In one of the more mind boggling articles I've read in a while, Daniel Pipes blogs about how "Weak Brits, Tough French".

"Thanks to the war in Iraq, much of the world sees the British government as resolute and tough and the French one as appeasing and weak. But in another war, the one against terrorism and radical Islam, the reverse is true: France is the most stalwart nation in the West, even more so than America, while Britain is the most hapless."

So here's my reasoning on why we're winning the "war on terror" and why the ultimatum issued by Al-Qaeda should be treated with the contempt it deserves.

Yes, they were able to pull off 8 suicide bombing attempts in London within the last 2 weeks. What did they really do? They killed 56 people - 4 of which were the bombers themselves so it's really just 52. Yes, the loss of those lives was tragic for their friends & family, but 8 bombs killing 52? Thats less than 7 people per bomb. I've read of traffic pileups that killed more than 52. Timothy McVeigh, while a trained soldier (Green Beret IIRC), was an amature terrorist compared to the thugs in Al-Qaeda who spend every waking hour of their day trying to figure out how to kill as many people as possible. McVeigh murdered 156 people with one bomb, the trained murderers of Al-Qaeda were able to kill just 52 with 8 bombs.

How does this translate to winning the war on terror? Think about it - if the countries of the world wouldn't be rounding up as many terrorist as they can find, the "best" of the terrorists would be out there right now planning these attempts and making their bombs. Since the "best" (sic) of them are currently rotting in jail or 6 feet under ground, its the shleps left planning these bombings.

Seven people per bomb.. shit, if I were insane enough to want to kill as many innocent civilians as possible, I know I could do better than that. Hell, give me a couple boxes of ammo and my 30-06 and I could kill more than 7 before the cops would (rightfully so) turn out my lights with a bullet to the head.

Here's some more food for thought. Last year in Madrid Spain, 3 weeks after the 3/11/04 train bombing there was a follow up attempt. In London, 2 weeks after the 7/7/05 bombings there was a follow up attempt. There is almost always an attempt by terrorists to follow a successful(sic) bombing with another.. so where was the followup to 9/11? Why wasn't Al-Qaeda able to blow up something else in the good ol USA within the last 4 years? Easy answer, and all you have to do is look at Gitmo prison to know why.

One of the biggest things that has been stoping me from keeping up on my website - well, aside from being plain lazy about it - is the amount of work it was taking me to update the various elements. See, I'm old school.. none of these fancy schmancy editors, give me a simple editor like Textpad and thats all I need. The down side is if you want to create a new page, or change the side links, background, etc., it was a real pain in the ass editing all of those files. Welp ... last week I stumbled across Intraweb Studio by Atozed software. Atozed makes some 3rd party controls we use in Delphi, the programming tool we use at work.

I have to admit, I'm a convert. Their help files pretty much suck monkey balls, so it took a bit to slog my way thru it, but in the end it's pretty easy to use. I really like the template feature that allows you to design a base form, and create new ones based off of that template. Makes it real easy to change a design in 1 place and have the changes propagate down thru all of the pages that are based off of that template. Publishing the updated pages to the website is 1 simple button click away.. pretty damned sweet all in all.

So - between the change to IWS and having the ability once again to be able to listen to the Bob & Brian show at work, I'm probably going to start tracking the YCW questions and answers. Not sure what format it will take, but it would be nice to have all of the current Q&A on hand for when I call in. Maybe one of these days I'll actually win the damn contest.

I watched Hotel Rwanda the other day, what a great movie. Don Cheadle gave a stellar performance as Paul Rusesabagina, who saved 1400+ refugees during the civil war that tore Rwanda during 1994. It really makes you sit back and wonder what exactly the U.N. is good for? The parallels between Rwanda and what is going on in the Darfur region of Sudan - countless dead, mass rapes.. its sickening how the world could stand by for so long and do nothing.

Another thing that really bugs the crap out of me, why is it every news source seems to be focused only on the body count for Iraq, and rarely - if ever - touch on what good is happening there? So, here's some good news about Iraq:

news from Fort Hood, TX
Chrenkoff always has stuff to say
Winds of Change

While reading Michelle Malkin, I happened across a link to Marine Corps Moms. Out-freaking-STANDING.. what a great site! Some of the posts in the archive really touched me. Glad to see that, even if the "Main Stream media" is busy bashing our men & women in uniform, there are so many bloggers out there giving them the support and accolades they deserve.

Anyone interested, the Marine Corps Commemoriative coin goes on sale July 20th. I'll be ordering a couple for sure.

Speaking of the MSM - what the fuck is wrong with this story? Wow - the 20th hijacker was *TORTURED* by being made to wear a bra and thong on his head? A women ran her fingers through his hair? Was lead around by a dog chain??? OH MY FUCKING GOD! The HORROR! The INHUMANITY! GULAG! INQUSITION! LET THE MILITARY HEADS ROLL! Fuck those writers.. thats not torture, that sounds like a fun night of sex. If thats torture, sign me up and bring it on baby - bring it on! I say we pack up those reporters and send them over to London to help clean up the poor innocent people who were murdered by the suicide bombers. Next they can go to Iraq and help scrape up the 30 dead children that the suicide bombers there intentionally targeted.

You want sympathy for the "tortured" guy who was supposed to be the 20th bomber on the World Trade Center towers? As my father - "The big guy" - always says, sympathy is in the dictionary, somewhere between shit and syphillis.