June 1, 2006
Santorum Collapsing In PA
The latest Rasmussen poll delivers bad news to Republicans hoping to hold or expand their majority in the US Senate. Incumbent and key conservative Rick Santorum has fallen far behind his challenger, Robert Casey Jr, with only five months left in the campaign: The latest Rasmussen Reports election poll in Pennsylvania shows Republican Senator Rick Santorum solidifying his standing as most vulnerable congressional incumbent this election season. Santorum now trails Democratic challenger Bob Casey 56% to 33% (see crosstabs). Our latest survey of the governor's race also brings good news for the Democrat in that contest. Last month, Santorum trailed by thirteen percentage points. The incumbent began 2006 down by 20 points and closed to within single digits by March. That was before the Primary Election solidified Casey's position as the Democratic nominee. Santorum continues to flounder with his base, attracting support from only 67% of GOP voters. Casey now...
UN: Rescue Palestinians From Themselves
The UN again demonstrates its fecklessness by insisting that the world owes the Palestinians refuge from their own bad choices, requesting emergency aid donations to stave of a financial crisis of their own making. The UN wants almost $400 million to replace what the Palestinians threw away when they elected terrorists to control their protostate: The UN has appealed for a near doubling of emergency aid to the Palestinian territories to alleviate a crippling economic crisis after the freezing of foreign funds to the Hamas government and Israeli sanctions against the Palestinians. It has revised the amount it wants foreign governments to donate this year from $215m (£115m) to $385m to prevent the collapse of services such as health and education, and to provide food and medicines. The appeal document said the UN had taken the unprecedented step of asking for more money because of the "extremely bleak" humanitarian outlook...
Zionist Conspiracist Runs For Congress
The trouble with using elections to clean house is keeping even worse choices from reaching office. Voters can see this dynamic in play in Northern California, where a former Congressman has decided to challenge House Resources Committee chair Richard Pombo for his seat in the Republican primary. However, Pete McCloskey has a lot of his own baggage to carry: A former congressman and longtime critic of America's alliance with Israel is hoping voter anger over bribery and ethical breaches in Washington will help him unseat a powerful committee chairman in a Republican primary in California next week. Paul McCloskey Jr., 78, known as "Pete," is challenging Richard Pombo, 45, who has spent seven terms in Congress and presides over the panel that oversees energy and public land issues, the House Resources Committee. In an interview with The New York Sun yesterday, Mr. McCloskey, who served in Congress between 1967 and...
Hastert's Folly Revealed
The latest ABC poll shows that House Speaker Denny Hastert miscalculated badly by erupting with outrage over the raid on Rep. William Jefferson’s offices. An overwhelming majority of Americans approve of the search performed by the FBI regardless of party affiliation: In the rift between Congress and the Justice Department, Americans side overwhelmingly with law enforcement: Regardless of precedent and the separation of powers, 86 percent say the FBI should be allowed to search a Congress member's office if it has a warrant. That view is broadly bipartisan, this ABC News poll finds, ranging from 78 percent among Democrats to 94 percent of Republicans. … Sixty-five percent of Americans give a negative rating to the ethics and honesty of members of Congress. More, 54 percent, rate their own member's ethics positively, but that's down from 69 percent in a 1989 poll. Nonetheless, support for FBI searches is about equally high...
Reid Forswears Freebies (Updated and Bumped)
After a chorus of apologists insisted that Harry Reid would have broken the law by buying his own tickets to boxing matches, the AP reports that Reid has now acknowledged that he misstated Senate ethics rules in defending his acceptance of tickets from the Nevada Athletic Commission. Reid's staff now says that he will no longer accept gifts from the NAC: Reversing course, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid’s office acknowledged Wednesday night he misstated the ethics rules governing his acceptance of free boxing tickets and has decided to avoid taking such gifts in the future. ... The announcement came after The Associated Press confronted Reid’s office early Wednesday with conclusions from several ethics experts that the Senate leader misstated congressional ethics rules in trying to defend his actions. ... Manley said Wednesday night that Reid “misspoke when he said the rule applies only to senators who represent the state agency.”...
Tinfoil Hats On Parade
Bobby Kennedy Jr has a turgid expose at Rolling Stone which purports to blow the lid off the 2004 presidential election by claiming that 350,000 Ohio voters were prevented from reaching the polling stations. This, unsurprisingly, has excited the entire port side of the blogosphere. However, when one begins to read through the argument, supported by a slew of citations but no evidence at all, it sounds like a very tired rehash of all the conspiracy theories we heard between November 2004 and January 2005, when the Electoral College made the results final. Kennedy's lead argument gives readers enough excuse to stop on the first page. He argues that exit polls are "exquisitely accurate", and therefore since the pollsters are infallible, their early returns must have been the truth: Over the past decades, exit polling has evolved into an exact science. Indeed, among pollsters and statisticians, such surveys are thought...
A Brief Moment Of Unity On Iran
As I suspected, Condoleezza Rice's offer of direct American participation came as she solidified an agreement with Russia and China on a carrots-and-sticks proposal for Iran which will carry sanctions for a refusal to comply. The acquiescence of the two nations presents a brief, perhaps transitory moment of unity that might give Teheran reason to reconsider its intransigence: The United States, Russia, China and the leading nations of Europe announced agreement tonight on a general formula designed to resolve the nuclear crisis with Iran, but officials declined to specifically describe the package of incentives and punishments before it can be presented to Iran. "I am pleased to say that we have agreed a set of far-reaching proposals as a basis for discussion with Iran," said Margaret Beckett, the British foreign secretary. "We believe that they offer Iran the chance to reach a negotiated agreement based on cooperation." She said the...
June 2, 2006
Bush Wants Immediate Action On Immigration
... but probably won't get it, for a couple of reasons. The New York Times reports that some Congressional Republicans want to wait until after the election to reconcile the House and Senate versions of immigration reform, and the Washington Times predicts that a turf war over revenue will delay conference committee action. Meanwhile, Bush changes rhetorical tactics somewhat in a concession to hard-liners: Beginning a public relations offensive intended to prod divided Congressional Republicans into overhauling the nation's immigration laws, President Bush rebuked conservative opponents of his plan on Thursday and warned that there is "no excuse" for delay. With Congress set to return to Washington on Monday after a one-week recess, some Republicans have suggested they may fare better at the polls in November if the House and Senate wait until after Election Day to reconcile their vastly different immigration bills. But Mr. Bush made clear in a...
Eine Kleine Chin Musik
E.J. Dionne notes the extension of the hysteria in Congress over the raid on William Jefferson's Capitol Hill office, and likens it to a baseball game. The Congressional Republicans think they are employing a brushback pitch, but in this case they look more like the St. Louis Cardinals in the final game of the 1985 World Series. They have melted down beyond all sense, conducting silly hearings and making threats of impeachment against officials in the Department of Justice, in an attempt to intimidate anyone with the temerity to investigate corruption in DC: In baseball, the hurler intimidates the batter with a brushback pitch. In soccer, the official warns an unruly player by pulling out a yellow card. Politicians in legal jeopardy thunder and moan, threatening prosecutors while cloaking their pressure tactics in the grand language of constitutional rights and democracy. ... The hearing was dominated by talk of abuses...
The Next Battle Of Islam
Yousef Ibrahim reports that the next clash between secular Muslim governments and jihadist radicals may come in Tunisia. His column in today's New York Sun describes the efforts of that moderate nation to "rationalize" Islam, and the portents for violent backlash this program carries: The next confrontation between secular dictators and Islamic jihadists in the Arab world may happen in Tunisia. The country's interior minister, Hedi Mhenni, has spoken of plans to issue an electronic identity card to Muslim worshippers, pairing them with the mosques nearest to their homes in what he termed "the rationalization of religion." The crudely named initiative is an effort to restrict the political activities of Islamic fundamentalists, who for decades have used mosques as a staging ground to recruit, organize, and launch potential jihadists at home and abroad. When it comes to battling fundamentalists, nothing done by Tunisia's president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali -...
Iraq Syndrome?
Daniel Henninger warns of the impending war fatigue in his column today for the Wall Street Journal's Opinionjournal. Instead of Viet Nam Syndrome, we will increasingly shut out news rather than allow ourselves to react to it -- and that will spell the end of the American prosecution for the war on terror: In El Paso, Texas, the father of Marine Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, whose death from a roadside bomb is the event said to have precipitated the Marine shootings at Haditha, said simply: "I don't even listen to the news." This may be the widespread reaction as the Haditha story overwhelms all else--enough, I don't want to hear about it. And there begins the Iraq Syndrome. Some elements of the newly ascendant Democratic left may welcome it, but no serious person in American politics should. The Vietnam Syndrome, a loss of confidence in the efficacy of American military...
The Truth Behind The Numbers (Updated And Bumped)
The DHS awards of block grants for the Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP) touched off a fiery round of criticism, with some calling for George Bush to fire DHS chief Michael Chertoff after seeing funding cut to New York City and Washington, DC. However, a look at the numbers calls the accuracy of this blamethrowing into serious question. First, the reaction: New York City will receive $124 million — the largest amount under the Urban Area Security Initiative. But that's just 60 percent of the $208 million given in 2005. The cut comes primarily because the Homeland Security Department determined that New York has no national monuments or icons. ... Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York and chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, called the cut in funding “indefensible and disgraceful.” “As far as I’m concerned the Department of Homeland Security and the administration have declared...
More Data On DHS Grants
Using the material at the Department of Homeland Security website, I have created a spreadsheet listing the grant allocations on state and urban area levels for both fiscal year 2006 and FY 2005. The data on these years tell an interesting story. While New York and Washington DC have howled the loudest about the reduction in grants to their cities, eight urban areas saw bigger cuts by percentage. And although the two cities' percentage lost from FY 2005 allocations to both cities is substantial (40.4% each), their combined share of the Urban Area Security Initiative grants still accounts for a quarter of all UASI grants this year. The following cities have seen higher percentages of the FY05 UASI grants disappear in FY06: Phoenix - 60.79% Denver - 49.76% New Orleans - 49.60% Pittsburgh - 49.46% Buffalo - 48.53% San Diego - 45.96% Dallas/Ft Worth/Arlington - 43.22% Columbus - 42.96 Fifteen...
Liberal Candidate Shuts Down Critical Website
Several Canadian CQ readers have sent this update on Joe Volpe, candidate for the Liberal leadership post, who ran into some embarrassment when two of his major contributors turned out to be 11-year-old twins of a drug company executive. Volpe raised $54,000 from two families that had everyone contribute the maximum $5400, including underage children in apparent violation of Canada's campaign finance laws. The Liberal Party insists that the contribution came from the children and not from their parents, which would violate the strawman ban on using other people to launder contributions. The Liberals just can't seem to shake their reputation for financing shenanigans, and now it looks like they've decided to enhance it by attempting to silence Volpe's critics. A satirical website, youthforvolpe.ca, attempted to poke fun at Volpe's predicament by posing as a contribution website for civic-minded Canadian youngsters. Not seeing the humor, Volpe reacted by having the...
June 3, 2006
Good War? Ain't No Such Thing
Frank Schaeffer gains a scoop in his Washington Post column by relating an incident in the British zone of control, an account of brutality and a potential war crime related by an eyewitness to the incident: "I saw an ugly sight: a British officer interrogating a civilian, and repeatedly hitting him about the head with the chair; treatment which the [civilian], his face a mask of blood, suffered with stoicism. At the end of the interrogation, which had not been considered successful, the officer called on a private and asked him in a pleasant, conversational sort of manner, 'Would you like to take this man away, and shoot him?' The private's reply was to spit on his hands, and say, 'I don't mind if I do, sir.' "I received confirmation . . . that American combat units were ordered by their officers to beat to death [those] who attempted to...
Is There A Lawyer In The House?
Bill Ardolino at INDC needs some legal advice in a case that has implications for all of us. Bill excerpted material from an article posted at Women to Women, a site dedicated to women's health issues, about breast cancer. In his post, Bill excerpted seven paragraphs of 23 to explain to his readers the potential triggers for the disease, complete with a link and block-quoting to show that the material was not original. That, however, was not good enough for Women To Women, who called this "plagiarism": The post at http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/002478.php used duplicate content from our following womentowomen website page http://www.womentowomen.com/breasthealth/estrogenbreastcancer.asp, without the author's permission. Moreover, its presence subjects our website to a duplicate content penalty assessed by search engines, directly causing us monetary damage. We do not mind you using our content for discussion purpose. However, please be sure they use the following at the top of the article:...
Iran Takes The Bait
If the Bush administration used the Condoleezza Rice offer of talks with Iran to seal the deal on sanctions, Iran so far has played directly into their hands. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confirmed their refusal to stop uranium enrichment -- as required by both the IAEA and the UN Security Council -- as a precondition for direct talks with the US: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday defied pressure from foreign leaders to accept a package of incentives in return for ending all nuclear activities, saying Iran will pursue its legal right to develop a peaceful nuclear program. "Any pressure to deprive our people from their right will not bear any fruit," he was quoted as saying on state-run television. "Their opposition to our program is not because of their concern over the spread of nuclear weapons," he said. "They are worried that Iran would become a model for other independent...
Canada Discovers Terrorist Plot
Canadian authorities rounded up seventeen suspected terrorists in a series of raids overnight, and have unraveled a plot to attack multiple targets in the Toronto area: Media reports Saturday alleged that the suspects engaged in terror training camps north of Toronto. It was further alleged that a group were plotting to attack targets in Toronto including the headquarters of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. ... The Canadian Security Intelligence Service aided the RCMP and officers from Toronto, Peel and Durham in detaining the suspects, described by an undercover officer involved in the operation as “terrorists, the ones who hate the West.” The ethnicity of the group was not clear. A well- placed police source said they are Muslims, but not Arabs, and unconnected to anti-terrorism raids that occurred simultaneously in Britain yesterday. Quoting anonymous sources, CBC said the targets of the raid are suspected of connections with al-Qaeda. A Canadian...
State GOP: No Taxation Without Voter Approbation
The Minnesota Republican convention overwhelmingly rejected the efforts of the current state legislature to fund a Twins stadium through the imposition of taxes without voter input, with 76% of all delegates adding a platform statement requiring any such revenue device to be put before the voters affected. This answers a bipartisan effort that has saddled the seven-county Metro area with a sales tax addition that will cost Twin Cities shoppers millions of dollars, all going to fund a new playground for millionaires: A new state Republican Party platform plank calling for voter approval of local sales taxes for professional sports stadiums was overwhelmingly adopted Friday by state convention delegates. The vote, which received 76 percent of the delegates' support, was a rebuff to Gov. Tim Pawlenty and dozens of Republican legislators who backed a 0.15 percent Hennepin County sales tax for a new Twins ballpark in Minneapolis. Pawlenty signed legislation...
Canadians Used Internet Monitoring To Stop Terror Attack
The Canadian intelligence service monitored Internet communications to identify and track the homegrown jihadists rounded up in last night's raids, according to the Toronto Star. The investigation began two years ago when agents cracked passwords and gathered communications from the group: Last night's dramatic police raid and arrest of as many as a dozen men — with more to come — marks the culmination of Canada's largest ever terrorism investigation into an alleged homegrown cell. The chain of events began two years ago, sparked by local teenagers roving through Internet sites, reading and espousing anti-Western sentiments and vowing to attack at home, in the name of oppressed Muslims here and abroad. Their words were sometimes encrypted, the Internet sites where they communicated allegedly restricted by passwords, but Canadian spies back in 2004 were reading them. And as the youths' words turned into actions, they began watching them. According to sources...
Northern Alliance Radio On The Air Today
The NARN once again takes to the airwaves today on AM 1280 The Patriot. The opening act will cover the end of the state Republican convention, while the second half will take on the issues of the day. Chief among them, I'm sure, will be the terror bust in Toronto and the controversy around the DHS grant allocations that led Re. Peter King to accuse Michael Chertoff of declaring war on New York City. Be sure to listen on the Internet stream, and call us at 651-289-4488 to join the conversation!...
I'm Angry, I'm Foolish, And Dang It, People Really Dislike Me
The picture of the day comes from Andy Aplikowski of Residual Forces, who managed to get his picture taken with future Senatorial hopeful Al Franken. Al looks thrilled to meet his constituents, doesn't he? Perhaps that might be because Andy's holding a Norm Coleman campaign sign. UPDATE: Doug at Bogus Gold has one almost as good. By the way, Doug reports that Franken had a good sense of humor about this....
Broad Strata?
The politically-correct whitewash of the Canadian terror cell has already begun in earnest. The Globe & Mail reports that the RCMP has decided to emphasize the fact that the suspected terrorists came from a "broad strata" of Canadian society: From an unmarried computer programmer to a university health sciences graduate and the unemployed, the 17 suspects charged in a foiled terrorist plot represent a “broad strata” of Canadian society. “Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed,” RCMP assistant Commissioner Mike McDonell said Saturday. ... Most of the group, who were remanded into custody until their next court appearance on Tuesday, wore street clothes although some appeared in white jump suits. The majority sported the traditional Muslim male beard. [emphasis mine -- CE] The RCMP and all of the Canadian government can keep talking about broad strata all day long, but the seventeen have this much in common: they...
The Democratic Lineup
Earlier today, the AP published a helpful list of the members of their House caucus that would assume control of the various committees if the Democrats win control of the lower chamber in the mid-term elections. While the list reflects the current ranking members of the existing panels, at least one comes as a surprise. Jane Harman has served as the ranking member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence since 2002. Upon gaining control of the House, one would expect Harman to ascend to the chair of this panel. However, she has lost favor with Nancy Pelosi for her support of the war in Iraq and other aspects of the overall war on terror. Harman also was one of the Congressional contingent that received briefings on the two NSA programs that caused such an uproar the past couple of months, until the Democrats found out that the American electorate...
June 4, 2006
RCMP Went Undercover For Raid
The Toronto Star reports this morning that the RCMP itself sold the Toronto terror cell the three tons of ammonium nitrate it planned to use for devastating attacks on Canada. The Mounties moved to capture all of the suspects as soon as the deal for the fertilizer concluded: The delivery of three tonnes of ammonium nitrate to a group suspected of plotting terrorist attacks in southern Ontario was part of an undercover police sting operation, the Toronto Star has learned. The RCMP said yesterday that after investigating the alleged homegrown terrorist cell for months, they had to move quickly Friday night to arrest 12 men and five youths before the group could launch a bomb attack on Canadian soil. Sources say investigators who had learned of the group's alleged plan to build a bomb were controlling the sale and transport of the massive amount of fertilizer, a key component in...
This ... Is GJN
As more information comes to light about the terror cell in Toronto smashed by Canadian authorities, the picture emerging is that of a global jihadist network that apparently does not require professionalism or guile to join. As this episode shows, any group of Muslims filled with enough hate for motivation can work through the Internet and a system of mosques to find like-minded terrorist wannabes and the resources to make their dreams come true: A Canadian counter-terrorism investigation that led to the arrests of 17 people accused of plotting bombings in Ontario is linked to probes in a half-dozen countries, the National Post has learned. Well before police tactical teams began their sweeps around Toronto on Friday, at least 18 related arrests had already taken place in Canada, the United States, Britain, Bosnia, Denmark, Sweden, and Bangladesh. The six-month RCMP investigation, called Project OSage, is one of several overlapping probes...
Ahmadinejad: I've Got A Secret
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has decided to publicly release the package offered by Western nations for an end to Teheran's uranium-enrichment program. Brushing off a warning from Kofi Annan, Ahmadinejad says he wants his people to remain fully informed of the situation: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that Iran would publish details of the package of incentives and possible penalties prepared by the United States and five other major powers aimed at halting Iran's nuclear program. In a speech in which he warned Iran's critics against "threats and intimidation," Ahmadinejad seemed to sweep aside a request by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to keep the process confidential. Western diplomats had said they were trying to avoid the appearance of threatening Iran by keeping the terms of the package as private as possible, especially the specific penalties Iran might face if it continues to enrich uranium. "We will record the talks...
June 5, 2006
One Last Word On New York City's Finances
The cuts to the DHS grant program of 34% from fiscal year 2005 have created a wailing and gnashing of teeth in New York, where elected officials have made accusations that DHS chief Michael Chertoff has "declared war" on the Big Apple for cutting UASI funding by 40%, along with Washington DC. The DHS did not help its case when their evaluation of the city's application resolved that NYC had no monuments or national icons, although as Newsweek reported yesterday, that description unfairly portrayed the analysis: The "risk" score sheets, based partially on classified data that included "suspicious incidents," "FBI Cases" and "Intelligence Community Reports," said New York had no "national monuments and icons," four "banking and finance" institutions with assets greater than $8 billion and two nuclear facilities. (The D.C. region was rated as having 18 monuments or icons, 2 major banking or finance institutions and 7 nuclear facilities.)...
The Broad Strata And Its Narrow-Minded Origins
The supposedly "broad strata" of society whence the Canadian terror cell sprang had an unusually narrow base: a single mosque in Mississauga. The eldest of the cell and apparently its ringleader, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, sat on the mosque's board and led prayers while organizing this conspiracy to attack Canadian targets: Several of the people arrested by Canadian authorities in a huge counterterrorism sweep over the weekend regularly attended the same storefront mosque in a middle-class neighborhood of modest brick rental townhouses and well-kept lawns. The eldest of the 17 Canadian residents arrested in the sweep, Qayyum Abdul Jamal, 43, was described by his lawyer as an active member of the mosque, the Al-Rahman Islamic Center for Islamic Education, though not its leader. "He's on the board, he's there regularly, but he's not an imam," said Anser Farooq, the lawyer representing Mr. Jamal and three other people from this Toronto suburb...
