The surviving Christian Peacemaker hostages have been freed;
Two Canadian hostages held in Iraq for nearly four months have been freed in a carefully planned military operation involving Canadian, British, American and Iraqi forces.
Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, were freed along with Briton Norman Kember, 74. All three were members of the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), an international peace activist group.
When the four members of CPT were first abducted, I recall a Canadian spokesperson from the group declaring (on behalf of the CPT and the hostages) that the use of military force to secure their release was unacceptable.
Members of Canada’s top secret commando unit, Joint Task Force 2, had been in Iraq working in tandem with British troops, said officials. It’s not clear how many were in Iraq, but they have been in the country for some time.
One presumes CPT will be issuing a press release any moment demanding they be “put back where they were found” – right after the news conference by NDP leader Jack Layton denouncing the involvement of Canadian troops in the rescue.
update – The CPT news release doesn’t quite call for that, but it does take time out to blame the rescuers (in so many words) for the abduction. For all of the lip-service paid to the phrase “love our enemies”, one might have thought there would be a little of that Christian generosity extended to the “occupiers” who put their asses on the line to free them.
More – Kathy Shaidle has this find;
“In reaction Kember’s friend, Bruce Kent (…) said the miltants holding the hostages ‘must have been people of great faith.'”
Not the rescuers, mind — the kidnappers! You can’t make this crap up! This is yer morally unmoored “progressive” Christianity, folks.
Update – the original quote has been changed, and the Shaidle post updated to reflect that it now “says the kidnappers must have realized that their hostages were people of great faith. Which makes infinitely more sense, naive or not”
Michelle Malkin has more.
ABC also says of this particular document:
“The document does not establish that the two parties did in fact enter into an operational relationship.”
The others mentioned in the story are of even more dubious origon.
Sorry, Saddam still had nothing to do with 9/11. Bush still lied. The Right was still played for suckers.
Reading this post was a great way to start the morning.
Then the wee fellow toddled through with his diaper loaded. One whiff of him and it was time to get past the feel good, right to the think good.
1. Canada is finally there with our allies helping with freedom and security.
2. The battle for freedom will be won in The West by marginalizing the self loathing lefties, who have been so dominant for the last 40 years.
3. The Islamic world will have to reform itself, which will only happen if they see that The West cannot and will not be defeated.
4. Take pride in Western Culture. It has produced the greatest level of freedom and prosperity that has ever been know to man.
“The effort to spin this into a great Victory for the glorious Conquerer is already starting to come undone…” – Big City Lib
“BCL – got any links to back up what you assert?”
– me (Gord Tulk)
“Gord, its a prediction…” – Big City Lib
So the news report is “Spin” and your “prediction” isn’t?
Such hubric polemic greatly hurts your credibility as a commenter.
Dear Gord,
Predictions come true or they don’t. We’ll see in a day or two. Just remember how many times Conservatives have been suckered during this war. From the justification of the War itself to Jessica Lynch to the implanted “good news” news-stories to the fake letters from fake troops complaining about negative reporting to God know what else.
“Didn’t say they were monsters, Defense guy. They are mostly idealistic young men being dragged through the muck by the dirty old men running the war.”
I hope you don’t make a habit of eating anything as stale and out of date as your rhetoric, BCL – this one was old when they signed the Armistice.
In the interest of fairness, Kathy Shaidle’s quote isn’t quite right. At least according to the article she references at:
http://tinyurl.com/pw9ld
It should read “He said the militants holding the hostages must have seen they are people of great faith”.
Doesn’t make me like the response by these radicals to the bravery of the rescuers any better. Just thought you might like to correct the record.
I suspect the kidsnappers bugged out when they knew their cover was blown – either that, or they found out no one was going to ransom the scum. Number me in the toss them back crowd.
BCL seems to be one of those people my father would describe as “having bone & dandruff as the substance of most consequence between their ears”.
A quote from the Christian Peacemaker Team spokesperson, from an article at the CBC website:
“…”They knew that their only protection was in the power of the love of God and of their Iraqi and international co-workers.”
