Bent Corner

Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, was convicted of supporting terrorism, but he was acquitted of conspiracy to murder. He was sentenced to only 66 months. Since he has already been held down in Guantanamo Bay for 51 months, he technically could go free in five months.

A jury of six US military officers, and not a judge, imposed the sentence.

After Hamdan completes the rest of his sentence, he will still be considered to be an enemy combatant.

Hamdan admitted to working for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1997 to 2001 as his driver. He made around $200 a month.

Say what you will about Germans, but they love Barack Obama. German officials estimate that the presumptuous Democratic presidential nominee attracted at least 200,000 Germans to an Obama campaign rally held in Berlin yesterday.

That’s a whole lot of Germans!

According to my research, this is the largest political rally held in the city of Berlin since 1937.  And much like the 1937 political rally,  Germans attending the 2008 political rally were prohibited from bringing signs or posters.

Obama canceled a scheduled trip to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center near the city of Kaiserslauternto.  It is the largest American hospital outside the United States and it provides treatment to American soldiers injured in Afghanistan.  When Obama was told by an Army official he could visit Landstuhl with his Senate staff, but not with his campaign staff, Obama canceled the visit.

It would seem that if he couldn’t use the visit for campaingn puposes, he was not interested in it.

Matt Drudge, founder of the Internet news site the Drudge Report ran a story on his rag of a website that told the world Prince Harry was fighting on the front lines in Afghanistan. Much of the British and American press knew he was over in Afghanistan, but they all agreed to keep the story secret until Harry and his regiment returned from Afghanistan. It was believed that if it was known that a member of the Royal family was in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban, it would create an extra risk not only for the Prince, but the rest of his unit.

Everyone was able to keep it a secret. Everyone except that douche bag Matt Drudge. He just had to let everyone know about it.

Because of Matt Drudge’s reckless disregard for the safety of Prince Harry and the rest of his unit, they are being withdrawn from Afghanistan. Their risk is just too high for him and the rest of the men in his unit.

My respect for Prince Harry is only matched by my contempt for Matt Drudge. Prince Harry didn’t have to put himself at risk and go to Afghanistan. His grandmother is the Queen of England and he is is third in the line of succession to the throne. Shame on Matt Drudge for putting his own desire for attention over the safety of Prince Harry and the rest of his unit.

That is what I call a well camouflaged soldier. No matter where the fight takes our military, the men and women in our armed forces are ready for the challenge. Whether it’s the mountains of Afghanistan or the sofa in Grandma’s living room, our fighting men and women can blend into almost any environment.

(photo stolen borrowed from Imager.cc)

Our illustrious president spoke last night on the television about his most favorite subject - the Iraq war. From his speech:

Anbar province is a good example of how our strategy is working. Last year, an intelligence report concluded that Anbar had been lost to al-Qaida. Some cited this report as evidence that we had failed in Iraq and should cut our losses and pull out. Instead, we kept the pressure on the terrorists. The local people were suffering under the Taliban-like rule of al-Qaida, and they were sick of it. So they asked us for help.

The al-Qaida he should be worried about is the al-Qaida in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is the real al-Qaida. That is the al-Qaida that attacked the United States on 9-11. The al-Qaida in Iraq? They just call themselves that to give themselves some cheap terrorist credibility. Everyone knows that al-Qaida attacked the United States six years ago and Bush has failed to bring them to justice. Bush has failed to make them pay. Bush and his inability to make al-Qaida pay turn them into the terrorist organization that every two bit terrorist wants to be apart of.

Just because they call themselves al-Qaida doesn’t make them al-Qaida. The al-Qaida in Iraq is as much al-Qaida as American skinheads are Nazis. Sure, they may have a photo of Hitler in their mom’s basement, but that doesn’t mean they are the same bunch that fought Patton’s Third Army in the Battle of the Bulge. Those were real Nazis. They weren’t pretending to be Nazis.

Just because someone identifies themselves as a Nazi on their MySpace page doesn’t mean they are a Nazi. Just because someone in Iraq says they are al-Qaida doesn’t make them al-Qaida.

A suicide bomber hit an American convoy in eastern Afghanistan with an explosives-packed minivan and militants then fired gunfire from several directions. American forces returned fire in defense of the attack. 16 Afghan civilians were killed and another 25 people were wounded.

Several wounded Afghans said they were shot by U.S. forces fleeing the scene. One U.S. soldier was injured in the attack.

The incident is supposedly under investigation. What’s not very clear is who exactly killed the Afghan civilians. Finding out what really happened may be next to impossible. This from the AP article:

U.S. soldiers at the scene deleted photos taken by a freelance photographer working for The Associated Press and video taken by a freelancer working for AP Television News. Neither the photographer nor the cameraman witnessed the suicide attack or the subsequent gunfire. It wasn’t immediately known why the soldiers deleted the photos and videos. The U.S. military didn’t immediately comment on the matter.

The freelance photographer, Rahmat Gul, said he took photos of a four-wheel drive vehicle with four bodies that had been shot to death inside.

An American soldier then took Gul’s camera and deleted the photos. Gul said he later received permission to take photos from another soldier, but that the first soldier came back and angrily told him to delete the photos again. Gul said the soldier raised his fist as if he was going to strike Gul but that he didn’t.

How are we the American people supposed to know what is happening if reporters are forcibly having their photos destroyed?

I personally have a hard time believing my personal freedoms depend on my government invading and occupying two different countries. Did any of those 16 dead or 25 wounded Afghan civilians had anything to do with the terror attacks on 9-11? Was there a chance that any of the 16 people killed would ever come to the United States to commit a terror attack? I would say that since they were not Saudis, the chances of that ever happening were absolutely nil.

What a complete and utter waste.