Lipscomb Fisks The Gray Lady
Thomas Lipscomb, whose writing on the John Kerry campaign in 2004 earned him a Pulitzer Prize nomination, has fired a salvo back at Kate Zernike and her article on Kerry's attempt to re-engage on the Swift Boat campaign. In an article at Real Clear Politics, Lipscomb deftly points out the journalistic, evidentiary, and logical flaws in Zernike's rather naive reporting: Kate Zernike's story on the front page of the Memorial Day Sunday New York Times, "Kerry Pressing Swift Boat Case Long After Loss," is an unfortunate reminder of the Times's embarrassingly poor coverage of Kerry in the face of the Swift Boat Veterans' for Truth charges in the 2004 election. Now as then, the Times acts as if the issues involved were between Kerry's latest representations of his record and the "unsubstantiated" charges of the Swift Boat group. The Times used the term "unsubstantiated" more than twenty times during its...
Do They Know Something We Don't?
Iranians have begun exporting their savings into international banks, also buying gold at an accelerated rate, according to the Wshington Times. This panic demonstrates that the Iranians understand the position that Ahmadinejad has placed their nation -- or perhaps it demonstrates something else entirely: Threats of an international financial squeeze stemming from the showdown over Iran's nuclear program have sent Iranians scrambling to get their savings out of the country, or if that won't work, to convert them into gold. An estimated $200 billion has left the country since last year's election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president, accompanied by panic buying of gold. The Iranian stock exchange lost an estimated 20 percent of its value even as other bourses in the region rose. "The most tangible effect of the threat of sanctions in the private sector is downsizing," said Farhad Sanadizadeh, a Tehran-based oil and gas consultant who has let...
First Mate Update, Rarified Air Edition
The news has not been good on the home front the past few days. The First Mate came home from the hospital last Tuesday evening to try to recover from her CMV infection. She ran fevers most of the week, sometimes as high as 103, and felt weak and unable to do much outside of restroom visits. Last Friday night, her fever finally broke and I hoped we would be heading for some improvement this weekend, but unfortunately, that didn't happen. On Saturday, she got disoriented and slipped down the stairs. She didn't get injured, but she obviously had some problems in moving around that required constant assistance when she wanted to walk. On Sunday morning, she wanted to eat breakfast in the dining room (which is on the same level as the bedroom), and I thought that might perk her spirits up. Unfortunately, she collapsed a couple of steps...
Fighting The Symptom And Not The Disease
President Bush, as expected, spoke today on behalf of efforts to amend the Constitution to establish a definition of marriage outside the reach of judicial mischief. To no one's surprise, the definition establishes "one man, one woman" as the national standard. He gave this statement at a speech this afternoon, some of which I heard live and the rest from a recording of the event: This week, the Senate begins debate on the Marriage Protection Amendment, and I call on the Congress to pass this amendment, send it to the states for ratification so we can take this issue out of the hands of over-reaching judges and put it back where it belongs -- in the hands of the American people. The union of a man and woman in marriage is the most enduring and important human institution. For ages, in every culture, human beings have understood that marriage is...
The Palestinian Showdown
The New York Times reports in tomorrow's edition that talks between Hamas and Fatah have ended without agreement, and Mahmoud Abbas will proceed with his plans for a plebescite on adopting the two-state solution as the official policy of the Palestinian Authority. This promises to escalate into a serious showdown between the two armed factions vying for power in the territories, and the chances of holding the referendum without an outbreak of civil war appears slim: The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, intends to call a referendum on a proposal developed by prisoners for a unified Palestinian political program that the governing Hamas faction opposes. Talks on the proposal ended without agreement late Monday night, and early Tuesday morning Mr. Abbas's office said in a statement that he intended to live up to his ultimatum to Hamas, the militant Islamic faction that heads the government, and announce a referendum later on...
British Want US To Allow Sinn Fein Fundraising
My, how times have changed! After many years of complaints by the British, the Bush administration curtailed the fundraising and travel of Sinn Fein leadership in the US after the murder of a Belfast man last year. Now the British want the Bush administration to reverse the ban after getting SF leader Gerry Adams to agree to a total disarmament earlier this year, and the White House apparently has balked: BRITAIN is pressing President Bush’s Administration to lift a fundraising ban imposed last year on the leadership of Sinn Fein, The Times has learnt. But Mitchell Reiss, Mr Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, has so far refused to heed calls from the British and Irish governments. They believe that Sinn Fein should be rewarded for renouncing its armed struggle and decommissioning IRA weapons. Both sides are playing down any talk of a significant row, although sources in London have...
June 6, 2006
Hearings Today For The Canadian Suspects
Seventeen suspects arrested this weekend as part of the terrorist roundup in Toronto will have their first court hearing today, where Canada will formally charge them with conspiring to detonate at least one bomb. Zakaria Amara, the 20-year-old student and father, will be identified as the man who bought the material, and another five as his primary accomplices: Government lawyers will allege 20-year-old Zakaria Amara, a university student and father of an 8-month-old daughter, was the man who purchased three tonnes of ammonium nitrate for bomb attacks on Canadian soil, sources have told the Star. Court documents released yesterday claim Amara and another five suspects were involved in the bomb plot. All 17 suspects in what police are alleging is a home-grown terrorist cell are expected to appear in a Brampton court today for the start of their bail hearings. More details have come out in the last twenty-four hours....
Iraqi Judge Tires Of Saddam Defense Obstructionism
The presiding judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein castigated the defense attorneys for their repeated motions for dismissal as well as their inability to produce witnesses as promised. He angrily suspended the trial for a week to give the defense one last chance to organize themselves, and warned them against making allegations without substantiation: The defendants have been accused of orchestrating the massacre of 148 people in retribution for a failed assassination attempt against Hussein in 1982. But defense attorneys pressed their claim Monday that at least 14 of those people were not killed. Some of the alleged victims are still alive and others died in the Iran-Iraq war, they said. Judge Raouf Rasheed Abdel Rahman had little patience for their complaints. Nor was he pleased to find most defense witnesses scheduled to testify hadn't shown up; lawyers said they were too scared to appear. Abdel Rahman ordered the...
When He's Right ...
Unfortunately, E.J. Dionne paints a fairly accurate picture in his column today regarding the sudden reappearance of the Marriage Protection Act. While Bush has always supported the traditional definition of marriage, he has not pursued the Constitutional option with much vigor until his polling numbers showed significant erosion among his base. Suddenly, the MPA has received front-burner status: This month's offensive by President Bush and his allies in Congress against gay marriage and flag burning proves one thing: The Republican Party thinks its base of social conservatives is a nest of dummies who have no memories and respond like bulls whenever red flags are waved in their faces. The people who should be angry this week are not liberals or gays or lesbians, but the president's most loyal supporters. After using the gay-marriage issue shamelessly in the 2004 campaign, Bush and Republican leaders left opponents of gay marriage out in...
Enlist In Congress, See The World!
The Center for Public Integrity reports that lobbyists provided Congress with over $50 million in trips between January 2000 and June 2005. The amount of time spent away from the office also comes to a staggering 81,000 days: Over 5 1/2 years, Republican and Democratic lawmakers accepted nearly $50 million in trips, often to resorts and exclusive locales, from corporations and groups seeking legislative favors, according to the most comprehensive study to date on the subject of congressional travel. From January 2000 through June 2005, House and Senate members and their aides were away from Washington for more than 81,000 days -- a combined 222 years -- on at least 23,000 trips, according to the report, issued yesterday by the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity. About 2,300 of the trips cost $5,000 or more, at least 500 cost $10,000 or more, and 16 cost $25,000 or more. "While some of...
Did Iran Get What It Wants?
The Associated Press reports that Iran has described the Bush offer to end the nuclear-proliferation standoff as "positive", while reports indicating that the US has promised to give Teheran the technology to build a light-water reactor have some worried that we may have given away the prize. Ali Larijani, Iran's nuclear negotiator, changed weeks of contentious Iranian rhetoric by lauding the "positive steps" taken by the Americans, while noting that areas of ambiguity need clearer definition: Iran and the United States had a rare moment of agreement Tuesday, using similar language to describe "positive steps" toward an accord on a package of incentives aimed at persuading Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment. Diplomats said the incentives include a previously undisclosed offer of some U.S. nuclear technology on top of European help in building light-water nuclear reactors. Other incentives include allowing Iran to buy spare airplane parts and support for joining the...
Do Not Pass Gaux
Chuck Guité, one of the handful of people who faced criminal prosecution for his part in the Adscam corruption case that brought down the Liberal government, got convicted of five counts related to the fraud. The presiding judge gleefully revoked Guité's bail, which means he will start serving time while the judge ponders his sentence: Chuck Guité, the operational mastermind at the centre of the federal sponsorship boondoggle, was sent straight to jail Tuesday for steering money-for-nothing contracts to a friendly ad firm. Guité, 62, clasped his hands as the jury foreman, a scrapyard manager, read the guilty verdict on five counts of fraud. Justice Fraser Martin immediately told Guité he would go to prison for his crime — defrauding the federal government of about $1.5 million. "I have no hesitation cancelling your bail conditions," the judge said, surprising even the Crown prosecutor with the swift incarceration. Martin said Guité,...
The CIA Covered For Eichmann
While the entire world looked for Adolf Eichmann, the colorless bureaucrat that headed the Nazi "Final Solution" that sent millions of Jews to their ghastly deaths, the CIA knew exactly where to find him. Why didn't they capture him, or at least reveal his whereabouts to the Mossad? The American government needed to protect a former Nazi who worked for the anti-Soviet West German government of Konrad Adenauer: The United States was aware of the hiding place and alias of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal and architect of the "Final Solution" to exterminate the Jews, but did nothing to pursue him, according to CIA documents. Timothy Naftali, a University of Virginia historian who has looked through the newly released documents, said yesterday they showed that West German intelligence had told the CIA that Eichmann was living in Argentina under the pseudonym Clemens two years before he was abducted by...
June 7, 2006
CA-50 Race Too Close To Call (Update & Bump)
The polls have closed in California's primary election, and the most significant contest looks like a real squeaker. With only 11% of precincts reporting, Republican Brian Bilbray leads Democrat Francine Busby by eight points in the race to replace the disgraced Randy "Duke" Cunningham. The early absentee returns should have given Bilbray a better lead at this stage; this one will probably go to the wire. I'll update this in the morning. UPDATE: Bilbray won, but shy of a majority: Republican Brian Bilbray beat Democrat Francine Busby early Wednesday in a close race to replace imprisoned former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in the 50th Congressional District, a contest seen as a gauge of voter attitudes for the national midterm elections. ... Bilbray also said that running in a heavily Republican district was an advantage, to a degree. “It can also be a big negative, because people were really hurt by...
Ann Coulter, Meet Ted Rall (Updated)
One of the topics that flew under my radar yesterday came from an interview Ann Coulter did with Matt Lauer on the Today show, promoting her new book, Godless. Other bloggers have picked up this story before I did, where I saw it at Rick Moran's Right Wing Nuthouse. Rick notes a particularly disturbing part of the transcript from the show: LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration: COULTER: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process.” "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies....
Bush Recasts Immigration Rhetoric For House
George Bush, like any good rancher, has to perform some fence-tending from time to time. Apparently he sees the need to do some with House Republicans who have opposed his ideas about fence-tending on the Rio Grande, and he now wants to emphasize border enforcement as a prerequisite for any comprehensive reform: President Bush tried on Tuesday to win back the trust of conservatives who have distanced themselves from him on immigration, promising to "get this border enforced" and warning those who enter the country illegally that "if you get caught, you get sent home." After weeks of embracing "comprehensive immigration reform" — Washington shorthand for a Senate bill that includes a temporary guest-worker program and a promise of citizenship for some illegal immigrants — Mr. Bush shifted his tone in remarks at the Border Patrol training academy here. Having nudged the Senate into action, Mr. Bush is turning his...
RCMP Foiled A Dozen Plots
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have stopped a number of attacks from occurring in Canada, sometimes by disrupting networks when arrests could not be made, the Globe & Mail reports this morning. This semi-covert action rarely gets acknowledged but has kept the nation safe from terrorist attack and demonstrates again that the professionals have kept their eye on the ball: The RCMP has quietly broken up at least a dozen terrorist groups in the past two years, according to documents obtained by The Globe and Mail. "We have completed 12 disruptions of national-level terrorist groups across the country," the Mounties say in briefing notes prepared for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day. Disruptive tactics -- sometimes as simple as letting targets know they are under close surveillance -- are used to prevent a terrorist attack when the police do not have enough evidence to lay criminal charges, the RCMP and the...
Germany: Iran Must End Enrichment For Negotiations
The Bush administration got significant international support for his latest diplomatic effort with Iran from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Showing a united front, Merkel told the Iranians that the new package of incentives could be negotiated, but not an end to their enrichment program: The terms of an offer of incentives delivered to Iran to end a dispute over its nuclear program can be negotiated but only if Tehran halts enrichment work first, Germany's chancellor said on Wednesday. "This is an offer to kick off negotiations but there must first be a suspension of (enrichment) activities implemented by Iran," Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters before a meeting with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana. ... Merkel urged the Iranians to consider the offer seriously, which she said was an opportunity to secure a peaceful resolution to the years-long nuclear standoff with Iran. "I believe that it is a truly...
More On Jefferson's Corruption
As the voters in CA-50 put the corruption of Randy Cunningham behind them, the voters of William Jefferson's district got more information on his sellout. The New York Times reports that the FBI has acquired documentary evidence of bribery regarding Jefferson's efforts on behalf of a foreign power, albeit in a strange reversal: The Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Maryland home of the vice president of Nigeria last summer in search of bribe money that the bureau believed had been paid to him by Representative William Jefferson, according to documents released on Tuesday. The documents included an affidavit signed by an F.B.I. agent who said that the Nigerian vice president, Atiku Abubakar, now a candidate for president of that oil-rich West African nation, asked for at least half of the profits of a technology company controlled by Mr. Jefferson that was seeking to do business in Nigeria. About the...
UN: We Hate Free Speech
Just when you thought that the United Nations could not possibly sink any lower, Turtle Bay manages to find a little more wiggle room in the muck. Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown told an audience that the American government uses the UN too much to allow its citizens to criticize its shortcomings, one of which is apparently an aversion to free speech: Secretary General Kofi Annan's deputy assailed the United States on Tuesday for withholding support from the United Nations, encouraging its harshest detractors and undermining an institution that he said Washington needed more than it would admit. "The prevailing practice of seeking to use the U.N. almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable," said the deputy, Mark Malloch Brown. "You will lose the U.N. one way or another." In a highly unusual instance...
September 2002: Iraq Buried Chemical Weapons Near Fallujah
Joseph Shahda has translated another key text from the archives of captured documents left untranslated by the Pentagon. In this case, Shahda appears to have struck gold: the memo describes not only the disposal of chemical-weapon materials but also where Iraq buried them. The memo dated September 15, 2002, comes from the General Relations group from one of Saddam's military/intelligence organizations, and describes in detail where the chemicals were hidden from UN inspectors (via Power Line): In the Name of God The Most Compassionate The Most Merciful The Republic of Iraq The Presidency of the Republic Saddam Feedayeens Secretariat The Supervisor of Saddam Feedayeens 2002/9 The Respected Supervisor of Saddam Feedayeens Subject: Information Salute and regards Sir We received information that state the following: 1. A team from the Military Industrialization Commission when Hussein Kamel Hussein was conducting his responsibilities did bury a large container said that it contains a...
June 8, 2006
British Arrest Two Terror Suspects At Airports
What's better than capturing a terror suspect in an airport? Getting two of them. The London Times and the New York Times both reporton the British double play, as an American got captured at Heathrow and a Brit at Manchester: An American citizen who once lived in New York was indicted yesterday on charges of conspiring to send money and military gear to associates of Al Qaeda to use against United States forces in Afghanistan, federal prosecutors said. The defendant, Syed Hashmi, 26, was arrested at Heathrow Airport in London on Tuesday night as he was trying to board a flight to Pakistan, according to the United States attorney's office in Manhattan. Prosecutors said he was carrying a large amount of cash. He was jailed pending extradition proceedings. The conspiracy alleged in the indictment was based in London, law enforcement officials said, but Mr. Hashmi, who had been living in...
Iranian Enrichment Suspension Not Necessarily Permanent?
The Guardian reports that Western negotiators have told Iran that the uranium enrichment suspension prerequisite to discussions over the package offered by the US only applies during negotiations. Any permanent end to enrichment will come as part of the overall negotiations, according to a report in today's Guardian: In a major western concession, Iran is to be allowed to retain some uranium enrichment activities if it reaches agreement with the US, Russia, Europe, and China on its nuclear programme. Diplomats said yesterday that the terms of a new package of proposed rewards delivered to Tehran on Tuesday by Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, state that Iran must freeze uranium enrichment activities before and during the talks. Once "confidence is restored in the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme", it would be allowed to resume enrichment on a scale to be determined. "Those are rights under the nuclear non-proliferation...
How To Overcome Conservative Battle Fatigue
My debut at the Examiner as a founding member of the Blog Board of Contributors appears today, discussing the manner in which conservatives can defeat political fatigue and exert more influence over policy. Other bloggers and I have discussed this topic extensively, and in my column I attempted to bring all of the elements together: Many conservative voices have asked recently whether the Republican Party has any capability of representing conservative values. After all, Republicans have controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress for the past five years, yet we have seen discretionary spending go through the roof, an explosion of earmarks, a curious lack of the veto, and a belated and misguided effort at border control that hearkens back to the failed Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty bill of 1986. Under these circumstances, conservatives may wonder with some justification whether a continued association with the GOP unfairly tarnishes true conservative...
Zarqawi Dead In Coalition Air Strike
(Note to CQ readers: This post will be time-stamped to ride on top through most of the day, in order to post updates. Scroll down for newer posts.) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the driving force behind the foreign insurgency in Iraq, died in an air strike at a safe house while holding a meeting with his lieutenants. The announcement from Iraqi PM Nuri al-Maliki came early this morning, and subsequent reports detail the identification through scars and fingerprints: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's leader in Iraq who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings and kidnappings, has been killed in an air strike, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Thursday, adding his identity was confirmed by fingerprints and a first-hand look at his face. It was a major victory in the U.S.-led war in Iraq and the broader war on terror. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said...
Bomb On Head Equals Knife In Back
So much for loyalty among terrorists. CNN now reports that the Coalition mission that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi came as a result of betrayal within the ranks of his own organization. The Pentagon also confirmed that US and Iraqi forces raided a total of 17 sites based on the intelligence gathered for weeks before today: Betrayal inside his al Qaeda in Iraq terror group led to success in a painstaking U.S.-led operation to kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the U.S. military said on Thursday. The most wanted man in Iraq died in a U.S. airstrike Wednesday evening when two 500-pound bombs slammed into a safe house near Baquba, according to U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell. "Last night was the first time that we have had definitive, unquestionable information as to exactly where [al-Zarqawi] was located, knowing that we could strike that target without causing collateral damage to other Iraqi civilians...
More Corruption?
The Los Angeles Times reported earlier today that the stepdaughter of a powerful Congressional committe chairman benefitted from a relationship with a company that had business before her stepfather's panel. Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), chair of the ultrapowerful House Appropriations Committee, oversaw the granting of over $11 million in earmarks to Trident Systems, whose founder and president hired his stepdaughter to run his political action committee: A political fundraising committee headed by a defense contractor has paid thousands of dollars in fees to the stepdaughter of House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands) at a time when the contractor has been lobbying Congress for funding. Lewis' stepdaughter, Julia Willis-Leon, has been paid more than $42,000 by the Small Biz Tech Political Action Committee, according to campaign finance records. The PAC is led by Nicholas Karangelen, founder and president of Trident Systems Inc. Records show the company received at least $11.7...
Wishing Them All The Best
It turns out that Western politicians do not have a monopoly on spin. The leftovers at al-Qaeda in Iraq put a message out on their website today congratulating Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on his great victory today in allowing two bombs to fall on his head. No, I'm not kidding: As the U.S. military announced Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death, al-Zarqawi’s lieutenants did the same, with a statement on his own Web site, with a highly positive spin. “We are bringing the good news of the martyrdom of our Sheikh,” reads the site. “What hit us is a blessing to our nation. ... It will encourage us to continue waging Jihad.” Jihadi bulletin boards and chat rooms were quickly overwhelmed. Al-Zarqawi’s photo was posted, adorned to glorify his death. One posting said: “Zarqawi’s blood will serve as fuel to burn the invaders and the apostates.” If that's how they feel about it...
The Swiss Get In On The Act
Switzerland just got its first big public win in the war on terror, overshadowed on the day American forces killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al-Qaeda in Iraq targets and Israel took out #2 on their own hit parade. The Guardian (UK) reports that the Swiss foiled an airliner attack on El Al last December, and announced arrests in the case today: A terrorist cell plotted to shoot down an Israeli airliner over Switzerland but was foiled by intelligence services, Swiss prosecutors said yesterday. Seven people of north African origin are under arrest in connection with the alleged plot, said a statement from the federal prosecutor's office. Officials declined to give further details. Israeli media reported last month that terrorists had planned a rocket attack on a plane operated by the Israeli airline El Al last December during takeoff from Geneva. A series of arrests began last month around Zurich...
