Why there should never be democrat presidents...
12.31.05 (11:24 pm) [edit]From the Weekly Standard-- http://powerlineblog.com/arch...
[b]A CIA Success Story![/b]
Former President Jimmy Carter, in an interview for the January issue of GQ magazine, reveals how, on the recommendation of then-CIA director Stansfield Turner, he once authorized a psychic to make targeting decisions--while "in a trance"--for America's satellite surveillance system:
[i]GQ: One of the promises you made in 1976 was that if you were elected, you would look into the [UFO] reports from Roswell and see if there had been any cover-ups. Did you look into that?
Carter: Well, in a way. I became more aware of what our intelligence services were doing. There was only one instance that I'll talk about now. We had a plane go down in the Central African Republic--a twin-engine plane, small plane. And we couldn't find it. And so we oriented satellites that were going around the earth every ninety minutes to fly over that spot where we thought it might be and take photographs. We couldn't find it. So the director of the CIA came and told me that he had contacted a woman in California that claimed to have supernatural capabilities. And she went in a trance, and she wrote down latitudes and longitudes, and we sent our satellites over that latitude and longitude, and there was the plane.[/i]
The Scrapbook figures this woman is probably no longer alive. Otherwise they'd have found bin Laden by now.
Munich
12.31.05 (1:53 pm) [edit][b]Munich[/b]- http://www.frontpagemag.com/b...
By BRET STEPHENS
Wall Street Journal
December 31, 2005; Page A8
Steven Spielberg wants you to know one thing about "Munich," his just-released, semi-historical, instantly controversial account of Israel's efforts to avenge the massacre of its athletes at the 1972 Olympics: "I worked very hard," he says, "so this film was not in any way, shape or form going to be an attack on Israel." So why is his movie raising such hackles among Israelis and those generally known as the "pro-Israel" crowd?
Maybe it has something to do with his choice of a screenwriter, Tony Kushner, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright brought in by Mr. Spielberg to rework the original screenplay by Eric Roth. Mr. Kushner (who, like Mr. Spielberg, is Jewish) believes that the creation of the state of Israel was "a historical, moral, political calamity" for the Jewish people. He believes the policy of the government of Israel has been "a systematic attempt to destroy the identity of the Palestinian people." He believes that responsibility for making peace between Israelis and Palestinians lies primarily with the Israelis, "inasmuch as they are far more mighty." He believes Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is an "unindicted war criminal."
Maybe it has something to do with Mr. Spielberg's curious use of "Jewish" tropes. Again and again in "Munich," the Israelis are seen counting the cost of each kill, down to the last dollar: $352,000 for an assassination in Rome; $200,000 for a bombing in Paris. "Killing Palestinians isn't exactly cheap," remarks one of the members of the Israeli team. A Frenchman in the business of retailing the whereabouts of wanted men praises Israeli squad leader Avner Kauffman (Eric Bana) because he pays "better than anyone." A Mossad officer warns Kauffman not to overspend his budget. "I want receipts," he says.
Maybe it has something to do with the historical liberties Mr. Spielberg takes in telling the story. "Vengeance," the George Jonas book upon which the film is largely based, is widely considered to be a fabrication. The book is based on a source named Yuval Aviv, who claimed to be the model for Avner but was, according to Israeli sources, never in the Mossad and had no experience in intelligence beyond working as a screener for El Al, the Israeli airline.
Maybe it has something to do with Mr. Spielberg's depiction of the Palestinian targets. The Israeli team's first quarry is an elderly, evidently kindly man whom the audience first encounters reading from his Italian translation of Scheherazade. Target Two is a well-spoken diplomat and doting father. Target Three offers Avner a cigarette from across a balcony; Avner repays the gesture by having him blown to bits in his bed. Another target gives a moving speech about his longing for his homeland and the agony of 24 years of dispossession. There is nothing wrong with depicting Palestinians -- even those involved in terrorism -- as fully rounded human beings. Yet not one of these characters is seen performing the deeds for which they have been targeted, unlike the Israelis in the film, who perform dirty deeds by the dozen.
