Tag Archives: War

News

Over 99 percent of people in southern Sudan vote for succession

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Map of Africa
Map of Africa

Great news in Sudan. (H/T Muddling Towards Maturity)

Excerpt:

More than 99 percent of Southern Sudanese voted to secede from the north, a referendum official said Sunday in the first official preliminary result announcement.

“The vote for separation was 99.57 percent,” said Chan Reek Madut, the deputy head of the commission that organized the referendum, to a crowd in the South’s capital of Juba, according to Reuters.

Voter turnout in the South was 99 percent, Madut said. And over 60 percent of Southern Sudanese living in the north turned out to vote, with 58 percent voting to secede, he stated.

Mohamed Ibrahim Khalil, chairman of the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission, said 99 percent of the Southern Sudanese diaspora in eight nations also voted to secede.

After decades of civil war and ongoing tension between the northern and southern governments, it looks like the south will finally become its own country. The weeklong referendum, which began on Jan. 9, is called for by the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended more than two decades of civil war.

[…]Southern Sudan President Salva Kiir, who is expected to lead the independent South, has called for Southern Sudanese to forgive the North for the years of violence during the civil war. Some 1.9 million people died during the war between the North and South and more than 500 churches were destroyed in the South.

“For our deceased brothers and sisters, particularly those who have fallen during the time of struggle, may God bless them with eternal peace,” said Kiir at Catholic Cathedral in Juba on Jan. 16.

“And,” he continued, “may we, like Jesus Christ on the cross, forgive those who have forcefully caused their deaths.”

Southern Sudan is the more Christian part of Sudan, so this is good news for Sudanese Christians.

Here’s a close up of southern Sudan:

Map of Southern Sudan
Map of Southern Sudan

Muddling linked to an interesting post providing more historical context for the referendum.

I’m still very worried about what is going on in Egypt and Pakistan. I am still trying to catch up on Egypt but the two posts linked by Gateway Pundit are the two best that I’ve seen.

News

Rachel Maddow doesn’t understand modern military weapon systems

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Rachel Maddow doesn’t think that you can shoot down incoming missiles with missiles. I am NOT KIDDING.

Watch this if you like: (warning – has really vulgar language, because they are liberals)

Or read the transcript: (H/T Newsbusters)

STEVE MOORE, WALL STREET JOURNAL: The other tragedy, David, of what’s happened in the last 20 years is the reason Reykjavik fell apart was because Reagan didn’t want to give up SDI or Star Wars. And here we are, you know, what 20 years later and we still don’t have a missile defense system in this country.

DAVID STOCKMAN: We shouldn’t.

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC: They’ve never worked.

MOORE: I don’t want to get blown up.

MADDOW: You know what? Here’s the country, here’s the kind of thing you put over like a cake to protect the cake from flies. Missiles don’t work that way. That’s the whole idea of SDI. We’ll protect ourselves by shooting missiles at other missiles. It’s never worked in a test. We spent billions on it.

MOORE: It’s worked.

MADDOW: And anybody who understands this knows it can never work.

MOORE: If you don’t think it works, then why did the Russians not want us to do it?

MADDOW: The Russians were very happy to sign this thing.

MOORE: No they weren’t. They didn’t want us to do SDI because they knew they didn’t want us to blow up their missiles.

MADDOW: You know what? If you think you can shoot the bullet with the other bullet, you can have an awesome life in Annie Oakley’s side show, but you should not be in charge of billions of dollars of the defense budget. It’s such a hysterical fantasy. I love it.

Newsbusters writes:

It appears Maddow must have been out of the country during Desert Storm when Patriot missiles were used to take out Iraqi Scud missiles aimed at Israel and Saudi Arabia. Although their success rate was a great source of debate at the time (see the July 1996 Center for Defense Information study), no one disputes that some Scuds were indeed shot out of the air.

More importantly, at least twelve countries are currently using Patriot technology as part of their missile defense programs.

Even Japan has missile defense technology:

And India can do it, too.

You can shoot down incoming ballistic missiles from mobile launchers, fixed launchers and naval launchers. In fact, even fighters can intercept incoming ballistic missiles.

In military simulations, I’ve scrambled my F-14 Tomcat CAP to intercept vampires fired at my carrier battle group. (My CAP usually consists of 1 E-2C Hawkeye and 4 F-14D Tomcats because I really like the range on the AIM-54C Phoenix AAM).

Ships will regularly shoot down incoming SSMs. In fact, that is the whole point of the AEGIS missile defense system that is deployed on CG Ticonderoga and DDG Arleigh Burke vessels.

IN FACT, in simulations I have actually shot down vampires using this Phalanx close-in weapon system made by Raytheon. That thing is just a big machine gun used for point defense if all other missile defense systems fail.

Should we really have Democrats like Rachel Maddow in charge of national defense?

UPDATE: Here are a couple more examples I found:

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Videos

MUST-SEE: Condoleezza Rice Takes on Katie Couric Over Iraq Claims

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I am not a fan of Condi, but I absolutely cannot stand Katie Couric.

So, my helmet’s off to you, Ms. Rice.