AP - In this image provided by the US Navy a Standard Missile - 3 (SM-3) is launched from the Pearl Harbor-based ...
HONOLULU - U.S. Navy officials say one of two short-range ballistic missiles shot from a military facility in Hawaii in a defense system test was hit by an interceptor missile fired from a Navy ship.
Vice Adm. Samuel J. Locklear says Saturday's trial marked the first time that the Navy -- rather than the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency -- oversaw the firing of a so-called Standard Missile-3 interceptor against a ballistic missile target.
The San Diego-based U.S. Third Fleet had command and control of the mission, in which two target missiles were fired from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai island.
An SM-3 fired from the USS Paul Hamilton directly hit the first target missile. Another ship, the USS Hopper, failed to intercept the second target missile that was fired.
Barack Obama has stated he will eliminate Missile defense...UNPROVEN
The following is an excerpt from an article entitled, Your War On Jihad:
This is simply a conversation between two people — one who is voting for McCain, and one who is voting for Obama. The conversation eases gently into a heated debate, and any liberal Obama fan will be cheering for the conversation in the beginning.
THE Govern ment’s craven appeasement of militant Islam is plumbing new depths.
Under the guise of promoting tolerance, Ministers are tearing apart the legal fabric that was once part of the bedrock of our civilised society. In a shameful move, Jack Straw’s Ministry of Justice has announced that the Muslim sharia code, notorious for its oppression of women, is to be endorsed by the British judicial system for the first time. Sharia tribunal decisions on civil matters such as divorce, property rights and family disputes are now to be legally binding if rubber-stamped by a judge in court. But this will be little more than a formality, as each sharia ruling will be set out in a brief application form and neither of the parties will be required to attend court. This new act of surrender to the ideology of Islamic separatism runs counter to all the assurances that Labour politicians have given in recent months. When the Daily Express reve aled last year that sharia courts were informally operating in Muslim areas of London and northern England, we were accused of “scaremongering”.
In response to the infamous expression of support for sharia made in February by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Government promised that there were no plans to allow the code any legal jurisdiction in Britain, warning that such a step could lead to “social chaos”. Throughout the summer, Ministers maintained this front of denial. But now these words have been exposed as nothing more than empty political rhetoric designed to hide the sinister truth. As with mass immigration and European integration, the liberal political elite has decided to ignore the will of the British public.
Sharia law has now become a terrifying reality in our midst, without any vote or sanction from the people.
The Government’s approach could hardly be more damaging, either for our democracy or our social cohesion. A network of sharia courts across several of our major cities, including London and Birmingham, has already dealt with more than 100 cases since last summer.
Among them have been six cases of domestic violence, which should be a serious criminal matter reserved for the police and proper courts. In line with the anti-female bias of sharia, none of the men in these six incidents received any punishment but were instead sent for “anger management” training or “mentoring” by “community elders”. It is inevitable that there will now be a vast expansion of the role of sharia courts within Muslim areas. This creation of a parallel system of justice makes a mockery of the essential principle, stretching back to the signing of Magna Carta in 1215, that everyone is equal before the law. That ethos is more important than ever in a diverse society which can be held together only by a unified concept of British citizenship, requiring the acceptance of our laws and customs. Instead, Muslims are encouraged to believe that they are entitled to have separate rights and a separate identity. This is not the road to tolerance but the very opposite – in place of integration we will see distrust, suspicion and antagonism as Muslim hard liners ruthlessly expand sharia’s role, creating enclaves of bigotry and oppression. It is extraordinary that a government which has made such a fetish of its commitment to equality should be creating a legal system which enshrines open discrimination against women. For, like the rest of Islamic culture, sharia is profoundly misogynistic with women treated as second-class citizens in everything from child custody to inheritance. Thanks to political correctness, there has been a reluctance to tackle the oppression of women by Muslim men. According to a recent report from the Association of Chief Police Officers, no fewer than 17,000 women are subjected to Islamic honour-related violence in Britain every year, including assault, kidnappings, beatings and even murder. It is outrageous that instead of tackling this outrage, the Government wants to encourage it by promoting sharia courts where women are put under savage pressure by husbands, families and the male-dominated community elders. The legal system should provide protection to the vulnerable, not reinforce the power of the bullies. Harriet Harman, Labour’s Deputy Leader who has built her career on her feminist record of attacking male prejudice, should hang her head in shame. She would not dream of allowing such institutionalised discrimination to be practised by white men but when it comes to aggressive misogyny from an ethnic minority she remains disgracefully silent. The Government has adopted this stance entirely for reasons of cynicism and fear. On the one hand, Labour is desperate to win the votes of the two-million strong Muslim community. It is no coincidence that more than a quarter of the voters in Jack Straw’s Blackburn constituency are Muslim. On the other, like all too many Western governments, Labour is fearful of standing up to the zealots as every Muslim demand is accompanied by the clenched fist of violence or the finger hovering over the bomb control device. That is why the creeping Islamification of Britain will continue – not because Muslims have overwhelming numbers but because our leaders are unwilling to defend our values. The adoption of sharia is another milestone in our slide towards national suicide.
