BRAZEN 17 OCT 07

FAILED SUICIDE BOMBERS: Recent days have seen two sad examples of fanatics who can't even successfully pull off a suicide bombing. A mother in southern Afghanistan triggered an explosion attempting to remove a suicide vest from her son. The blast killed the would-be bomber, his mother, a brother, and two sisters. Reports are the man had recently returned from studying in a madrassa in Pakistan (big surprise), and had given his family $3600 before he announced his intentions. Another man in Afghanistan's Paktika province blew himself up as he attempted to remove his vest. The bomber had told police he changed his mind after seeing people praying. Only the bomber was killed. These examples are part of the continuing pathetic story of Al Qaeda evil. There is no low too low for them or their Islamfascist cohorts the Taliban.
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FIX IT, MR. PRESIDENT: Soldiers of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division, Minnesota National Guard, returned from Iraq earlier this year as on of the longest serving American units. The "Red Bulls" soon discovered some of them were being denied full educational benefits on the basis of a single day of service. Appeal after appeal have not solved the problem. Congress, especially the Minnesota delegations, have begun to get involved, and rightfully so. These soldiers deserve every benefit for which they are even remotely eligible and more. The President should seize this matter, issue an executive order fixing whatever bureaucratic snafu is causing the difficulty, and be done with it. Allowing Congress to get any more involved is an abdication of Presidential authority. President Bush can and should fix this immediately if not sooner. Leaving it unresolved leaves military matters in the hands of legislators, always a dangerous proposition.
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ANYONE NOTICE?: President Bush last Thursday announced the award of a posthumous Medal of Honor to Navy Lieutenant Michael P. Murphy for his actions in Afghanistan in late June 2005. Murphy led a special four-man SEAL recon team trying to find a local Taliban leader as part of a plan to kill or capture local militia leadership near Asadabad. Local Taliban sympathizers informed on the SEAL team, and they were quickly under fire. and outnumbered. LT Murphy continued to fight even after being wounded, probably by a mortar round, and managed to crawl out into the open and make a radio call for air support. That call allowed the rescues of one wounded SEAL and the recovery of the bodies of LT Murphy and two of his men also killed. One helicopter that went to rescue the SEALs crashed, killing 16 American troops and resulting in the worst single-day loss of life for USN Special Ops since World War 2. Bush will present the medal to LT Murphy's parents in a ceremony October 22. This significant military event was completely ignored by the major liberal media. They spent endless hours last week trumpeting the nearly traitorous words of dictator-loving Jimmy Carter, but they had no time for a real American hero. Al Gore gets the Nobel Peace Prize for playing global warming Chicken Little, but it's men like LT Murphy who really insure the peace. The liberal media, and the American political left in general, has no regard for the United States military, and they have proven it for the umpteenth time.
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JINGOCON