Fans of the above might want to check out the Godsmack video on Pursuit's sidebar.

Posted by: annika at 10:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Forget Frontline. The inside stuff on the insurgency can be found at Iowahawk.

For instance, this fascinating account of a secret planning conversation between Zarkawi and Zawahiri, as recalled by Zarkawi himself:

I grabbed a pile of my project folders and headed for the conference room, and the crapstorm commenced before my ass hit the carpet.

“Abu, as you know, AQI is all about creating a scalable paradigm for enabling global caliphate,” he says. “But lately, I have been concerned that we’ve had some performance leakage in our Total Quality Jihad plan.”

Okay, maybe I donÂ’t have a fancy ass Master of Martyr Administration from Damascus Tech, but I saw where this shit was going.

“Well, Ayman, sure, we’ve had a couple of tough quarters, but if you look at these clippings from the infidel press and TV, you can see we are still in a net positive PR situation, and... “

“How many associates did we lose in Q1?”

Fuck. Since when does he start asking direct questions? I start fumbling around with my folders.

“I’ll tell you Abu. 1,256.” And then he’s off to the races, with a 45 minute firehose of PowerPoints and Excel pie charts detailing every mosque bombing screwup, every wipeout with Team Satan, every stupid Iraqi anti-Al Qaeda protest.

“At the end of the day, Abu, the AQ family needs to deploy our resources for maximum Return-on-Jihad,” he says. Then he drops the bomb: “It’s time we think about right-sizing the organization vis-à-vis the Baghdad Region.”

Oh, dandy. He says we can accomplish it through attrition, but now it looks like I’m going to have to start emailing pink slips AND condolence letters. I’m not even sure how safe my own damn job is. I was gonna call Fatima and my other babies’ mamas and tell ‘em to cancel the family Mecca trip, but that’d just buy me a week of nonstop nagging.

Posted by: annika at 09:02 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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E.M. proves again why she is a daily must read.

Daily, mind you.

Posted by: annika at 09:40 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Greg has some excellent and extensive hitting advice over at The End Zone.

Throughout my life, I believed I was an excellent hitter in tough situations. I believed my teams were lucky to have me at bat in those situations. I often believed, of everyone on the team, I had the best chance of succeeding against tough pitching in tough situations. I would often be really wanting to win, and I would think "Thank God I'm coming up - my coming to bat really gives us a good chance to win this game," or "My coming to bat is bad luck for those other guys - they are screwed," or "Those other guys have no idea how much trouble they are in with me coming to bat. I'm the last person they want up there - even if they don't know it." Was that true? It doesn't matter if it was true or not! The important thing is to believe it - to have confidence. My father used to say "If you think you cannot, you cannot." He was right about that.

Posted by: annika at 05:34 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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