It seems to me that the power of the love of God was made manifest by the good men of those Armed Forces who risked their lives to save them.
I too am a Christian. But that’s irrelevant to the fact that if a stranger to me were to risk his life to save mine, with no thought of any reward, common decency would require me to acknowledge that and thank him.
That the CPT didn’t say one word of thanks about those brave soldiers, rather using the opportunity to attack them as criminals, is truly beyond ungraciousness, to the point of vulgarity.
The CPT et al should be reading an amzing series of articles
The Jihadis and their alternatives
J. R. Dunn today completes his three part series on Jihadi strategic alternatives. Part 1 and Part 2 remain available in our archives, as will Part 3.
http://www.americanthinker.com/index.php
BCL
If being suckered leads to the freeing of tens of millions of my fellow human beings from tyrannical despotic governments who use and abuse them as their whims dictate, then sign me up for being suckered every day until the day I die.
Dave quoting the cbc:
“They knew that their only protection was in the power of the love of God and of their Iraqi and international co-workers.”
I guess god didn’t love Tom Fox enough.
“Isn’t it interesting how the leftist trolls only want to politically feed on the hostage’s misfortune but when they have a stroke of grace/good luck not a word of elation or empathy….just more hollow partisan venom….you guys need a serious personal catharsis.
Posted by wlyonmackenzie at March 23, 2006 10:27 AM ”
More like a slap up side the head if you ask me.
NOT a mention of the poor American who lost his life in this misguided attempt at placating evil and murderous intentions. We cannot and should not placate these vermin. We need to kill them.
It is dangerous in the extreme to entertain anything they say or do. We must not tolerate any of these manouevers for we do so at our very peril.
Good for the Special Forces who freed these men. God Bless them.
As for their ungratefulness in their release , well that just speaks for itself, now doesn’t it!!
Okay, I’m sorry. I am making outrageous statements so that people will visit my blog. You guessed it.. I work for the CBC
I propose we coin a neologism to describe the behaviour of CPT, and other pacifist types:
“Pre-emptive Stockholm Syndrome”
Islam: The religion of the sword.
Inside the belly of the beast. +
Danish Imam Caught Making Death Threat on Hidden Camera
Agora has good coverage of this astounding breaking news from Denmark: Danish Imam Ahmed Akkari: Kill Naser Khader.
Imam Ahmed Akkari has issued death threats against Naser Khader of the Social Liberals. Naser Khader founded the organisation �Democratic Moslems� in February, as an organisation for moderate, Democracy-minded Moslems to join. See this article for biography and background on the enmity between Naser Khader and the Imams in Denmark.
Today Jyllands-Posten reports that Imam Ahmed Akkari was recorded on a hidden camera by journalist Mohamed Sifaoui of the French TV-Station France 2 which will show a documentary tonight detailing the doings of the Danish Imams. The documentary also reveals that the Danish Imams have been using the affair as a lever to go against their political opponents in Denmark.
Ahmed Akkari is quoted as saying:
If [Naser Khader] becomes the Minister of Foreigners or Integration, why don�t we send out two guys to blow up him and his ministry?
The Danish reaction to this has been consternation and revulsion.
Peter Skaarup of the Danish People�s Party:
It�s pure threats and it only goes to show how crazy these Imams have been acting. I will at once ask the Minister what punishment can be given for making such statements and whether it is a punishable offense.
Jens Rohde of the Liberals:
This is certainly very disturbing and it shows what we�re up against. That�s also why I am worried about what is happening at that conference in Bahrain which Ahmed Akkari is a delegate to.
Ahmed Akkari denies:
I�ve never said anything like that about Naser Khader, but they are welcome to try and prove it.
More at Viking Observer: Caught on tape.
Also see Sugiero: Danish Imams On Hidden Camera: Revealed.
