Daily Roundup and Merry Christmas!

Loyal Readers! Chester will be celebrating the season with his in-laws and blogging will continue, though it will be light. Best wishes to all of you for a joyous Christmas and cheery New Year. We'll probably squeeze in a post or two over the next week, but make no promises. Here's some things that caught our eye today: ----------------- Sunday is the 60th Anniversary ofthe Battle of the Bulge, when Patton's Third Army smashed the 7 German divisions that had been held in check by a surrounded, starving, cold and fearless 101st Airborne. Though many good stories come out of that fight, this is my personal favorite (the 82nd Airborne was in the fight too):

Dec. 23, 1944 - "Battle of the Bulge" - An entire U.S. armored division was retreating from the Germans in the Ardennes forest when a sergeant in a tank destroyer spotted an American digging a foxhole. The GI, PFC Martin, 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, looked up and asked, "Are you looking for a safe place?" "Yeah" answered the tanker. "Well, buddy," he drawled, "just pull your vehicle behind me... I'm the 82nd Airborne, and this is as far as the bastards are going."

Awesome. --------------------- All of iran's military is focused on defending its nuke sites. That means that if we act fast we can get two birds with one stone! --------------------- If any of you dear readers are feeling especially generous, we'd love a subscription to East-Asia-Intel.com. This is one content-rich source that we could then plow right back into analytical posts on the ole blog here. Looks like they always have interesting under-the-radar stories ... [Thus far, all reader donations have been plowed back into the site here in one way or another . . . more on this in the coming weeks.] --------------------- With friends like these . . .MEMRI reports that a Saudi government daily, Al-Watan, Accuses U.S. Army of Harvesting Organs of Iraqis. We suppose this doesn't increase our support in Saudi Arabia. Joseph Nye would certainly call it a failure of our "soft power." But it certainly helps the US the more Muslims are scared to death of our military. If you can't convince them you're a good guy, might as well convince them that you steal organs from dead insurgents . . . --------------------- Lawrence of Irvine Learns Spying and Blogging Don't Mix? We've received this somewhat humorous email from an Alert Reader:

A few weeks ago I sent you a copy of an article posted on The Angry Iranian Weblog. The blogger, Lawrence Reza Ershaghi, is an Iranian who was living in Irvine California, and made no secret of his displeasure with the US. He seemed to eagerly await the rise of the Shia in Iraq, which he felt would result in Iranian hegemony in the Gulf. He had been posting articles once or twice a week until November 24. After that, nothing. This week DEBKAfile posted this: "...Iranian spy teams have been spotted outside Israeli missions in various parts of the world, including one nabbed by the FBI watching Israeli consulates in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Houston. It was made up of Iranian Americans, Arab and Pakistani students - some of them US citizens, and all activists belonging to Muslim fundamentalist groups." I suspect Lawrence may be spending the holidays as a guest of our government.

A very Merry Christmas to you, Lawrence, and we hope you enjoy the government cheese in whichever federal institution you now reside!