First Mate Update: Better News
The First Mate is still recovering in the hospital, but we got some good news today. The MRI taken of her brain reveals no damage, so we know she did not have a stroke or a seizure. Her phosphorus and potassium levels were very low, unusual for a dialysis patient; she has had IV infusions for both and they have improved her stamina and color tremendously. Her anemia still causes problems with oxygenation, but another transfusion has improved that too, although she remains on oxygen now. She may improve enough to come straight home in the next day or two, although we're hearing conflicting stories on that. No one thinks she needs an intermediate-care facility with the improvement she's shown so far, which relieves both of us. In the meantime, she's relaxing (ha!) in the hospital, and this time she promises that she will not leave until the doctors agree....
June 9, 2006
An Answer From Iran
Iran answered the West regarding the offer of a set of incentives, including more modern nuclear-power generation, for a cessation of uranium enrichment by the Iranian government. The IAEA reported late yesterday that Iran restarted its uranium enrichment on the day it received the offer despite public knowledge of the preconditions for talks: Iran restarted important nuclear activities on the same day this week that six world powers offered it incentives aimed at encouraging the complete suspension of the nuclear work, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported on Thursday. On Tuesday, Iran restarted the pouring of a raw form of uranium into a set of 164 centrifuge machines to produce enriched uranium, said the I.A.E.A., the nuclear monitoring agency based in Vienna. That same day, Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, was in Tehran, where he presented Iranian leaders with an international package of incentives to help resolve...
Canadian Muslims Ask For Help With Extremists
In an unusual plea for assistance from a group known for its fear of outsiders, Canadian Muslims reached out to mainstream Canada to help manage an impulse among younger Muslims towards fundamentalism and radical Islam, the Toronto Star reported last night. Part blameshift and part honest introspection, the request for a conference on better integration at least acknowledges that the problem exists: Muslim leaders pleaded for help Thursday in their struggle against extremists in their midst, saying they can't fight a small minority of radicals alone. "We're not here to say we don't have an issue," said social worker Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association. "Of course we have an issue," she told a news conference on Parliament Hill. "But we can't deal with it ourselves. We're part of the Canadian society and so we demand that the Canadian society come forward, help us root out this."...
Dionne: Realism Is Not The Enemy Of Idealism
E.J. Dionne takes a hard look at the failure of Proposition 82 and gives liberals a truth they need to hear -- that tax and spend policies will not succeed any longer, even in a state as liberal as California. He advises liberals to start considering reality when it comes to proposing large and expensive government programs, and to make sure that they have a convincing argument before spending a lot of money trying to convince people to buy: While the political world was obsessed with the Republican victory in a special election for a California congressional seat, the truly sobering news for liberals was in the statewide voting. Proposition 82, the ballot measure that would have guaranteed access to preschool for all of California's 4-year-olds, went down to resounding defeat, 61 to 39 percent. Not only that, voters also rejected a $600 million bond measure for the state's libraries....
Soldier's Mom Starts Media Watch Blog
One of my correspondents has started a blog to keep an eye on media reports regarding our men and women in the armed forces. Sharon's new blog, Spirit Builders, began five days ago and is intended to counteract the overly negative press coverage on all military affairs in the shadow of Haditha and its aftermath. Be sure to drop by and check on her observations regularly!...
Pork On A Diet
The conference committee on the emergency appropriations bill has reached agreement on the measure which had an original spending gap of $16 billion. The resulting bill will reach the White House at $94.5 billion, $2.5 billion more than the House-approved plan but much lighter than the heavily-porked version the Senate tried mightily to get: House and Senate negotiators reached agreement last night on a $94.5 billion package to pay for Iraq war and hurricane recovery costs, after shaving numerous extraneous provisions that the Senate had wanted to stuff into the bill. The bill, which is expected to reach President Bush's desk next week, would designate $65.8 billion to the Pentagon to cover troop pay, provide recruiting incentives, buy new body armor and fund continued operations of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other items. Diplomacy projects in the region would receive $3.9 billion in new funding. The bill would...
You Get The Government You Deserve, Part 37B
The London Times reports this rather depressing news: KREMLIN hardliners pushing for President Putin to serve a third term have been given a significant boost by an opinion poll indicating that 59 per cent of the population would support such a move. Mr Putin, who took power in 2000, has promised to step down before the next presidential election, in 2008, because the Russian Constitution does not allow anyone to serve more than two consecutive four-year terms. However, none of the potential successors identified so far has the popular appeal of Mr Putin, whose sobriety and steely manner have consistently won him approval ratings of higher than 70 per cent. And the Kremlin controls more than the two-thirds majority in the Duma needed to amend the Constitution to allow Mr Putin, 53, to stand for a third term. The poll by the respected Levada Centre suggested that 59 per cent...
Two Editorials On Western Delusion
Almost five years into the war on terror, we still have yet to see Western governments take domestic threats seriously, and two editorials make excellent points in that regard today in response to the revelation of the Toronto terror cell this week. The Examiner talks about the "broad strata of delusion" in how security checks get conducted in the age of Islamist terror: Here’s something to think about while standing in line at the airport. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police official described the 17 recently arrested members of an alleged terrorist cell as representing “the broad strata of our community.” The more we learn about these individuals, their recent activities and their alleged plans, the more the RCMP’s description looks like evidence of a dangerously common delusion among many Westerners, especially those in positions of authority where the demands of political correctness too often make it impossible to speak honestly...
Mike The Contractor Speaks Out On Zarqawi
A good friend of CQ has spent decades in the Naval Reserve as a SEAL, volunteering regularly for active duty during conflicts. He has served in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf as a SEAL and spent some time as a contractor in Iraq. He was in Iraq when Islamist "insurgents" murdered four contractors and desecrated their corpses -- burning them, hanging them from a bridge, and then tearing them to pieces. Since then, Mike has occasionally shared his thoughts on Iraq and the war on terror with CQ readers. After the death of Zarqawi, Mike sent me this letter and allowed me to once again pass it along to you, after redacting some personal information. As I am in and out of town on active duty until mid-summer I am really enjoying magical weekends off with my awesome high energy boys. At the same time I, like many veteran friends...
The Famous Last Words No One Heard
So Abu Musab al-Zarqawi didn't die instantly from the bombing of his safe house in Baquba two days ago, as it turns out. He lived long enough to know who killed him: Major-General Bill Caldwell said that he had learnt early yesterday that al-Zarqawi had survived the initial airstrikes on his two-floor breeze-block hideout. “We did, in fact, see him alive,” General Caldwell said. “He mumbled something but it was indistinguishable and it was very short.” US medics tried to save the life of the most-wanted man in Iraq, but it was too late, General Caldwell added. “Zarqawi attempted to sort of turn away off the stretcher,” he said. “Everybody resecured him back on to the stretcher but he died almost immediately from the wounds he’d received. “He obviously had some kind of visual recognition of who they were because he attempted to roll off the stretcher, as I am...
The End Of The Non-Truce
Hamas has announced the end of a truce that never was, after a series of artillery exchanges between Palestinians in Gaza and the IDF resulted in seven civilian deaths on a Gaza beach, apparently from an errant Israeli volley. After the seven victims died on the beach, Hamas angrily announced their renunciation of the truce: Hamas militants called off a truce with Israel on Friday after a barrage of Israeli artillery shells tore into Palestinians at a beachside picnic in the Gaza Strip, killing seven civilians. The declaration raised the prospect of a new wave of bloodshed. Hamas militants suspended a campaign of deadly suicide attacks on Israelis with a February 2005 cease-fire, and have largely stuck to the truce. The Islamic group now leads the Palestinian government. "The earthquake in the Zionist towns will start again and the aggressors will have no choice but to prepare their coffins or...
Guess Who Wanted To Fly In New Zealand?
New Zealand authorities found out that an eager young student pilot might have more on his mind that just cruising through South Pacific clouds. The country deported Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, an undeservedly obscure cast member from the 9/11 plot who told the Kiwis that his dream was to fly a commercial airliner: A Saudi Arabian linked to one of the September 11 hijackers spent four months in New Zealand before being expelled as a national security risk. The United States-qualified pilot, Rayed Mohammed Abdullah Ali, was admitted to New Zealand in February on a student visa, saying his dream was to become a commercial airline pilot and that he needed an English language qualification to assist. Today the Weekend Herald reveals that on May 29 police and immigration officials raided Ali's Palmerston North home and deported him. ... The Government claimed last night that Ali had lived and trained...
June 10, 2006
Anti-Semitism In Virginia Democratic Primary?
Forbes Magazine reported on a potentially explosive story when it relayed accusations that campaign material for James Webb used anti-Semitic imagery to combat his opponent in the upcoming Virginian Democratic primary for the Senate, Harris Miller. According to Forbes, the drawing used stereotypical cartoon images about Jews to show Harris as a greedy manipulator, charges that came from the Harris Miller campaign itself: Senate candidate James H. Webb, President Reagan's former Navy secretary, was criticized by his Jewish opponent Friday over a campaign flier that depicted the opponent with a hooked nose and cash spilling from his pockets. The flier was intended for distribution among labor groups. It was titled "Miller the Job Killer," referring to Webb's opponent for the Democratic nomination in Tuesday's primary, businessman Harris Miller. The flier, drawn in comic-book cartoon style, depicts Miller with a grotesquely hooked nose and cash overflowing from his suit pockets as...
Murtha, The Gift That Keeps On Giving
Rep. John Murtha inadvertently provided a rare moment of unity last fall when he demanded an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. House Republicans took him at his word and introduced a bill to that effect, and the measure only gained three votes -- none of them Murtha's, as it turned out. He later complained that the bill misrepresented his position and that he meant to give the Pentagon six months to leave, although even the most precipitous retreat would take nearly that long to organize and execute, given our deployment throughout Iraq. Now he apparently intends to provide that kind of unity again, among Republicans at least, by throwing his hat into the ring for a key Democratic leadership post -- that doesn't even exist yet: Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), one of the Democrats' leading antiwar voices, startled his political colleagues yesterday by announcing he would seek a senior leadership...
Terror Experts Agree: Zarqawi Death A Significant Blow To AQ
The Washington Post leads with an analysis of the impact from the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq this week, and the news sounds much better than some of the talking heads on television would lead viewers to believe. Zarqawi's death will not only degrade his own AQI network, but will have a tremendous impact on terror networks worldwide, according to analysts: The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could mark a turning point for al-Qaeda and the global jihadist movement, according to terrorism analysts and intelligence officials. ... Some European and Arab intelligence officials said they had seen signs before Zarqawi's death that the number of foreign fighters going to Iraq was already waning. For recruitment efforts, the importance of Zarqawi's death "cannot be overestimated," Germany's foreign intelligence chief, Ernst Uhrlau, told the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. Guido Steinberg, an expert on Islamic radicalism at the German Institute for...
Corruption In Nevada Judiciary
The Los Angeles Times has a blockbuster report this morning on a judicial system in Nevada that has allowed corruption into the state's justice system, an embarrassment that has benefited organized crime, casinos, and the judges themselves. By allowing a classification for jurists as "senior judges" to escape rules of accountability, the predictable outcomes have occurred: One Nevada judge was nearly indicted on blackmail charges. Another ruled repeatedly for a casino corporation in which he held more than 10,000 shares. Still another overruled state authorities and decided in favor of a gambling boss who was notorious as a mob frontman, and whose casino did the judge a $2,800 favor. Yet the Nevada Supreme Court has conferred upon these judges a special distinction that exempts them from some of the common rules of judicial practice and reduces their accountability. They are among 17 state judges whom the high court has commissioned...
Long Day's Hospital Visit Into Night
My sister flew in for a brief visit and the entire family spent the day at the hospital with the First Mate, which is why I couldn't make it to my normal Northern Alliance Radio Network spot today. The FM needed me to go over the lab results with the doctors, who had told her several seemingly contradictory prognoses. The complexity of her case has her wondering what it all means, and we had the opportunity to get a lot of the fog cleared today. She's doing much better, but the fever is still there and her hemoglobin dropped suddenly two days ago, necessitating another transfusion. Hematology wants to see what happens over the next couple of days whether she continues to have problems in this regard. The FM will probably stay in the hospital now until Monday evening at the earliest -- which displeased her, but is probably necessary....
Gettin' Wild With The Zarqmeister
My, the stories I miss when I'm away! It turns out that the US military didn't just kill a terrorist monster Thursday, but also a major party monster. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi apparently brought out the beast in his women, according to the clothing found in the rubble of his safe house in Baquba: The ruins of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s house are strewn with a random jumble of wreckage -- magazines, a leopard-print nightgown, a religious slogan and a few hints at the violent career of Iraq’s most wanted man. What is left of the “safe house” where the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq lived suggests that he and his companions lived there with few luxuries. Apparently, it didn't take much for Zarqawi to get relaxed. Besides the latest from Victoria's Secret for his women (well, we assume for his women), Zarqawi seemed a bit obsessed with the culture he hated...
Zarqawi Said Beaten To Death By Witness Who Could Not Have Seen It
The AP has caused quite a stir today by publishing an uncorroborated account by a supposed eyewitness to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The witness, identified as Mohammed, says that Americans beat and stomped Zarqawi until blood flowed from his nose and he died: The Iraqi, identified only as Mohammed, said he lives near the house where al-Zarqawi was killed. He said residents put a bearded man in an ambulance before U.S. forces arrived. "When the Americans arrived they took him out of the ambulance, they beat him on his stomach and wrapped his head with his dishdasha, then they stomped on his stomach and his chest until he died and blood came out of his nose," Mohammed said, without saying how he knew the man was dead. Interesting. Of course, Reuters reported earlier tonight that the house could not be seen from any of the local houses, screened...
June 11, 2006
Canadian Imam: We Failed Our Youth
Canadian imams spoke out for patience and trust in the Canadian justice system and told their congregants that they themselves failed their children. Other Muslims protested the Canadian efforts to round up suspected terrorists in their community: Imams across the GTA urged families and communities to take more responsibility for shaping the minds of young Muslims, following the arrest of 17 young men and boys on terrorism-related charges last Friday. In Mississauga, North York and Scarborough, they spoke to thousands gathered for Friday afternoon prayers, some addressing concerns about backlash, others urging the community to have faith in the Canadian justice system to provide a fair trial. "There is nothing wrong in saying we failed our youth," said Imam Munir El-Kassen at the Toronto and Region Islamic Congregation in North York. "We did not fail them intentionally, but our community was in a formative stage and our youth searching to...
CQ's Day Off On Drugs
Due to a back injury that has gotten progressively worse, I've taken the day off from blogging, with the exception of the one interesting story on the Canadian imams. I just got back from Urgent Care, and they've upgraded me from Vicodin to Percocet. I'm told by those who know that I will shortly discover an entire new world of sleep, so unless I'm as impervious to Percocet as I apparently am to Vicodin, I'll be unable to do much more. However, I don't want to leave you with no place to go, so .... Ed Driscoll podcasts an interview with Hugh Hewitt about his book, Painting The Map Red. Be sure to tune in; with Ed and Hugh on the podcast, it should be very entertaining. Blue Crab Boulevard has an e-mail from his son memorializing a lost comrade, killed by an IED in Iraq on Friday. I have...
June 12, 2006
Quick Note Of Thanks
I have heard from a number of people about my back problems, both in comments and e-mails over the last twenty-four hours. I cannot express my appreciation for all of your kind thoughts and prayers, and excellent advice as well. Some of you have shared some personal insights into painkillers and their long-term effects, and that level of concern has been very touching indeed. I will definitely keep all of that in mind while I work with my doctor to get a plan for recovery together in the next few days. Assuming I can remain alert, I will be blogging on and off, since I do not appear capable of doing much of anything else. Of course, I may also take some time to watch more of my Firefly episodes, or something equally important, so we shall see! Also, the First Mate will return home today. Fortunately, our son will...
Lipscomb Continues The History Lesson
Thomas Lipscomb continued to give John Kerry the rematch he demanded on the Swift Boat debate, this time by addressing one of Kerry's rebuttals about the first Purple Heart medal. Lipscomb revisits the skimmer mission that resulted in his eventually winning the medal after first having it denied by his commanding officer and later caused Kerry to call an admiral a liar: According to Kerry's accounts in both Michael Kranish's Boston Globe reporting, the Brinkley account of TOUR OF DUTY, and the Zernike Times piece, Kerry, an officer stationed at Coastal Division 14 at Cam Ranh Bay, still in training before being assigned a Swift boat, who had never been in combat before, "volunteered for a special mission on what the Navy called a skimmer but he knew as a Boston Whaler." Coastal Division 14 operations officer Bill Schachte, who says he was glad to have Kerry volunteer, agrees so...
Tories Closing In On Total Victory?
Canadian politics have transformed since the revelations of Adscam showed the rot in the Liberal governance that had been in place for more than a decade. Once considered a mere shadow of a party, the Tories roared back from oblivion to cpature a minority government earlier this year, in what appeared to be a "test drive" for Canadians. Since their election, the Conservatives have built an impressive following, polling into the 40s nationally and poising themselves for a majority government in the next elections. The Liberals have found themselves in a free-fall, unable to find new leadership that can attract those offended by the corruption of Adscam and by the fear-based electoral tactics they used against the Tories and Stephen Harper. Until now, however, the Grits could count on Ontario as their power base. That seems to be changing as well, according to a new Ipsos poll: According to a...
The Beat Didn't Go On
Contrary to the AP's uncorroborated witness who claimed that American servicemen beat Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to death, an autopsy performed on his corpse reveals that the al-Qaeda leader died from injuries consistent with close encounters to two 500-lb bombs. This should put an end to a very strange episode where people accused soldiers of murdering a man by beating him instead of blowing him up: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi lived for 52 minutes after a U.S. warplane bombed his hideout northeast of Baghdad, and he died of extensive internal injuries consistent with those caused by a bomb blast, the U.S. military said Monday. Col. Steve Jones, command surgeon for Multinational Forces, said an autopsy concluded that the terrorist leader died from serious injuries to his lungs. An FBI test positively identified al-Zarqawi's remains. ... "Blast waves from the two bombs caused tearing, bruising of the lungs and bleeding," he said. "There...
Democrat Wants To Pork You Up
Every once in a while, a politician provides a moment of utter clarity, usually inadvertently, which defines their character so well that further defense is pointless. Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) not only did that for himself but for his entire party, and provided the Republicans with a valuable sound bite for the upcoming mid-terms in every district: If Democrats win back control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November, U.S. Rep. Jim Moran said he would use his position in the majority to help funnel more funds to his Northern Virginia district. Moran, D-8th, told those attending the Arlington County Democratic Committee's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner on June 9 that while he in theory might oppose the fiscal irresponsibility of “earmarks” - funneling money to projects in a member of Congress's district - he understands the value they have to constituents. “When I become chairman [of a House appropriations...
Wear The Helmet, Big Ben
Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger broke his jaw and injured his knees in a motorcycle accident late this morning. According to reports, he has undergone surgery to repair the injuries and has shown no signs of brain damage: Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was badly hurt in a motorcycle crash Monday and undergoing surgery. The extent of his injuries was not known. Roethlisberger was in serious but stable condition, said Dr. Larry Jones, chief of trauma at Mercy Hospital. "He was talking to me before he left for the operating room," Jones said before the operation. "He's coherent. He's making sense. He knows what happened. He knows where he is. From that standpoint, he's very stable." The 24-year-old Roethlisberger likes to ride without a helmet, a habit that once prompted coach Bill Cowher to lecture him on the dangers. It was not known whether Roethlisberger was wearing a helmet when he...
Did A Land Mine Kill The Palestinians On The Beach?
The Israeli Defense Force believes that the explosion that killed seven members of a Palestinian family on a Gaza beach did not come from Israeli guns. After analyzing the shrapnel taken from the bodies of the dead and reviewing the records of their assault on the Palestinian firing position, the IDF suspects that the explosion came from a buried device meant to discourage an Israeli invasion: The IDF probe investigating the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians, caused by an explosion on a beach in Gaza on Friday evening, concluded that chances were slim that the accident was caused by IDF shelling. According to Channel 2, the findings, expected to be formally released on Tuesday, showed an inconsistency between the shrapnel found in the body of one of the wounded babies and the metal used in IDF artillery. Moreover, the investigation noted the absence of a large enough crater at the...
June 13, 2006
Fizzlemas
Karl Rove will not face any charges stemming from the leak of Valerie Plame's identity or of any cover-up in its aftermath, the New York Times reports. The decision brings an end to the politically-charged waiting game that had some of George Bush's opponents salivating for Rove's head: The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove. The decision by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, announced in a letter to Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, lifted a pall that had hung over Mr. Rove who testified on five occasions to a federal grand jury about his involvement in the disclosure of an intelligence officer's identity. In a statement, Mr. Luskin said, "On June 12, 2006, Special...
Bush To Baghdad, Post To Desperation
George Bush paid a surprise visit to Baghdad and the newly-formed constitutional government of Iraq. Keeping the news secret until he landed in Baghdad, he delighted the new Prime Minister, who greeted him enthusiastically: President Bush arrived in Baghdad this afternoon for a face-to-face meeting with new Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki -- an effort, the White House said, to get a clear sense of the premier's priorities and how the U.S. government could help his government succeed. The White House originally had said Bush was scheduled to be at Camp David and to hold a video-conference with Maliki this morning. Instead, without telling the Iraqi government or all but his closest advisers, the president slipped out of Washington last night and made the 11-hour trip to Baghdad International Airport, landing at 4:08 p.m. Baghdad time (8:08 a.m. EDT). ... "Good to see you," Maliki said to the president, who...
