Stop The Presses!!!! Hold The Phone!!!!

From Pat Dollard's NEW and IMPROVED website!!!! (Go tell him it looks good, please)

Report: NATO Agrees To Let Afghan Government Try Koran-Burning Soldiers

In a development that could chill the dedication of every soldier in the field, the U.S. government has refused to deny reports by the government of Afghanistan that NATO has agreed to have the soldiers who burned copies of the Quran face trial.Last week, Afghan president Hamid Karzai demanded NATO turn over the U.S. troops to be tried in Afghanistan. President Obama subsequently sent a letter to Karzai reassuring him that the troops involved would be punished for their actions.

Part of the three-page letter to Karzai said, “I extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies. We will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible.”

It is unclear exactly what Obama meant by that statement as the White House has not released the full text of the letter. However, the Afghan government may have provided insight into its contents.

Over the weekend, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan government media and information center website posted a joint statement by the delegations assigned to probe the Quran burning incident.

The statement says that two delegations were created to “investigate the circumstances and causes that have led to the inhumane incident.”The statement listed several items, including a demand that the U.S. turn over the authority of the prison in Bagram to the Afghan government to ensure similar incidents do not recur and “calls on the U.S. government to fully and comprehensively cooperate to this end.”
However, the statement used vastly different language when discussing the fate of the U.S. soldiers involved in the incident.

“NATO officials promised to meet Afghan nation’s demand of bringing to justice, through an open trial, those responsible for the incident and it was agreed that the perpetrators of the crime be brought to justice as soon as possible,” the statement said.The wording suggests members of the military could be handed over to an Afghan system that imposes Shariah-related penalties.

WND requests to both NATO and the Pentagon asking for confirmation of the statement by Afghan authorities were not returned.Although the statements apparently were made by the Afghan government Feb. 25, they have received no mention in the mainstream media.Clare Lopez, a senior fellow with the Center for Security Policy, said if the statement by the Afghan government turns out to be true, it would be an unprecedented betrayal of our men and women in uniform.“ (oh gee, a Marxist betraying American troops, whodathunkit)

I can’t imagine we would ever do this, what would we charge them with? Are we going to try Americans for crimes committed under Shariah law? I cannot believe our government would go that far,” she said.

Robert Spencer, founder of Jihad Watch, said it was fascinating that the U.S. government has not gotten out in front of this issue and denied the statement.“The administration needs to clarify their stance on this. The longer they wait to deny this the more it has the opportunity to further inflame the Muslim in Afghanistan.”
Spencer said that whether the soldiers end up being turned over to the Afghan government or face court-martial, either decision would set a dangerous precedent.“

"It would be unconscionable either way,” he said. “If they turn them over to the Afghan government for trial then we are endorsing the applicability of Shariah law to non-Muslims in the U.S. military. If they court-martial them then they are adopting those norms as part of the UCMJ. Either way it’s frightening.”

Lopez said that while U.S. officials have made large concessions to appease Muslims, turning the soldiers over to face trial would be over the line.“If they were to allow our soldiers to be tried under a legal system that calls for the death penalty for destroying a Quran, that would be unthinkable,” she said. She said that the silence on the part of U.S. officials has the potential to cause real damage to the morale of troops.

“When the government will not come out with a strong denial of this statement by the Afghan government it has the potential to cause our troops to wonder if the U.S. will truly stand behind and protect them when they are simply trying to do their job,” she said. It appears that the soldiers may not have violated Islamic law at all by their burning of the Qurans.

In a PBS interview, Imam Jihad Turk, director of religious affairs at the Islamic Center of Southern California, said it was acceptable to burn the Quran if it was in a state of “disrepair.”

Or being used to pass messages to other terrorists for the purpose of conspiring to murder ISAF troops or escape detention in order to re-join the Taliban to murder ISAF troops.

More Problems in the Stan

Once everyone understands that if you run up behind a convoy of military personnel in the dark in a free fire zone you'll probably get shot, this stuff will stop happening.

Los Angeles Times -- Western troops fire on bus, kill 4 Afghan civilians

Riots in Kandahar after NATO troops opened fire on a busload of civilians.

The shooting sounds like a tragic case of mistaken identity when the bus driver tried to overtake a convoy in the dark, but with anti-American sentiment running high in Afghanistan these days, this seems to have touched out real outrage – tire fires, “Death to America!” chants, etc.

With Hamid Karzai acting wobbly and the spring offensive planned for Kandahar in some doubt, this incident promises to make a difficult situation more so.

