Alexander said he’d convinced the terrorist to give up Zarqawi in six hours. In the book, he wrote that it took weeks.

In the interview, Alexander says that he used interrogation techniques in Iraq that the military isn’t using, however, throughout the book, he credits his instructors at the “Schoolhouse” (his word) for teaching him these new techniques. But in one brief paragraph he says he talked religion with a terrorist which would have made his instructors at the “Schoolhouse”, to use his phrase, “shit bricks” – so I have to assume that the whole book is about that one little conversation since that’s the only time he deviated from his training by his own admission.

Now, Matthew Alexander tells us to take his book and his story at face value – that we shouldn’t question his methods because he was the man on the ground. But here he interviews again with with Keith Olbermann in April, and based strictly on the general, non-specific information that Olbermann provides, Alexander spends five minutes second-guessing interrogation methods used in operations for which he wasn’t present and he labels them “failures”;

In the first interview, he tells us that he’s looking to the future and not interested in placing blame anywhere – yet here he is, dwelling in the past and placing blame on other interrogators.

In the following video, Alexander tries to make the point that treatment of Guantanamo prisoners influenced foreign fighters to join al Qaeda. That’s just foolish on it’s face. No matter where the prison is located, no matter how our prisoners from this war are treated – if they were held in a Las Vegas hotel THAT would become the excuse for them to join al Qaeda. We’re not talking about a bunch of people who are firmly rooted in reality.

In fact, this MoveOn.org/Soros organization AVAAZ is using Alexander’s words in this series of posters which plaster the walls on the Washington DC Metro subway system;

In this video interview, Alexander tells Jon Stewart that he hides his name, not because he’s scared of terrorists finding out who he is, but rather because he’s afraid of the military.

A few months ago, Alexander changed his story about why he used a pseudonym to write the book. He told an interviewer from the Spy Museum that it was protect his family from al Qaeda. So I guess he was just afraid of the military while the Bush Administration was running it. More accurately, he’s probably afraid that his fellow interrogators will find out his real name.

I made the mistake of watching the interviews before I read the book. When I was about halfway through the book, I wondered if I had the right book because it read nothing like what I heard in the interviews Alexander had done on TV. In the interviews he did, Alexander constantly made the point that he was using techniques that no one else had ever employed in this war, but throughout the book, he compares the techniques he learned from the “Schoolhouse” to those being used by some in his prison. In other words, the military was teaching the methods he used, but a few interrogators weren’t using them. That doesn’t make the military wrong nor does it verify that we had “policy of torture” during the Bush years, it just makes some interrogators untrainable.

In one part of the book, Alexander recounts a story of how he diagnosed a child in South America, while on a “medical operation”, with a flesh-eating disease. Although I found in his records where he’d once been deployed on a medical operation to Bolivia, he was assigned as an administrator not in a medical capacity, so I think that he claims that he was diagnosing patients was a bit of embellishment.

I mention that story because, the main story in his book might be the same sort of embellishment. Alexander claims that he met with the terrorist who gave up Zarqawi in unreported visits to the terrorist’s cell. I say unreported because no one (including Federal investigators) can find evidence that Matthews did indeed meet with the guy. He was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for merit for his service during that time and it doesn’t mention this successful operation specifically. It seems to me that, as important as the results were, if Alexander had something to do with the operation, it would have been detailed instead of being lumped in with “numerous combat operations of national significance”.

Lately, Alexander has allied himself with the ACLU joining The Torture Project to bore through Bush Era documents relating to torture. I suspect that he’s doing it because he needs money (his book did poorly among the Liberals – if you meet a Liberal who said he read the book, he’s probably lying). However, he says it’s because of the Bush Administration’s legacy of torture and abuse. In the Huffington Post, he wrote;

First, VP Cheney said, “This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately… it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do.” He further stated, “It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so.” That is simply untrue. Anyone who served in Iraq, and veterans on both sides of the aisle have made this argument, knows that the foreign fighters did not come to Iraq en masse until after the revelations of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. I heard this from captured foreign fighters day in and day out when I was supervising interrogations in Iraq.

He heard it from captured foreign fighters who he admits in the book lied to him on a minute-by-minute basis – but they’re telling the truth about this particular subject. He echoed the same sentiment in another Huffington Post article;

If the Obama administration decides to release these memos, then I suggest they also release statistics from Iraq showing the number of foreign fighters that were recruited because of our policy of torture and abuse. It was tracked. I know because I saw the slides and because I heard captured foreign fighters state this day in and day out. The government can also release the statistics that show that 90% of suicide bombers in Iraq were these same foreign fighters.

Abu Ghraib was an anomaly for which several criminals were punished – in fact they were in the process of being punished well before the media got a whiff of the trouble there. So obviously, there wasn’t a “policy of torture”.

