10. Ramadan Shallah: Leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. His low ranking is because he’s a weak terrorist leader but still has plenty of blood on his petite doll-like hands.

9. Samir Kuntar: Druze member of the PLF in Lebanon who murdered an Israeli policeman, Eliyahu Shahar, 31 year-old Danny Haran, and Haran’s 4-year-old daughter, Einat Haran, whom he killed with blunt force against a rock and for indirectly causing the death of two-year-old Yael Haran by suffocation, as her mother tried to quiet her crying while hiding from Kuntar. In November 2008, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad presented Kuntar with Syria’s highest medal.

8. Mahmoud al-Zahar: Founding father of HAMAS and considered a hard line hawk, even by HAMAS’ standards

7. Mohammed Deif: Commander of HAMAS’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. That’s reason enough.

6. Ali Moussa al-Daduq: Senior Hezbollah advisor captured in Iraq while acting on Iran’s behalf and responsible for the killing of U.S. military personnel in southern Iraq.

5. Ahmed Abu Khattala: Leader of the Benghazi-based Ansar al-Sharia group closely involved in the September 11 assault that killed four Americans including ambassador Christopher Stevens.

4. Hassan Nasrallah: “Secretary-General” of Hezbollah.

3. Hamid Arabnejad: Managing-Director of Mahan Air, the Iranian regime’s airline tasked with ferrying weapons/explosives, IRGC-QF personnel, and mayhem all over the world.

2. Qassam Soleimani: Head of Iran’s IRGC-QF. That’s more than enough reason.

1. Bashar al-Assad: How many lives could have been saved by rubbing out this man Christopher Hitchens once famously dubbed, “The human toothbrush”. Sic Semper Tyrannus.

Michael Ross was born in Canada and served as a soldier in a combat unit of the Israel Defence Forces prior to being recruited as a “combatant,” (a term designating a deep-cover operative tasked with working in hostile milieus) in Israel’s legendary secret intelligence service, the Mossad. In his 13 year career with the Mossad, Ross was also a case officer in Africa and South East Asia for three years, and was the Mossad’s counterterrorism liaison officer to the CIA and FBI for two-and-a-half years. Ross is a published writer and commentator on Near Eastern affairs, intelligence and terrorism. He is the author of The Volunteer: The Incredible True Story of an Israeli Spy on the Trail of International Terrorists. You can follow him on Twitter.

Wounded by an IED blast in Iraq, Maj. Pulido returned home facing tremendous physical and psychological challenges, including thoughts of suicide. What turned things around for him was reaching out for and accepting support from others, and focusing on helping service members and families in similar circumstances.

Sadly servicemembers stationed in a warzone often miss once in a lifetime moments, but with the advancement of technology and free services such as Skype Soldiers are finally able to join their ones for the moments that matter most. staff Sgt. Kirk Bell tells us more.

1AD mechanics fix vehicles to give troops doing partnership missions the gift of mobility. Story by SPC Naomi Martini, 1st Armored Division Public Affairs.

Charlie Wilson, a.k.a. Uncle Charlie, performs some R&B for troops at Contingency Operating Base Speicher, Iraq. Sgt. Reinaldo Lopez reports.

An Afghan girl recuperating and bonding with the staff at Role 3 Multi-National Hospital on Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan after receiving life-threatening injuries from an improvised explosive device. Tech. Sgt. Elicia Summerville has more from Afghanistan.

USD-C dog handlers provide K9 support to Iraqi Security Forces during a joint patrol. Story by SPC Katie Summerhill 366 MPAD, USD-C Public Affairs.

Iraqi infantry soldiers retrain as mortarmen as part of a larger Iraqi initiative to further their artillery force. USD-C soldiers advise and assist the instructors during the training. Story by SSG John Freese 366 MPAD, USD-C Public Affairs.

Iraqi and American soldiers donate wheelchairs to a private clinic in rural Babil, Iraq. Story by SGT Collin Black 1st Armormed Division Public Affairs.

I thought Iraqis were a bit more restrained than this. This is the sort of behavior you’d expect from Keith Olbermann or Helen Thomas.

Bush was, as usual, cool under fire:

Zaidi yelled “Dog, dog!” as he was surrounded by Iraqi security officers, who tackled him and began to beat him. Zaidi was later removed from the ornate room in the heavily fortified Green Zone where the news conference was taking place.

Bush was not injured and joked about the incident minutes later: “If you want the facts, it’s a size 10 shoe that he threw. Thank you for your concern; do not worry about it.”