Six Questions For Senator Frist
I had an opportunity to speak with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist this morning and talk to him about immigration, spending, and the upcoming elections. Senator Frist and his staff graciously squeezed me into a tight window between television appearances. Q1: The immigration bills are now heading into conference. When will we know the composition of the committee? The composition of the committee will not be announced until the committee starts its work, Senator Frist told me. He plans on making sure the committee is large and diverse on this topic. The Senate side will split equally on supporters and opponents of the Senate version of immigration reform. The House has not yet made its selections, according to Frist, so he has no idea about its composition. Q2: For you, what are the essentials that the final bill must have for you to support? The bill has to have strong...
Hospiblogging, Up Close And Personal
I just got the results back from my MRI, and it isn't good news. I've had a ruptured disk between L3 and L4 that has caused all the mischief, and I will be admitted to the hospital later today for treatment. I don't know what the treatment might be, but it's going to keep me for a while. I'm hoping to have internet access, but if I don't, CQ will be off line for a few days. I'll try to post an update when possible. Just do me a favor, and don't let anything really cool happen while I'm gone, mm-kay? Blessings to all of you who have written and prayed for my health and that of the First Mate. She's coming home today, but she's going to have the place to herself for a bit. UPDATE: I can cheerfully report that the hospital does indeed have a wireless network...
Kerry's 'So Is Your Mama' Mature Response
Regardless of whether a voter trends liberal or conservative, one expects their leaders to display a certain level of maturity in their public pronouncements. John Kerry's office has demonstrated their own level of maturity by calling Karl Rove fat in response to his criticism of their stamina in the Iraq War, and Raw Story has the specifics: The move comes one day after Rove called plans to exit Iraq proposed by Senator Kerry and Representative John Murtha (D-PA) "profoundly wrong" "cut and run" strategies. "They may be with you for the first few bullets," Rove said, "but they won't be there for the last tough battles." Both Kerry and Murtha are decorated service veterans. "The closest Karl Rove ever came to combat," said Kerry spokesman David Wade, "was these last months spent worrying his cellmates might rough him up in prison. This porcine political operative can't cut and run from...
Update On Hospiblogging
A quick update on the hospital stay and some technical issues arising from it ... I have confirmed that the rupture is between L3 and L4 and that it is causing the pain that pretty much disabled me for the past few days. Tomorrow we will try an epidural cortisone injection to see whether that resolves the problem enough to avoid surgery. I should know within the next couple of days whether it will do the trick. Some of you had commented and e-mailed with that suggestion, and it looks like you were correct. I do have Internet access and can keep up with the news and blogging, and I can get e-mails, but for some reason I am unable to send e-mail. I do not know whether that is a problem with the hospital connection or with my hosting service, but I'm trying to get it resolved. If you're...
Another Pork Protector Revealed
The Hill quotes another Congressman who believes he has a right to spend our money on whatever pork projects he can fund. At a time when serious questions arising from Appropriations chair Jerry Lewis (R-CA) have cast doubt on the credibility and integrity of the House committee, another of its members, Rep. Ray La Hood (R-IL), declared that he has had enough of the taxpayers' "crap": Appropriations members have already vowed to fight any move to strip spending from the bill. “I’m not going to take their crap,” Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) said last week. The Illinois appropriator said he included several projects for his district and would fight to keep them all. “They think they’ve gotten a little steam building, and we’re going to have to shoot them down,” LaHood said. He ripped RSC members this year on the House floor for successfully stripping $507 million in construction projects...
Key Bali Bombing Player Released In Indonesia
Indonesian authorities have released the cleric who gave his blessing to the bombings in Bali that took over 200 lives in 2002, mostly Australian tourists. Scores of Islamists greeted him enthusiastically at the gates as their spiritual leader: Authorities released militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir from prison on Wednesday, and about 150 of his supporters jubilantly greeted him with shouts of "God is great!" The 68-year-old cleric, an alleged key leader of the al-Qaida-linked Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, had served 26 months in prison for giving his blessing to the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings, which killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. Bashir's supporters gathered at Jakarta's Cipinang prison for his release, which came about 45 minutes earlier than expected. "God is great!" they shouted. Bashir has maintained his innocence of the charges, but an Indonesian court found him guilty of the crime. In a sentence that...
America's Most Wanted Politicians
Almost three weeks ago, I posted about a new FBI focus on public corruption, adding more than 200 agents for their work in discovering and stopping bribery and malfeasance by public officials. At the time, the FBI stated that most of the new effort would go to investigating illegal campaign contributions rather than an increased effort to catch outright bribery and payoffs. Now the FBI wants to clearly show a broad effort in this fight -- and they're hoping to use some new Internet tools to help them succeed: Even with stories about public corruption probes flooding the morning papers, Internet and cable news airwaves, the FBI's new Web site for individuals to report malfeasance and just plain bad behavior hasn't made splashy headlines. But the site, reportcorruption.fbi.gov, is up and running and the G-Men are paying attention. ... Tipsters from any walk of life are welcome to report suspicious...
June 14, 2006
Truman The Unilateralist
After making references to Harry Truman in recent speeches, George Bush received criticism from Democrats who complained that Bush falsely assumed Truman's mantle in foreign affairs. They claimed that Truman set the standard for multilateralism through his founding of the United Nations, bringing his predecessor's dream to fruition. Max Boot answers them in today's Los Angeles Times by reminding them that even Truman found the UN and an insistence on multilateralism to be a hindrance to American security: WHEN HE delivered the West Point commencement address last month, President Bush compared his efforts to stand up to terrorists to Harry Truman's efforts to stand up to communists during the early years of the Cold War. Liberal pundits were outraged. How dare this Republican cite a sainted Democrat as his inspiration? Commentators such as Peter Beinart, the former New Republic editor, suggested that Bush should instead learn from Truman about the...
Post Editors: Bush Iraq Visit An Important Boost
The Washington Post editorial board recognizes the value in yesterday's surprise visit to Baghdad by George Bush. In its unsigned editorial today, the Post applauds the message that Bush delivered by his presence as well as his words -- and the Post has a few words for John Kerry as well: PRESIDENT BUSH delivered an important demonstration of American support for Iraq's new democratic government in his visit to Baghdad yesterday. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki represents the best and maybe last hope that a national government can stem sectarian bloodshed, defeat Islamic terrorist organizations and die-hard defenders of Saddam Hussein, and make economic recovery possible. He has formed a unity cabinet, appointed a well-qualified defense minister and spelled out the right agenda, including an imminent campaign to pacify Baghdad with tens of thousands of Iraq's newly trained troops. But Mr. Maliki desperately needs international help to turn the tide of...
Afghan Delegation: Gitmo 'Humane'
A delegation from Afghanistan spent ten days at the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay and pronounced conditions at the facility 'humane': The head of the delegation, Abdul Jabar Sabhet of the Interior Ministry, said the delegation was given the chance to speak freely with all 96 Afghan prisoners about their living conditions. Sabhet said there were "only one or two" complaints. "Conditions of the jail was humane. There were rumors in this country about that. It was wrong. What we have seen was OK," he said. Sabhet's assessment comes five days after the suicides of three detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. Much has been made of the three suicides last week at Gitmo. While any suicides should be investigated, it is plain to see that the men involved took their own lives as a protest, a means of generating publicity for the overall cause. The US...
Government As Gangsters
The Russian democracy has begun to resemble Russian communism in the way in which its government has become pre-eminent among thieves. The New York Times reports that government agencies and the police are less likely to protect Russians from crime than to participate in crime themselves. Motorola just experienced a multi-million dollar lesson in the Russian concept of free-market international trade: On March 29, agents of the Interior Ministry seized 167,500 mobile phones that Motorola had shipped into Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, dragging the company into the Kafkaesque world where Russian justice intersects with business. The phones were first declared counterfeits, then contraband, then a health hazard, and now they are evidence in a criminal investigation focused, again, on suspected smuggling. In April, the Interior Ministry made a show of destroying some of the phones — 49,991, officials said — after saying that one model violated safety standards, though suspicion...
Rare But Necessary Bipartisanship
On occasion, a candidate for election demonstrates such poor judgement that both Democrats and Republicans wind up endorsing the same person in the general election. This usually happens in local and state races for legislative or executive positions. In North Carolina, the voters face this unusual situation in the state Supreme Court race after one of the major-party candidates started violating Godwin's Law as if it were the 55-MPH speed limit: The leaders of the state's Democratic and Republican parties have asked voters not to cast ballots for state Supreme Court candidate Rachel Lea Hunter, whose fiery rhetoric in recent weeks has included comparing the actions of a black congressional candidate to that of a slave. "She's unstable and unqualified, and the thought of her serving on the highest court in North Carolina is scary," state Republican party chairman Ferrell Blount said Tuesday. Blount's comments came after Hunter, a former...
Finishing The Final Solution
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shown a peculiar obsession with the Holocaust, claiming that it never occurred and that the establishment of Israel therefore has no legitimacy. This claim goes along with many other conspiratorial claims about Jews and their supposedly destructive history, a disturbing characteristic of a national leader seeking nuclear arms and believing in a messianic vision. One might hope that Ahmadinejad's advisors might hold a moderating influence on his anti-Semitic paranoia, but unfortunately they appear to feed his madness. MEMRI has just posted a translation of remarks made by Ahmadinejad's advisor Mohammad Ali Ramin, who both questions the Holocaust and insists that the question will only find an answer in Israel's destruction: On a visit to Gilan University, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s advisor Mohammad Ali Ramin said to a group of students in the town of Rasht, 'Ten years ago, when I brought up the issue of the...
Line Item Veto Coming To House Floor
The House Budget Committee has returned the line-item veto to the full House on a bipartisan vote, 24-9, delivering a potentially valuable tool in the fight over earmarks. The new bill would allow the President to return line items from bills for an up-or-down vote in Congress, forcing porkers to take responsibility for their spending habits and links to benefactors: Congress is moving to give President Bush and his successors greater power to try to weed bills of certain spending, though the new power would pale compared with the line-item veto law struck down by the Supreme Court in 1998. The House Budget Committee on Wednesday approved by a 24-9 vote a bill to allow the president to single out wasteful items contained in appropriations bills he signs into law, and it would require Congress to vote on those items again. The idea is that wasteful "pork barrel" spending would...
Hospiblogging, Day 2: The Needle Cometh (And Goeth)
Not too much to report on Day 2 of my personal hospiblogging quest. I received an epidural cortisone injection as a first tactic to resolved the ruptured disc, but both of my doctors don't hold out a lot of hope that it will bear much fruit. The anesthesiologist took a few moments before the procedure to show me a model of vertebrae with discs in various stages of injury. ("This is a normal disc ... and this [pulling out a model reminiscent of Igor] is your disc, Mr. Morrissey.") It went well enough, since they sedated me prior to the procedure. I woke up in time to get moved back into my own bed. So far, I haven't noticed much difference. I still cannot walk more than a couple of steps without serious assistance, and the pain even in rest has not improved much. This solution takes a couple of...
Baghdad Crackdown Gets Results
Iraqi forces set out to crack the country's toughest security problem in a mission launched today, and the early returns look promising. CNN reports that the security forces freed hostages and captured several terrorists as the violence dipped in the Iraqi capital: Iraqi troops Wednesday uncovered a kidnapping ring, seized weapons -- including three rockets -- and defused two roadside bombs after beginning a security clampdown on the often lawless streets of Baghdad. In the first day of the new government's push to restore order in the capital, Iraqi troops also enforced a curfew from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and issued a weapons ban for civilians. Four insurgents were detained at one checkpoint after three people emerged from a car "screaming for help," said Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. "We found eight people that had been kidnapped now for four days that we were...
Another Confluence of Pork And Influence (Update With Hastert Response, And Reader Response)
Note: Be sure to read Dennis Hastert's response through his attorneys in the updates below, as well as more information on the transaction. The Sunlight Foundation reports that another apparently clear linkage between pork and a politician's pocket exists in the business dealings of Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). They report that Hastert has pushed through $207 million in earmarks for a business venture financed by a trust owned in part by Hastert himself: House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has used an Illinois trust to invest in real estate near the proposed route of the Prairie Parkway, a highway project for which he's secured $207 million in earmarked appropriations. The trust has already transferred 138 acres of land to a real estate development firm that has plans to build a 1,600-home community, located just a few miles from the north-south connector Hastert has championed in the House. Hastert's 2005 financial disclosure...
June 15, 2006
Minnesota Bats .747 On Missing Sex Offenders
Minnesota has just completed a twelve-day roundup of sex offenders who have failed to keep their registrations up to date. They managed to resolve a little over half of these cases, most of whom just neglected to send their paperwork back on time: A 12-day sweep by law enforcement officers across Minnesota has rounded up hundreds of sex offenders who failed to keep current with the state's tougher registration requirements, officials said Wednesday. Of the 636 offenders targeted in the dragnet May 15 through 26, the first such statewide sweep, 219 were brought into compliance, 35 were arrested and 90 cases were forwarded to prosecutors for possible felony charges, said Tim O'Malley, assistant superintendent of the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Another 215 offenders had responded to reminder mailings sent out before the sweep. Assuming that the 90 cases referred for felony prosecution have skipped town (since those arrested...
Government Has Broad Powers To Detain Non-Citizens Indefinitely: Federal Court
In a ruling that affirms executive branch power in wartime, a federal judge ruled yesterday that the government has broad powers under immigration law to detain non-citizens indefinitely, and to do so on a wide variety of criteria. This ruling deals a strong blow to a class-action effort by Muslims rounded up after the 9/11 attacks, who claimed that the US violated their rights to due process: A federal judge in Brooklyn ruled yesterday that the government has wide latitude under immigration law to detain noncitizens on the basis of religion, race or national origin, and to hold them indefinitely without explanation. The ruling came in a class-action lawsuit by Muslim immigrants detained after 9/11, and it dismissed several key claims the detainees had made against the government. But the judge, John Gleeson of United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, allowed the lawsuit to continue...
Zarqawi's Thumb Drive Fingers Associates, Maliki Tries Amnesty
If al-Qaeda in Iraq reads Western news sources, and their media-savvy but tactically insane recent communications suggest they do, they may soon decide that their operation has blown its cover completely. After an AQ associate dropped a dime on Zarqawi, they now have a much larger security breach than they knew: Iraq's national security adviser said Thursday a "huge treasure" of documents and computer records was seized after the raid on terror leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's hideout, giving the Iraqi government the upper hand in its fight against al-Qaida in Iraq. National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie also said he believed the security situation in the country would improve enough to allow a large number of U.S.-led forces to leave Iraq by the end of this year, and a majority to depart by the end of next year. "And maybe the last soldier will leave Iraq by mid-2008," he said. Al-Rubaie...
Report Card Adds Up To A Turning Point
Once dominoes start to fall, it becomes increasingly difficult to stop their momentum. The terrorists who pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi until he attained room temperature have discovered this, much to their dismay. CENTCOM spokesman General William Caldwell gives us the scorecard on the Zarqawi mission, and it looks like a rout: American and Iraqi forces have carried out 452 raids since last week's killing of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and 104 insurgents were killed during those actions, the U.S. military said Thursday. Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said the raids were carried out nationwide and led to the discovery of 28 significant arms caches. He said 255 of the raids were joint operations, while 143 were carried out by Iraqi forces alone. The raids also resulted in the captures of 759 "anti-Iraqi elements." That result should impress even the deepest cynics. 452...
A Treasure From The Trove
Iraqi officials released a document found in the run-up to the Zarqawi mission that discussed al-Qaeda in Iraq tactics and strategy, accompanied by a gloomy prognosis for the AQI network. In the memo, the author acknowledges that the momentum had shifted to the Americans and that AQI would quickly run out of time and recruits, and proposed starting another war with America as a distraction -- preferably with Iran: A blueprint for trying to start a war between the United States and Iran was among a "huge treasure" of documents found in the hideout of terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraqi officials said Thursday. ... While the coalition was continuing to suffer human losses, "time is now beginning to be of service to the American forces and harmful to the resistance," the document said. The document said the insurgency was being hurt by, among other things, the U.S. military's program...
Did They Run Out Of Rockets?
Less than a week after declaring an end to the "truce" with Israel -- a truce that allowed Palestinian terrorists to continue launching rockets at Israeli citizens -- Hamas has offered to resume the truce. This time, Hamas leaders will pledge to stop all other groups from launching separate attacks: The Hamas-led government offered Thursday to restore a cease-fire with Israel, several days after calling off the truce to protest a deadly explosion on a Gaza beach, but said the calm would depend on Israel's response. Hamas said it is ready to put pressure on other militant groups to halt rocket fire against Israel. The rocket attacks have drawn tough Israeli reprisals and raised the possibility of a broader conflict. "This is very clear for us. We are interested to keep the situation and quiet, especially in the Gaza Strip," said government spokesman Ghazi Hamad. "We have contacts with the...
Cut And Run Gets Run Out Of Senate
Both houses of Congress spent today debating the Iraq War and the troop deployment, and the Senare voted on a bill presented by the GOP caucus that mirrored John Kerry's amendment to the defense authorization bill calling for a withdrawal of all US forces from Iraq by the end of the year. When the rhetorical dust had settled, the motion failed by a whopping 93-6 vote, embarrassing Democrats who have stepped up calls for exactly such a withdrawal: The Senate rejected a call for the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq by year's end on Thursday as Congress erupted in impassioned, election-year debate over a conflict that now has claimed the lives of 2,500 American troops. The vote was 93-6 to shelve the proposal, which would have allowed "only forces that are critical to completing the mission of standing up Iraqi security forces" to remain in 2007. ... The...
Why Competition Improves The Media
Mary Katharine Ham makes her debut as a member of the Examiner Blog Board in an excellent column regarding competition and accountability in the media. Mary Katharine might be the only one of us on the board who has worked in the mainstream media, and she brings her unique perspective to the issue of external checks and balances for newspapers and broadcast media outlets: I grew up in a cross-town newspaper battle — one of the few left in a news climate where chains had bought most major dailies and many markets had become monopolies. I learned early that two newspapers fighting for scoops and readers meant that readers got better news coverage than they would have gotten if they were served by one paper. I know because I watched both papers grow. We got the competition’s newspaper delivered to our house for opposition research. ... I decided to give...
Hospiblogging, Day 3: The Kindest Cut?
Today was a day of clarity for the doctors and myself, as the cortisone injection failed to produce any good results. I woke up this morning feeling a little less pain, and I even managed to get a shower for the first time here. Let me tell you, I've used more luxurious bathrooms but I never had a shower that felt so good. In fact, I concentrated so hard on getting into the shower that I forgot I still had my glasses on until I knocked them onto the floor. That respite was short-lived, as it turns out. By the end of the morning, all of the pain had returned and it became apparent that cortisone therapy would not address the rupture. My two doctors and I decided that surgery would be the best course of action, and so we have it scheduled for tomorrow, either early in the morning...
Jefferson Ousted In Democratic Power Play
Rep. William Jefferson, whose freezer held over $90,000 when the FBI searched it in connection with an ongoing bribery and corruption probe, has lost a vote by the House Democratic Caucus to retain his committee seat on the Ways and Means Committee. The lopsided vote affirmed Nancy Pelosi's influence as caucus leader, but may have caused a bitter racial split among her colleagues: House Democrats, determined to make an election-year point about ethics, voted to strip Rep. William Jefferson of his committee assignment Thursday night while a federal bribery investigation runs its course. Members of the rank and file approved the move after Jefferson refused for weeks to step aside on his own, and despite claims by some members of the Congressional Black Caucus that he was being treated unfairly. Officials said the vote was 99-58. The action must be ratified by the full House, and Jefferson left open the...
Iran Turns East
Facing a showdown with a delicate coalition on the UN Security Council demanding a cessation of its uranium-enrichment program, Iran has decided to do its best to split the East from the West before answering the offer it received this week. The Times of London reports that Iran has opened talks with Russia and China concerning the creation of a diplomatic and military bloc that would oppose the US and the West: MAHMOUD Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, held talks with Chinese and Russian leaders at a summit meeting yesterday to build up a security grouping in opposition to the US and Nato. Mr Ahmadinejad was invited to address a meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), a China-sponsored proto-alliance that aims to strengthen defence links across Central Asia. In an implicit reference to the US and its pressure on Iran to end its nuclear weapons programme, he said that the...
Other Than Strapping On A Bomb Vest, Of Course
Newly freed Indonesian Islamist Abu Bakar Bashir, the spiritual leader of the Bali bombers that killed 202 people, might appear to be the best authority on salvation in ... well, anywhere or any time. However, that did not keep Bashir from advising world leaders to convert to Islam or face eternal damnation: A reputed leader of an al-Qaida-linked terror group blamed for deadly bombings across Indonesia on Thursday accused President Bush and Australia's prime minister of waging wars against Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. Militant cleric Abu Bakar Bashir also called on Bush and Prime Minister John Howard to convert to Islam, saying it was "the only way to save their souls." I doubt that either Blair or Bush will take the oportunity to act in accordance with the wishes of a terrorist leader and murdering thug who exhorted his followers to commit mass murder in the name of said...
June 16, 2006
Knock, Knock!