Alexander’s problem isn’t with our policy, it’s with his pocketbook. His book was a failure – he only made back a few hundred dollars of his advance from the publisher. It’s not because of the content of the book, but because he made it part of the Liberal electioneering last year and the Left liked his interviews more than the book. The book did little to support their anti-Bush tirade in the last election – but his interviews were jam-packed with BDS. So the book wasn’t a literary failure, it was a public relations failure.

And, oh, all of this expertise that Alexander brings to the discussion is based on three months of practical application. Yes, that is all of the time he spent actually interrogating actual terrorists. He says he supervised over a thousand interrogations – only because he was a team leader of several interrogators. He didn’t directly supervise those interrogations – if you read the book, you’ll notice that he’s hardly aware of what other team members are doing.

I haven’t told you Alexander’s real name because I’m not sure if he’s still in the military. Obviously, he has a talent for interrogating our enemies and I don’t want to be the reason he stops doing that if he’s still in the military. I found a promotion announcement on the internet that reports that he’s on the LTC list and scheduled for promotion next June, yet somehow we got his military records so I have to sort that out. Just by knowing his real name, I was able to find his immediate family in about five minutes, so I’m not going to be the guy that puts his family in danger if any exists.

I will, however, provide his real name and his complete unredacted records to anyone who emails me through my AKO account (where I can verify your identity). If you don’t know what an AKO account is, you don’t have one.

Shared via AddThis

Did Russia just blow up?

BREAKING NEWS: Georgia cabinet minster says Georgian troops are in control of capital of South Ossetia, four Russian warplanes shot down; Russian military officials claiming 10 “peacekeepers” killed, 30 wounded in fighting.

This is not good for a couple of reasons.

First, the Georgian military claims to have occupied the area. Furthermore they claim to have shot down a couple of Russian combat aircraft. Civilians have been killed and both sides are blaming the other.

Georgia wants to join NATO and expects some help from the west. Putin can not and will not let this stand.

Stay tuned.

The Wall Street Journal‘s Kimberley Strassel throws back the covers on the new traitors to the Republican Party, led by COB6′s favorite bitch-slap target;

…in stumbled Sens. Lindsey Graham, John Thune, Saxby Chambliss, Bob Corker and Johnny Isakson — alongside five Senate Democrats. This “Gang of 10″ announced a “sweeping” and “bipartisan” energy plan to break Washington’s energy “stalemate.” What they did was throw every vulnerable Democrat, and Mr. Obama, a life preserver.

That’s because the plan is a Democratic giveaway. New production on offshore federal lands is left to state legislatures, and then in only four coastal states. The regulatory hurdles are huge. And the bill bars drilling within 50 miles of the coast — putting off limits some of the most productive areas. Alaska’s oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is still a no-go.

The highlight is instead $84 billion in tax credits, subsidies and federal handouts for alternative fuels and renewables. The Gang of 10 intends to pay for all this in part by raising taxes on . . . oil companies! The Sierra Club couldn’t have penned it better. And so the Republican Five has potentially given antidrilling Democrats the political cover they need to neutralize energy through November.

When are these peckerheads in the Senate going to learn that you compromising with Democrats wins nothing? Chuck Hagel tried to throw in with the anti-war caucus eighteen months ago and he’s become a punchline. Graham has turned every Republican in the country against him for the capitulation to the pro-illegal-immigrant clowns. And now, they’re recommending the same failed policies of the last forty years as an energy solution.

This isn’t a compromise – it’s a Democrat victory. And the five Republicans who’ve pretended to hammer out this surrender package (when all they really did was let the Democrats dictate the terms of the new programs) need to explain to the American workers why they think $4/gallon gasoline is reasonable. And then resign…or run for their seats as Democrats and see if their constituents want to be represented by turncoat, traitorous, backstabbing, two-faced, cowards.

This isn’t an energy plan…it’s wishful thinking and $84 billion to special interests who haven’t come up with an alternative fuel source in the last forty years. What makes them think they come up with one a timely manner now? Even if one began production today, do we really think Americans will just park their current vehicles and run out to buy the new vehicles? Who are these f’in retards and do they have a brain in their heads?

“Guilty … as ORDERED”?
Naturally, I would never suggest that the New York Times stoops to a predetermined editorial narrative with which it proceeds, and toward which it slants news coverage, without a care in the world about what facts actually happen. But today’s “Guilty as Ordered” rant about the Hamdan military commission trial has to take the cake. The first paragraph is so shamefully dishonest and misrepresentative of reality as to defy one’s necessarily low expectations of the Gray Lady:

“Now that was a real nail-biter. The court designed by the White House and its Congressional enablers to guarantee convictions of high-profile detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — using evidence obtained by torture and secret evidence as desired — has held its first trial. It produced … a guilty verdict.”