07:49 AM PST
via LGF + more
From Agora (ht: Uriasposten): The programme will be sent tonight 8.50 on France 2 in the series of programmes known as Envoye-Special (Trans: Special Correspondents). See introduction to the programme here (update 4).
****
“…blow up both him and the ministry”.
This is terrorism so, please, do not call danes racists for opposing radical imams.
I�m astonished…
Let me ask again: What does the Qu�ran say about punishment for lying, misleading and encouraging to violence?
****
BACKGROUND: Mohamed Sifaoui is an Algerian Muslim journalist who became incensed by the war of terror waged by Islamic fundamentalists against the Algerian people. Not a few of his friends, relatives and colleagues perished at their hands, and before leaving for Paris he himself was nearly killed in an attack on his newspaper.
The combination of cowardice and indulgence shown to the terrorists by bien pensant opinion in France heightened his disgust. To expose the truth he decided to pose as a terrorist sympathiser, and his book is a diary of the three months he spent infiltrating a Parisian cell of al-Qa’eda under an assumed name.
The portraits he provides are not of the suicide bombers or gunmen, but of the recruiters, brain-washers and organisers behind them, yet the book conveys a convincing picture of the terrorist milieu. And a dismal picture it is. The members of the network emerge as a bunch of inadequates and infantile fanatics, although they are not the less fearsome for that.
There is a grim irony in the fact that, though Sifaoui is maddened by French anxiety to excuse terrorism, it is Britain that he sees as the real “sanctuary for hard-core Islamism”. “Don’t forget that all the brains are here in London”, a British fundamentalist tells him. Somehow it is strange to think of the sinister clown Abu Hamza being revered in Islamist circles in Paris.
He published the book “Inside Al Qaeda: How I Infiltrated the World’s Deadliest Terrorist Organisation” August 23 2003. +
http://sugiero.blogspot.com/2006/03/danish-imams-on-hidden-camera-revealed.html
I completely agree with what so many posters have said – how outrageous it is, that these CPT people didn’t have a work of thanks to say to their rescuers – the soldiers of the US, UK and Iraq. Not one word of thanks – merely denigration of them as ‘illegal occupiers’.
The war in Iraq is not illegal. No-one is occupying Iraq. Iraq has been freed of a tyrannical dictator and has elected its own government. And these smug, ignorant individuals go over there full of their own sanctimonious nonsense – when they had done nothing about Hussein’s regime – get kidnapped by criminals, and, when rescued, say not one word of thanks.
BCL- you are wrong. Iraq is free and moving out of an authoritarian tyranny, to democracy. You, of course, wish them the opposite. It won’t happen; they want to succeed, even if you don’t want them to.
“…fake letters from fake troops complaining about negative reporting to God know what else.”
Once again – proof?
OK! Please stop arguing with BCL! Arguing with a fool will only make you look like a fool too. What are you going to do, change his mind? Convert him to the right?
Ignore his blithering responses and just continue posting intelligence.
If Liberalism is a mental disorder then don’t beat up the mental patient. Gently guide him so he doesn’t hurt himself or others and occasionally wipe the drool from his chin
BCL
Okay okay, we get it! You have a blog! We get it. How very nice for you. No need to keep reminding us.
Karl
“In reaction Kember’s friend, Bruce Kent (…) said the miltants holding the hostages ‘must have been people of great faith.'”
Not the rescuers, mind — the kidnappers! You can’t make this crap up! This is yer morally unmoored “progressive” Christianity, folks.
Kate, check out this link. Neither rescuers nor kidnappers–the reference is to the hostages themselves. Shaidle can “make this crap up,” if she likes, but there’s no need to compound the felony.
I’m glad they got out safely. I heard one of the spokespeople for their organization on The Current this morning, and (unless my ears deceived me), thanks were being offered to the rescuers.
Hypocrites the lot of them. Just using the Gospels as cover for an anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-freemarket agenda. Total frauds.
I am so dissappointed to see so many fall into an easily recognised troll’s trap!