Maybe it has something to do with the strawman arguments the Israelis offer for exacting their revenge. "The only blood that matters to me is Jewish blood," says Steve (Daniel Craig), the most macho of the Israeli hit men. Steve is a South African Jew, blonde and blue-eyed, and somehow it's no surprise that this Jewish Aryan is made to utter this most racist of views. Avner's mother offers her son an ends-justify-the-means rationalization for his killings: "Whatever it takes," she says, "we have a place on Earth at last." And then there is Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen), who justifies the assassination policy by saying, "forget peace for now, we have to be strong." Never mind that in 1972 neither the Arab states nor the PLO were prepared to live in peace with Israel on any terms. Never mind, too, that peace and strength are not incompatible options.
Maybe it has something to do with the false dichotomy the film establishes between Jewish ideals and Israeli actions. "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values," pronounces the fictional Mrs. Meir. Yet the Torah and Talmud are replete with descriptions of the justified smiting of one enemy or another. (Hanukkah, for instance, commemorates the Maccabean victory over the Seleucid empire.) It is Christianity, not Judaism, that counsels turning the other cheek.
Maybe it has something to do with what in Hollywood is known as the hero's "character arc." Avner is introduced in the film as the quintessential sabra, the son of Zionist pioneers personally selected for the mission by the prime minister herself. But as his doubts about his mission grow, so does his disillusionment with Israel. On a return visit to Israel, he can barely bring himself to shake the hands of two soldiers who congratulate him for his rumored exploits. By film's end, he has moved his family to Brooklyn and convinced himself that the Mossad is targeting him for assassination.
Maybe it has something to do with the film's final scene. Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), Avner's snarling Mossad handler, has come to New York to ask Avner to "come home." Avner refuses; Israel, apparently, is no longer a suitable place for a morally sensitized man. Next, Avner invites Ephraim to join him at home for supper. "Break bread with me," he says. "Isn't that what Jews do?" Now it's Ephraim who says no, as if to suggest that such old-fashioned courtesies are no longer of interest to today's hard-of-heart Israelis.
Maybe it has something to do with Mr. Spielberg's decision to depict the actual slaughter of the Israeli athletes (bizarrely interwoven with an especially vulgar sex scene) at the end of the film rather than at the beginning. The effect is to jumble cause and consequence; to make the massacre seem like a response to Israeli atrocities; to turn Munich into just another stage in the proverbial cycle of violence, or what Mr. Spielberg calls a "response to a response." Mr. Spielberg has said he made this film as a "tribute" to the fallen athletes. What he has mainly accomplished is to trivialize their murder.
"If you start with an ax to grind," Mr. Kushner recently told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, "then you write a bad play or movie." To watch "Munich" is to recognize the truth of that statement.
Big Science's Poster Boy for Human Cloning Revealed as Liar, Fraud
12.29.05 (4:59 pm) [edit]Money is the root of all evil, folks- especially when the money isn't yours.
From the Weekly Standard-- http://www.weeklystandard.com...
Western Muslims' Racist Rape Spree
12.27.05 (6:40 pm) [edit]From FrontPage Magazine-- http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...
[b]Western Muslims' Racist Rape Spree[/b]
By Sharon Lapkin
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 27, 2005
In Australia, Norway, Sweden and other Western nations, there is a distinct race-based crime in motion being ignored by the diversity police: Islamic men are raping Western women for ethnic reasons. We know this because the rapists have openly declared their sectarian motivations.
When a number of teenage Australian girls were subjected to hours of sexual degradation during a spate of gang rapes in Sydney that occurred between 1998 and 2002, the perpetrators of these assaults framed their rationale in ethnic terms. The young victims were informed that they were “sluts” and “Aussie pigs” while they were being hunted down and abused.
In Australia's New South Wales Supreme Court in December 2005, a visiting Pakistani rapist testified that his victims had no right to say no, because they were not wearing a headscarf.
And earlier this year Australians were outraged when Lebanese Sheik Faiz Mohammed gave a lecture in Sydney where he informed his audience that rape victims had no one to blame but themselves. Women, he said, who wore skimpy clothing, invited men to rape them.
A few months earlier, in Copenhagen, Islamic mufti and scholar, Shahid Mehdi created uproar when – like his peer in Australia – he stated that women who did not wear a headscarf were asking to be raped.