The Supreme Court ruled that evidence collected on a valid search warrant can be admitted in court, even if the officers did not knock on the door to announce themselves at the time of the search. The ruling narrows the exclusionary rule which normally would render invalid any evidence arising from a search with any defect, a limit that will have civil libertarians seeing red: Evidence found by police officers who enter a home to execute a search warrant without first following the requirement to "knock and announce" can be used at trial despite that constitutional violation, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. The 5-to-4 decision left uncertain the value of the "knock-and-announce" rule, which dates to 13th-century England as protection against illegal entry by the police into private homes. Justice Antonin Scalia, in the majority opinion, said that people subject to an improper police entry remained free to go...
The Criminalization Of Political Differences
Michael Barone pens a must-read editorial for the Wall Street Journal that reflects on the charged political environment of the past few decades. He remarks on how the media have changed its approach to political coverage and how the political landscape has adapted to it: It has been a tough 10 days for those who see current events through the prisms of Vietnam and Watergate. First, the Democrats failed to win a breakthrough victory in the California 50th District special election--a breakthrough that would have summoned up memories of Democrats winning Gerald Ford's old congressional district in a special election in 1974. Instead the Democratic nominee got 45% of the vote, just 1% more than John Kerry did in the district in 2004. Second, U.S. forces with a precision air strike killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on the same day that Iraqis finished forming a government. Zarqawi will not be available...
Hospiblogging, Day 4: Did Anyone Get The Number Of That Truck?
I'm out of surgery -- the doctors squeezed me in early in the schedule. So far as I can tell, it looks like it went well. It hurts, but it's a different kind of pain; it feels more like a typical lower-back muscle ache. The shooting pain down the right leg is gone, and I was able to stand for a few minutes in the last half-hour or so. The prevailing opinion is that I will be released sometime tomorrow or Sunday at the latest, depending on some secondary considerations. Anesthesia causes the bowels to go to sleep, so we have to make sure they return to normal function first. I'll know more by tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I'll be enjoying that cleal-liquid diet that I've been looking forward to having all week. I'm very encouraged, and with any luck I'll be home very soon!...
House Joins Senate In Defeating Cut-And-Run Strategy
One day after a near-unanimous vote against retreating from Iraq in the Senate, the House also rejected the cut-and-run strategy, although this time on a mostly party-line vote. Forty-two Democrats joined all but five Republicans in refusing to abandon the democratic Iraqi government before the Maliki government wants us to go: The House of Representatives voted, 256 to 153, today in favor of a resolution promising to "complete the mission" in Iraq, prevail in the global fight against terrorism and oppose any "arbitrary date for withdrawal" of American troops. The nonbinding but politically significant resolution was approved with just three Republicans voting against it and 42 Democrats voting for it. The measure also expresses gratitude for the valor and sacrifice of American and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and congratulates the new Iraqi government. This morning's vote, coming after an emotional and partisan debate, was a victory for President...
McKinney Walks
Rep. Cynthia McKinney will not face charges for her assault on a Capitol Hill police officer in an incident started by her refusal to stop and show identification at a security checkpoint. The Washington Post reports that the grand jury could not find probable cause for an indictment, according to the office of the US Attorney handling the case: A grand jury has declined to indict Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) in an incident at a House office building where she admitting hitting a police officer who tried to stop her from entering after she failed to show identification. The grand jury found "no probable cause" after an "extensive and thorough" investigation, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia. "We respect the decision of the grand jury in this difficult matter," U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein said in the release. The grand jury's...
June 17, 2006
Kerry Loses The Center-Left
If the lopsided vote against a duplicate of John Kerry's amendment to the defense authorization bill signaling surrender in Iraq didn't tell him that he had joined Fringeland, then a scolding from Martin Peretz at The New Republic should correct any misunderstandings. Peretz not only dislikes Kerry's stand on the war, but he believes that Kerry is the wrong messenger for the message: John Kerry can be trumped by just about anybody. But today, the titular leader of the Democratic Party was trumped by Mitch McConnell, consummate cynic and the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate. Kerry had announced that he would soon offer a measure requiring the administration to withdraw almost all of the American troops now in Iraq by the end of the year. What was in the tactical side of his brain when he made this pronunciamento before he had figured out the details of his proposal?...
2006 Agenda 2.0
The Democrats have announced their latest version of the electoral agenda for the 2006 midterms, but they selected an unusual news day for its release. Politicians use Friday afternoon to release information that they hope will see little coverage, and in reviewing Agenda 2.0, one can understand why: Their plan, presented at a news conference, included promises to raise the minimum wage, make college tuition tax deductible, eliminate subsidies for oil and gas companies, negotiate lower drug prices for the prescription plan passed last year, increase stem cell research and restore a pay-as-you-go policy for federal budgets. They noted that Congress had not increased the minimum wage, now at $5.15, since 1997, a fact that Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, declared "immoral." Their proposal to raise it to $7.25, they said, would benefit seven million workers. They rejected the argument that such a raise would shrink...
Nailing AQ's Hacker/Blogger In Chief
The Toronto Star has the story this morning on the British capture of al-Qaeda's chief online resource, Irhabi007, and how badly the discovery has impacted the entire AQ operation. His arrest eight months ago allowed Western nations to make almost 40 arrests around the world, including important links to the 17 Canadians arrested in Toronto last month: On a cold night last October, police stormed a West London apartment and found Younis Tsouli at his computer, allegedly building a Web page with the title "You Bomb It." Initially, the raid seemed relatively routine, one of about 1,000 arrests made under Britain's terrorism act during the last five years. The more eye-popping evidence was allegedly found in the London-area homes of two accused co-conspirators: a DVD manual on making suicide bomb vests, a note with the heading "Welcome to Jihad," material on beheadings, a recipe for rocket fuel, and a note...
Northern Alliance Radio On The Air
The Northern Alliance Radio Network goes on the air at 11 am CT. The opening half includes John from Power Line, and Chad and Brian from Fraters Libertas. At 12:30, we will have Dr. Charles Kupchella of UND, discussing their lawsuit against the NCAA regarding their school's "Fighting Sioux" nickname and logo. The second half will feature Mitch from Shot In the Dark and King from SCSU Scholars from 1 to 3 pm CT. Unfortunately, I will not make it into the studio, but Mitch and King have a great week of news to review and may have a few surprises up their sleeves. Call in and join the fun at 651-289-4488, or send an e-mail to comments@northernallianceradio.com!...
Lieberman: Put National Interest Above Partisan Interest
David Broder's column in tomorrow's Washington Post reviews the conundrum of Joe Lieberman, a leader in a Democratic Party that has largely stopped following him. Lieberman knows why his party, especially the state party, appears poised to throw him under the bus, and he forcefully answers their complaints about the Iraq War: "I think we did the right thing in overthrowing Saddam, and I think we are safer as a result," he continued. "Second, while I have been very critical of the Bush foreign policy before the war and the Rumsfeld-Bush policies in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown, I also made a judgment I would not invoke partisan politics on this war." That was the point of a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece Lieberman wrote last November endorsing the president's announced strategy to defeat the insurgency and establish a democratic government in Iraq. That article infuriated Lamont and launched his...
Joschka Fischer To Teach At Princeton
Princeton has invited former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to teach at the university starting this fall. Fischer, known to Americans as a bitter opponent of the Iraq War, will teach courses on crisis diplomacy: The Bush administration didn't much like what Joschka Fischer had to say during the Iraq war. So what will Washington say now that the former German foreign minister is trading his parliament seat for a professor's cap at Princeton? This fall, Fischer will teach the next generation of American elites about international crisis diplomacy at the university. Fischer will begin his new job as a guest professor at the Ivy League institution, SPIEGEL is exclusively reporting this weekend. He has also been given a contract to work as a scholar at the respected Council on Foreign Relations think tank. Fischer is currently a Green Party member of the German parliament, but he hasn't said when...
Hospiblogging No More: Home Again
I left the hospital this afternoon and returned home to recuperate further. The Admiral Emeritus and his wife have come out for a week to take care of both the FM and me, and after that my sister will do a tour of duty here in Sick Bay. I am comfortably ensconced in the recliner on the lower level; my doctors and nurses advised me to avoid using a bed until I could comfortably rise from a full laying position. Well, that day is still a few more off, so downstairs in the recliner I will stay! It's good to be home -- and it's good to have family around. I'll be back later....
June 18, 2006
Happy Father's Day!
I want to wish all of my readers a happy Father's Day and hope that you have a chance to spend some time with your fathers or close family today. In a way, I'm fortunate to have had my surgery this week, as the Admiral Emeritus had just been out a week before my injury and hadn't planned on coming back out this way this soon. Now we'll be able to put four generations of Morrisseys under one roof on Father's Day for the first time ever -- even with the second generation firmly planted in a recliner, it will still be a special day. Even hard times have their blessings, and this is certainly one of them. I'm very grateful that I still can celebrate the day with my father -- I know that plenty of people don't have that luxury, especially those whose fathers have given their lives...
Time: AQ Called Off NY Gas Attack
Time Magazine reported yesterday that an inside mid-level source in al-Qaeda informed the US that the terrorist network built a device that would have turned New York's subway tunnels into a gas chamber that could have killed hundreds in an attack. Inexplicably, AQ's #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri called off the attack in 2003, but American analysts proved the design of the weapon could easily have worked: It was time to call on Ali. His handler contacted him through an elaborate set of signals, and a meeting was set up. cia operatives mentioned to him the names of the captives in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, and the existence of the mubtakkar designs. Ali said he might be able to help. He told his cia handlers that a Saudi radical had visited bin Laden's partner al-Zawahiri, in January 2003. The man ran the Arabian Peninsula for al-Qaeda, and one of his aliases was...
Annan: Don't Pull Our Plug
Kofi Annan warned the United States yesterday not to pull the plug on the United Nations by defunding Turtle Bay. Annan assured the US that the world body would reform itself despite the slow progress thus far: Secretary-General Kofi Annan predicted on Thursday the United Nations would avert a budget crisis threatened at the end of the month over the slow pace of U.N. reforms and implicitly warned the United States against trying to "pull the plug" on the world body. "The reform will proceed, and the cap on the budget will be lifted. There will be no crisis as far as I can see this month," Annan told a news conference. Rich nations, pushed by the United States, imposed a cap on the U.N. budget in December in hopes of increasing pressure on developing nations to approve long-delayed management reforms by June 30. ... Annan told reporters he saw...
CNN: Democrats Congressional Support Eroding
The efforts of Democratic caucuses in both houses of Congress to set a mid-term election agenda have had a definite effect on their standings with the electorate -- they've eroded them significantly. According to CNN, Democrats have lost seven points and the majority in support for a generic party preference, while Republicans have remained steady: When registered voters polled were asked if they were more or less likely to vote for a candidate Bush supported, 47 percent said they were less likely, while only 27 percent said they were more likely. Twenty percent said it made no difference. The sampling error for the question was plus or minus 4 percentage points. However, the poll showed that Democrats have so far not been able to capitalize on Bush's political difficulties. When voters were asked which party would be their choice for Congress in November, 45 percent said Democrat and 38 percent...
Ayatollah's Grandson Wants US To Invade Iran
This apple apparently fell far from the tree. Hossein Khomeini, the grandson of the Ayatollah Khomeini that overthrew the Shah and established the first Islamic Republic in Southwest Asia, wants the US to invade Iran in order to establish a representative democracy to replace the mullahcracy his grandfather established: The grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the inspiration of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, has broken a three-year silence to back the United States military to overthrow the country's clerical regime. Hossein Khomeini's call is all the more startling as he made it from Qom, the spiritual home of Iran's Shia strand of Islam, during an interview to mark the 17th anniversary of the ayatollah's death. "My grandfather's revolution has devoured its children and has strayed from its course," he told Al-Arabiya, an Arabic-language television station. "I lived through the revolution and it called for freedom and democracy - but it has persecuted...
A Correspondent To Thank
I have received many e-mails and comments on my back injury and recuperation from CQ readers, giving me their personal stories and advice based on their own experiences, and I have found all of it tremendously helpful. I have been grateful for all of the correspondence, but I would like to acknowledge one correspondent whose personal story and outreach to me touched me very deeply, especially considering his experiences with his own difficulties. I wrote last week about the excruciating pain that the disc rupture caused and the painkillers that doctors prescribed to ease the situation. Some of you wrote to caution me about Vicodin and Percocet and their addictive qualities. One person in particular wrote to me about his own addiction, and in particular gave me solid advice on physiological conditions that would indicate an addictive response from my body. Given the very public nature of his addiction, his...
Will Hamas Bend?
Reports from the West Bank have Hamas considering a compromise with Fatah on the proposed plebscite on their plan to recognize Israel and work towards the two-state solution. Hamas may agree to an implicit recognition in order to rescue themselves from a back-breaking sanctions regime forced on the Palestinians due to their defiance, but it may not be enough: The ruling Hamas and rival Fatah factions were moving closer to an agreement on implicitly recognizing Israel, negotiators said Sunday in a sign that international pressure on the new Palestinian government could be yielding results. ... One official, who was serving as a mediator, said Hamas is desperate to reach an agreement with Fatah as a way of lifting the international aid boycott that has bankrupted the Hamas-led government and left public workers unpaid since March. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were still in progress. A...
Are We Talking About A Two-State Solution?
Earlier this evening I posted an update on the tensions between Fatah and Hamas regarding the efforts by Mahmoud Abbas to use a plebescite to bypass Hamas and work towards a two-state solution. At least, that has been the reporting from the mainstream media. However, CQ reader Dan and Charles at LGF point towards the actual document -- and we find no evidence that the so-called National Conciliation Document envisages any such solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The proposal has some problems in its presentation at the Jerusalem Media & Communication Centre. Either the translation is sketchy or the original language has a number of grammatical errors. The writing uses long run-on sentences that seem to double back on themselves. However, it clearly never states any intention of recognizing Israel, nor of accepting 1967 borders for a Palestinian state. Let's take a look at the key paragraphs of the proposal:...
June 19, 2006
The Left Can't Tell Between Victory And Defeat
The problem in the debate over the war in Iraq has suddenly clarified itself thanks to two people on the Left who demonstrate that their side has no idea what a successful military decision looks like. Between John Murtha and Frank Rich, both of whom argue that Iraq is a disaster, Somalia is either a brilliant tactical decision or a stunning loss for America -- and this within hours of each other. On yesterday's Meet The Press, where Murtha followed the John Kerry strategy of criticizing Karl Rove's weight rather than his positions (I guess this kind of ad hominem insult attracts voters on the Left), Murtha has this to say about Somalia: REP. MURTHA: He’s, he’s in New Hampshire. He’s making a political speech. He’s sitting in his air conditioned office with his big, fat backside, saying, “Stay the course.” That’s not a plan. I mean, this guy—I don’t...
Are We Winning The Viet Nam War?
The New York Times reports that Viet Nam has received plenty of attention lately, and not just as an analogy to our current war in Iraq. American investors, prompted by the US government, have renewed interest in an increasingly capitalistic Viet Nam. In fact, DC wants to use its economic leverage to beat the Chinese in Viet Nam's market, a strange but interesting twist by the players of a much different conflict four decades ago: With the fastest growth in East Asia after China and a capitalist game plan that is attracting global investment, Communist Vietnam is emerging as a regional economic power as it moves steadily from rice fields to factories. And with the wounds of war all but healed, Washington is paying attention. Trade talks between House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, and his Vietnamese counterpart turned into a lovefest here recently, choreographed by the hosts...
Saddam Trial Heading Into Final Arguments
The trial of Saddam Hussein has concluded its evidentiary phase and now has proceeded to final arguments. To no one's great surprise, the prosecutors demanded the death penalty for Saddam and his co-defendants, while the defendants tried to disrupt the proceedings yet again: The prosecutor asked for the death penalty for Saddam Hussein and two of his co-defendants, saying in closing arguments Monday that the former Iraqi leader and his regime committed crimes against humanity in a "revenge" attack on Shiite civilians in the 1980s. The arguments brought the eight-month-old trial into its final phase. After Monday's session, the court adjourned until July 10, when the defense will begin making its final summation. Saddam, dressed in a black suit, sat silently, sometimes taking notes, as chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi delivered his arguments, listing the evidence against each of the eight defendants. Concluding his remarks, al-Moussawi asked for the death penalty...
The New French Right?
Sabine Herold, acclaimed by French libertarians as a harbinger of the policies that would rescue France from itself, has announced her intent to run for the National Assembly. Herold will run for office in an upscale Paris district where a center-Right member of Jacques Chirac's coalition currently serves -- a message that Herold might eye a higher office soon: Sabine Hérold, who sprang to fame when she led a protest movement against French workers' readiness to go on strike, now hopes to exploit growing disillusionment with her country's political elite by winning a seat in parliament. Miss Hérold, 25, who regards her French media nickname - Mlle Thatcher - as a compliment, also refuses to rule out standing as a candidate to replace Jacques Chirac as president next year. Miss Hérold, a prominent figure in the new Liberal Alternative Party, told The Daily Telegraph last night that her aim was...
Owning Both Ends Of An Economic Cycle
This seems almost unfair: In a twist in corporate synergy, chocolate-maker Nestle AG said Monday it will fatten up its weight-loss business by buying Jenny Craig Inc. for $600 million. The acquisition follows Nestle's purchase for around $670 million last month of Uncle Tobys, an Australian maker of nutritional cereals and snacks, and is part of the company's "continuing commitment to nutrition, health and wellness," the Swiss company said in a statement. While best known for its namesake chocolates, Nestle is the world's largest food and drinks company, making baby formulas, nutrition foods such as PowerBar, drinks to aid weight loss and the Lean Cuisine line. The company's purchase of Jenny Craig follows the lead of consumer products company Unilever, which bought both Ben & Jerry's ice cream and Slim Fast in 2000. So Nestle will sell you enough of their original product line until you need Jenny Craig --...
Nifong Now Faces Republican Challenger
Mike Nifong's pursuit of the Duke rape charges regardless of the evident collapse of the case has generated at least one reaction -- he now will face a Republican challenger in the general election. La Shawn Barber has followed the case closely and has more on this development. Jeralynn at TalkLeft has also covered this story with precision and excellence. Be sure to visit both sites to catch up on the story. UPDATE: I had Nifong's first name incorrectly as Matt instead of Mike. Thanks to CQ reader and Duke student Mike J for the correction....
Freedom Of Speech RIP?
Today's Washington Examiner editorial decries the pressures of political correctness and underscores how it undermines the very concept of free speech as well as freedom of religion. It takes a debate in DC over how homosexuality is perceived through secular and religious viewpoints and notes that the consequences of speech seem a bit one-sided: Robert Smith, Roman Catholic and now-former Metro board member, believes homosexuality is a form of “deviancy.” Jim Graham, District of Columbia Council member, believes Smith’s beliefs are “ancient and archaic.” Graham’s views cost him nothing. Smith’s cost him his job. Graham and Smith’s now-former boss, Maryland Gov. Bob Erhlich, should have said something like this: “I repudiate Smith’s views and find them disgusting, but it’s a free country and he can say whatever he thinks about any issue.” In a culture increasingly dominated by political correctness, however, such remarks would be derided. So we have a...
More Sanctions Threatened For NoKo Missile Launch
North Korea's impending missile test has captured the attention of the United States and Japan, with both countries threatening new sanctions in response to any missile launch: North Korea has finished loading fuel into a long-range ballistic missile, a Bush administration official said Monday as signs continued that the reclusive communist state will soon test a weapon that could reach the United States. U.S. intelligence indicates that the long-range missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2, is assembled and fully fueled, said the official, who requested anonymity because the information comes from sensitive intelligence methods. That reportedly gives the North a launch window of about a month. ... The United States, Japan, Australia and News Zealand all cautioned the impoverished country that a test would bring serious consequences and further isolate the regime. The White House has warned of an appropriate response and Japan has threatened a "fierce" protest to the...
HFM Making Excuses
I admit that I have not kept up with this story well enough, but the conflict between independent journalist and photographer Michael Yon and Hachette Filipacchi Media over their use of his poignant photograph without permission prior to publication has escalated. HFM CEO Jack Kliger has sent a letter to retailers that have come under pressure to pull all HFM publications from their shelves, especially Shock, where HFM used Yon's photograph without permission, according to Yon. Kliger essentially has told retailers to stand fast, as the entire controversy is a tempest in a blogpot: Even though we had purchased the rights to use the photograph through a reputable photo agency, we recognize that misunderstandings do occur. We acted quickly to address Mr. Yon's concerns, attempted to settle the matter, and when he agreed to a settlement, Mr. Yon himself stated on June 5th via his on-line magazine that he was...
Disabiliblogging Round-Up, Day 1: Six Degrees Of Connie Chung
In honor (or denial) of my temporarily disabled state, I offer the following roundup of political and cultural liabilities around the blogosphere. I don't think this will exactly be a trend, but it's good for a laugh for now: In an apparent attempt to wrest the title of World's Worst Television Variety Presentation from Lifetime Achievement Award winner Chevy Chase, Connie Chung sings goodbye to her MS-NBC audience, her credibility, and any respect she still might have in broadcasting. The Moderate Voice has the YouTube video and the sound. Trust me, the latter is worse than the former, but that ain't saying much ... Ankle-Biting Pundits picks up on the Democrats' plan to combat the "culture of corruption" in Congress by making impeached former judge Alcee Hastings their chair of the House Intelligence Committee. That's somewhat akin to improving Connie Chung's singing by having her accompanied by PDQ Bach. I...
