I wonder how good they are against underground uranium enrichment sites:

The aircraft is simply the most advanced ever built. There is nothing on earth to touch it. In simulated dogfights it has wiped the floor with the opposition.

In one such encounter, six F-15 Eagle air-superiority fighters — which the Raptor is replacing and which has a perfect combat record of 101 victories with zero defeats — were sent up to “kill” a single Raptor. All six were shot down.

A bit of perspective is needed here. The Eagle is the most lethal air-superiority fighter in the US arsenal and its pilots are the best in the world.

One of those “aura” pilots I was talking about earlier is Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Huffman, the commander of the 64th Aggressor Squadron.

The Aggressors are the dogfighting experts of the US Air Force. In aerial combat training they act as the “enemy”. It’s their job to give the opposing fighter jocks a hard time. It’s also their job to “kill” them. A sort of baptism of fire — a wake-up call.

Huffman and his hot-shots were sent up against the Raptor. IÂ’ll let him finish the story.

“We still joke about our missions against the Raptor, because they can be fairly boring.

“We fly to the [designated combat] range. Die. Go to the tanker [to refuel]. Go back out to the range. Die. Go back to the tanker. Go back out. Die. After the third time we go home.”

Same thing the next day, and the next.

As Huffman told Code One magazine, the 64th flew almost 300 sorties against the Raptors “and we never once got to merge [make visual contact] against a single Raptor”.

Another hard-assed air combat supremo, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Garland, a former F-15 Eagle pilot and now a Raptor jockey, told Code One magazine: “Six adversaries provide a good workout for two F-15 Eagle pilots. But for two Raptors, defeating six adversaries is about as difficult as eating breakfast. We [Raptor pilots] don’t even break a sweat.”

...

So how do you fight something you canÂ’t see, fire at or out-turn? The short answer is: you donÂ’t. You just die.

Thanks to Allah.

Bonus Warporn: Old, but still cool. The much-linked Metalstorm fire system stacks each of its multiple barrels with several bullets at a time, then ignites each electrically a split second after the other. The effect is that you can fire a hellacious number of rounds in a second -- 30,000 rounds per minute when firing from all 36 of the barrels show in this model.

The first firing is a conventional one-after-the-other sort of firing. The following firings are speeded up through electic ignition.

Instead of rat-a-tat-tat, the Metalstorm just purrs with firepower.

Again thanks to Allah.

Update: The Navy can do some bragging. An F-18 Super Hornet managed to bag a Raptor in wargames.

Not really a fair contest, though. The poor Raptor was up against Maverick, Slider, and Iceman. To celebrate, they all went out for mojitos and a steam.

Thanks to Steve K.

Posted by: Ace at 06:44 AM | Comments (33)
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Hope it's true:

Al Qaeda in Iraq and its presumed leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi, have conceded strategic defeat and are on their way out of the country, a top U.S. military official contended yesterday.

The group's failure to disrupt national elections and a constitutional referendum last year "was a tactical admission by Zarqawi that their strategy had failed," said Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who commands the XVIII Airborne Corps.

"They no longer view Iraq as fertile ground to establish a caliphate and as a place to conduct international terrorism," he said in an address at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Gen. Vines' statement came as news broke that coalition and Iraqi forces had killed an associate of Osama bin Laden's during an early morning raid near Abu Ghraib about two weeks ago.

Rafid Ibrahim Fattah aka Abu Umar al Kurdi served as a liaison between terrorist networks and was linked to Taliban members in Afghanistan, Pakistani-based extremists and other senior al Qaeda leaders, the military said yesterday.

Posted by: Ace at 03:52 PM | Comments (49)
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Not for the squeamish, and not for before dinner or an hour or so after.

The video begins with the snake having already swallowed the dog-- a medium-sized dog, not a puppy or chihuahua. Then it, well, regurgitates it.

It's nastier than The Thing.

Thanks to Allah.

Posted by: Ace at 02:34 PM | Comments (27)
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Pic swiped from iCards, thanks to Temple of Jennifer/Demure Thoughts.

Posted by: Ace at 07:38 AM | Comments (72)
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Lionel Richie electrifies Libyans

Electrifies, huh? Was he and Mo rubbing a lot of balloons on their heads?

"Libya I love you, I'll be back," the Oscar and Grammy award-winning singer songwriter said to roars of approval from more than 1,000 senior Libyan officials and diplomats gathered in front of the shell-cratered building.

Hey don't forget my T-shirts and CDs in the lobby!

The event ended with a group of children dressed as angels standing on a balcony of the house and waving candles as they sang along to a recording of the U.S. humanitarian pop anthem "We are the world."

I think we should have had the US Air Force provide the encore!

Posted by: Tanker at 01:53 PM | Comments (26)
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Peace activist rescued by soldiers, not peace activists!

Remember those Hippy dickheads taken hostage by the Iraqi Minutemen?

Apparently the English one is a little miffed that he was rescued by such violent people. Unfortunately, it seems that Mother Sheehan was unavailable that day.

"They were brave. I disagree with their profession, but it is ironic isn't it - you go as a peace activist and you are rescued by the SAS, which is perhaps the most violent of all the British forces.

Hey Norm! I don't remember the Boy Scouts landing on the beaches of Normandy, do you?