And with haunting synchronicity in 2004, the London Telegraph reported that visiting Egyptian scholar Sheik Yusaf al-Qaradawi claimed female rape victims should be punished if they were dressed immodestly when they were raped. He added, “For her to be absolved from guilt, a raped woman must have shown good conduct.”
In Norway and Sweden, journalist Fjordman warns of a rape epidemic. Police Inspector Gunnar Larsen stated that the steady increase of rape-cases and the link to ethnicity are clear, unmistakable trends. Two out of three persecutions for rape in Oslo are immigrants with a non-Western background and 80 percent of the victims are Norwegian women.
In Sweden, according to translator for Jihad Watch, Ali Dashti, “Gang rapes, usually involving Muslim immigrant males and native Swedish girls, have become commonplace.” A few weeks ago she said, “Five Kurds brutally raped a 13-year-old Swedish girl.”
In France, Samira Bellil broke her silence – after enduring years of repeated gang rapes in one of the Muslim populated public housing projects – and wrote a book, In the hell of the tournantes, that shocked France. Describing how gang rape is rampant in the banlieues, she explained to Time that, “any neighborhood girl who smokes, uses makeup or wears attractive clothes is a whore.”
Unfortunately, Western women are not the only victims in this epidemic. In Indonesia, in 1998, human rights groups documented the testimony of over 100 Chinese women who were gang raped during the riots that preceded the fall of President Suharto. Many of them were told: “You must be raped, because you are Chinese and non-Muslim.”
Christian Solidarity Worldwide reported that in April 2005, a 9-year-old Pakistani girl was raped, beaten with a cricket bat, hanged upside down from the ceiling, had spoonfuls of chillies poured into her mouth, and repeatedly bashed while handcuffed. Her Muslim neighbours told her they were taking revenge for the American bombing of Iraqi children and informed her they were doing it because she was an “infidel and a Christian.”
In Sudan – where Arab Muslims slaughter black Muslim and Christian Sudanese in an ongoing genocide – former Sudanese slave and now a human rights’ activist Simon Deng says he witnessed girls and women being raped and that the Arab regime of Khartoum sends its soldiers to the field to rape and murder. In other reports, women who are captured by government forces are asked; “Are you Christian or Muslim?” and those who answer Christian, are gang raped before having their breasts cut off.
This phenomenon of Islamic sexual violence against women should be treated as the urgent, violent, repressive epidemic it is. Instead, journalists, academics, and politicians ignore it, rationalize it, or ostracize those who dare discuss it.
In Australia, when journalist Paul Sheehan reported honestly on the Sydney gang rapes, he was called a racist and accused of stirring up anti-Muslim hatred. And when he reported in his Sydney Morning Herald column that there was a high incidence of crime amongst Sydney’s Lebanese community, fellow journalist, David Marr sent him an e-mail stating, “That is a disgraceful column that reflects poorly on us all at the Herald.”
Keysar Trad, vice-president of the Australian Lebanese Muslim Association said the gang rapes were a “heinous” crime but complained it was “rather unfair” that the ethnicity of the rapists had been reported.
Journalist Miranda Devine reported during the same rape trials that all reference to ethnicity had been deleted from the victim impact statement because the prosecutors wanted to negotiate a plea bargain.
So when Judge Megan Latham declared, “There is no evidence before me of any racial element in the commission of these offences,” everyone believed her. And the court, the politicians and most of the press may as well have raped the girls again.
Retired Australian detective Tim Priest warned in 2004 that the Lebanese gangs, which emerged in Sydney in the 1990s – when the police were asleep – had morphed out of control. “The Lebanese groups,” he said, “ were ruthless, extremely violent, and they intimidated not only innocent witnesses, but even the police that attempted to arrest them.”
Priest describes how in 2001, in a Muslim dominated area of Sydney two policemen stopped a car containing three well-known Middle Eastern men to search for stolen property. As the police carried out their search they were physically threatened and the three men claimed they were going to track them down, kill them and then rape their girlfriends.
