Coordinated attacks ongoing in France

I am entirely ashamed of my country and embarrassed by the cowardice of the ISIS supporters in congress who have allowed themselves to vote for fear. So much for leadership and principle. It's a new low in American history even by today's standards. The founding fathers weep in their graves and it blatantly disrespects the service and sacrifice of all vets.

The approach contrasts sharply with Bush’s brother in 2001. George W. Bush visited a Washington mosque six days after the 9/11 attacks and later gave an address to Congress that urged tolerance toward Muslims.

“The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself,” the president said. “The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. . . . Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.”

George W. Bush and his advisers were trying to tamp down anti-Muslim backlash in the United States and to counter a narrative from the terrorists themselves — that Islam and the West were at war. Bush’s version tried to put the United States and the bulk of the world’s Muslims on the same side of the fight, defending civilization against al-Qaeda’s barbarity.

That message seems to have sunk in: A recent Bloomberg poll, taken after the Paris attacks, showed that 61 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of Democrats agreed with the statement that “Islam is an inherently peaceful religion, but there are some who twist its teachings to justify violence.”

"We Have ISIS Contained.....

Republicans won’t listen to Obama on this score, but they might heed George W. Bush, who still holds sway with the party. He doesn’t need to say anything new or novel. He just needs to remind his party that there’s more to politics than winning—that some victories aren’t worth the cost to the country.

“America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country,” said Bush in his remarks at the Islamic Center in September 2001. “Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.”

Happiegrrrl2

Trad climber

Nov 20, 2015 - 07:53am PT
DAMN, the chief - you are like a rabid dog.

BRUSSELS — Once a happy-go-lucky student at one of Brussels’ most prestigious high schools, Abdelhamid Abaaoud morphed into Belgium’s most notorious jihadist, a zealot so devoted to the cause of holy war that he recruited his 13-year-old brother to join him in Syria.

The child of Moroccan immigrants who grew up in the Belgian capital’s scruffy and multiethnic Molenbeek-Saint-Jean neighbourhood, the fugitive, in his late 20s, was identified by French authorities on Monday as the presumed mastermind of the attacks last Friday in Paris that killed 129 people and injured hundreds.