Forty-Two Months For Adscam Figure
In a departure from the lenient sentencing originally given to Paul Coffin for his crimes in the Sponsorship Programme corruption ring, Chuck Guité received significant jail time for his five convictions. The Montreal court has given the former Liberal bureaucrat forty-two months in prison, the harshest sentence thus far: Former bureaucrat Chuck Guité was sentenced Monday to 42 months in prison after being found guilty of all counts of fraud in the wake of the federal sponsorship scandal. The Crown had sought a sentence of between three to four years. Prosecutor Jacques Dagenais told a Montreal court that Mr. Guité's power and position of trust meant he deserved the harshest sentence to date of the three players convicted in the federal scandal. Mr. Guité was found guilty earlier this month of five counts of fraud. Mr. Guité oversaw the program set up by then prime minister Jean Chrétien after the...
Haditha: No Cover-Up, But No Determination On Central Allegations
The Los Angeles Times reported earlier that the DoD investigation into the circumstances of the civilian deaths in Haditha show no attempt at a cover-up. Instead, the report appears to point towards poor investigative technique on the part of Marine officers allowed faulty information to flow back to CENTCOM: The general charged with investigating whether Marines tried to cover up the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha has completed his report, finding that Marine officers failed to ask the right questions, an official close to the investigation said Friday. Nothing in the report points to a "knowing cover-up" of the facts by the officers supervising the Marines involved in the November incident, the official said. Rather, he said, officers from the company level through the staff of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force in Baghdad failed to demand "a thorough explanation" of what happened in Haditha. In an official announcement about...
America's First Jihadi War
The Jerusalem Post reviews a book by Joshua E. London on the first war that pitted Americans against jihadist Muslims titled Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation. The history of that conflict, and how America prevailed over an enemy comprised of suicidal zealots, would appear informative in today's conflict: A fledgling republic without a navy, the United States seemed ripe for the picking. In 1783, Muslim pirates - the sea-faring terrorists of their day - began attacking American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean, and the following year, the Moroccans captured a brig called Betsey and enslaved its crew. Soon afterwards, the ruler of Algiers declared war on the US, a declaration backed up by marauding corsairs. The situation worsened with each coming year, but for the life of them, the Americans could not figure out what they did...
Hillary, Kerry, Gore Face Near-Majority No Votes
In an early poll determining the strengths and weaknesses of the various potential candidates for the 2008 presidential race, both Hillary Clinton and John Kerry face a skeptical electorate. Both candidates have at least 47% of the voters opposing them already, the second-highest of any would-be Democratic contenders. Another previous nominee takes first prize, while a presidential brother takes the top spot for the GOP: With the presidential election more than two years away, a CNN poll released Monday suggests that nearly half of Americans would "definitely vote against" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Respondents were asked whether they would "definitely vote for," "consider voting for," or "definitely vote against" three Democrats and three Republicans who might run for president in 2008. Regarding potential Democratic candidates, 47 percent of respondents said they would "definitely vote against" both Clinton, the junior senator from New York who is running for re-election this year,...
June 20, 2006
Iraq Already Has A Plan For Coalition Withdrawal
Today the Senate will start debate on a non-binding resolution that will demand an end to the American presence in Iraq except for those troops engaged in training Iraqi security forces. This new proposal contains much of the same language as the amendment offered by John Kerry to the defense authorization bill that got soundly thumped last week 93-6 when offered by the GOP separately for debate, but as the newly appointed Iraqi National Security Advisor writes today in the Washington Post, the effort is completely unnecessary. First, let's take a look at the latest Democratic effort to shut down the American effort in Iraq, a silly and nonspecific proposal that inspired Senator Mitch McConnell to call it a "cut and jog": Trying to bridge party divisions on the eve of a Senate debate, leading Democrats called Monday for American troops to begin pulling out of Iraq this year. They...
Bodies Of Two Missing Soldiers Found In Iraq
The Iraqi government has found the bodies of two American soldiers reportedly captured by terrorists in Iraq last week, and the bodies show signs of torture according to the preliminary reports: The bodies of two U.S. soldiers who had been reported kidnapped have been found near the checkpoint where the men disappeared after an attack, a senior Iraqi military official said Tuesday. The U.S. military said two bodies had been found but had not yet been identified. Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore., went missing Friday near the town of Youssifiyah, south of Baghdad. Spc. David J. Babineau, 25, of Springfield, Mass., was killed in the attack. ... Ahmed Khalaf Falah, a farmer who said he witnessed the attack Friday, said three Humvees were manning a checkpoint when they came under fire from many directions. Two Humvees went after the assailants,...
Oh, Those Brave And Honorable Jihadis!
The Times of London reports on the latest defensive tactic by the brave and honorably Islamists in Afghanistan when facing Western forces. Instead of just hiding among and targeting civilian populations in their terrorism, now they have started seizing women and children to use as human shields when running away from NATO/Coalition forces under fire: TALEBAN fighters used women and children as human shields as they tried to escape into the mountains of Afghanistan, British troops claimed yesterday. The tactics were revealed in the first account by those who fought in one of the main battles faced by the men of 3 Para and the Royal Gurkha Rifles in Helmand province, where 3,300 British troops are stationed. The Taleban’s use of human shields happened during a six-hour battle that began when British troops arrived in a remote area to flush out a suspected Taleban hideout. They came under attack seven...
AQI Top 5 Terrorist Killed (Update: Confirmed, Perhaps Plus Another AQI Leader Captured)
CENTCOM announced minutes ago that one of the men expected to take the place of the now-room temperature Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has also reached thermal equilibrium near Baghdad. The spokesman for the military briefed reporters on the death of Sheikh Mansur, displaying before and after mug shots of the dead terrorist and explained his significance to the insurgent network in Iraq. So far, none of the wire services have picked up the story; I will fill in the details as they become available. UPDATE: The BBC has an addendum to the story on the discovery of the two bodies that reports up to 15 insurgents killed while hunting a "senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq," but does not identify Sheikh Mansur despite the specifics in the briefing. UPDATE II: The Commissar asks if I may have mistranscribed the name from al-Masri or al-Mohajer. I took the name from the placard...
Missile Defense: Shall We Play A Game?
Earlier today, North Korea stepped up the rhetoric surrounding their impending missile launch by declaring themselves free of the moratorium on missile launches it established with Japan four years ago. In response, the US has activated its missile defense systems while trying to keep our moves from being unnecessarily provocative: The United States has moved its ground-based interceptor missile defense system from test mode to operational amid concerns over an expected North Korean missile launch, a U.S. defense official said on Tuesday. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed a Washington Times report that the Pentagon has activated the system, which has been in the developmental stage for years. "It's good to be ready," the official said. U.S. officials say evidence such as satellite pictures suggests Pyongyang may have finished fueling a Taepodong-2 missile, which some experts said could reach as far as Alaska. The Taepodong-2 missile has Alaska...
Did Suskind Confuse His Terrorists?
Ron Suskind, whose new book The One Percent Solution revealed spectacular allegations of pending terrorist attacks in the US, may have confused two different terrorists in his research. The error could have led to erroneous conclusions in Suskind's book, ABC News reports, but Suskind stands by his work: Counter-terrorism officials in the United States and Great Britain say an allegation of a "catastrophic breakdown in communications," reported in a new book on terror, is based on the author's own breakdown in communication. Officials say author Ron Suskind, in "The One Percent Doctrine," got names confused when he reported that the mastermind of last year's London bombings, Mohammad Siddique Khan, had contacts in the United States, had been placed on a no-fly list and was prevented from boarding a plane to the United States in 2003. Terror experts say that no evidence shows that M S Khan ever entered the United...
They Can't Silence Us! (Well, Not For Long, Anyway)
Apparently we are having a problem with the comments script at CQ, so our readers have not been able to post their thoughts. I have asked Hosting Matters to look into the matter. Hopefully we will have the comments section open for business soon. In the meantime, please check out these links: Bruce Kesler is callng for Human Rights Watch to fire Mark Garlasco. Given his and HRW's track record on Israel, he's probably right but shouldn't hold his breath... The Anchoress notes a very strange coffee commercial ... If you haven't read Michelle Malkin's post about the 9/11 Scholarship Program, make sure you do so soon. See Deb Schlussel as well ... Learned Foot's substituting for Mitch at Shot In The Dark, and he has a scoop on Pink Floyd lead singer Roger Waters and his protest against the Israeli security barrier. Gee, guess which song lyrics he changes...
Readily-Prepared Storylines, Example 06-137
ABC News reports at 3:03 pm CT: Bush Arrives In Austria BBC reports at 2:37 pm CT: Guantanamo clouds EU-US talks Well, those talks went downhill quickly, huh? Why did he bother landing at all?...
No Amnesty, No Normalization, No Border Security
Republican Congressional leaders have told the White House that they will not bend on any normalization scheme that allows those who entered the US illegally to have a path to citizenship without leaving the country -- and so no immigration reform will happen in 2006. They will not proclaim the effort dead out of respect to George Bush, but they will not consider the broader reforms that the Senate wants, and the Senate will not act on border security alone: In a defeat for President Bush, Republican congressional leaders said Tuesday that broad immigration legislation is all but doomed for the year, a victim of election-year concerns in the House and conservatives' implacable opposition to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. "Our number one priority is to secure the border, and right now I haven't heard a lot of pressure to have a path to citizenship," said Speaker Dennis Hastert,...
French Imperialism
A Paris Criminal Tribunal ruling has pinned the government of Jacques Chirac with responsibility for a 1995 coup in Comoros, giving suspended sentences to over two dozen French mercenaries who seized power on Chirac's secret orders. The judge refused to sentence the defendants to jail time, saying that the French government had obviously allowed the men to act as their agents in their attempt at an overthrow: COVERT attempts by President Chirac to exert influence over Africa were exposed by a French court yesterday, when it denounced his secret services for conniving with a band of mercenaries in a coup in the tiny Comoros Islands. In a damning ruling, the Paris Criminal Tribunal said that the French authorities had given at least tacit approval to the 1995 coup led by Bob Denard, the best-known French soldier of fortune. ... The court refused a prosecution demand to jail the plotters and...
June 21, 2006
Post Takes The Law-Enforcement Approach
The Washington Post editorial board, which has demonstrated an above-average comprehension of the dynamics of a war on terror, gets it wrong in their lead editorial today. The Post scores the Bush administration for failing to provide trials for master terrorists it captures, calling the lack of such a "shambles": SEPT. 11 MASTERMINDS Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, along with numerous other infamous al-Qaeda figures, have been in American custody for years. So has Mohamed Qatani, who was allegedly to be the 20th hijacker. None has faced trial for his crimes. Nor have any of the hundreds of lesser foreign detainees captured in the war on terrorism. Nearly five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration's plans for bringing the enemy to justice are a shambles. This failure has been one of the most easily avoidable blunders in the war on terrorism. ... The administration is correct...
Now Kerry Irritates Democrats, Too
For a man who wants to capture his party's nomination for President in less than two years, John Kerry has spent more than his fair share of time putting his putative allies on the spot over the Iraq War. After a number of Democrats tried fashioning a non-binding Senate resolution that would eliminate a specific timetable to avoid the charge of a cut-and-run strategy, Kerry undercut them by simply resubmitting his original proposal with a deadline only six months further out than the last: When Senator John Kerry was their presidential nominee in 2004, Democrats fervently wished he would express himself firmly about the Iraq war. Mr. Kerry has found his resolve. But it has not made his fellow Democrats any happier. They fear the latest evolution of Mr. Kerry's views on Iraq may now complicate their hopes of taking back a majority in Congress in 2006. As the Senate...
Saddam Lawyer Murdered
Iraqi authorities found one of the lawyers representing Saddam Hussein and his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti murdered earlier today. Gunmen dressed in police uniforms abducted Khamis al-Obeidi from his home and shot him to death just prior to the launch of the defense's final arguments in Saddam's trial: One of Saddam Hussein's main lawyers was shot to death Wednesday after he was abducted from his Baghdad home by men wearing police uniforms, the third killing of a member of the former leader's defense team since the trial started some eight months ago. Khamis al-Obeidi, an Iraqi who represented Saddam and his half brother Barzan Ibrahim in their trial, was abducted from his house Wednesday morning, said Saddam's top lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi. His body was found on a street near the Shiite slum of Sadr City, police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said. Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi confirmed that al-Obeidi had been killed,...
August 22nd?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has replied to the joint EU-US demand for a response to their package of incentives and sanctions regarding the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Iranian president informed the West that he would need until August 22nd to review the proposal and to prepare an answer (via It Shines For All): President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Iran will respond in mid-August to the package of incentives on its nuclear program offered by the West, but President Bush accused Tehran of dragging its feet. "We are studying the proposals. Hopefully, we will present our views about the package by mid-August," Ahmadinejad told a crowd in western Iran in a speech broadcast live on state television. Speaking at an annual U.S.-European Union summit in Vienna, Austria, Bush said that the mid-August timetable "seems like an awfully long time" to wait for an answer. The long review time request did...
Liberating Trackbacks
In all of the posting I did the last couple of days, I neglected to check my junk-trackback filter. This morning, I found around three dozen valid trackbacks that had not appeared on my posts. The posts are in the process of being rebuilt now, and the trackbacks will appear shortly....
DHS: AQ Planned More Aviation Attacks
ABC News reports this morning on a Homeland Security document that describes at least three plans to attack America and its allies via commercial aviation. The DHS analysis notes the "ingenuity" of al-Qaeda planners even though US security efforts stopped all of the plots: Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to use cameras to disguise bombs and flash attachments as stun guns in a disrupted hijack plot that targeted the U.S. east coast, Britain, Italy and Australia, U.S. officials say. The plot was one of three previously unknown al Qaeda hijack plots disrupted before they could be carried out, according to a Department of Homeland Security report obtained by ABC News. The report, a strategic assessment on U.S. aviation, says despite security improvements, "DHS continues to receive information on terrorist threats to the U.S. aviation industry and to the Western aviation industry worldwide." The previously secret plots include one in which...
More On Sheikh Mansur
Yesterday I reported a breaking news item that the US had killed a Top 5 leadership figure from al-Qaeda in Iraq based on a televised briefing. Today the AP gives more background on Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani: A key Al Qaeda in Iraq leader described as the group's "religious emir" was killed in a U.S. airstrike hours before two American soldiers went missing and in the same area, the military said Tuesday. Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani, or Sheik Mansour, and two foreign fighters were killed as they tried to flee in a vehicle near the town of Youssifiyah, in the so-called Sunni "Triangle of Death." U.S. coalition forces had been tracking al-Mashhadani for some time, American military spokesman Maj. Gen. William Caldwell said in announcing his death. He said al-Mashhadani was an Iraqi, 35 to 37 years old, and that one of the men killed with him was...
CENTCOM Confirms Second AQ Leader Captured
A new release from CENTCOM confirms that the US military captured a second high-value target three days after killing "Sheikh Mansour". Two days after the death of Mansour Suleiman Mansour Khalifi al-Mashhadani and the capture of two American servicemen later brutally butchered, American forces captured an as-yet unidentified AQI leader and three of his lieutenants: In another operation June 19 southwest of Baqouba, Coalition forces detained a senior al-Qaida in Iraq network member and three suspected terrorists during coordinated raids. The terrorist is reportedly a senior al-Qaida cell leader throughout central Iraq, north of Baghdad. He’s known to be involved in facilitating foreign terrorists throughout central Iraq, and is suspected of having ties to previous attacks on Coalition and Iraqi forces. Coalition forces secured multiple buildings and detained the known terrorist plus three suspected terrorists without incident. Troops found an AK-47 with several magazines of ammunition and destroyed them all...
Walking In Lockstep
The conservative blogosphere gets accused often of working off of "talking points" and coordinating our efforts. That's a fairly ludicrous charge, as anyone who really reads the starboard side of the 'sphere understands. Most of us support the Bush administration, but certainly do not offer carte blanche on all policies and efforts from either the White House or Congress. We also sometimes snipe at each other, usually politely but not always, and the latest such point came with the latest Ann Coulter brouhaha. I can state pretty clearly that, as far as my involvement with conservative bloggers go, we have never sent around e-mails telling each other to not blog about an issue. According to The New Republic's Jason Zengerle, however, that's exactly what Markos Moulitsas did with several of the more prominent liberal bloggers, and apparently they obeyed: TNR obtained a missive Kos sent earlier this week to "Townhouse,"...
Santorum: 500 Chemical-Weapons Shells Found In Iraq (Updated And Bumped)
Negroponte letter can be viewed in PDF format here. According to numerous sources but not yet on the wires, Senator Rick Santorum announced a few minutes ago that the US has found 500 chemical-weapons shells in Iraq. Hot Air has the hot link for what little data exists thus far. Apparently, some of the shells contained sarin and others mustard gas. No word has come yet on when and where the US found these munitions. I will update this as more information becomes available. UPDATE: Nothing on the wires yet at 5:10 pm CT, but let's think through what this discovery -- if it is new -- means. We have found a handful of such shells already in Iraq; I reported such a find here in November 2004. The shells had come from around the time of the first Gulf War and the contents had likely been rendered inert by...
Zawahiri Speaks, Again
Al-Qaeda's second in command, Egyptian terror mastermind Ayman al-Zawahiri, released another videotape today. Unlike his past missives, this release appears aimed at Afghanis rather than Westerners, with Zawahiri speaking in Pashtun and Farsi and skipping the English subtitles: In the video, al-Zawahiri, speaking in Arabic, addresses his message to the people in Afghanistan and talks about what he terms "crimes against the Afghan people by the Americans." He claims to have recorded the message, which lasts 3 minutes and 44 seconds, the day after deadly riots in Kabul on May 29. He calls on young men in Kabul's universities to defend their homeland against what he called invaders. Zawahiri missed the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the collapse of the AQ network in Iraq. He also recorded it prior to the completion of the Iraqi government, an event that even apart from Zarqawi's death would have ruined Zawahiri's month....
June 22, 2006
Iraqi Police Rescue 17 Hostages
The Iraqi police, who have come under criticism from some American politicians as ineffective, today staged a successful raid that freed 17 hostages. Insurgents had kidnapped them a day earlier, part of 85 hostages taken at an Iraqi factory: Iraqi police stormed a farm north of Baghdad early Thursday and freed at least 17 people who were snatched a day earlier in a mass kidnapping of about 85 workers and family members at the end of a factory shift. ... A National Security Ministry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, told The Associated Press that several insurgents holding the kidnap victims were captured during the Thursday morning raid on the farm in the Mishada area, about 20 miles north of the capital. Police operations were continuing in the area, the official said, in a bid to locate the rest of...
A Nation Of Laws?
La Shawn Barber takes her bow as a member of the Examiner Blog Board of Contributors with an opinion piece on immigration, and she holds nothing back in her scorn for the rhetoric of George Bush on this issue. Commending his speechwriter for creating "the most exquisite piece of empty doublespeak", La Shawn reminds Bush about the laws this nation does not see fit to enforce: The issue is not whether the United States should seal the borders and stop all immigration, as the president very well knows. It is whether illegal aliens should be given amnesty for their crimes and allowed to benefit from their fraud. That is the crux of the controversy. Last month, the Senate passed a “comprehensive” immigration reform bill that would permit illegal aliens in the country for at least five years to remain, continue working, pay fines and back taxes, and learn English. Instead...
More On The WMD
But not much more, as most media outlets chose to ignore the Santorum/Hoekstra press conference on WMD discovered in Iraq since 2003. The Washington Post put the story on page A10: Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) told reporters yesterday that weapons of mass destruction had in fact been found in Iraq, despite acknowledgments by the White House and the insistence of the intelligence community that no such weapons had been discovered. "We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, chemical weapons," Santorum said. ... Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction soughtin Iraq after the 2003 invasion. Of course, what the Post and Dafna Linzer missed from this analysis is that the pre-1991 WMD was the subject of the cease-fire agreement and the UN sanctions that Saddam...
SCOTUS Limits Illegal Immigrant Access To Courts
The Supreme Court denied the appeal of an illegal immigrant who wanted to appeal a deportation ruling on the basis of an ex post facto argument. By a vote of 8-1, the justices ruled that illegal immigrants have no basis to appeal their status based on changing immigration law: The Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a blow to longtime illegal residents, ruling that a deported Mexican man who lived in the United States for 20 years is barred from seeking legal residency or other relief in the courts. By an 8-1 vote, justices said that Humberto Fernandez-Vargas, who was deported several times from the 1970s to 1981, is subject to a 1996 law Congress passed to streamline the legal process for expelling aliens who have been deported at least once before and returned. Vargas applied for resident alien status after getting married in 2001 to an American citizen after a...
Kerry Doubles His Support!
John Kerry has managed to double his support for the cut-and-run amendment he offered to the defense authorization bill. He got 13 votes instead of six by extending the deadline for withdrawal from Iraq to July 2007 rather than the end of the year. Roll call to follow shortly ... UPDATE 10:53 CT: Bill Nelson of Florida voted against the Levin resolution, crossing party lines. The so-called "cut and jog" appears headed to defeat as well. Ben Nelson of Nebraska also voted against it -- but of course, Linc Chafee (R-RI) voted to support it. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) also voted against it. So far all of the red-state Democrats appear to be coming out against it. 10:59 - Joe Lieberman voted against the Levin resolution. While that remains consistent with Lieberman's previous support for the war and the long-term strategy -- recall that he alone among his caucus acknowledged the...