Disaster.
Imagine a campaign website that intentionally turns off all credit-card security, an unprecedented step that allows bogus names and addresses for donations.
Imagine a campaign that accepts made-up credit-card numbers, which are tried one after another until valid card numbers are found.
Or a campaign that retains forged computer addresses for its donations instead of the real donors' addresses.
Or a campaign that accepts untraceable prepaid cash cards that can be used to evade contribution limits or mask contributor identities.
Or a campaign that secretly shares its donor lists with ACORN, a group reportedly under a RICO investigation for multi-state vote fraud involving hundreds of thousands of fraudulent registrations.
Now imagine hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed, suspect donations orchestrated by foreign nationals and other persons unknown.
Roughly two-thirds of Barack Obama’s record haul derives from a website that intentionally disables all security checks that prevent basic fraud. In other words, that facilitates crooked donations complete with fake names, phony addresses, no donation limits and untraceable cards.
Now imagine that the same campaign, through its corrupt practices, wins control of law enforcement and prosecution in the United States.
Just say no to Barack Obama and vote fraud. Vote John McCain."Lost Horizon" was a classic movie, released in 1937 to great acclaim. Hitler was in power and preparing to launch a war of aggression; meanwhile wishful thinking prevailed in the democracies. This 4-minute clip captures a preachy scene in which a statesman espouses the glory of disarmament and the wickedness of nationalism. It's blatantly a plea to answer the Nazi threat with love rather than arms, and worth viewing because it illustrates the "enlightened" thinking of the day; an attitude that, we now know, directly led to the violent deaths of 60 million human beings.
At the time, the advocates of "peace" thought they were doing a wonderful thing, but history shows the practical effect of their good intentions. Listen to this dialogue, and see how familiar it sounds...disturbingly like what we hear today. Have we learned from the past, or are we doomed to repeat it?
"I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions...
"If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourselves, man, woman and child to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them."
"Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs."
Louis Fisher, Gandhi's biographer asked him: "You mean that the Jews should have committed collective suicide?"
Gandhi responded, "Yes, that would have been heroism."
WASHINGTON -- A U.S. Army report, based on interviews of Iranian-sponsored Shi'ite fighters, said Hizbullah was believed to provide better training and instruction than Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.The report, based on more than 28 U.S. intelligence documents, asserted that Iraqi Shi'ites preferred Hizbullah training in Lebanon rather than that of IRGC in Iran.
"Based on the accounts of multiple Iraqi militants that claimed to have been trained by Lebanese Hizbullah, the training in Lebanon is considered to be superior to the training conducting in Iran," the report, "Iranian Strategy in Iraq: Politics and Other Means," said. "Part of this assessment appears to be based on the fact that the instructors and students share Arabic as their native language and have an Arab cultural affinity."
Iraqi Shi'ite fighters, particularly those from the so-called Special Groups, were said to receive training in anti-aircraft missiles, anti-armor missiles, mortars, sniper skills, intelligence and management. The report said Hizbullah provides a course of up to four weeks on anti-armor missiles a German sniper rifle and intelligence. Iran was said to offer as 12-day course in the Russian-origin SA-7 shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile.
That's not just insurgency training where I come from.
"Iraqi SG trainees do not like their Iranian trainers," the report, authored by Joseph Felter and Brian Fishman, said. "The Iranians do not show the SG trainees any respect and feel they are better than the SG trainees. The SG trainees like and respect the Lebanese Hizbullah trainers because the Lebanese trainers speak Arabic and treat the SG trainees with respect."
Shi'ite fighters captured over the last 18 months were quoted in the U.S. intelligence documents as describing training in Iran. The fighters said Hizbullah instructors, wearing uniforms different from those of the IRGC, briefed Special Groups operatives on ambush, stealth, discipline and demeanor.
At one point, the Hizbullah instructor showed a suicide bombing of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1981. Hizbullah trainers also taught Shi'ites on how to avoid enemy fire, saying this was used by Palestinian insurgents against Israel.
"This is one of the specific events that gave the [detainee] impression that the instruction they received was developed mostly by LH [Lebanese Hizbullah] not IRGC," an intelligence report said.
The report said Hizbullah was probably training Iranian-sponsored fighters in Iraq as well. Felter and Fishman said Iran has concluded that Hizbullah shields Iran from charges of interference in Iraq.
"Employing the Lebanese Hizbullah trainers provides additional insulation and ameliorates the cultural tension between nationalist Iraqi militants and their Iranian sponsors," the report said.
