This is hardly surprising since we’re talking about the same university that invited Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak, but even still, words escape me:

Columbia University students heckled a war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether ROTC should be allowed back on campus.

“Racist!” some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.

Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military.

“It doesn’t matter how you feel about the war. It doesn’t matter how you feel about fighting,” said Maschek. “There are bad men out there plotting to kill you.”

Several students laughed and jeered the Idaho native, a 10th Mountain Division infantryman who spent two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington recovering from grievous wounds.

Pathetic, but predictable. The inexcusable treatment of Anthony Maschek by people who won’t understand or appreciate the US military until there are Chinese tanks sitting in the lobbies of their dormitories and suicide bombers in Schermerhorn Hall (and probably not even then) isn’t necessarily because he’s a military veteran — it could be because his name isn’t Bradley Manning.

**Wasn’t the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” supposed to open the arms of the left toward the military?

**Rhetorical question, no need to answer

Glenn Reynolds:

I note that this is also more evidence that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was just a lame excuse to cover for generic hostility to the military, something made clear by numerous speakers at the event including some Columbia faculty. I also note that in these days of constrained budgets and an angry, aware electorate, heavily subsidized sectors like higher education — and Columbia, despite its private nature, is itself heavily dependent on government subsidies — should think twice about appearing anti-American. It’s not the 1960s anymore.

Maybe we should add Columbia to the “defund-a-palooza” wish list.

I’ll close with an observation from Jammie Wearing Fool:

This is where we are now in America: People laugh and sneer at wounded veterans. Yet go and make fun of a liberal and it’s basically a hate crime.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

How do you convince the FARC to get in a helicopter with you and turn over their most valuable hostages? Why, pretend you’re a trustifarian NGO, of course:

It emerged that commandoes had managed to trick the rebels into handing over the hostages.

A government agent managed to infiltrate the rebel group, apparently earning their trust, paving the way for the rescue.

Undercover Colombian commandoes flew to the jungle camp in a civilian helicopter, claiming to be from a fictitious non-government organisation.

They claimed they had orders to fly the hostages by helicopter to a camp to meet with rebel leader Alfonso Cano.

“The helicopters, which in reality were from the army, picked up the hostages in Guaviare and flew them to freedom,” Mr Santos said.

It’s like Clear and Present Danger meets Beverly Hills Cop. They even had the Colombian commandos dress up in Che Guevara T-shirts.

The helicopter was piloted by intelligence officers dressed as leftist sympathizers. Betancourt said the hostages thought they were being picked up by some kind of international humanitarian organization to be taken to the FARC high command.

“Our hearts broke. More captivity. Another transfer,” [Rescued hostage Ingrid] Betancourt said in a dramatic press conference minutes after embracing her mother.

She and the others were handcuffed as they boarded the helicopter, which she described as “humiliating.” Once they were airborne, everything happened so fast Betancourt missed it.

It was then that she saw {FARC prison commandant] Cesar, who had treated her so cruelly for so many years, was naked and blindfolded on the floor.

No word whether there was a banana in his tailpipe.

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Seriously, though, this is great news, and it’s one more blow to the rapidly collapsing FARC.

Kudos to President Uribe for staying the course, and avoiding the easy temptation of legitimating the FARC through their negotiations.

Oh, interesting detail from the Telegraph’s report about the FARC, in case you are discussing them with a sympathizing lefty: Those three American hostages were the lucky ones.

The three men were part of a five-man crew of a spy plane that was taking pictures of drugs crops and guerrilla camps in February 2003.

The plane crash-landed in rebel territory and within minutes the Farc were on the scene. The two other crew members, a Colombian and another American, were killed by the Farc as they were too injured for the march into captivity.

Here’s a video of Ingrid Betancourt’s press conference.

Keep hunting the FARC down.
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UPDATE: A friend e-mailed to point out one brilliant psy-op advantage of this exercise–now the FARC will suspect every trustafarian in a Che T-shirt as a potential double agent!
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{Post by See-Dubya}

Diego Fernando Murillo acknowledged he had conspired with military, political and “anti-communist” forces to smuggle tonnes of cocaine into the US.

Murillo, also known as Don Berna, now faces between 27 and 33 years in jail.

You’ll notice that the BBC is careful to identify them as “right wing” and “anti-communist” several times there.

So I was wondering: are they more Russell Kirk types, or Straussians? Maybe they’re more Hayekian Road-to-Serfdom thinkers. Or…maybe they’re theo-cons? Don’t a lot of the AUC’s libraries subscribe to World magazine?

Hmmm….Libertarians, maybe? Guns, drugs, hate legitimate authority and display a complete lack of conscience. Closest yet, but not quite right.

Seriously, the AUC isn’t a movement with an ideology other than killing FARC and selling drugs. Mostly just selling drugs. But the media thinks that since FARC gets called a left-wing terror group because they stand for a Castroesque revolution in Colombia (and selling drugs), therefore their opposition, the AUC, must be “right-wing”.

So let’s hear it for Plan Colombia, and the Bush administration’s prosecution of right wing terror!

The AP’s story about Murillo includes a couple of interesting details–including how the case that resulted in his extradition was started by an ordinary NYPD detective doing good police work, as well as Murillo’s Keyser Soze-like legend:

As a younger man, he was the target of an assassination attempt that left his body riddled with gunshot wounds. The attack cost him part of one leg and paralyzed muscles in his face, but somehow, he survived.

“The local legend,” Barry said, “is that he reappeared on the streets of Medellin with a crutch under one arm and a machine gun under the other.”

Oopsie, did I just quote the AP? Well, I must owe them some money, then. They can send Captain Jamil Hussein by my house to pick it up from me.

He knows where I live. He knows everything…

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{Post by See-Dubya}