Anyways,I prefer to comment on the following:
“For all the lip-service paid to the phrase ‘love our enemies’,one might have thought there would be a little bit of that Christian generosity extended to the occupiers who put their asses on the line to free them”
I find “hypocracy” by Christians in this country is not at all rare.I have expressed some of my beliefs on religion in general on other threads on this site and,I believe,done it with respect to others…How was I treated in return?
How about hurling insults at me,then,get this, after reading their insults,I have to read a “sales pitch”.
Hey,if you doubt me,try it yourself…and,in fairness,I did receive one apology.
It sounds like CPT also needs to learn to show some respect for others views.Is it not similar(but obviously more extreme)behavior by another religion that has created this mess in the first place?
Three “Christian Peacemaker Teams” members are back in the news
Remember those four guys that belonged to that never-before-heard-of group called “Christian Peacemaker Teams” (CPT) that disappeared in Iraq late last year? They were allegedly kidnapped by another little-known group calling itself the &#…
rq: too fickin’ funny, my friend!
DrDawg,
I listened to the The Current this morning too (Bless me Father for I have sinned…). I must have missed ‘the’ word rescue because all I heard was released and by all of the guests. It was stated so often that I began to think that they were actually released. And to add to the quality of the debate, Tom Scmidthead used his speaking time for an anti-Catholic rant. By the end of the program I wished that the hostages had been beheaded. Early this afternoon, I was still outraged by the interviews and filed a complaint with the CBC.
Hey, I’ve got an idea! Why don’t the nations of the world designated one area on earth where everyone that whants to blow themselves and others up, where those that want to murder and plunder, where those that feel that might is right, and all those that feel there is no evil in this world, that feel they are able without any undue pressure or force bring about change for the good, where all those who claim love concurs all, and who are bent on saving everyone from themseves, all can go there and express themselves without restriction or moderation and leave the rest of us alone.
What, you say we have a place like that already? And it’s called the Middle East?
Dawg, your correction is duly noted. Or should I say theirs. When I posted that story this morning, it read the way I initially said it did. I copied and pasted it from their site.
So they changed it, I’m glad to see that and am happy to be corrected.
They are all still twits, however.
I heard the spokesman for the group on the radio and heard no thanks for the rescuers. I stand by that.
I meant to add just then that my original post has been updated to reflect this wording.
Islam: The religion of chemical weapons and the sword. +
Saddam Regime Document: Saddam Ordered The Use of Chemical Weapons in Northern Iraq (Translation)
Pentagon/FMSO website about PreWar Iraq docments ^ | March 23 2006 | jveritas
Posted on 03/23/2006 11:38:46 AM PST by jveritas
Document CMPC 2004-002219 has many letters that discuss the order of Saddam Hussein to use Chemical Weapons in Northern Iraq against who they call agents of Iran, and they are mainly Kurds followers of Massoud Al Barazani, Saddam regime call them �The Destroyers�, but of course many civilian died in these Chemical attacks because Chemical weapons deadly effects spread much larger than the area where it hit. Page 1 is a letter dated April/8/1987 talks about the final decision to hit the Kurds with Special Ammunition (Chemical Weapons). Then page 4 and 5 are from a letter dated a week earlier March /31/1987 were the Saddam Intelligence are discussing the way to conduct the strike with Chemical Weapons and in this letter they were very clear about the meaning of Special Ammunition where they identified it as MUSTARD AGENT where it is called in letter as �AA�MEL AL KHARDAL� where AA�MEL =AGENT (chemical agent that is), and �AL KHARDAL� = MUSTARD, and this letter mentions another chemical agent called in Arabic as � AA�MEL AL ZAYEN� i.e. � AL ZAYEN AGENT�, I need to find out what is the meaning of �AL ZAYEN� may be it is nerve agent or blistering agent, it an Arabic chemical word that I need to find out what it means..
Translation of Page 1
In the Name of God the Most Merciful the Most Compassionate … + more
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1601810/posts
Never argue with an idiot – they will only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Cal
I don’t care too much for lefties either.