According to Priest, it didn’t end there. As the Sydney police called for backup the three men used their mobile phones to call their associates, and within minutes, 20 Middle Eastern men arrived on the scene. They punched and pushed the police and damaged state vehicles. The police retreated and the gang followed them to the police station where they intimidated staff, damaged property and held the police station hostage.
Eventually the gang left, the police licked their wounds, and not one of them took action against the Middle Eastern men. Priest claims, “In the minds of the local population, the police are cowards and the message was, 'Lebanese [Muslim gangs] rule the streets.'”
In France, in the banlieues, where gang rape is now known simply as tournantes or ‘pass-around,’ victims know the police will not protect them. If they complain, Samir Bellil said, they know that they and their families will be threatened.
However, Muslim women in the French ghettos are finally fighting back against gang rape and police non-action. They have begun a movement called, “We’re neither whores nor doormats.” They are struggling against the intrinsic violence that plagues their neighbourhoods and the culture that condones it.
In most French prosecutions, the Muslim rapists state that they do not believe they have committed a crime. And in a frightening parallel with the gang rapists in Australia, they claim the victim herself is to blame and accuse her of being a “slut” or a “whore.”
According to The Guardian, during the recent French riots, a Saudi Prince with shares in News Corporation boasted to a conference in Dubai that he had phoned Rupert Murdoch and complained about Fox News describing the disturbances as “Muslim riots.” Within half an hour he said, it was changed to “civil riots.”
Swedish translator, Ali Dashti, stated that in Sweden when three men raped a 22-year-old woman recently, they said one word to her. “Whore.” Such stories, according to Dashti, are in the Swedish newspapers every week. And, the politically correct “take great care not to mention the ethnic background of the perpetrators.”
Sweden’s English newspaper The Local reported in July that Malmo police commander Bengt Lindström had been charged with inciting racial hatred. He sent e-mails from his home computer to two city officials. To the head of healthcare, he wrote: “You...treat old Swedes who have worked hard building up the fatherland like parasites and would rather give my taxes to criminals called Mohammed from Rosengärd.”
In Malmo, the third largest city in Sweden, the police have admitted, Dashti says, that they no longer control the city. “It is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslim immigrants.” Ambulance personnel are regularly attacked and spat upon and are now refusing to help until a police escort arrives. The police are too afraid to enter parts of the city without backup.
In early 2005, Norwegian newspapers reported that Oslo had recorded the highest ever number of rape cases in the previous twelve months. However, Fjordman explained, the official statistics contained no data regarding “how immigrants were grossly over represented in rape cases”, and the media remain so strangely silent.
Oslo Professor of Anthropology, Unni Wikan, said Norwegian women must take responsibility for the fact that Muslim men find their manner of dress provocative. And since these men believe women are responsible for rape, she stated, the women must adapt to the multicultural society around them.
The BBC pulled a documentary scheduled for screening in 2004, after police in Britain warned it could increase racial tension. “In these exceptional circumstances... Channel 4 as a responsible broadcaster has agreed to the police’s request...” The documentary was to show how Pakistani and other Muslim men sexually abused young, white English girls as young as 11.
The number of rapes committed by Muslim men against women in the last decade is so incredibly high that it cannot be viewed as anything other than culturally implicit behaviour. It is overtly reinforced and sanctioned by Islamic religious leaders who blame the victims and excuse the rapists.
In three decades of immigration into Western countries, Islam has caused social upheaval and havoc in every one of its host countries. No other immigration program has encountered the problems of non-assimilation and religious ambiguity.
Everywhere in the world, Muslims are in conflict with their neighbours. And as Mark Steyn recently said, every conflict appears to have originated by someone with the name of Mohammed.
In July 2005, Melbourne Sheik Mohammad Omran told Sixty Minutes that “...we believe we have more rights than you because we choose Australia to be our home and you didn’t. “
In the same interview visiting Sheik Khalid Yasin warned “There’s no such thing as a Muslim having a non-Muslim friend, so a non-Muslim could be your associate but they can't be a friend. They're not your friend because they don't understand your religious principles and they cannot because they don't understand your faith.”
Despite being told over and over by Islamic scholars, and witnessing massive influxes of Islamic crime, Western countries continue to believe in the reality of assimilation and moral relativism.