Today the military court announced the sentence.

The New York Times will no doubt cover the sentence with as much furor as it did the verdict.

Was it death by hanging? Nope.
Life in GITMO as a training aid for fascist interrogators? Nope.
Forty years of hard labor in a secret government prison? Nope.

Did the evil Nazi military court dream up something more inhuman than we could possibly imagine?

Nope.

Bin Laden’s driver received six months.

Chirp, chirp, chirp.

Hillary Clinton told a group of supporters recently that she has not yet decided whether she will put her name in for a roll-call vote at the Democratic convention in Denver later this month.

The New York senator was filmed addressing the matter apparently at a California fundraiser last week. The video was posted on YouTube.

“I happen to believe that we will come out stronger if people feel that their voices were heard and their views respected. And I think that is a very big part of how we actually come out unified, because I know from just what I’m hearing that there is just this incredible pent up desire,” Clinton said in the video, after being asked by a supporter if she’d consider putting her name in for the nomination.

“And I think people want to feel like ‘Okay, it’s a catharsis, we’re here, we did it,’ and then everybody get behind Senator Obama. … No decisions have been made.”

Clinton said she was trying to work out the issue with the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Such a vote would presumably allow her remaining delegates to throw their symbolic support behind Clinton on the convention floor.

“I could be wrong, but the best way I think is to have a strategy where my delegates feel that they have a role and that their legitimacy has been validated,” Clinton said.

What she’s up to is a rhetorical question obviously.

The Clinton machine is watching the polls carefully. They know that Obama should be up 12 points right now and anticipating another 4-6 point bounce after the convention.

More importantly, Clinton realizes the likely “Bradley Effect” that these polls are showing. Bottom line; Obama needs at least an 8 point lead on election day to win in a squeaker and that’s not looking very likely at this point.

Hillary needs to cut Obama off at the knees without being too obvious about it.

This postures her for another run in 2012.

The real fun will be the Stalin-esqe Purge of the Democrat party that Clinton will lead.

In any case, the childish antics that Democrats are notorious for will be in full bloom in Denver.

I like this picture of Skye, so this gives me chance to post it again;

Since they can’t stop the pro-victory movement from showing up against their “peace vigil” every Saturday, Skye writes in the Free Republic that the aged hippies are trying to use legal (or extra-legal means) to silence them. Below is the letter that  Rich Davis, the founder of the movement in West Chester, received (you can click the letter to make it larger, if you need to);

Skye writes;

The same tactic was employed by a VFP’er Sandy Kelson in Erie, Pa and it failed magnificently. As will this latest stunt by the ‘peace’ movement. The CCPM is the same group that can boast of having a convicted ‘peace slapper’ in their midst.

Personally, I fail to see what getting lawyers involved at this point would gain. The war’s damn near over. Both candidates for president have admitted that they’ll keep troops in Iraq – especially because the war is winding down. It sounds to me like there are a couple of mental defectives who’ve taken their supposedly altruistic movement and turned it into some sort of personal vendetta against anyone who disagrees with them. But when your whole ideology is centered on emotional reactions, you’re bound to attract some sociopaths.

As Skye says, there’s only one side in this that’s had someone arrested for irrational behavior, and it ain’t the Sheepdogs.

Spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said there was consensus in the group that Iran’s latest reply to the offer was “very disappointing” and “a stalling tactic” that had left the group with no option other than to seek new sanctions.

“We are very disappointed that Iran has yet again failed to give Javier Solana a clear answer to the … generous incentives package,” he told reporters. “We agreed that we have no choice but to pursue further measures against Iran.”

Despite the strong language, Iran seems unafraid. I wonder why?

…a one-page document which was submitted to Solana on Tuesday and was supposed to contain either an acceptance or rejection of negotiations over the package.

Instead, the response repeated Iran’s long-standing position that it has a right to peaceful nuclear activities and said it would not give a definitive answer to the offer until its own questions about it had been answered.

The Iranians have the Russians running a screen play for them, just as the Soviets did for Hussein and later the Russians did for Serbia (Washington Post link);

Vitaly I. Churkin, said the six nations should continue negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. He dismissed assertions by the United States, Britain and France that Tehran had missed a deadline this week to respond to the offer, which would make a push for U.N. sanctions inevitable.

“We haven’t set any deadlines for their response,” he said. “We have some negotiating opportunities, and rather than focus almost entirely on sanctions we should focus on what those opportunities should be.”

Churkin’s remarks raised the prospect of renewed strains between Washington and Moscow over Iran policy during the final months of President Bush’s tenure.