But don’t you think that if they were all margarinized it would be the dairy farmers that had to pay the price?
St. John: Priceless! Mental images of drooling lefies in longsleeved white coats brings me to tears of laughter. Thanks.
Wretchard:
Excerpt:
The widow’s mite
…
The Washington Post reported shortly after CPT hostage Tom Fox was killed:
Members of the Langley Hill Friends Meeting, a peace group in northern Virginia to which Fox belonged, read a statement he co-wrote in October 2004 in which he shunned violence, even to rescue him should he ever be kidnapped. Members of the Langley Hill Friends Meeting, a peace group in northern Virginia to which Fox belonged, read a statement he co-wrote in October 2004 in which he shunned violence, even to rescue him should he ever be kidnapped. “We reject violence to punish anyone who harms us,” said Doug Smith, quoting Fox, in a statement read to reporters at the group’s headquarters in McLean, Virginia.
If I have it aright, the CPT would not on principle — if the word can be perverted thus — have placed a call, if they could, to save Tom Fox as he was being tortured to death because it might bring Multinational Forces rushing to violent rescue, an act which would violate their sense of ethics. Yet they saw no contradiction in precipitating this absurd situation by their intentional presence in Iraq and by trailing their coat in the most dangerous neighborhoods; nor did they think it ethically consistent to refrain from telling the Press of the kidnapping though they must have known efforts to rescue them would be made, despite their well-publicized refusals. Their is nothing more suspicious than false modesty performed conspicuously upon a stage.
As for myself, the Christian Peacemaker Teams remind me of nothing so much as Fred Phelps. I think that if ever there were an instance of latter-day blasphemy it must be in the CPT’s hideous claim that their “only protection was in the power of the love of God and of their Iraqi and international co-workers”. Nothing seems further than the truth. They’ve endangered themselves, the lives of innocent Iraqis and those who hazarded themselves to find and rescue them for the sake of their own self-righteous theater. Vanity, not love is their watchword. Fortune and men’s eyes and not God is who they worship.
posted by wretchard at 3:04 PM +
http://www.fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/
How to spot a baby conservative:
“Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.”
confident kids turned out liberal
To which I can only add:
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/jonahgoldberg/2006/03/22/190779.html
The funniest thing is that they actually believe this crap. Confident people don’t need others to beat up on their intellectual opponents, legislate to keep others from ‘offending’ them. The arrogance is unbelievable.
I think it’s called ‘cognitive dissonance’ or ‘head in assedness’.
As far as these CPT ‘heroes’… why the hell are we wasting valuable resources on these suicidal idiots? Aren’t there real missions to do? I think a lot of people would have been pissed off if anything had gone wrong. Thank God nothing did. You’re welcome, jackasses.
Socialist mantra:
“If I believe it’s true, reality will fall in line.”
Steve
At least there was some good news from Iraq.
steve in bc,
“Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.”
Too funny. Are you saying the right kids reached this level of maturity in nursery school (and out grew it) at least a decade before the left kids did (and never out grow it)?
Steve in BC…Good news from Iraq?
What that the CPT hostages (that should never have been in Iraq in the first place) were so ungrateful they couldn’t manage a public thank you to military people that rescued them?
�We pray that Christians throughout the world will, in the same spirit, call for justice and for respect for the human rights of the thousands of Iraqis who are being detained illegally by the U.S. and British forces occupying Iraq.”
-simply put, these idiots should not have been rescued, they should have been left to rot. We wasted valuable time, effort and resources to help these ungrateful hypocrites, who are no more than collaborators with terrorists. I’m sorry that we put lives on the line to repatriate these losers.
This is the correspondence I’ve just e-mailed to the CPT outfit:
I am a Canadian Christian who gives thanks to God for the safety of your CPT brothers who are returning home–and those who RESCUED them.
I believe your official statement is both naive and blasphemous: At the least, it is astonishingly uncharitable. You thank Muslims for their support. Didn’t any Christians support you? You condemn violence. What about Saddam Hussein’s brutalizing of his own people? What about 9/11? What about suicide bombers?