In Australia, Lebanese Christians have assimilated and become a respected part of our community. The Premier of Victoria is a Lebanese Christian as is the Governor Of New South Wales. However, Lebanese Muslims have encountered serious problems because of their refusal to accept our right to live our way of life. Nothing so clearly demonstrates that it is not an issue of race — but of culture.
[i]Sharon Lapkin is a former Australian Army Officer and a postgraduate student at the University of Melbourne. [/i]
The President Had Legal Authority to OK wiretaps
12.21.05 (9:53 am) [edit]A spot-on editorial from John Schmidt, associate AG under Clinton-- http://www.chicagotribune.com...,0,3553632.story?coll=chi-newsopinio ncommentary-hed
Excerpt:
[i]FISA does not anticipate a post-Sept. 11 situation. What was needed after Sept. 11, according to the president, was surveillance beyond what could be authorized under that kind of individualized case-by-case judgment. It is hard to imagine the Supreme Court second-guessing that presidential judgment.
Should we be afraid of this inherent presidential power? Of course. If surveillance is used only for the purpose of preventing another Sept. 11 type of attack or a similar threat, the harm of interfering with the privacy of people in this country is minimal and the benefit is immense. The danger is that surveillance will not be used solely for that narrow and extraordinary purpose.
But we cannot eliminate the need for extraordinary action in the kind of unforeseen circumstances presented by Sept.11. I do not believe the Constitution allows Congress to take away from the president the inherent authority to act in response to a foreign attack. That inherent power is reason to be careful about who we elect as president, but it is authority we have needed in the past and, in the light of history, could well need again.[/i]
FDR confined 200,000 Americans-- Now that is a police-state tactic
12.20.05 (3:19 pm) [edit]Amid this nonsense over Bush's legal spying on those with connections to terrorists, are we forgetting FDR's World War II round up of 200,000 American citizens merely because they were Japanese? Now that is a police state tactic, and worth much more of DrForBush's crusading and inane anger.
An editorial from the Washington Times- http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...
[b]No Crime in Bush's Spying[/b]
By Washington Times
Washington Times | December 20, 2005
Should the National Security Agency secretly eavesdrop on the telephone conversations of suspicious persons in the United States calling al-Qaeda operatives overseas? We might be more shocked if the Bush administration hadn't authorized such surveillance, provided it was done within the law. NSA's substantial resources, like those of the CIA and the military, should be properly and legally harnessed to fight the al-Qaeda threat wherever it appears.
Questions have been raised whether President Bush can do this without violating the law. He thinks he can: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows it, with congressional oversight and checks on executive authority, as well as presidential war powers. [b]The guardians of civil liberties who object may be mistaking precedent -- that the NSA didn't engage in domestic spying activities until late 2001 or early 2002 -- for a nonexistent law saying that it can't.[/b]
Mr. Bush answered questions yesterday with unusual passion: that terrorists and their collaborators are agents of a foreign power on whom the government should be allowed to spy because such spying protects and preserves American lives. He had said in his Saturday radio address: [b]"Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al Hamzi and Khalid al Mihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to al-Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn't know they were here until it was too late." Listening to their conversations -- both were aliens, one here illegally, one legally -- could have prevented tragedy.[/b]
The voices of outrage misread the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. [b]Title 50 of the U.S. Code, Chapter 36, Subchapter I, Section 1802, "Electronic surveillance authorization without court order," reads: "[T]he President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year," provided a series of conditions are met. [u]Surveillance must be directed only at agents of foreign powers; there can be no likely surveillance of a "U.S. person" (more on this term below); and there must be strict congressional oversight in the intelligence committees. Mr. Bush says he has complied with these laws.[/u][/b]
The critics ignore the [b]Joint Authorization for Use of Military Force[/b], enacted by Congress shortly after September 11, which can be viewed as a congressional declaration of war on the terrorists and a stamp of approval for the president's wartime actions.