Posted by: Tanker at 09:30 AM | Comments (80)
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It's not for party tricks.

Apparently it's sold to undercover-type operators who may have need on occasion to fake a bout of diarrhea in order to get away from someplace, or get out of doing something expected of them. And for some reason it's now being made generally available to the public.

I guess it could help you get out of work early, but soiling yourself in your office (even with fake diarrhea) seems a little extreme, even if you really, really want to catch the first-Friday-matinee-screening of Snakes on a Plane.

The pitch:

Doo Drops look and smell just like real diarrhea. Many useful applications, all of which will be left to your imagination. It's just like a tube of explosive diarrhea, except silent for stealth deployments. It comes in a handy dropper-top squeeze dispenser for rapid, realistic applications. All-natural. SMELLS LIKE CRAP.

"SMELLS LIKE CRAP." There are very few products that advertise that. The only thing that comes close is Clamato, the clam juice/tomato drink, which tried claiming it had "all the rich, zesty flavor of liquified puma waste," believing that might be more palatable to the public than its actual taste.

Thanks to JohnS.

Posted by: Ace at 10:48 AM | Comments (36)
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Great piece in the Spectator.

The WaPo article, suggesting Bush lied by saying these trailers were WMD factories because it had already been "unanimously" determined they were not for WMD purposes, was already caught out in its deception, as two teams who investigated the trailers concluded they were, in fact, bioweapons factories.

But it gets worse, because previously we had thought the WaPo article was merely deliberately misleading-- the one team, we thought, was in fact "unanimous" in determining they were not for WMD purposes. But it turns out even that team was not unaminous at all:

Curiously, on June 7, 2003, the New York Times had already described three teams looking over the trailers in Iraq. Two of the teams were in agreement that the trailers were WMD labs, but the third, more senior team was not at all "unequivocal," but "divided sharply over the functions of the trailers."

The piece also quotes that intercepted communication between an Iraqi general and colonel that Colin Powell played at his UN presentation on Iraq's WMD's.

COL: About this committee that is coming...

GEN: Yeah, yeah...

COL: ...with Mohamed El Baradei [Director, International Atomic Energy Agency]

GEN: Yeah, yeah.

COL: Yeah.

GEN: Yeah?

COL: We have this modified vehicle.

GEN: Yeah.

COL: What do we say if one of them sees it?

GEN: You didn't get a modified...You don't have a modified...

COL: By God, I have one.

GEN: Which? From the workshop...?

COL: From the al-Kindi Company

GEN: What?

COL: From al-Kindi.

GEN: Yeah, yeah. I'll come to you in the morning. I have some comments. I'm worried you all have something left.

COL: We evacuated everything. We don't have anything left.

GEN: I will come to you tomorrow.

COL: Okay.

Make sure you read the article to realize the importance of the reference to the "Al-Kindi company." They were not in the business of making mobile hydrogen production laboratories for weather balloons.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 AM | Comments (45)
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...including very graphic photographs the MSM will of course never dare to show.

One such photo appears after the jump. CAUTION. It's sickening.

H/t American Barbarian, via LGF. more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (50)
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I sure could use a little racism like that in my life.

Funnyman Dave Chappelle cites racial prejudice as the reason for his abrupt walk-out from his hit Comedy Central series, "Chappelle's Show" last year.

The stand-up comedian made headlines in May 2005 when he quit the show during its third season, leaving behind a $50 million contract.

He was eventually tracked down in South Africa where he said he went to "purify himself," and "do some soul searching" because he was unhappy with the direction the show was going.

During an interview, Chappelle told Esquire magazine, "The bottom line was, white people own everything..."

Well, they no longer owned that $50 million they gave to you, until you gave it back.

.".. and where can a black person go and be himself or say something that's familiar to him and not have to explain or apologize? I felt like I was really pressured to settle for something that I didn't necessarily feel like I wanted. The thing about show business is that, in a way, it forces dysfunctional relationships in people."

I don't get it. Life is full of compromises imposed upon us. Is the idea of black authenticity, whatever the hell that is, so strong in some people they think they should be freed of the compromises just about every human being on the planet must accept?

To me, $50 million buys a lot of goodwill and spirit of compromise.

Some people handle this kind of amazing success relatively well. Some people just go bananas. I guess I understand that last part; hey, if your life circumstances suddenly changed from everything you had previously known -- hassels, money problems, a boss you hate, etc. -- into something resembling that Twillight Zone episode where you're suddenly in heaven on earth, maybe you too would find that a heaven where you're given everything you've always dreamed of looks a lot like Hell. It's just disorienting, I guess.

(Although: I sure would like to be disoriented in such a fashion.)

Chappelle has previously stated he walked away from the $50 million because he felt that kind of money alienated him from his audience, and, presumably, his friends and family, and from himself as well. That sounds strange, but then, that is, after all, a life-changing amount of money, and some people may just recoil from such a life-changing event.

But now he's crying racism. The evil racism of white men who tried to make him a "slave." A fifty-million-dollar incredibly-famous do-a-job-you-love walk-away-after-three-years-and-never-need-to-work-again-except-on-your-tan "slave."

Chappelle always struck me as sensible. But I think now he's been deranged by his jaw-dropping success.

Thanks to Digital Brownshirt, who asks for your prayers for his dad in his battle with cancer.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 AM | Comments (55)
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