Stuff you almost Never See in the Papers

I was shopping with my mother and sister a couple of weeks ago, when I walked past this Edmonton Journal headline: CANADIANS ROUT TALIBAN. I've been reading about the coalition (and Canada's) successes against the Taliban in Afghanistan from non-traditional news sources for quite sometime, but this midsteam media headline was a surprise. The Liberal Journal seems to usually print only stories that seem to me to be designed to damage morale and sway Canadian public opinion against participation in the recovery and rebuilding of Afghanistan. No doubt the regular editor at the Journal was sick or something, and this story was printed.

Maybe it's catching. Today's Sun carried on the GLOBAL watch page the headline: AMBUSH ENDS BADLY FOR TALIBAN. The Sun news wire reported that a Nato-led force was ambushed yesterday in southern Afghanistan but suffered no losses. The story reported that the Taliban lost "dozens of insurgents" and attempted to hide in a residential area. I'm usually skeptical of what appears to be "newsrelease" reporting, but we can be reasonably certain there weren't any coalition casualties- that would have been reported in the midstream media for sure.

Meanwhile, another milestone was ignored by the midstream media: the 10,000th act of Islamic-based terrorism since 9/11.

I've had the opportunity to meet a few people who claim to be moderate muslims; Muslim by choice. Some are very likeable guys, Veterans of honorable service with the U.S. military. But when the topic turns to issues like this, they get very hot and very angry.
My response is that either they've been lied to, or we've been been lied to about what Islam really is. But I'll buy into their viewpoint only after it's as Safe to open a Jewish Synagogue in Tehran or Medina as it is to open a Mosque in Edmonton or New York.

Who knows, that day may come.

Ordinary Sunni Iraqi's have been banding together in revolt against the Al-Qaida terrorists in Iraq. Baghdad's largest Sunni Cleric's group, The Association of Muslim Scholars, has condemed the actions of these ordinary citizens who've acted to protect themselves by doing things like capturing suicide bombers and holding them until the authorities arrived. Associated Press reported Yesterday that after accusing the Association of Muslim Scholars of actively supporting Al-Qaida, the Iraqi government seized control of their headquarters.

Quote:

"The association has always justified killing and assassinations carried out by al-Qaida," the head of the Sunni Endowments, Ahmed Abdul-Ghafoor al-Samarraie, told reporters at the mosque, built by Saddam Hussein to commemorate the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Al-Samarraie said the association had opposed the Sunni revolt against al-Qaida, which began last year in Anbar province and is spreading throughout the Sunni heartland. He said the association opposed any group formed "to purge their neighborhoods of al-Qaida elements." AP