Kurds Show Why Saddam Had To Go
While the rest of Iraq continues to show marked progress towards self-reliance and security, even in the Sunni Triangle, one portion of Iraq has already transformed itself into a remarkable area of freedom and stability. The Kurdish areas of the north have blossomed since the end of the Saddam Hussein regime, expanding their cities and rapidly modernizing through significant capital investment and reliable security. The left-wing British newspaper The Independent reports on how the Kurds have delivered on the promise of liberation: The struggle of the Iraqi Kurds for self-determination has been longer and bloodier than that of any nationalist movement outside Vietnam. It began under the British in the 1920s when "Bomber" Harris, later the commander of the air offensive against Germany, practised his art against Kurdish villages. Setting the tone for Baghdad's treatment of the Kurds over the rest of the century, he wrote with approval in 1924:...
Hamas: Islam, Islam Uber Alles
Palestinian Media Watch notes a new video Hamas has posted to their web site, one that calls for the overthrow of the United States by Islamists. The governing political party of the Palestinian Authority predicts that Israel, Britain, and Europe will also fall before the onslaught of Islam and exhorts their followers to maintain their defiance against international pressures (via Michael van der Galien at TMV): A Hamas video just released on their web site focuses on the broader Palestinian Islamic ideology, promising the eventual conquering and subjugation of Christian countries under Islam. The way Israel "ran" from Gaza after terror is presented as the prototype for future Israeli and Western behavior in the face of Islamic force. ... The following is the transcript of selections from the Hamas video: "We will rule the nations, by Allah's will, the USA will be conquered, Israel will be conquered, Rome and Britain...
Guest Post: Senator John Sununu On Net Neutrality
CQ welcomes Senator John Sununu, a member of both the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation as well as the Senate Republican High Tech Task Force. Senator Sununu posts the following statement on the issue of "net neutrality", a topic that has not received coverage at CQ. Government’s role in supporting the development of emerging technologies is to get out of the way. Imposing unnecessary regulations on the Internet is a sure way to discourage investment, limiting the deployment of new products. The marketplace has powerful incentives for private industry to continue the development of existing technologies, while at the same time providing safeguards to protect consumers. Furthermore, the most recent version of the Commerce Committee’s legislation includes an ‘Internet Consumer Bill of Rights,’ along with authority for the FCC to adjudicate complaints against providers. These provisions will help ensure that Internet users have unfettered access without stifling technological...
The Post Picks Up Hastert's Real-Estate Deal
The Washington Post picks up on the profit taken by Dennis Hastert and his partners in the Little Rock Trust that came from $207 million in federal highway funding, a traffic corridor championed by Hastert himself and funded through pork-barrel earmarks. Now it turns out that federal highway earmarks may have enriched two more Congressmen in a similar manner: House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) made a $2 million profit last year on the sale of land 5 1/2 miles from a highway project that he helped to finance with targeted federal funds. A Republican House member from California, meanwhile, received nearly double what he paid for a four-acre parcel near an Air Force base after securing $8 million for a planned freeway interchange 16 miles away. And another California GOP congressman obtained funding in last year's highway bill for street improvements near a planned residential and commercial development that...
CQ On The Air Tonight
I will be on radio twice tonight. At 5 pm CT, I will appear on the Lars Larson show, discussing the WMD find and possibly the SCOTUS decision. Then at 9 pm CT, I'll be back on CHQR's The World Tonight with Rob Breckinridge, also talking about WMD, Iraq, the Senate votes today, and possibly Bush's visit to the EU. Be sure to tune in! UPDATE: Had a great time with Lars; I hope you all had a chance to listen in! We spent the entire time on WMD, but the topic could easily have taken us through an hour or more. Lars will stay on top of it, so stay tuned....
Line-Item Veto Passes House
The House just passed the new limited line-item veto moments ago, 247-172, with 35 Democrats voting to support the Republican initiative on reform. Andrew Taylor at the AP notes the irony in this vote: Lawmakers voted to give Bush and his successor a new, weaker version of the line-item veto law struck down by the Supreme Court in 1998, despite a recent series of lopsided votes in which they've rallied to preserve each other's back-home projects. It would expire after six years. The idea advances amid increasing public concern about lawmakers' penchant for stuffing parochial projects into spending bills that the president must accept or reject in their entirety. ... The bill would allow the president to single out items contained in appropriations bills he signs into law, and it would require Congress to vote on those items again. It also could be used against increases in benefit programs and...
Then What?
Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Perry offered an interesting option for the North Korea missile standoff -- commit an act of war: Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil? We believe not. The Bush administration has unwisely ballyhooed the doctrine of "preemption," which all previous presidents have sustained as an option rather than a dogma. It has applied the doctrine to Iraq, where the intelligence pointed to a threat from weapons of mass destruction that was much smaller than the risk North Korea poses. (The actual threat from Saddam Hussein was, we now know, even smaller than believed at the time of the invasion.) But intervening before mortal threats to U.S. security can develop is surely a prudent policy. Therefore, if North Korea persists in its launch preparations,...
Domestic Terrorism Raids In Miami
UPDATE X: Val at Babalu Blog rightly calls me out for suggesting that the Cuban-American community may have been involved as nothing more than sheer speculation, via e-mail. I apologize for that; it's what happens when calculating all of the potential vectors of "domestic terrorism" without thinking things all the way through. Blogs have the important quality of immediacy, but some immediacy shouldn't get committed to pixels, as it were. I have tremendous admiration for the Cuban-American community and their struggle against the fascist dictatorship of Fidel Castro, and I blew it by my insinuation that they present a potential danger to our country on the basis of no information at all. Please accept my apologies. It won't happen again ... but if it does, Val's going to call me on the carpet, and I'm grateful for that. Also noting this was Liberal Catnip and The Florida Masochist, the latter also by e-mail. They're all correct.
Iraq To Offer Amnesty And American Withdrawal To Insurgents
In a development that underscores the cluelessness of the Senate debate the past two days, the Iraqi government has built an ultimatum and offer to native insurgents in Iraq that will offer amnesty for most of their actions and an American withdrawal if all insurgencies surrender themselves. The US government has helped craft the offer, which both Iraq and the US hopes will allow Iraq to reach stability quickly: THE Iraqi Government will announce a sweeping peace plan as early as Sunday in a last-ditch effort to end the Sunni insurgency that has taken the country to the brink of civil war. The 28-point package for national reconciliation will offer Iraqi resistance groups inclusion in the political process and an amnesty for their prisoners if they renounce violence and lay down their arms, The Times can reveal. The Government will promise a finite, UN-approved timeline for the withdrawal of all...
June 23, 2006
NYT Reveals Secret Banking Anti-Terrorist Program
The New York Times Eric Lichtblau and James Risen have exposed yet another clandestine method used by American intelligence to track terrorists at home and abroad. This time, the pair has revealed a complex surveillance system in the international banking system that traced financial transactions of people suspected of terrorist ties. The system, called Swift, has resulted in at least one capture of a high-value target, al-Qaeda's leader in Southeast Asia: Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials. The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian...
Miami Indictment Released
The government has released the indictment for the seven men arrested in Miami last night, and the charges levied do not mince words. The government will charge the men with "levying war against the government of the United States": A federal indictment against seven men revealed Friday details of what the government said was a plan intended to "kill all the devils we can." The mission was intended to be "as good or greater than 9/11," beginning with the destruction of Chicago's Sears Tower, according to court documents obtained Friday by CNN. Named in the grand jury indictment is Narseal Batiste, who allegedly told a federal undercover agent, who he thought was a member of al Qaeda, that he was organizing a mission to build an Islamic army to wage a jihad in the United States. The document says that Batiste "recruited and supervised individuals in order to organize and...
Saddam Notes Value Of His Defense Team
After proclaiming a hunger strike in honor of his slain defense attorney and in protest of a lack of sufficient security for the defense team, Saddam Hussein ended his fast -- fast: Saddam Hussein ended a brief hunger strike after missing just one meal in his U.S.-run prison, a U.S. military spokesman said on Friday. The former Iraqi leader had refused lunch on Thursday in protest at the killing of one of his lawyers by gunmen, but the spokesman said he ate his evening meal. Former Saddam aides being held in the same prison had refused to eat three meals since Wednesday evening but ended their fast with the ex-president. Saddam honored Khamis al-Obeidi by skipping lunch. The international news media breathlessly reported this hunger strike in the wake of Obeidi's assassination, but one suspects that this will drop to the bottom page of their next editions. Even Saddam's co-defendants...
Miami Terror Press Conference Live Blog
9:36 CT - Starts with Alberto Gonzalez statement regarding homegrown terrorists. Toronto, Madrid, and London bombings were not sleeper cells, but turned on their own country ... 9:39 - The Haitian immigrant was in the US illegally. Hmmm ... wonder if Congress will do anything about that? 9:42 - John Pistole, Deputy Director of the FBI, joins Gonzalez. I wonder why Mueller didn't attend the press conference? 9:44 - Gonzalez won't answer whether all known cell members have been arrested; he won't comment, says investigation is ongoing. 9:45 - Asked whether the group had explosives and weapons stockpiled, Gonzalez stated that sufficient actions had occurred to press the case now rather than wait for them to arm themselves. 9:47 - Asked if they really thought these people could have pulled off a terror attack. Gonzalez replied they didn't get the materials and the weapons they wanted, but that we can't...
Navy Missile Intercept Test A Success
The Navy conducted a successful missile test yesterday that has implications for the current standoff with North Korea. The defense system intercepted a medium-range test missile near its apogee after booster separation: A Navy ship intercepted a medium-range missile warhead above the earth's atmosphere off Hawaii in the latest test of the U.S. missile defense program, the military said Thursday. The military had initially scheduled the test for Wednesday but postponed the drill after a small craft ventured into a zone that had been blocked off for the event. The USS Shiloh detected a medium-range target after it was launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, then fired a Standard Missile-3 interceptor. The interceptor shot down the target warhead after it separated from its rocket booster, more than 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean and 250 miles northwest of Kauai, the Missile Defense Agency said in a statement....
Barone: Bush Gets Stronger
Has George Bush gained strength through the debate over the war policy in Iraq? Michael Barone writes that the Democrats have profited from bad news in Iraq over the past few months, but now that the war effort has seen a string of victories, Bush can play Republican unity into recovering his political strength. However, Barone rightly surmises that Bush's bad fortunes may have been overplayed from the start: Things are looking up for George W. Bush and maybe for his party. The Democrats failed to win the special election in the 50th Congressional District of California June 6. Abu Musab Zarqawi was killed on June 7. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he would not seek an indictment of chief Bush adviser Karl Rove on June 12. Bush made a dazzling surprise trip to Baghdad on June 13 and followed up with a confident press conference the next day. The...
Sarcasm And Satire Causes Cynicism? No!
Richard Morin breaks the news today that sarcasm and satire produces cynicism in those who get continually exposed to it, and the effect causes them to lose interest in political participation, especially voting. Since the essence of satire is ridicule and devaluation, this should be almost akin to the correlation between the sunlight and warmth, but apparently it comes as a shock to some people. Morin reveals this dynamic in the demographics of Jon Stewart fans, whose show discourages its fans from voting, according to a new study: This is not funny: Jon Stewart and his hit Comedy Central cable show may be poisoning democracy. Two political scientists found that young people who watch Stewart's faux news program, "The Daily Show," develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting. That's particularly dismaying news because the show is hugely popular among college...
When Lucifer Gets Into Oppo Research, Call us
Every once in a while, events remind us that politics can be very entertaining. Today's case in point: John Jacobs, a Utah politician running for Congress, who believes that Satan has made his life difficult ever since announcing his candidacy against Chris Cannon in the Republican primary. Jacobs has had business deals delayed, preventing him from putting as much cash as he would have liked into the campaign: "You know, you plan, you organize, you put your budget together and when you have 10 things fall through, not just one, there's some other, something else that is happening," Jacob said. Asked if he actually believed that "something else" was indeed Satan, Jacob said: "I don't know who else it would be if it wasn't him. Now when that gets out in the paper, I'm going to be one of the screw-loose people." Jacob initially said the devil was working against...
CQ On The Air Tonight
I'll be joining Hugh Hewitt tonight. He wants to talk about the New York Times and Bill Keller -- and since Bill Keller won't return his phone calls, he'll talk with a number of bloggers today instead. I'll be on at 6:40 CT this evening. Apparently, Keller went on vacation. On the day that his newspaper blew another national-security program. The day that he knew he would have faced calls for some sort of accounting. Well, that's courage in journalism for you ... UPDATE: I had the opportunity to get in on the same segment as Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit -- always a great honor -- and Rep. John Campbell. We had a spirited and delightful time skewering Bill Keller and the Times for their insistence on divulging national security secrets during wartime. Radioblogger will have the transcript up shortly, and my pals from Power Line will be up next...
ACLU, Right On Schedule
The ACLU has jumped into the fray over the publication of national-security efforts to trace financial transactions of suspected terrorists and their organizations in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal this morning. To no one's great shock, the ACLU has leveled more accusations of malfeasance against the Bush administration: "The revelation of the CIA's financial spying program is another example of the Bush administration's abuse of power. The invasion of our personal financial information, without notification or judicial review, is contrary to the fundamental American value of privacy and must be stopped now. It seems the administration feels entitled to flip through all of our checkbooks. How many other secret spying programs has the Bush administration enacted without Congress, the courts or the public knowing? We need a full accounting of what information has been demanded by the U.S. government, how they have used...
June 24, 2006
Update From CQ's Sick Bay
I've received a few requests to update readers on the status here at the infirmary, and Saturday seems like a good day to post it. The First Mate has been home now for almost two weeks and is doing a little better than before. We found out that she had pneumonia earlier, which is what caused her low oxygenation and poor energy. She still has some of the infection in her lungs, so she has to have oxygen at all times now. We have a pretty nifty oxygen generator here at the house, and it has a long lead on it, so she doesn't need to use a tank unless she leaves the house. I understand that portable oxygen generators exist, and we may look into that as an alternative to the tanks. Her CMV infection slowly has improved, but she's still seriously ill on that front. I have a...
Talking About The Gray Lady On Hugh Hewitt
Yesterday I had the opportunity to spend some time on Hugh's show, discussing the NY Times article disclosing more classified methods of tracking terrorists, this time through the global financial system. I had the distinct pleasure to join Glenn Reynolds and Rep. John Campbell in a ten-minute segment, which Hugh's top-notch producer, Generalissimo Duane Patterson at Radioblogger, transcribed late last night. Here's a taste of the debate: HH: Now earlier in the program, Senator Jon Kyl, and last segment, Congressman Campbell agreed that the New York Times' and Los Angeles Times' story today assisted the terrorists. The Vice President made the same argument. Glenn Reynolds, do you believe that to be the case. GR: Yes, and I want to make another very important point that I think a lot of the coverage has missed. This was done through SWIFT, the Society for Worlwide Interbank Financial Transfers. That's actually something I...
Ledeen And McCarthy: The Media's War On War
Michael Ledeen had an excellent post at The Corner last night, reminding the media that Islamofascists don't distinguish between combatants and non-combatants in their war against the West. With Bill Keller leading the war against national security here in the United States, perhaps Ledeen's reminder should get put to the top of Keller's reading list when he returns from his "vacation": Keller et al have confirmed yet again that they don’t care about national security, at least in this war (sorry, the current circumstances; they don’t think we’re at war). What they really want is the defeat of George W Bush, and the devil take the consequences. They have forgotten that the terrorists love to behead journalists. But Daniel Pearl, well, it’s such a long time ago, you know... The next point is: Who leaks? The answer is, enemies of the president’s policies leak. His supporters don’t. That basic rule...
The Washington Post Doesn't See The Problem, Either
The New York Times has come under fire from a wide spectrum of observers for their hysterical and tabloidesque revelation of a national-security program that turns out to break no laws and endanger no one's civil liberties. Today, the Washington Post joins the chorus of criticism, albeit sotto voce, in their lead editorial today: THE TREASURY Department's just-disclosed program of searching records of overseas bank transfers may provoke outraged comparisons to the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance and data-mining of telephone call records. At least if news reports and government statements concerning the revelations are correct, however, this program is far less troubling. As with all revelations concerning the secretive Bush administration, you have to worry about what you don't know. So far, however, it seems like exactly the sort of aggressive tactic the government should be taking in the war on terrorism. For one thing, it appears to be...
NYT Reveals Secret Briefing On The Painfully Obvious
The New York Times has revealed yet another war secret, this time publishing details of negotiations between CENTCOM and the Iraqi government on troop reductions in Iraq. Michael Gordon reveals that General George Casey has briefed the Pentagon on specific troop reductions that will cumulatively reduce troop strength in Iraq by 60% at the end of 2007: The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say. According to a classified briefing at the Pentagon this week by the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the number of American combat brigades in Iraq is projected to decrease to 5 or 6 from the current level of 14 by December 2007. Under the plan, the first reductions would involve two combat brigades that would rotate...
Don't Worry About That Amnesty Offer
After a day of debate over the idea of granting amnesty to native insurgents that have killed American troops, the insurgents themselves rendered the point moot. According to the Times of London, which broke the story on the Iraqi peace offer, key insurgent groups have already stated their opposition to the plan (via Newsbeat1): IRAQ’S main insurgent groups intend to reject a peace plan that Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, will present today in an attempt to halt the country’s spiral of violence. Maliki is expected to go before parliament with a 28- point plan for national reconciliation aimed at defusing the Sunni insurgency and sectarian conflict in which thousands of people have died. ... Representatives of 11 Iraqi insurgent groups told The Sunday Times yesterday that they would reject the peace offer because they did not recognise the legitimacy of the government. A senior commander authorised to speak on...
June 25, 2006
CIA Officer Writes Book About Being Overruled
We will soon have another new book from a disgruntled former CIA officer about his experiences of being overruled by the Bush administration, and he has received the traditional Page 1 launch in the Washington Post. Tyler Drumheller's upcoming tome on his work in the WMD program will highlight his participation in the mobile-labs controversy and with "Curveball", the discredited Iraqi defector, and the Post uses that as its lead this morning: While the administration has repeatedly acknowledged intelligence failures over Iraqi weapons claims that led to war, new accounts by former insiders such as Drumheller shed light on one of the most spectacular failures of all: How U.S. intelligence agencies were eagerly drawn in by reports about a troubled defector's claims of secret germ factories in the Iraqi desert. The mobile labs were never found. Drumheller, who is writing a book about his experiences, described in extensive interviews repeated...
How Secret Information Can Catch Terrorists
Ha'aretz shows how secret information can catch terrorists when it remains a secret. The US got Western Union to assist our intelligence services and the Shin Bet in order to catch Palestinian terrorists attempted to move money through their network: From the spring of 2003 until autumn 2004, the Shin Bet security service tracked down Palestinian terror cells in the West Bank thanks to information from the Western Union money transfer service, which was passed on by the FBI. ... In early April, 2003, an Islamic Jihad activist went to a Western Union office in Lebanon and ordered a money transfer to Hebron. The Justice Department authorized Western Union to release this information to the FBI and the CIA, and eventually to the Shin Bet. According to Suskind, all this took just minutes, enabling Israeli intelligence to track the person who collected the transfer in Hebron and to uncover the...
Conservative Convergence Coming
Newsweek has an interesting article on a project about which CQ has long known: the conversion of the durable Townhall website into a merging of conservative talk radio, weblogs, and opinion leaders to create an unprecedented media convergence. When Salem Radio bought Townhall, Hugh Hewitt and Salem dared to dream big, and that dream is about to launch: Hugh Hewitt is a master of multitasking. Week after week, the sanguine, persistent pundit hosts his "center-right" talk radio show from a nondescript office in Orange County, Calif.—and more than a million people tune in. Two computers flank his mike. While on the air, Hewitt uses the first to surf news sites, then swivels to the second during breaks to update his well-trafficked blog. "Both spoken words and written words are powerful," he says. "Acting in harmony, the effect is exponential." Just ask Rick Santorum. In May, he urged Hewitt's listeners to...
Palestinians Invade Israel From Gaza
The Palestinians have escalated their continuous attacks on Israel from Gaza, which no longer qualifies as occupied territory, by raiding Israel. 'Militants' crossed over into Israel using tunnels, killed two soldiers and apparently kidnapped another, before crossing back into Gaza: Palestinian militants launched on Sunday their first deadly raid into Israel from Gaza since an Israeli pullout last year, killing two soldiers and abducting another in an assault in which two attackers died. The infiltration, through a tunnel militants dug under the Gaza border fence to reach an army post, raised tensions along the frontier to their highest point since Israel completed its withdrawal last September after 38 years of occupation. Israeli forces scrambled into the Gaza Strip to search for the missing soldier, who the army said had been kidnapped. There was no immediate claim from any of the militant groups that took part in the dawn raid that...
Taliban Calls For Truce
The Taliban in Afghanistan has proposed a month-long truce in order to reach a permanent arrangement with the Pakistani government. The Waziristan region has seen fierce fighting involving Pakistani troops, and as the Americans and Canadians press an offensive in Afghanistan, the two-front war has taken its toll on the Taliban: The militants, also known as local Taleban, have set the government four main conditions. They want a withdrawal of army troops from the region within a month, and the removal of all new check posts from North Waziristan, their spokesman Abdullah Farhad told the BBC. He also demanded the restoration of salaries and jobs and other incentives for local tribes and the release of tribesmen arrested during military operations against al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters in the region. The governor of North Western Frontier Province, Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai, said a decision on these conditions would be taken in talks...