Zaidi, colleagues said, was kidnapped by Shiite militiamen last year and was later released.

Zaidi would do well to consider this point, made on Twitter, by Cameron Kaiser:

btw, to those snickering over Bush+shoes, remember throwing shoes at Saddam would’ve meant death, and that would’ve been lenient.

When I accepted a position in Iraq as a civilian contractor many of my family and friends were pretty concerned about my safety, maybe even questioning my sanity. This is not my first trip to Iraq and I knew that on the FOBs (Forward Operating Bases), you are probably safer than many towns and cities across America. While some FOBs do experience mortar and rocket attacks, they are becoming fewer and farther between. In the case of Al Asad, where I work and live, the housing areas are quite literally miles from the base fenceline and have not seen any appreciable attacks in over 18 months.

As I’ve been roaming around western Iraq, I’ve noticed an incredible number of civlians working to support the US military’s efforst in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m not talking a few either. In an earlier post “Ugandans Provide Security” I noted there were approximately 6,000 Ugandans working at securing various facilities on each base throughout Iraq. That number pales in comparison to the number of food service workers, sanitation workers, bus drivers, sales clerks, MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) workers, facilities workers (heating, cooling, plumbing, energy production, etc…), custodians, and many, many more. The amazing thing I’ve noticed is most of these folks are not Americans, they are “TCNs” or Third Country Nationals. There are some “LNs” or Local Nationals (i.e. Iraqis), but not too many. I truly don’t have any idea how many TCNs there are, but the number must be at least 10 times the number of Ugandans.

Why so many TCNs? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out: TCNs work for a fraction of what an American would work for and they do jobs many Americans would simply not do. I’m pretty certain, the Department of Defnese is exercising due diligance in contracting these workers. The budget for OIF (Operation Iraqi Freedom) and OEF (Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan), and the larger Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) is tremendous, but stretched thin to keep the fight going. By using TCNs, the savings are incredible no doubt.

But, as I watch America slide into a serious Recession and possibly a Depression, it begs the question: Could these jobs be accomplished by Americans? My simple answer is YES.

As a new President enters office, I believe it is an opportunity to revisit this situation. As “New Deal” era plans are being made, there is already a ready made infrastructure that could employ tens of thousands of Americans within 6 months if a concerted effort were put into place to replace each and every TCN with an out-of-work American.

There is undoubtedly also some minor political benefit gained in employing third country nationals so it might not make sense to replace all of them but the balance could be adjusted. The issue is really just part of the larger outsourcing trend that Obama has promised to tackle. Ultimately, I don’t expect much to change and I’m not alone:

To illustrate the major views of Malaysian tech leaders, let me just talk about the most recent conversation I had. It was with TL Wong, chief executive officer of a business process outsourcing firm, Zeltrans, which is just three years old. He responded to a question about how the economic downturn was affecting his company.

TL said that for outsourcers, the downturn may be a good thing. He told me he had been approached by two more large American companies which wanted to cut costs by outsourcing to his company. Then he mentioned Obama’s intention.

Naturally, I asked him for his take on Obama’s intention. TL said there were two camps among his peers. Some companies were scared, but the majority thought there would be no or very little real action possible by Obama on this. “And if there was, the US is going to find it a very expensive exercise. What always counts at the end of the day is: the bottom line. Always will.”

Local residents in a Syrian border town said that American forces killed seven men in a helicopter-borne commando attack inside Syrian territory.

Doctors in the town of Al-Sukkariya, some eight kilometres from the Iraqi border, said seven corpses and four wounded had been delivered to a nearby clinic after the attack.

The eyewitness accounts said that four helicopters were involved in the operation, with two of the helicopters landing in the town and eight American soldiers disembarking. The eyewitnesses said that the seven killed men were supposedly construction workers.

Afterwards, the US helicopters then left Syrian airspace with all the soldiers again on board.

So, either the U.S. military is taking construction code enforcement incredibly seriously or the Syrian’s are learning the hard way that they can’t sponsor or allow cross-border operations with impunity.

The area is near the Iraqi border city of Qaim, which had been a major crossing point for fighters, weapons and money coming into Iraq to fuel the Sunni insurgency.

Iraqi insurgents seized Qaim in April 2005, forcing U.S. Marines to recapture the town the following month in heavy fighting. The area became secure only after Sunni tribes in Anbar turned against al-Qaida in late 2006 and joined forces with the Americans.