Where are your thanks for the bravery of your rescuers�let alone your rescuers at all? Where are your thanks for the fact that they were willing to lay down their lives for your confreres? “Greater love hath no man than this, That a man laid down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
I believe you are hypocrites: You deny love or any kind of fair recognition to those who have proven themselves to be your friends. You lavish saccharine on those who have, time and time again, used the utmost violence to achieve their ends.
You may have good intentions–isn’t the road to hell paved by these?–but your words are painfully duplicitous. Kyrie eleison.
lookout, I too have been disgusted all day at the lack of appreciation exhibited by CPT. I just visited their website and see that at 9pm ET ( a full 18 hours after being notified of the rescue of their members) the have posted an “addenda” to their press release. I guess they got the message from you and others loud and clear:
23 March 2006, 9 p.m. ET
We have been so overwhelmed and overjoyed to have Jim, Harmeet and Norman freed, that we have not adequately thanked the people involved with freeing them, nor remembered those still in captivity. So we offer these paragraphs as the first of several addenda:
We are grateful to the soldiers who risked their lives to free Jim, Norman and Harmeet. As peacemakers who hold firm to our commitment to nonviolence, we are also deeply grateful that they fired no shots to free our colleagues. We are thankful to all the people who gave of themselves sacrificially to free Jim, Norman, Harmeet and Tom over the last four months, and those supporters who prayed and wept for our brothers in captivity, for their loved ones and for us, their co-workers.
We will continue to lift Jill Carroll up in our prayers for her safe return. In addition, we will continue to advocate for the human rights of Iraqi detainees and assert their right to due process in a just legal system.
Still munching on those magic mushrooms, eh Steve?
Hey Rick, wonder why steve in bc didnt link to the full column?? Isn’t that just like a liberal to leave out the parts that don’t suit his arguments??
I haven’t heard that the hostages were ungrateful. There was a statement from the organization head.
Maybe, we’ll hear that from the men themselves.
Ural…I took it as a public service for parents, so if they identified early conservative whining in their babies, we might have a chance at wiping the right out in a generation.
Thanks, sooz, for that info.
Re the CTP’s apparent “conversion”: I’d say they’ve given way too little much too late. If they had to be outed before thanking their rescuers and Christian/Western supporters and intercessors, shame on them.
Well, as of 9:00 pm my conspiracy theory is till in play. There is a major discrepancy between the words of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who claimed the “rescue” involved “weeks and weeks of very careful work by military and coalition personnel in Iraq and many civilians as well”, and U.S. military spokesman Rick Lynch, who said the whole job was done up in three hours.
Easter Bunny is held hostage in Minnsoda.
Send in a CPT for to rescue him.
“Rescue the perishing, duty demands it;
Strength for thy labor the Lord will provide;
Back to the narrow way patiently win them;
Tell the poor wand�rer a Savior has died.”
(H/T Fannie Crosbie) +
St. Paul Minnesota Officials Ban Easter Bunny
St. Paul’s human rights director, Tyrone Terrill, asked that the decorations be removed, saying they could be offensive to non-Christians. +
via nealenews.com
INfo phoned in at 5am.. prisoners picked up at 8am. A three hour plan.
I like this blogsite… Liberals are the required foil to right leaning argument.
Thing is, whether everything is going well or not in Iraq, we simply can not afford to back off, as the Soviets did. They had to deal with hundreds shot in the back in the swarming of a high school. Their open wound continues in Chechnya.
There are large populations of peace loving Muslims in Europe, Africa, Asia and even North America.
In Indonesia alone there are 220 million. There is a small group of fundamentalist Jihadists there. Pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan would give great incentive to leaders of *black headbands* in many countries, not the least of those being Iran who supports people like Muqtada Al-Sadr and his black head-bands snatching ransom victims in Basra and Iraq.
Do you require any clearer picture of why keeping pressure on the Jihadists is not a question open to debate? TG
10words