Bill SprichtJust another WordPress weblog

Via Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: A German court has lifted the ban on the deportation of the “Caliph of Cologne” — Kalif von Köln. Granted asylum in Germany in 1992, Metin Kaplan later proclaimed the caliphate of Cologne and was then convicted of “calling for murder” (Mordaufruf) in 2000. Since then the government has been trying to get him out of Germany. No such luck. Until today, he’s been very successful in court. And even though the court today lifted the ban, it still indicated that deportation should not occur quickly. This means the Kalif will the opportunity to try every other court his team can think of, including the European court of human rights. He alleges he would face torture if delivered post haste to Turkey; the Turkish government has promised to be fair (I don’t know what it is he did there that makes him scared to return.) Moreover, the poor Kalif has prostate cancer and has notes from two docs saying he is not in any shape to travel. (Want to wager on that?)

It’s amazing to me how difficult it can be to deport someone who has already been convicted and spent time in jail for inciting murder. What else needs to be proved? I bet it is far easier to get asylum than it is to be kicked out. That’s an example of Western suicide.

I have no idea who Princess Louise is/was, but the cool good guys from last week in Iraq were her “Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders,” who, if you didn’t catch the story already, initiated and very successfully completed the first British bayonette charge in over 20 years. Read about it. And let’s not forget those who preceded them:

• The Argylls’ forebears formed The Thin Red Line which kept 25,000 Russians at bay at Balaclava during the Crimean War of the 1850s.
• In 1967, Argylls commander Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Mitchell known as Mad Mitch stormed a rebel stronghold in Yemen.
• Accompanied only by 15 pipers playing Scotland The Brave, he recaptured Crater Town, the commercial heart of Aden, which had been in enemy hands for two weeks.
• The regiment has won 16 Victoria Crosses.

I don’t think the pipers were around this time, but Mad Mitch would have been proud.

I know it is terribly unfashionable in this post-historical age to think there is anything special or sacred about military tradition and values. Things like discipline, for example. Yet in this Washington Post exclusive story about the possibility that General Sanchez was present at Abu Ghraib when torture was inflicted during interrogations, we have a Brigadier General (Karpinski) giving interviews and posing suggestive questions:

• In an interview yesterday, Karpinski said the number of visits by a commanding general struck her as “unusual,” especially because Sanchez had not visited several of the 15 other U.S. detention facilities in Iraq.
• Karpinski has said that she is being used as a scapegoat for the command failures at Abu Ghraib.
• The general, a reservist from South Carolina, said she was not present during Sanchez’s visits because her brigade had surrendered authority over that part of the prison to intelligence officers. She said she was alerted as a courtesy while the three-star general was planning to travel to the prison. Karpinski added that Sanchez might have visited without her knowledge after the intelligence officers were given formal authority over the entire prison on Nov. 19.

“He has divisions all over Iraq, and he has time to visit Abu Ghraib three times in a month?” Karpinski asked yesterday. “Why was he going out there so often? Did he know that something was going on?”

Am I the only one shocked to read that she is saying these things “in an interview”? Even if she is 100% correct, I am shocked. Is she still part of the Reserve or has she officially resigned? Even if she has resigned, does she not realize she is speculating about the commanding officer in a war and concerning an issue that she knows full well will be used by hostile media around the world in order to intensify hatred towards the United States?