Writer Laura King followed the dispatches from Kabul:
“The early-morning shooting occurred in the Zhari district, when a bus traveling west from Kandahar on the main highway came up quickly behind several Western military vehicles, said Zalmai Ayubi, a spokesman for the district governor.

Under what NATO calls ‘escalation of force’ rules, troops are supposed to use nonlethal means when possible to prevent a suspicious vehicle from approaching them. It was not immediately known whether Western forces were able to signal the driver to halt, or to fire warning shots."

Stuff From the Inbox

Washington Examiner Political Digest

Chris Stirewalt - Obama delivers a cynical speech to a cynical nation
The biggest casualty in Tuesday night's speech was Obama's credibility. Even his detractors were taken aback that he would be so calculating, even on matters of life and death.

Michael Barone - Are Democrats exiting the sinking ship? Part 2
The Hotline reports that Congressman John Tanner of the 8th district of Tennessee is retiring in 2010. Tanner, a Democrat and a member of the Blue Dog Caucus, was first elected in 1988; he turns 66 in 2010 and in a statement said he considered retiring in 2008, but decided to run for one more term so that he could serve as Chairman of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly..
Jim Geraghty of National Review notes that Tanner was facing competition this year from Republican gospel singer Stephen Fincher, who has raised $300,000 in a short period of time and seemed likely to wage a serious campaign in a district that voted 56%-43% for John McCain in 2008. This west Tennessee district was one of the few where Barack Obama ran behind John Kerry's 2004 showing; George W. Bush carried the district by only 53%-47% in 2004. It voted 51%-48% for Tennessee's own Al Gore in 2000.

David Freddoso - Honesty from Baucus on Health care -- and a bomb from Tom Coburn
PA bit of honesty today from Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D, Mont., regarding the tricks used to make the health care bill appear deficit-neutral:
“Health care reform, whether you use a ten-year number or when you start in 2010 or start in 2014, wherever you start at, so it is still either $1 trillion or it's $2.5 Trillion, depending on where you start”
This is an important point. The health care bill costs $2.5 trillion over ten years if you count from the year when it started.

Pelosi's outrageous attempt to hide congressional spending
Remember when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said "This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history”? Well, if a little noticed rule change by Pelosi is anything to go by, she lied -- big time.
If $217.55 is enough to save a job, then there's no reason for the White House to worry about meeting its goal of creating or saving 3.5 million jobs. They're on pace to create 3.5 billion jobs.

Michael Barone - Global warming alarmists getting frozen out
The Australian Senate has rejected Labour party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's carbon emissions bill by a vote of 41-33. Interestingly, it was supported by Liberal (i.e., conservative) party Malcolm Turnbull, who was promptly sacked as party leader. Like the Waxman-Markey carbon emissions bill which passed the House back in June but seems to have no chance in the Senate, Rudd's measure was criticized by both conservatives and by global warming alarmists.

Extra Crispy Tangos

In spite of all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the EU, the Afghan government has determined that "only forces hostile to the Afghanistan government were killed in the NATO airstrike on the hijacked fuel tankers."

All you pro-Taliban/goat humping terrorist supporters can now go find something else to bitch about.

Jeff Emanuel Examines Big O's Afghan Strategy

AMERICA’S GOAL IN THE REGION, according to Obama, is “to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.” In pursuit of this nebulous goal, which can be categorically filed under “Would take far more time and dedication than Obama (and, unfortunately, the American population) would ever willingly put into it,” the president laid out several points of emphasis.

These points, each of which will be addressed in an installment over the next week, can be grouped into the following five goals:

Implementing a ’surge’ of forces in Afghanistan (and augmenting that with a so-called “civilian surge”);

Growing the Afghan Security Forces, both police and army, by such numbers and with such speed that they will be able to assume responsibility securing large portions of the country in a very short time;

Attempting to achieve reconciliation with less-hardline Taliban militants and promoting an open, honest, and effective Afghan national government;

Expanding international support for the Afghan mission and convincing both NATO and regional players to take a more active role in combating terror and shaping the Afghan state; and, perhaps most importantly,

Eliminating Taliban and al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan, while simultaneously promoting democratic order within that fractured Islamic state.

Unfortunately, as the next five installments on this topic will demonstrate, President Obama’s strategy as currently laid out will do little to make a difference on any of these fronts.
Coming next: Examining Obama’s Afghan Plan: A ‘Surge’ in Soldiers and Civilians

Kosovo

Kosovo

Norwegians can sing!

also stolen, ahem, borrowed from Theo. Go visit him. He likes us. He really likes us. Besides, we're on HIS blog roll.....hint, hint.....