And if the NSA ends up spying on a U.S. citizen? The "U.S. person" definition "does not include a corporation or an association which is a foreign power," according to the same law. An "agent of a foreign power" is anyone, citizen or otherwise, who "knowingly engages in sabotage or international terrorism, or activities that are in preparation therefor, for or on behalf of a foreign power." [b]Which means that people who do not help al-Qaeda or other terrorists are safe from surveillance. Anyone who does, however, forfeits his rights and can be targeted for eavesdropping.[/b]
There is little novel about the domestic-spying revelations, only that Mr. Bush has chosen to break precedent by harnessing the NSA's substantial resources. Any government intrusion into private lives should make us all uneasy, but given the givens, given NSA's capabilities and above all the fearsome magnitude of the threat, we think the president's arguments persuasive.
Mr. Bush has not flinched from the criticism, and we applaud him for that. Congress could clear the confusion with an unmistakeable formal declaration of war on radical Islamist terrorism. Congressmen who sit on the intelligence committee could detail just how much they know and how long they've known it; it seems clear that several of the critics had prior knowledge of the program. In an era of airport searches and bomb-sniffing dogs, should a suspicious telephone call to Iran or Algeria be exempt from the war on terror?
From National Review-- http://www.nationalreview.com...
Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches
Does anyone remember that?
-Byron York
In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own.
[b]"The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes," Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, "and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General."
"It is important to understand," Gorelick continued, "that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities."[/b]
Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, provides for such warrantless searches directed against "a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power."
Reporting the day after Gorelick's testimony, the Washington Post's headline — on page A-19 — read, "Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches." The story began, "The Clinton administration, in a little-noticed facet of the debate on intelligence reforms, is seeking congressional authorization for U.S. spies to continue conducting clandestine searches at foreign embassies in Washington and other cities without a federal court order. The administration's quiet lobbying effort is aimed at modifying draft legislation that would require U.S. counterintelligence officials to get a court order before secretly snooping inside the homes or workplaces of suspected foreign agents or foreign powers."
In her testimony, Gorelick made clear that the president believed he had the power to order warrantless searches for the purpose of gathering intelligence, even if there was no reason to believe that the search might uncover evidence of a crime. "Intelligence is often long range, its exact targets are more difficult to identify, and its focus is less precise," Gorelick said. "Information gathering for policy making and prevention, rather than prosecution, are its primary focus."
The debate over warrantless searches came up after the case of CIA spy Aldrich Ames. Authorities had searched Ames's house without a warrant, and the Justice Department feared that Ames's lawyers would challenge the search in court. Meanwhile, Congress began discussing a measure under which the authorization for break-ins would be handled like the authorization for wiretaps, that is, by the FISA court. In her testimony, Gorelick signaled that the administration would go along a congressional decision to place such searches under the court — if, as she testified, it "does not restrict the president's ability to collect foreign intelligence necessary for the national security." [b]In the end, Congress placed the searches under the FISA court, but the Clinton administration did not back down from its contention that the president had the authority to act when necessary.[/b]
— [i]Byron York, NR's White House correspondent, is the author of The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President — and Why They'll Try Even Harder Next Time.[/i]
Michael Moore bought, sold Halliburton stock
12.13.05 (11:14 am) [edit]What a jackass-- http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...
Media promotes a false premise: that the Bush administration linked 9/11 and Iraq
12.12.05 (1:54 pm) [edit]This morning the president held a rare question and answer session after his speech on Iraq. He took questions from the audience, and one audience member asked him how he could still insist on there being a connection between 9/11 and Iraq when every reputable reporter has reported that there wasn't. The president's answer was a bad one-- trying to avoid conflict, he focused on how the Iraq war was predicated on the world's judgment of Hussein (embodied by 17 UN resolutions) and how it was a good war because it would make the Middle East safer (implying that it would reduce terrorism).
What Bush did not do was state the obvious- this questioner's premise was false. The president and everyone else in the administration, while preparing the country for war, went to absurd lengths to tell the American people 2 things: that one, Hussein was [i]not[/i] an imminent threat, and, two, that Iraq was not in any way associated with 9/11.
Bush very deliberately tried to explain to the elites reporting the news that the idea was to not let a gathering threat become a grave one. For example, Iran right now is a grave and gathering threat. When they get a nuke they will be an imminent one. Yet many, many people are still tethered to the thought that we shouldn't do a thing until Iran gets a nuke and uses one. Bush was entirely justified with his reasons for war. I find it ironic that the rest of the media cannot follow this logic, especially when they get their biggest kicks out of calling Bush stupid.
