Sharia Being Perverted, Pakistanis Say

By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, May 10, 2009

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 9 -- When black-turbaned Taliban fighters demanded in January that Islamic sharia law be imposed in Pakistan's Swat Valley, few alarm bells went off in this Muslim nation of about 170 million.

Sharia, after all, is the legal framework that guides the lives of all Muslims.

Officials said people in Swat were fed up with the slow and corrupt state courts, scholars said the sharia system would bring swift justice, and commentators said critics in the West had no right to interfere.

Today, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Swat and Pakistani troops launching an offensive to drive out the Taliban forces, the pendulum of public opinion has swung dramatically. The threat of "Talibanization" is being denounced in Parliament and on opinion pages, and the original defenders of an agreement that authorized sharia in Swat are in sheepish retreat.

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30 April 2009

Their reputations and interests are left undefended

The Washington Times

By Gabe Ledeen / Thursday, April 30, 2009

Commentary:

In its second major misstep with veterans in as many months, the Obama administration gave our representative organizations another opportunity to step up on our behalf and defend us from misguided government action.

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19 April 2009

I am in Borneo heading into the jungles.  Got this interesting email from blog.USNI.org:

Japan’s late-1941 attack on Pearl Harbor left America feeling vulnerable, and Japan invincible.  On April 18, 1942, American pilots – flying from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet – cracked Japan’s confidence.  Led by Lieutenant Colonel “Jimmy” Doolittle, their daring raid on Tokyo was the first WWII strike against the Japanese homeland.  In 1983, U. S. Naval Institute historians recorded a conversation with Doolittle as part of an oral history project.  Until weeks ago, the tapes of that interview sat hidden on a dusty shelf.  Rediscovered and digitized, we’ve posted them so you can hear, in his own voice, the man who made history with the “Doolittle Raid.”

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