From the Washington Post…

As Ford and Staff Sgt. John Wayne Walding returned fire, Walding was hit below his right knee. Ford turned and saw that the bullet “basically amputated his right leg right there on the battlefield.”

Walding, of Groesbeck, Tex., recalled: “I literally grabbed my boot and put it in my crotch, then got the boot laces and tied it to my thigh, so it would not flop around. There was about two inches of meat holding my leg on.” He put on a tourniquet, watching the blood flow out the stump to see when it was tight enough.

Then Walding tried to inject himself with morphine but accidentally used the wrong tip of the syringe and put the needle in this thumb, he later recalled. “My thumb felt great,” he said wryly, noting that throughout the incident he never lost consciousness. “My name is John Wayne,” he said.

9 men received the silver star as a result of their actions during that battle. That is the most given to single unit for one battle since the Vietnam War.

From the Telegraph….

Greece has issued an international appeal for more tear gas after supplies ran low because police fired so much of it during a week of violent protests across the country.

Officers released 4,600 capsules of tear gas during confrontations in Athens and nearly a dozen other cities since riots erupted over the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old schoolboy by a policeman last Saturday.

The Greek government is urgently seeking fresh supplies of tear gas from Israel and Germany, the police said.

From Spiegel….

The rocks are lying everywhere in the streets. Thousands and thousands of them. Iron rods are also littered about, as are makeshift wooden clubs and spent cartridges. The sharp stench of teargas floats through the air, mixed with the acrid odor of melted plastic. Flames shoot out of trash bins; a Japanese compact lies on its side. And from behind the fence surrounding the Athens Polytechnic, black clad rioters are chanting as loud as they can:

“Pigs! Swine! Murderers!”

“Pigs! Swine! Murderers!”

Facing them, around 10 or 20 meters away, is a unit of riot police, armed with truncheons and armored with shields and white helmets. Earlier, the police had spoken of following a strategy of de-escalation — but by late Tuesday night, that, apparently, had been discarded. “Come on out you cowards! Come out and get us,” yells the police commander. He bends down to grab a rock and hurls it at the demonstrators. His men do the same. It’s a revolt in reverse.

It is the fourth night since 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos died after being shot in the breast by a policeman. And still, peace refuses to return to the Greek capital.

From a different article in Spiegel….

The two seem enthusiastic as they chat to each other, smiling and cracking jokes. Perhaps they’re related. At the same time, the mates of a rioter standing next to him are busy ripping apart the sidewalk. The woman says goodbye, kissing both of his cheeks, before gracefully tottering away. Then one of the rioters turns around, picks up a large rock and throws it down into the street where the police are standing.

It’s the daily dose of anarchy in Athens, that entered into its fifth day on Wednesday.

The Greek riots are a textbook example of how deep a country can sink if it lacks democracy’s most important element, the support and acceptance of its people. The scales of democracy have tipped here, and one inevitably gets the impression these days that there are few left who still trust the government to find the right path. Their experiences with its scandals, cronyism and corruption are too deeply seated. And it is in their unanimous rejection of the elite that both business people and the Black Bloc anarchists have found common ground.

Spiegel almost makes it sound heroic to destroy the sidewalk and throw it at the police. Granted, the Greek political elite is pretty corrupt, but the people of Greece are hardly oppressed. If they were being oppressed, there would be a lot more then just one punk dead. Heck, the police are barred by law from entering the universities. This gives the rioters a place to rearm and regroup unmolested by the evil forces of authority. How is that for oppression? Whats more, the protesters have been rioting for almost a week without have any clear idea of what they hope to accomplish. I guess they just want hope and change.

Greece has the government that it deserves but that government has no authority.

From the Telegraph….

Taliban militants launched a second raid in as many days on Nato supplies in Pakistan setting fire to nearly 100 more vehicles destined for coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The latest attack on a container terminal near the northwest city of Peshawar came a day after Taliban militants launched the biggest such raid to date, destroying nearly 200 vehicles in the area.

This time, the attackers set nearly 100 vehicles alight including jeeps and 20 supply trucks after dousing them with petrol, police said.

“It was almost the same type of attack as the one conducted by 200 armed militants” on the previous night, said a police official. “The militants fled from the scene when police arrived.”

Speaking of trends, Pakistan has moved against Lashkar-e-Taiba. From the Guardian…..

Pakistan launched its first major operation against the militant group accused of carrying out the Mumbai attacks, raiding a camp of Lashkar-e-Taiba and capturing a man identified by India as one of the masterminds behind the terrorist strike.

According to local reports, 12 members of the banned group including Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, accused by Delhi as being one of the planners of the carnage in India’s financial centre, were arrested in Sunday night’s raid in the hills above Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. A helicopter gunship hovered overhead and gunfire was heard.