But that assumes the media has honest intentions. In fact, the mainstream liberal media wants Bush to have said that Iraq was an imminent threat. They want Bush to have said that there was a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. It makes it so much easier to oppose him, and so they just lie about it and say that he did. Tonight, on all three network newscasts, all of the reporters said that Bush was called on the carpet at his speech for insisting that there was a link between 9/11 and Iraq. They agreed, therefore, with the questioner, without bothering to find out if the premise was true.
That is liberal media bias, folks. It exists. I've always said you can oppose the war all you want. I'm not happy with many aspects of it. But oppose it with truth. You can't have respect for an ideological movement that makes its case through deceit and law-breaking.
"Reformer" Abbas signs law giving grants to families of suicide bombers
12.12.05 (8:11 am) [edit]Gee, I wonder why there is no peace in the ME?
-- http://www.israelnationalnews...
The Case for Abolishing the CIA
12.11.05 (2:14 pm) [edit]From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-- http://www.post-gazette.com/p...
[b]Ciao, CIA
The spy agency is damaged beyond repair: Abolish it and start over[/b]
by Jack Kelly
Sunday, December 11, 2005
On Aug. 2, Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post reported that "a major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years."
On Dec. 5, the Jerusalem Post reported that Mohammed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, "confirmed Israel's assessment that Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb."
My, how time flies. It hasn't seemed as if 10 years have elapsed since last summer.
The CIA could be right, and the Israeli intelligence service Mossad and the IAEA could be wrong. But given the CIA's forecasting record -- it missed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Islamic revolution in Iran, the warning signs of 9/11 and Saddam's WMD -- that's not the way to bet.
Intelligence analysis isn't the only thing the CIA does sloppily. The Bush administration suffered major embarrassment when it was disclosed that the United States was holding top al-Qaida suspects in "secret prisons" in eastern Europe and North Africa.
A Swedish journalist who prepared one of the first stories on the CIA flights that transported al-Qaida captives told Josh Gerstein of The New York Sun the CIA did a poor job of covering its tracks.
"I would say they didn't give a damn," Fredrik Laurin told Mr. Gerstein. "If I was an American taxpayer, I'd be upset."
For a show broadcast in May of last year, Mr. Laurin traced the tail number of a Gulfstream jet used to transport captives to a clearly phony company in Massachusetts.
"You weren't able to trace the name to any living individual," Mr. Laurin said. "They were all living in post office boxes in Virginia.
"If that's all the imagination they can drum up at Langley, I'd fire the bunch," Mr. Laurin added.
But if the CIA hasn't been very good at ferreting out the secrets of our enemies, or keeping our own, it has shown a talent for playing politics.
"The CIA's war against the Bush administration is one of the great untold stories of the past three years," wrote lawyer and Web logger John Hinderaker in The Weekly Standard.
The CIA has used its budget to fund criticism of the Bush administration by former Democratic officeholders, and permitted a serving analyst, Michael Scheuer, to publish and promote a book bashing the president.
The principal CIA weapon has been the leak. Reporters for ABC, The New York Times and The Washington Post didn't have to do even the minimal legwork Mr. Laurin did to out the CIA's clandestine "rendition" program. It was handed to them by "current and former intelligence officials."
"So the CIA established policies that it knew would be controversial and would damage American interests if revealed, and then leaked the existence of those policies to The Washington Post for the purpose of damaging the Bush administration," Mr. Hinderaker wrote.
A rogue CIA that subverts American democracy has long been a staple of moonbat mythology. How ironic that the rogues in the CIA should turn out to be leftists who harm America to benefit Democrats.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA operative in the Middle East, sees little hope the agency can be reformed:
The CIA's "muscle-bound bureaucratization, combined with the failure of the press to accurately represent to the public the Agency's actual problems ... holds out little hope that we will see the innovation needed to combat bin-Ladenism," he wrote last year.
"For almost a decade now the CIA put a low priority on recruiting human sources abroad," agreed Robert Baer, another former CIA Middle East operative and author of "See No Evil." "The CIA was more concerned about being politically correct."