On Thursday, U.S. Maj. Gen. John Kelly said Iraq’s western borders with Saudi Arabia and Jordan were fairly tight as a result of good policing by security forces in those countries but that Syria was a “different story.”

“The Syrian side is, I guess, uncontrolled by their side,” Kelly said. “We still have a certain level of foreign fighter movement.”

Update:
It looks like we’re confirming the attack – and it was related to the hostile cross-border traffic:

U.S. military helicopters launched an extremely rare attack Sunday on Syrian territory close to the border with Iraq, killing eight people in a strike the government in Damascus condemned as “serious aggression.”

A U.S. military official said the raid by special forces targeted the foreign fighter network that travels through Syria into Iraq. The Americans have been unable to shut the network down in the area because Syria was out of the military’s reach.

“We are taking matters into our own hands,” the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of cross-border raids.

The attack came just days after the commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq said American troops were redoubling efforts to secure the Syrian border, which he called an “uncontrolled” gateway for fighters entering Iraq.

The Reaper is off to a good start in Iraq:

During an overwatch mission over southeast Iraq, Reaper operators with Balad’s 46th Expeditionary Reconnaissance and Attack Squadron discovered a suspicious vehicle. The Airmen immediately relayed the information to personnel in a local ground unit, said Lt. Col. Micah Morgan, the 46th ERAS commander. After the suspicious vehicle was confirmed to be a VBIED — a variant of the number-one killer of Americans on the battlefield — a joint terminal attack controller cleared the Reaper to employ a GBU-12 laser-guided weapon against the vehicle.

“This was a great example of the Reaper’s unique capabilities,” Colonel Morgan said. “We searched for, found, fixed, targeted and destroyed a target with just one aircraft.”

I’m sure that there will be many more drops to come.

Barack Obama’s campaign scrubbed his presidential Web site over the weekend to remove criticism of the U.S. troop “surge” in Iraq, the Daily News has learned.

The presumed Democratic nominee replaced his Iraq issue Web page, which had described the surge as a “problem” that had barely reduced violence.

“The surge is not working,” Obama’s old plan stated, citing a lack of Iraqi political cooperation but crediting Sunni sheiks – not U.S. military muscle – for quelling violence in Anbar Province.

The News reported Sunday that insurgent attacks have fallen to the fewest since March 2004.

Obama’s campaign posted a new Iraq plan Sunday night, which cites an “improved security situation” paid for with the blood of U.S. troops since the surge began in February 2007.

It praises G.I.s’ “hard work, improved counterinsurgency tactics and enormous sacrifice.”

Obama praises the heroic work of our troops as well but it always sounds like a forced disclaimer thoughtlessly tacked on to one complaint after another. His position yesterday:

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But The same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

So yesterday he took a sort of it’s working but I’ll find a reason to oppose it anyway approach and today he’s trying erase his pointed criticism of the entire strategy. Are American’s actually comfortable looking to this man for leadership?

The man is a great orator but an absolute political lightweight and as a Commander in Chief he would, as most Americans recognize, be a complete joke. Just look at the National Review’s attempt to document his ever-changing position.

Others Blogging:

Stop the ACLU
This must be a part of his “change you can believe in” platform.

Power Line
Question of the day: Who is heading up the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth over at the Obama campaign?

Wake Up America
How can a person that has not been to Iraq in 919 days, has never spoken one-on-one with the commander on the ground in Iraq and has not yet gone on his fact-finding mission to Iraq, actually state what his plans for Iraq are?

Political Punch
Another conundrum for Obama: the surge of US troops in Iraq having created a safer and more secure Baghdad, McCain can now (perhaps for the first time) point to an aspect of the war where he is able to argue that his judgment was superior to Obama’s.

Right Wing Nut House
Where will all this dizzying manuevering get Obama? Because the press will not call him out for this monumental flip flop – this Mother of All Campaign Backfills – it is not likely he will be hurt very much at all. More likely, the disillusioned left will grumble a bit and still turn out for him in November. Those on the far left always have Ralph Nader or Green Party candidate Cynthia McKinney. For the center, there is only the here and now in politics which is what Obama is counting on with this incredibly cynical move.

Riehl World View
Obama claims to have judgment you can trust. I have to assume he’s talking to our enemies in the Middle-East given the judgment he displayed on the surge.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government.

He stops short of proposing to call this Operation Frequent Wind but why not? Just for old time’s sake. Still, Obama may not achieve this goal so like all politicians he’s leaving himself tons of wiggle room:

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later.

