PeterBlood goes to Lisbon

* The “first ambulance”, no. 782, was speeding in a convoy AND stationary;
* The six people on board the convoy were all severely injured except Shalin the driver AND only two were severely injured;
* Shalin was protected by the driver’s canopy AND by the vehicle’s rear ramp;
* The ambulance/convoy was struck by a rocket/s AND missile/s fired by an Apache helicopter that was also a drone;
* The missile pierced the centre of the red cross on ambulance 782 AND “an explosion thundered” into the ambulance;
* Shalin “remembers nothing” after the flash-bang-crunch of the crash AND he remembers that “then there was a battle for the next hour” and “we hid in a building convinced we were going to die”.

# posted by Pedro Oliveira @ 11:59 PM 0 comments

I hope and pray we don't get hit again, like we did on September 11. Even one life lost to the violence of terrorism is too much. [...]

What if another terror attack just before this fall's elections could save many thousand-times the lives lost?

I start from the premise that there is already a substantial portion of the electorate that tends to vote GOP because they feel that Bush has "kept us safe," and that the Republicans do a better job combating terrorism.

If an attack occurred just before the elections, I have to think that at least a few of the voters who persist in this "Bush has kept us safe" thinking would realize the fallacy they have been under.

If 5% of the "he's kept us safe" revise their thinking enough to vote Democrat, well, then, the Dems could recapture the House and the Senate and be in a position to:

Block the next Supreme Court appointment, one which would surely result in the overturning of Roe and the death of hundreds if not thousands of women from abortion-prohibiting states at the hands of back-alley abortionists;

Be in a position to elevate the party's chances for a regime change in 2008. A regime change that would:

Save hundreds of thousands of American lives by enacting universal health care;

Save untold numbers of lives by pushing for cleaner air standards that would greatly reduce heart and lung diseases;

More enthusiastically address the need for mass transit, the greater availability of which would surely cut highway deaths;

Enact meaningful gun control legislation that would reduce crime and cut fatalities by thousands a year;

Fund stem cell research that could result in cures saving millions of lives;

Boost the minimum wage, helping to cut down on poverty which helps spawn violent crime and the deaths that spring from those acts;

Be less inclined to launch foolish wars, absence of which would save thousands of soldiers' lives- and quite likely moderate the likelihood of further terror acts.

# posted by Pedro Oliveira @ 3:56 PM 0 comments

Yes, why should they bother, if talking about talks is working so well - and is providing them all the time they need for finishing their little nuke project – against the concern that dear Annan’s baby expresses so well.

Finally, after providing enough suspense for several Hitchcock movies, Ali Larijani, top negotiator on Iran’s nuclear program, offers more of the same:

On Tuesday, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, hand-delivered his government's response to ambassadors of Britain, China, Russia, France, Germany and Switzerland — which represents U.S. interests — nine days before a Security Council deadline for Iran to halt uranium enrichment or face economic and political sanctions.

Larijani refused to disclose whether the response included an offer to suspend uranium enrichment. But the semiofficial Fars news agency reported that Iran rejected calls to suspend "nuclear activities" — or uranium enrichment — and "instead has offered a new formula to resolve the issues through dialogue."

The state-run television quoted Larijani as telling the diplomats Iran "is prepared as of Aug. 23rd (Wednesday) to enter serious negotiations" with the countries that proposed the incentives package.

So that’s it, yet more negotiations, and more time for Tehran’s mad mullahs to finish their nuclear project. Are we heading for another great show of Munich-like appeasement, and will we be watching a Middle East take over in a couple of years?

I’ll just add a word of advice to Syria’s Hassan. As his country’s sympathy towards Iran nowadays, back in 1939 Poland’s sympathy for Germany’s regime wasn’t enough to stop their invasion and division between the Nazis and the Soviets.

Ahmadinejad may want to try to bring the 12th Imam out on his timetable to speed up the end of the world as we know it. We still have the ability to end Ahmadinejad's world in a hell of a hurry, and that a thousand times over. The 12th Imam won't even have climbed aboard his winged horse before we can turn Teheran into a glass farm. Why don't we recall that we are not helpless children in the face of Islamic millenial nonsense?

# posted by Pedro Oliveira @ 11:22 PM 0 comments