"The problem with the CIA is that the senior executives responsible for production of intelligence just aren't good enough," said Herbert Meyer, assistant to legendary CIA Director William Casey.
In the 1990s, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan proposed abolishing the CIA. That seemed far out then. It doesn't seem so far out now. It might be easier to start from scratch than to clean up the mess the CIA has become.
"The CIA is in deep crisis," Mr. Hinderaker said. "It is not at all clear that its survival is in the national interest."
We are ignoring Iran's president like we did Hitler
12.11.05 (2:09 pm) [edit]An excellent, excellent Steyn column on Iran's terrorist (and soon nuclearly armed) President-- http://www.suntimes.com/outpu...
Excerpt:
[i]We assume, as Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax and other civilized men did 70 years ago, that these chaps may be a little excitable, but come on, old boy, they can't possibly mean it, can they? Wrong. They mean it but they can't quite do it yet. Like Hitler, when they can do it, they will -- or at the very least the weedy diplo-speak tells them they can force the world into big concessions on the fear that they can.[/i]
Steyn goes on to mention and imply that since the bar has been raised on proof of WMD (including nukes), we may not be able to do a damn thing about Iran until, literally, New York or Washington (or more likely in the short term Paris) is lost.
God help us all.
The Left's very own Ramsey Clark-- Saddam's Chief Apologist
12.09.05 (2:39 pm) [edit]This is a very good Christopher Hitchens article-- http://www.frontpagemag.com/A... .
Some key excerpts:
[i]...in an interview with the BBC last week and another in the New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Clark addressed the charge that in 1982, after an apparent attempt on his life in the Iraqi town of Dujail, Hussein had ordered the torture and murder of about 150 men and boys from the area.
Far from denying that any such horror had occurred — and it is one of the smaller elements in the bill of indictment — Clark asserted that it was justifiable. He has now twice said in public that, given the war with the Shiite republic of Iran, Hussein was entitled to take stern measures. "He had this huge war going on, and you have to act firmly when you have an assassination attempt," he told the BBC.
...[b]does the former absolute owner of Iraq quite realize that one on his team of attorneys is proudly trumpeting his guilt?[/b]
Never mind for now whether the despot has engaged a bad counsel: This raises another subject that ought to concern all serious Americans. In the run-up to the war, almost whichever way the debate was going, one could count on the president's opponents to stipulate that, yes, Hussein was certainly a dreadful and criminal figure. This position was hardly optional, given the Alps of evidence assembled over the years, much of it later excavated in mass graves and torture centers and in the ruin of two neighboring states.
[b]Yet now, one of the best-known spokesmen for the antiwar cause appears across the world's TV screens, openly saying that the Hussein system was justified all along in its aggression abroad and its fascism at home.[/b]
...the antiwar faction has subordinated everything to its hatred of Bush, folded its hands and [b]watched coldly as Iraqi democrats struggle in a sea of chaos and violence. That sham neutrality is bad enough. But now, the anti-warriors do have a permanent representative in Baghdad, in the form of an apologist for the past crimes and aggressions of a man who makes his hero, Mussolini, seem like an amateur.[/b]
I wonder: What will Cindy and the other humanitarians say this time? Or are they not "antiwar" at all, but simply pro-war and on the other side?[/i]
The US executes its 1000th convict....imagine if he were a baby
12.03.05 (4:25 pm) [edit]If we put convicts to death like we do babies, then the left would really have something to whine about. Every seven hours 1000 babies are aborted-- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And no one cares.
Murderers, rapists, and other convicts put to death at least have had some sort of defense, right? Sure, there probably have been mistakes where an innocent man has been put to death. [i]But every baby is innocent. A baby harms no one. Yet somehow the Supreme Court has divined a right to federally-sanctioned murder of these babies.[/i] It simply doesn't make sense.
The left loves to talk about the wrong people being put in prisons. How most people in prison are there for frivilous drug charges, and that our death penalty is obsolete and unproven as a deterrent. That may be. But what hypocrites they are to support abortion, to support turning a womb into death row-- to civilize murder and call it a choice.
If only babies in America today were so lucky to be victims of American judisprudence. Then they might have a chance.