Day: June 8, 2006

Absolutely. He was the self proclaimed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. He was acknowledged as such by Osama Bin Ladin and Zawahiri. If instead Al Qaeda had successfully killed our President, or even a top general in Iraq like General Casey it would be a major coup for them and a serious blow to us. So the same is true when we successfully kill their general in the theatre and one of his top lieutenants. Not to mention the 17 other safe houses coalition forces raided successfully today. Just imagine 17 separate Al Qaeda attacks in one day. 17 US soldiers captured in different parts of Iraq on one day.

Make no mistake this is a major blow.

Some are already saying others will rise to take his place. No doubt they will. Until our enemy realizes the fight is hopeless they will continue but for now they are shaken.

More than anything I know this was a major blow to Al Qaeda and a major victory for the Iraqi people, the new Iraqi government, the United States, and coalition forces because of a post my friend at Treasure of Baghdad just put up titled The Thousand-Miles Road Starts with One Step: Continue reading “Does Zarqawis Death Matter?”

I’ve avoided writing about the Haditha situation (Marines accused–mostly by the far left–of “atrocities” in Haditha last November in an incident that was under active investigation by the military long before any Mass Media Podpeople whistles blew). I’ve done so because others are doing a fine job of handling the situation. Michael Yon, though, has outdone the best of the blogosphere and responsible traditional media with Hijacking Haditha.

Just read it.

You might also read Rick’s post at The Real Ugly American pointing to and commenting on an American Thinker Piece. Given the facts presented there, one might almost think Dan Rather’s behind the Haditha massacre story… I’ll not link directly to the American Thinker piece, cos I’d rather you licked up the link from Rick and read his comments as well.

Weeelll, playing around with Puppy Linux. Yeh, you heard me. I was over at The Florida Masochist reading a post about assault with a dead chihuahua, and I thought, “Hmmm… I’d better check that “Chihuahuas were bred for food” memory I had float to the surface. A quick Google search later, I had verification from several sources and… a link to someone talking about their experience with Puppy Linux, a Live CD distro (that can also be installed on a hard drive) that’s a mere 70 MB download (for the ISO image), and which can run in memory (apps n all) on most modern computers.

There are smaller footprint versions of Puppy Linux, but I chose the one that includes Opera 9 (beta 2) web browser. Slick. A really short config of video, mouse, ethernet–all using easy wizard-based configuration tools where i simply accepted the default all the way through, in order to see if it’d work as well for someone—the proverbial “Aunt Tilly” *heh*—who has no technical expertise as for a techie-oriented guy.

Works just fine.

I was planning on putting together a new Linux box to play around with the new “Dapper Dan” Ubuntu 6, but I may just slap a couple together and put Puppy Linux on another, as well. This is a slick, fast, capable lil OS, from what I’ve seen so far. Nice.

Lines from Schiiler’s poem, An die Freude, which Beethoven credited as the inspiration for his Ninth Symphony, have been running through my head off n on today…

See, I had this “real world” project that’s taken me away from the computer much of the day but at the same time kept me around the house. I was gonna just put the Eroica on and let it lift me up a bit, energize me (a lot), but then I thought about those nine mp3 downloads from last summer, the nine performances of Beethoven’s symphonies by the BBC orchestra.

Wonderful! Burned off a fresh mp3 CD with all nine and popped it in the DVD player in the living room (where much of my “real world” project was going on.

What a way to lighten the work! I always forget how much I love the first symphony until I hear it again. *heh* but then, despite folks’ saying for years that all the odd-numbered ones are so much better than Bethoven’s even-numbered symphonies, they’re all simply wonderful.

Yeh, the mp3s lack a little in sound reproduction as against decent DDD Cd performance reproductions, and I retired my venerable RCA three-ways with their wonderfully smoothe frequency responses, and my ears are older and sometimes rather full of the “tintinabulation of the bells, the bells, the bells…” but musical memory fills in the holes and gaps with years of remembered performances heqard (and a few participated in), so the play of the recordings was mostly an evocation of that musical memory base.

Another pleasant thing.

“Freude, schöner Götterfunken,” indeed!

Food for the soul. Thanks, Ludwig!

Well, I’m a little slow outa the gate this morning… Committees of Correspondence and Stop the ACLU were first in my inbox this a.m. with the news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is R.I.H.—roasting in hell (although only CofC actually implied those appropriate words).

Seems like a time for a reprise—and an update—of Sympathy for the Devil, written from the heart as a “get well” card in doggerel for the clown after he’d been rumored to have been wounded:

To: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
(I’ve addressed this to you in Malawi,
Cos I hear you’re running
From folks who’re gunning
For you, for a lark on safari.)

Your wounds may be sorely pressing,
And even, perhaps, quite distressing,
But I take hope in this,
You insufferable piss-
They’ve poisoned your surgical dressing.

So, as your wounds fill with puss,
We’ll charter a big Grehound bus
To haul in the tourists
(We need no jurists)
To jeer as you whine, moan and fuss.

Your passing will leave us distressed,
For really, in case you’ve not guessed,
We all think it fitter
You suffer long, bitter
Agonies; yes, that is best.

Nah, on second thought, no real update. I’ll not rejoice that he’s suffering the agonies of hell, now, but I am glad he’s removed from a leadership position in al-Qaeda. Permanently.

Would someone like to pen new words to “Pore Judd is Daid” (Although somehow I think a hip-hop version of “Ding Dong, Zarqawi’s Dead” might be a lil better)? All I wanna know is where’s the funeral. I wanna send a baked ham for the wake.

Begging for new lyrics and Zarqawi funeral food recipes at TMH’s Bacon Bits (bacon bits! Let’s send a case of those!), Basil’s, Conservative Cat and Blue Star Chronicles.