So the Israelis, who don’t have the luxury of time and distance that the debating society at Turtle Bay enjoys, are making plans of their own. They use language that’s a little bit stronger (Reuters link);

Israeli cabinet minister Shaul Mofaz, a contender to succeed the prime minister, denounced his native Iran on Wednesday as “the root of all evil” and said its nuclear program constituted a threat to world peace.

Mofaz was speaking a day after he launched a campaign for a party leadership election next month that will lead to the replacement of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

And they’ve got the clout (Fox News link);

The Jewish state has purchased 90 F-16I fighter planes that can carry enough fuel to reach Iran, and will receive 11 more by the end of next year. It has bought two new Dolphin submarines from Germany reportedly capable of firing nuclear-armed warheads — in addition to the three it already has.

And, of course, while the US pussyfoots around with Iran over the insurgency against our troops in Iraq, not to mention the Iraqis themselves, using the language of the American Left, which in itself is shameful, the Iranians deny they’re involved in Iraq…despite the mounting evidence to the contrary(India News);

The Iranian mission to the UN issued a statement Wednesday rejecting the charge by US Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff that its government contributed to the insurgent war and undermined peace efforts by the Iraqi government.

“The US government unwarrantedly insists on its unacceptable behaviour in scapegoating others, including Iran, for its own wrong policies in Iraq in order to distract attention from the sources of US failures in that country,” Iranian Ambassador Mehdi Danesh Yazdi said.

Now, someone explain to me how the Islamic Republic deserves to be treated as a rational actor. This is a pattern of the enemies of freedom that we’ve seen played out so many times in the last century. They bank on the fact that the world community, the so-called civilized nations, are too weak to force rational behavior from them, and they go on their merry way until thousands, sometimes millions, of lives are lost and world security is placed at risk.

It’s always left up to the US or Israel to act unilaterally, then world gasps at the audacity and condemns the actions, while privately heaving a sigh of relief. Iran is begging for it, so why wait? Someone’s going to do something, why not sooner than later?

To Hell with Code Pink, IVAW, MoveOn and all the rest of the little brainless nitwits who want to neuter the US’ military advantage for their own selfish emotional reasons. Do something. Now.

Barack Obama throttled Hillary Clinton in the Georgia primary by two to one. This beat down inspired democrat Vernon Jones to run in the Democrat senate primary as a Barry-Clone.

That didn’t work out so well for Vernon.

Politicians grabbing Barack Obama’s coattails should take note: In the Georgia democratic Senatorial primary runoff held yesterday, Jim Martin defeated Vernon Jones by a 60% to 40%. Martin will now face the Republican senior Senator from Georgia, Saxby Chambliss, in November’s election. This doesn’t seem to bode well for Obama’s presidential quest. Jones’s campaign hoped to emulate Obama’s impressive primary victory in Georgia (he defeated Senator Hillary Clinton in Georgia, 66.4% to 31.1%), but now he’s failed to even make it to November’s ballot.

In fact, Jones distributed campaign paraphernalia consisting of a picture of himself and Obama, with the words “Yes We Can!” prominently scrawled underneath the photographs….

Reading that reminded of a recent article that I read about Obama running through money like crap through a goose. What struck me then was that he was spending money in places where he has zero chance of winning, like Texas.

The stories of Obama spending all over creation while McCain seems focused on battle ground states are still out there.

This one got my attention:

Obama is outspending McCain in: Florida, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana, New Hampshire, and North Dakota.

What’s interesting here is that McCain is outspending Obama in almost all the “traditional swing states.” Most of the states Obama is outspending McCain in are states that most figured wouldn’t even be in play this year — Georgia, North Carolina, Indiana, and North Dakota.

It’s also interesting to see that McCain has spent NOTHING in Florida while Obama has spent more there than anywhere else.

When you are spending millions against zero and get results like this, a person has to wonder.

Georgia: McCain +11
Florida McCain +6

I came across this protest for Food Not Bombs back in May which was scheduled for June 28th. When I went, they weren’t there, but luckily, the protest against Guantanamo was going on instead so I cut my loses and it turned out pretty good, blogwise, not protest-wise. So I got back home and checked the website again – they’d changed the date.

We are very sorry about the change in date. Problems with the food and logistics. If Bush starts bombing Iran before August 6th we plan to start the Tent City two days later.

So, I patiently waited until today. Since TSO works near Lafayette Park, he graciously agreed to do a good infantry recon before I committed logistics and communications to the mission at hand. Well, he called me several minutes ago and reported no hippiesque activity not discernable from normal tourist operations. I called the phone number on the website and the mailbox is full.

So the only picture I have of this protest is this one;

Well, no one ever said hippies were dependable, did they? But, it’s like TSO said when he called; it’s getting so you can’t believe anything you read on the internet anymore.

TSO sends this picture of himself looking for the hippies in Lafayette Park;