The political strategy employed here may be more dangerous than it seems. The “consult with commanders” line that he’s tossing around these days is either your typical political escape hatch (to be employed if he keeps the troops deployed longer than liberals would like) or an outright lie to convince moderates and conservatives that he’ll carry out a responsible withdrawal. Of course, I suspect that it’s an outright lie. He’ll consult with them alright, but will he heed their advice? Not a chance. Anyway, there’s more. Like all good Democrats he believes that we can skip the hard work and just write a check to solve any remaining problems:

We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.

I’m not sure which refugee crisis he’s referencing here. Is it the one created by the war or the much larger one that will be created by his rapid withdrawal? It doesn’t matter, to Obama at least, it appears that he wants to end the war at any cost and the fact-finding trips, consultations with military brass, and tactical adjustments are all window-dressing on a surrender that he plans to orchestrate at a time when victory is most certainly within reach.

Their bodies were recovered by the army’s 10th Mountain Division, little else is known, but they did not die in vain:

“Byron went to Iraq to help people who couldn’t help themselves,” said Pte Byron’s stepfather, Gordon Dibler. “I know their sacrifice was not for nothing. It was not in vain.”

The two soliders had been MIA for just over a year. The body of a third missing soldier, Pfc. Joseph Anzazk Jr., was recovered shortly after the attack in 2007.

However, since charges were first announced in December 2006, prosecutors have struggled to make the allegations stick.

Six have now had charges against them dropped, while charges of murder against squad leader Frank Wuterich were changed to the lesser offense of manslaughter.

Wuterich faces trial later this year, along with Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, the highest ranking officer accused over the incident who has been charged with dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order.

Wuterich told a preliminary hearing at Camp Pendleton last September that he would “always mourn the unfortunate deaths of the innocent Iraqis who were killed during our response to that attack.”

But he said: “Based on the information I had at the time, based on the situation, I made the best decision I could have.”

The Ohio Statehouse is hosting the memorial:

The exhibition was created in memory of 22 fallen Marines and a Navy Corpsman from the Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division who lost their lives while serving in Iraq in 2005. The exhibition will be unveiled in the Ohio Statehouse Rotunda on May 23, 2008 during a private ceremony for the families of the fallen. The exhibition will be on view to the public from May 24 through November 11, 2008. The exhibition will be free and open to the public.

The Ohio-based Marine Reserve unit, once known as “Lucky Lima,” was one of the hardest hit single units in Operation Iraqi Freedom, suffering deaths of 22 Marines and their Navy Corpsman. Created by Columbus artist Anita Miller, the memorial will contain life-sized paintings of each of the 23 fallen heroes. Names and statistics of each of the fallen men, an ever-living candle, boots and space for visitors to leave mementos will be part of this moving memorial installation.

Miller has worked during the last two years to create and paint the memorial. She has created eight painted panels set in an octagon that depict portraits of each of the 23 men who lost their lives in the war.

The Ohio Statehouse grand Rotunda will serve as a solemn place to honor these American service members from May 24, 2008 through July 7, 2008. The exhibition will then be featured in the South Hallway beneath Representatives Hall from July 8 through November 11, 2008.

The exhibition at the Ohio Statehouse will offer thousands of individuals the opportunity to learn about the sacrifices that these fallen servicemen have given our state and nation.

The Fallen Heroes:
Private First Class Christopher R. Dixon
Lance Corporal Christopher P. Lyons
Staff Sergeant Anthony L. Goodwin
Petty Officer 3rd Class Travis Youngblood (Navy Corpsman)
Sergeant Justin F. Hoffman
Staff Sergeant Kendall H. Ivy II
Lance Corporal Nicholas William B. Bloem
Corporal Andre L. Williams
Lance Corporal Grant B. Fraser
Lance Corporal Aaron H. Reed
Lance Corporal Edward A. Schroeder II
Lance Corporal William B. Wightman
Lance Corporal Timothy M. Bell, Jr.
Lance Corporal Eric J. Bernholtz
Corporal Dustin A. Derga
Lance Corporal Nicholas B. Erdy
Lance Corporal Wesley G. Davids
Sergeant David N. Wimberg
Lance Corporal Michael J. Cifuentes
Lance Corporal Christopher J. Dyer
Lance Corporal Jonathan W. Grant
Sergeant David Kenneth J. Kreuter
Lance Corporal Jourdan L. Grez

You can learn more about the memorial at LimaCompanyMemorial.org