Internet Scammers Blast Cincinnati With Bogus E-Mails From Gen. Petraeus: $22.6 Million Afghan Treasure Needs Ohio Hideout

Email Says General Has Loot Like Pirate

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The message comes from a gmail account under the name General David Howell Petraeus, who is supposed to be writing from his command post in Afghanistan where U.S. and NATO forces are battling the Taliban.  The general has become a pirate with a treasure he needs to stash.  But the message is crude and clearly fake.  It contains numerous grammatical and punctuation errors.  Petraeus is a four-star U.S. Army general officer from West Point who went on to obtain an Ivy League PhD.  He doesn't write like an unschooled Arab hunched over a keyboard in an Internet cafe, a Nigerian spammer, or a Somali Long John Silver.  What's even more ridiculous: Holly Petraeus, the general's wife of 36 years, heads a Better Business Bureau (BBB) consumer education office.  Yet the email portrays this American hero as corrupt, as crooked as Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the kleptocrats who surround him.  Perhaps the email originated as psyops from the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, and was written from a cave in Pakistan.  Perhaps it is simply a scam.  It clearly is an attempt to tie the American general into Karzai's thieving regime.  Awful that gmail allows it to circulate widely.  See for yourself the bogus content -- bad grammar and all -- in this excerpt:

"Some money and gold in various currencies [$22.6 million in U.S. dollars plus 50 kilos of gold] was discovered in barrel at a farm house in (sic) during the presidential election at the Taliban strong hold during a rescuer (sic) operation in the election attack and it was agreed by staff Sgt. Kenneth Buff and I that some part of this money and gold be shared among us before informing anyone about the discovery.  this (no caps) was quite illegal thing to do but I tell you what.  No compensation will make it up for the risk we have taken our lives in this hell whole (sic) of which my brother-in-law was killed by a road side bomb last week.

"The above figure was given me as my shared to cancel this kind of money became a problem for me, so with the help of a British contact working here and his office enjoys some immunity I was able to move the money to a security company in the United Kingdom as a diplomatic consignment."

The general's wife, Holly, directs the BBB Military Line, which works with service members.  She tries to keep families from being the targets of scammers and financial fraudsters.  She tells the story of how in 1974 she and her husband got caught in a snare by buying a sports car.  It was a red Jensen-Healy that was a mechanical nightmare.  They were young, not well off, and the car moneypit drained them financially.  Lesson learned. 

Quran Tearing Planned For Cincinnati's Fountain Square: Islam-Bashers Say They'll Show Up Oct. 7



Is Tearing Less Worse Than Burning?



CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The local protest will coincide with the date the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, although nobody seems to have noticed the connection.  Randall Terry, the anti-abortion protester who founded Operation Rescue, says his followers plan to read and destroy passages from the Quran this week in at least seven U.S. cities,  including Cincinnati.  Terry calls the protest "Hear Muhammad Speak,"  and it is scheduled to start at the proposed mosque near Ground Zero on Wednesday.  A day later the protest is supposed to show up on Fountain Square at the noon hour.  Nobody is sure what will happen, if anything.  Terry's website lists this information about the local organizer:

"Contact: David Smith
Email: david_smith@milacron.com
Thursday, October 7, 2010
12PM -1PM
Meet at: Fountain Square
Fountain Square
W 5th St
Cincinnati, OH 45202"

Terry has an instructional video on YouTUBE that shows how to print-out and crumple up passages from the Quran. Organizing materials say that the the quotations are words "in which Muhammad calls for the murder, beheading, torture, execution and more of Christians, Jews, and Muslim 'apostates' who leave Islam."  Terry has turned into a fringe player on the far out Christian Right.  He seems to be trying to jump back into the headlines by piggybacking off the Florida preacher's threat to burn the Quran.  Some would say he's looking for a second act.  Terry says:  "One of our goals is to urge Americans to study the words and deed of Muhammad.  Americans are rightly concerned about Sharia law; we must connect the dots between the Quran, Muhammad's actions, and Sharia law."  Additional details are at http://www.terrycast.com/; you have to click on the headline Hear Muhammad Speak.

Terry says October 7 is an important date in Christian history because on that date in 1571 the naval battle of Lepanto took place.  He also says October 7 is the Catholic Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.  In the battle  of Lepanto, a fleet from the Holy League -- an alliance of Mediterranean nations that included Spain, Venice and the Papacy -- defeated the Turks, who were bidding to occupy Italy and Rome.  Wikipedia has an entry about the battle, which apparently was the last big naval engagement involving fighting ships powered by rows of oarsmen.  Terry doesn't mention that Oct. 7 is also the day the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, starting the longest war in American history, an event meant as reprisal for Al Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  Since the fighting started, at  least 1,239 Americans have lost their lives in that war.

Cleveland Browns All-Pro Joe Thomas Shows Up In Afghanistan: Lineman Goes From NFL Trenches To The Real Thing

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Bengals fans might want to stuff their chant that goes "If it's Brown, flush it down." Offensive tackle Joe Thomas of the Browns has popped up in Afghanistan signing autographs and posing for pictures with troops in the combat zone. No Bengals were in sight or on the trip. The photo was taken five days ago by Air Force Staff Sgt. Richard Williams at Bagram Airfield. Thomas visited service members along the flightline, then went to a USO center at the base named for Pat Tilman, the NFL player who quit football to join the military. Tilman was killed by friendly fire in the early days of the war; the Army tried to cover up the mistake.

Thomas, at 6-foot-6 and 312 pounds, has been with the Browns since 2007, when he was a first round draft pick out of the University of Wisconsin. His wife, Annie, is a former Wisconsin basketball playwer. Thomas is from Brookfield, Wisc., and went to Brookfield Central H.S. where he captained the football and basketball teams and made the academic Honor Roll. He's traveling with three other NFL players through the war zone -- San Francisco tight end Vernon Davis, House Texans defensive end Mario Williams, and Cowboys tight end Jason Whitten. Thomas is blogging, though he hasn't disclosed exactly where he's been. The Air Force released the photo from the Bagram flightline. Here's Thomas about a night in the field: "Our group has really been in awe of just about everything. We watched troops fire off mortar rounds so loud they literally shook the ground. We spent one night at a "black out base" -- meaning that the base isn't lit up at night for security reasons. The players bunked up, two to a room, in small wood cabin rooms that had nothing more than one bunk bed with two mattresses. We brought sleeping bags to put on top of the mattresses."

A Coming Disaster: Afghans Won't Spray Poppy Crop

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Heroin use in Ohio is a growing problem, and it will probably grow worse because of another Bush Administration foreign policy setback. Today, the U.S.-supported government of Afghanistan refused to chemically eradicate 407,000 acres of poppies that can produce heroin.

Bush Administration Drug Czar John Walters predicts Afghanistan will turn into a narco-state unless the crop is eliminated. Today, odds of his prediction coming true likely increased dramatically. The Karzai government balked at using Round-up, an agricultural herbicide it considers too dangerous to the country's environment, economic infrastructure and work force. Apparently, heroin trafficking is less risky.

In Dayton, Wright State University has published state-supported research data about increasing heroin use in Ohio. Small towns have been harmed the most so far. But big city law enforcement officers and judges say the heroin is back in urban communities, too.

On two fronts in the Muslim world -- the War in Iraq and the War on Drugs -- American foreign policy interests are flummoxed. The news from Afghanistan today is terrible.