Sounds great don’t it? But we have been down this road before. From later on in the article….

In the past, Pakistan has arrested the founder of LeT, Hafiz Saeed, but then quietly let him go weeks later.

Lashkar-e-Taiba has been banned for years now. But that has not stopped it from operating.

If you get your morals from the media, then the beating of Rodney King justified a riot but the killing of Vicki Weaver was all right. Some of us hillbillies don’t buy that line of argument.

A common argument is that terror should not be fought through war, but rather, terror should be treated as a police matter. But the truth of the matter is that people have the stomach for neither war nor justice.

The assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri is good case in point. If any other nation’s political leader was killed by agents of another, it would be considered an act of war. But the assassination of Hariri is being treated as a police manner and it is being conducted to the highest standards that any liberal could wish. But in the end, there is likely to be no justice.

And this lack of justice is the not the result of the matter being treated as a crime as opposed to an act of war. The investigation has almost certainly fingered the guilty parties.

Rather the lack of justice will come about because Bush, Israel, and the world at large have no use for justice when it is inconvenient. At least, that is the conclusion that Getting Away With Murder? by Joshua Hammer points towards.

From the Telegraph….

Hundreds of Taliban fighters have stormed a crucial Nato depot outside the Pakistani city of Peshawar, destroying over 100 lorries which would have taken supplies to American and British forces in Afghanistan.

The gunmen overpowered and disarmed the security guards, before setting fire to the vehicles, many of which were laden with Humvee armoured cars intended for Western forces.

About three quarters of all the ammunition, food, weapons and other supplies needed by Nato’s troops in Afghanistan, including 8,000 British soldiers, pass through Pakistan. The Taliban have clearly identified this route as a crucial vulnerability.

I may be getting too paranoid, but I wonder if these attacks were done with the encouragement of Pakistan’s army. It would be good way of reminding the US of how critical Pakistan was for American success in Afghanistan. The Pakistani army might figure that the US needs a reminder given the pressure that the US has started to put on Pakistan. From the Belmont Club….

Whatever the American attitude towards the Government of Pakistan will be, the US already openly believes that certain former (thanks for spotting the difference, readers) Pakistani officials are in fact, terrorists. Bill Roggio reports that “the US wants the United Nations Security Council to designate several senior former officers of Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency as international terrorists.”

It may be paranoia to connect these two stories. But Pakistan has openly threated to let to allow the Taliban a free hand if too much pressure is put on it by India. From the New York Times….

Ms. Rice’s diplomatic agenda takes place as Washington is seeking high-level cooperation in different spheres with both India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbors. Washington wants Pakistan to help defeat Al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents along the border with Afghanistan.

But Pakistani security officials have threatened to withdraw troops from the lawless border region to redeploy them if India and Pakistan slide toward their fourth war since independence from Britain in 1947, Reuters reported.

From NewsMax…

The devices, called Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) machines, allow officials to read remotely any passports, pass cards, and driver’s licenses that contain special chips with personal information.

The RFIDs are so sensitive that, even before a vehicle pulls up at a border checkpoint, agents already will have on their computer screen the personal data of the passengers, including each person’s name, date of birth, nationality, passport or ID number, and even a digitized photo.

The new gadgets are in place, or soon will be, at five border crossings: Blaine, Wash.; Buffalo; Detroit; Nogales, Ariz.; and San Ysidro, Calif. They are slated to have a dramatically expanded presence in June.

Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that the technology could make Americans less secure because terrorists or other criminals may be able to steal the personal information off the ID cards remotely.

Tien and other critics warn that people up to no good can use their own RFID machines in a process called “skimming” to read the information from as far as 50 feet.

Of course, the government assures you that only their machines can read the data so you have nothing to worry about.

From the Times….

Water supplies to residents in Harare were cut by the authorities yesterday as Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic tightened its grip and the city witnessed its worst unrest for a decade.

The Zimbabwe National Water Authority turned off the pumps in the capital after it ran out of purifying chemicals. With cholera cases soaring above 11,000 across the country, and an anthrax outbreak ravaging the the countryside, David Parirenyatwa, the Health Minister, urged Zimbabweans to stop shaking hands to avoid spreading disease.

Companies and government offices, especially those in high-rise buildings, were sending workers home by midday as lavatories became blocked. “My office stinks and the toilet is a disgusting site,” said Mary Sakupwene, a secretary. “I won’t go back until the water’s on again.”

You have to give Islam some credit. No Islamic country has ever been mismanaged to the degree that Zimbabwe and North Korea have been. I don’t want to ever live in Pakistan or Iran, but their leaders are the model of good governance in comparison to the Kims and the Mugabes of the world.