Palistinians Claim WMD Capability
The Fatah terrorist faction has claimed the capability of chemical and biological weapons and has threatened Israel with a WMD attack, according to the Jerusalem Post. Leaflets distributed in the Gaza Strip state that the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has spent the last three years developing the capabilty, the start of which seems oddly coincidental to the fall of Saddam Hussein (via Reliapundit): The Aksa Martyrs' Brigades group announced on Sunday that it its members have succeeded in manufacturing chemical and biological weapons to be used against Israel. In a leaflet distributed in the Gaza Strip, the group, which belongs to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party, said the weapons were the result of an effort that has lasted for three years. The statment was a response to an Israeli Security Cabinet decision to give the IDF the green light to prepare all the forces necessary for a military operation...
Tech Notes
A few weeks ago, I asked for some assistance on improving the performance of my computer. Thanks to all of the assistance offered by my readers, the laptop performs much better. I added memory, defragged the hard drive, and eliminated some unnecessary background programs. When I added memory, most of that had not yet taken place, and the installing tech got a little frustrated with the boot time of my laptop. One of his recommendations was to get rid of Norton Anti-Virus, which has lots of features but throws a lot of processes into the background. He recommended PC-Cillin instead. His store sold both (as well as other brands) but I decided to hold off on making that change, mostly because I still had a few more months on my subscription. However, with all of the down time I'm facing, I figured that this might be the best time for...
UNSCAM Trial Starts Tomorrow In NY
The trial of Tongsun Park starts tomorrow in New York. The Times of London looks forward to revelations of links between Saddam Hussein and former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in one of the first UN Oil-For-Food trials: LINKS between Boutros Boutros Ghali, the former UN Secretary-General, and an alleged agent for Saddam Hussein will come under the spotlight when the first American trial of a major figure in the Oil-for-Food scandal gets under way today. The judge has ruled that prosecutors can present evidence of Dr Boutros Ghali’s relationship with Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman on trial in New York for acting as an unregistered foreign agent for Saddam’s Iraq. The North Korean-born Mr Park was dubbed “the oriental Gatsby” after he played a central role in the “Koreagate” bribery scandal in Washington in the 1970s, although the judge has ruled that evidence of that role is not relevant...
Delusions Of Grandeur Die Hard In Baghdad
Saddam Hussein has had a difficult time adjusting to life out of power and in the hands of the people he brutalized for four decades. That kind of life change can cause cognitive difficulties for someone in that position; the mind plays tricks on megalomaniacs, allowing them to believe that they still occupy the center of the universe. That would explain Saddam's latest delusions of grandeur: Saddam Hussein believes the United States will have to seek his help to quell the bloody insurgency in Iraq and open the way for U.S. forces to withdraw, his chief lawyer said Sunday. Khalil al-Dulaimi argued in an interview with The Associated Press that the former leader is the key to returning stability to Iraq. "He's their last resort. They're going to knock at his door eventually," the lawyer said. Saddam is "the only person who can stop the resistance against the U.S. troops."...
June 26, 2006
Terrorists Use Crank Calls To Soldiers' Families
In one of the strangest developments in the war on terror, terrorists in Iraq have begun making crank calls to the families of British soldiers using technology that hacks into their cell phones while they call home. The Times of London describes this odd tactic, which has their Defence Ministry steamed: WIVES and family members of soldiers fighting in Iraq have received telephone death threats from insurgents. Their numbers were obtained by Iraqi hackers from soldiers’ mobile telephones using an electronic device. Disclosure of the threatening calls emerged after an investigation by the Royal Military Police into complaints from soldiers. The threats range from claims that a husband or son is dead or will be killed in Iraq to verbal abuse, according to reports. ... The extent of the problem emerged at the weekend in a restricted Army document issued to soldiers of the London Regiment, a Territorial Army unit...
Keller Offers Platitudes Rather Than Reasons
Bill Keller, having fled the scene according to his office as soon as the New York Times published the latest national-security revelations from Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, offers his readers a written explanation rather than give any interviews about his decision to reveal classified tactics. Unfortunately for Times readers, he doesn't offer much in the way of explanation in his open letter. Keller manages to dodge the real questions while actually blaming conservative critics for making this a bigger story than he imagined when he green-lighted it for publication. The pushback against the right comes as his first excuse: Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by...
Kerry Splits Democrats With Renewed Presidential Aspirations
John Kerry has split Democrats with his race to the left in order to gain some traction for the 2008 presidential nomination, his hometown newspaper reports. The Boston Globe notes some approbation coming from the antiwar netroots, but the party establishment has little trust in the man they think blew a winnable 2004 election: Senator John F. Kerry has intensified his quest to regain the Democratic presidential nomination with a sharp move to the left, presenting himself in high-profile speeches and Senate debates as an unfettered lawmaker and would-be presidential candidate who learned from his 2004 loss that he must fight harder for what he believes. In passionate remarks on the Senate floor and before party faithful last week, Kerry spoke directly to grass-roots Democrats, many of whom remain angry over his defeat in an election they believe Kerry was capable of winning. ``I think I'm a much better candidate...
Bush: NYT 'Disgraceful'
George Bush weighed in on the controversial story published this weekend on the Swift project that exposed the covert tactics used to track terrorist financing. Speaking at a briefing in the White House, Bush called the Times disclosure "disgraceful": President Bush on Monday sharply condemned the disclosure of a secret anti-terrorism program that taps into an immense international database of confidential financial records. "The disclosure of this program is disgraceful," he said. "For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America," Bush said. He said the disclosure of the program "makes it harder to win this war on terror." ... "Congress was briefed and what we did was fully authorized under the law," Bush said, talking with reporters in the Roosevelt Room after meeting with groups that support U.S. troops in Iraq. "We're at war with a...
AQ Leaders Negotiated With Saddam Regime For Training
For those who keep insisting that al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein had no operational ties, the work of Ray Robison has provided explicit evidence in rebuttal. Fox News reports on the latest efforts of Robison in translating the documents captured by US forces but never translated by the CIA or Pentagon. His recent translation of a series of documents shows that AQ jihadists had negotiated with the Iraqi Intelligence Services for training facilities in Tajikistan or in Baghdad: Newly declassified documents captured by U.S. forces indicate that Saddam Hussein's inner circle not only actively reached out to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan and terror-based jihadists in the region, but also hosted discussions with a known Al Qaeda operative about creating jihad training "centers," possibly in Baghdad. Ray Robison, a former member of the CIA-directed Iraq Survey Group (ISG), supervised a group of linguists to analyze, archive and exploit the hundreds of...
9/11 Commission Chairs Asked Keller To Shelve SWIFT Report
Outgoing Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose low-key leadership led to his eventual replacement, has ensured that he will make waves on his exit from the Bush Cabinet. Secretary Snow released a rebuttal to Bill Keller's wan explanation of his decision to expose covert tactics in tracking terrorist financing that all but calls Keller a liar. While Keller described efforts by the government to hold back publication of the story as "half-hearted", Snow reveals that Keller's association with the truth is half-assed: Your charge that our efforts to convince The New York Times not to publish were "half-hearted" is incorrect and offensive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the past two months, Treasury has engaged in a vigorous dialogue with the Times - from the reporters writing the story to the D.C. Bureau Chief and all the way up to you. It should also be noted that the co-chairmen...
And Other People Have Need Of This As Well
The First Mate has had need of several blood transfusions in her fight against hemolytic anemia, and will likely need several more before she can turn the corner. We're lucky; our health insurance covers the cost of the transfusions. An extended family member in Texas (very distantly related through two marriages) is not so lucky. Her sister wrote a plea to friends and family this afternoon: To all my family & friends that live out of the area: My sister, Kathleen, is living on blood transfusions until she can get a stem cell transplant. This is costing her $3,000 for each unit of blood. We can help by donating blood in her name. You must make sure that where you donate the blood that will give credits in her name through the National Blood Exchange. They will ask for her information, which is Kathleen Galaise Carter Blood Center-Baylor Hospital, Dallas,...
Media To Challenge Canadian Publication Ban
The Canadian courts have imposed another publication ban on the trial of the 17 Muslims arrested for conspiring to conduct terror attacks in Toronto. Two American and two Canadian media outlets have filed challenges to this order, hoping to open the trial to the press and the Canadian public: Four media organizations asked a judge on Monday to hear arguments on overturning a media blackout in the cases of the suspects charged with plotting to bomb buildings in southern Ontario. The Associated Press, the New York Times, the Toronto Star and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are challenging a publication ban a judge has imposed on courtroom proceedings for the 17 suspects arrested in the alleged plot. ... Justice of the piece Keith Currie banned the media from reporting details of courtroom proceedings as the request of prosecutors on June 12. A notice of application to quash Currie's decision was filed...
June 27, 2006
The Enduring Resolve Of The Gray Lady
In the wake of the decision by the New York Times to reveal covert tactics used by our nation to track terrorist financing as a means of defeating them, Bill Keller offered the following as part of his explanation: Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress. Most Americans seem to support extraordinary measures in defense against this extraordinary threat, but some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight. We believe The Times and others in the press have served the public interest by accurately reporting on these programs so that the public can have an informed view of them. However, that doesn't quite square with what the Times wrote on September...
Ayaan Hirsi Ali Stays Dutch
The Netherlands has reconsidered its efforts to strip Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the reformist Muslim, of her citizenship based on a technicality following her courageous efforts to push her coreligionists to demand an end to its oppressive practices of shari'a. Michael van der Galien reports from Dutch news sources: NOS journaal reports that, during a meeting between different ministers - that lasted until well past midnight - the Dutch Cabinet decided that Ayaan Hirsi Ali is, and will remain, officially Dutch. Although Minister Verdonk did not want to decide this last night already, her fellow ministers enforced a permanent decision. Verdonk will inform Parliament about this matter later today. According to RTL Nieuws certain political parties, especially GroenLinks, have already announced that they will be giving Verdonk an extremely hard time during the next debate in the lower chamber about this matter. I won't be suprised if Parliament will force her...
Specter: Borders First
A key moderate in the Senate has apparently shifted away from an insistence on instantaneous comprehensive immigration reform, agreeing to support a borders-first approach. Arlen Specter, one of the more liberal members of the GOP caucus, has announced his openness to verification of border security and employer enforcement before any efforts at normalization commence: The security of the border should be the No. 1 priority for an immigration bill, Sen. Arlen Specter said yesterday, and he's open to a compromise that sets goals for border and interior enforcement ahead of a guest-worker program and path to citizenship for illegal aliens. ... "Are we out of touch with the American people? We may be, on the basis of what the American people know today," he said, adding that the broken borders and poor interior enforcement get most of the attention. But he said he's having hearings, beginning July 5 in Pennsylvania,...
Japan To Get Missile Defenses
The US will supply Japan with anti-missile systems in response to North Korea's recent escalation in staging a Taepodong-2 missile for launch. The Post reports that both nations have expedited the process in order to have some response ready for any subsequent missile tests from Pyongyang: The Pentagon is reportedly speeding up plans to deploy advanced Patriot interceptor missiles on U.S. bases in Japan for the first time, a countermeasure seen as a response to the increasing threat of North Korean missiles. ... The planned PAC-3 deployment underscores concern that Japan is emerging as the nation most threatened by North Korean missiles. Reports of a possible test-firing of a Taepodong-2 have spurred Japan and the United States to take further steps in a joint effort to construct an effective missile-defense shield. The U.S. Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles are designed to intercept ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or aircraft. But experts said...
The Roberts Letter And Its Lack Of Significance
Senator Pat Roberts chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and has a rather large influence on how our intelligence agencies conduct their business. For that reason, the following letter from Roberts to John Negroponte, the Director of National Intelligence, seems rather tepid at best: June 27, 2006 The Honorable John D. Negroponte Director of National Intelligence Washington, D.C. 20511 Dear Mr. Director: Unauthorized disclosures of classified information continue to threaten our national security – exposing our sensitive intelligence sources and methods to our enemies. Numerous, recent unauthorized disclosures of sensitive intelligence programs have directly threatened important efforts in the war against terrorism. Whether the President’s Terrorist Surveillance Program or the Department of Treasury’s effort to track terrorist financing, we have been unable to persuade the media to act responsibly and protect the means by which we protect this nation. To gain a better understanding of the damage caused by...
Europe To Debate Whether Iraq Can Prosecute Saddam-Regime Criminals
The European Court of Human Rights has taken it upon themselves to debate whether Iraq has any sovereignty. At least, that is the implication of their agreement to deliberate whether the Coalition should allow Iraq to try former Saddam Hussein regime figures, starting with Tariq Aziz: A lawyer for former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tareq Aziz, in US custody in Baghdad, said the European Court of Human Rights had conditionally agreed to hear a plea over fears Aziz might be handed over to the Iraqi government. Italian lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano said the court had first said it wanted to know to whom it was that Aziz had surrendered in April 2003, shortly after the fall of the former regime, by whom and where had he been held since then and at what date they proposed transferring custody. Di Stefano and fellow Italian lawyer Domenico Marinelli said in a statement...
The Hammer Falls In Gaza
Israel has begun its response to the Palestinian incursion from Gaza this weekend and the capture of an IDF soldier. Israeli tanks have attacked a bridge in central Gaza, and Palestinian security forces report that IDF tanks have begun to move towards the border: Israeli planes attacked a bridge in central Gaza late Tuesday, Israel Radio reported, and Israeli tanks were said to be on the move, possibly signaling the start of a military operation. Palestinian security forces said Israeli tanks were moving near the Israeli village of Nahal Oz, a main Israeli staging area just outside Gaza, but that they had not yet entered Gaza. In the Shajaiyeh neighborhood of Gaza City, not far from the border fence, armed militants took up positions across from the blaring headlights of Israeli vehicles, and Israeli attack helicopters hovered overhead. The militants told residents to leave the area. Israeli military officials said...
Israel Meets Little Resistance In Gaza
The Jerusalem Post reports that Israeli troops have met only light resistance from Palestinians in Gaza as its ground offensive pushed across the border. The IDF has made this military operation a coordinated affair, with the Israeli Air Force taking out a power station in the area of the invasion, along with at least three bridges: The incursion began shortly before midnight, when IAF aircraft blew up three main bridges, located along the main route connecting between the northern and southern parts of the Strip. The army said that the operation was intended to keep Hamas from taking kidnapped soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit out of the Gaza Strip. Ground forces then began entering the southeastern part of the Gaza Strip and the troops gained control of two key sites near Dahaniya. At the same time, artillery units were shelling areas from where Kassam rockets were often launched at Israel. The...
Saudi Visas Double In 2006
The Jerusalem Post revealed earlier tonight that a study of State Department figures show that visas granted to Saudis have doubled in 2006. The State Department stated that we are "pleased" at the increase: For the first time since the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the US State Department has begun to sharply increase the number of entry visas granted to Saudi Arabian nationals seeking to visit the United States, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Figures obtained by the Post reveal that after three years of steady decline, 2005 saw the number of US visas issued to Saudis remain relatively stable, while this year the number has more than doubled. In an e-mail to the Post, Amanda D. Rogers-Harper, a spokeswoman for the US State Department, confirmed that as of June 10, a total of 18,683 non-immigrant US visas had been issued to Saudi citizens since...
June 28, 2006
Gaza Incursion Gains Ground
The IDF gained important tactical positions east of Rafah this morning, allowing Israel to control more of the southern border of Gaza, while it also captured an airstrip in Dahaniyeh and bombed northern Gaza where Palestinian terrorists often launch Kassam rockets into Israel. The manuevers show that the IDF has taken the time to think its incursion through for strategic as well as tactical purposes, cutting off the escape routes from Gaza into Egypt: Earlier in the day, the IDF took control of the abandoned airport in Dahaniyeh and the town of Shuka in southern Gaza in a move to cement their foothold in areas east of Rafah, a city on the Egyptian border. The area of Dahaniyeh represents a strategic control and observation point over the area of Rafah and the southern Gaza Strip. So far there has been one incident of gunfire and anti-tank missile fire at the...
Cannon Wins The Primary
Rep. Chris Cannon beat his Republican primary opponent, John Jacobs, last night in what supposedly was a bellwether race on illegal immigration. Hardliners on border security had targeted Cannon in the primary despite his support for the House border-enforcement bill because he also supported a compromise with the US Senate. His twelve-point victory belies the earlier analysis that Jacobs had pulled even with Cannon: The five-term incumbent defeated political newcomer John Jacob on Tuesday 56 percent to 44 percent — or 32,306 votes to 25,589 votes — with all precincts reporting but an unknown number of absentee ballots to be counted. "This is a big margin of victory. It says a lot about Republicans getting together and solving this problem," he said. ... Last December, Cannon voted for a House bill that would toughen border security, criminalize people who help illegal immigrants and make being in the U.S. without the...
9/11 Commission Chair: 'A Good Program Is Over'
Byron York interviewed Thomas Kean, the 9/11 Commission chairman, on the revelation of the covert terror-finance intelligence operation in the New York Times last week. Kean tells the National Review's White House correspondent that he tried to talk Bill Keller out of publishing the story, and pronounces the program dead as a result of Keller's decision: Thomas Kean, the co-chairman of the September 11 Commission, was briefed several weeks ago about the Treasury Department’s terrorist-finance program, and after the session, Kean says, “I came away with the idea that this was a good program, one that was legal, one that was not violating anybody’s civil liberties…and something the U.S. government should be doing to make us safer.” Kean tells National Review Online that the New York Times’s decision to expose the terrorist finance effort — Kean called Times executive editor Bill Keller in an attempt to persuade him not to...
Mixed Bag In Texas Redistricting Case
The Supreme Court handed down a moderate victory for Texas Republicans, ruling that states can redistrict at any time, and that the redistricting plan did not violate the Constitution. The court did rule, however, that the Texas legislature must redraw one district, as the new boundaries unfairly deprived Hispanic voters of political power: The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld most of the Texas congressional map engineered by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay but threw out part, saying some of the new boundaries failed to protect minority voting rights. ... At issue was the shifting of 100,000 Hispanics out of a district represented by a Republican incumbent and into a new, oddly shaped district. Foes of the plan had argued that that was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voting rights. On a different issue, the court ruled that state legislators may draw new...
Iraqi Oil Production Hits New Post-War High
The production of oil in Iraq has reached a post-Saddam high of 2.5 million barrels a day, with a quarter of the production going to domestic use. The AP reports that the Iraqi production system has survived sabotage and political chaos to move forward to its current production levels: Iraq is producing an average of 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, its highest level since the war began in 2003, an oil ministry spokesman said Wednesday. Assem Jihad said 1.6 million barrels are being exported daily from the southern port of Basra, while 300,000 are being pumped from the northern city of Kirkuk to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The other 600,000 barrels produced daily are for domestic use, he said. ... Jihad also said new measures were being implemented and he was optimistic that the situation would improve. "We hope to add 200,000 to 300,000 (barrels per day)...
Iraqi Insurgents Want Two-Year Withdrawal Commitment
The amnesty plan offered by Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki and President Jalal al-Talibani appears to have broken a standoff with native insurgents in Iraq. The groups have replied by demanding a commitment to a two-year withdrawal plan of foreign forces from Iraq as a condition of their surrender: Insurgents are demanding the withdrawal of all U.S. and British forces from Iraq within two years as a condition for joining reconciliation talks, a senior Iraqi government official said Wednesday. ... Iraqi government officials involved with the contacts with insurgents told The Associated Press that several militant groups sent delegates from their regions and tribes to speak on their behalf. One of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of demands for secrecy in the talks, said the insurgents have so far rejected face-to-face talks, saying they fear being targeted by Shiite militias, Iraqi security forces and the Americans. The...
An Appointment With The Opthalmologist
Israeli Air Force pilots paid a visit to the Middle East's most famous opthalmologist earlier today, reminding the doctor that unless he stops protecting Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, the IDF may send a lot more business his way soon: Israeli warplanes buzzed the summer residence of Syrian President Bashar Assad early Wednesday, military officials said, in a message aimed at pressuring the Syrian leader to win the release of a captured Israeli soldier. The officials said on condition of anonymity that the fighter jets flew over Assad's palace in a low-altitude overnight raid near the Mediterranean port city of Latakia in northwestern Syria. Israeli television reports said four planes were involved, and Assad was home at the time. The flight caused "noise" on the ground, the military officials said on condition of anonymity, according to military guidelines. The IDF has paid visits to Bashar Assad before. In 2003, they buzzed...
Peretz Gives Order For Stage Two Of Gaza Incursion
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz reacted to the additional abduction claimed by the Palestinians by giving a green light to the second stage of the Israeli incursion into Gaza. The IDF will roll into northern Gaza and begin a vise manuever on the region as Israel solidifies its grip on Rafah: Less than 24 hours after the IDF entered Gaza in the biggest operation since disengagement last summer, Defense Minister Amir Peretz gave the green light on Wednesday evening for the second part of the IDF Gaza incursion. The IDF was poised to enter northern Gaza. IAF planes will distribute flyers on Wednesday night in the Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun areas in the northern Gaza Strip, warning local residents that they are endangering their lives by being in the vicinity of Kassam launch sites. ... The Hamas-led Palestinian government called for a prisoner swap with Israel, saying the Gaza...
Israel Captures Hamas Ministers As Palestinians Kill Hostage
Israeli forces rounded up dozens of Hamas ministers in the West Bank as the Gaza incursion continued. Palestinian terrorists also announced that they had killed one of their hostages, the teenager kidnapped just as Israel entered Gaza: Israeli forces arrested the Palestinian deputy prime minister and dozens of other Hamas officials early Thursday and pressed their incursion into Gaza, responding to the abduction of one of its soldiers. Adding to the tension, a Palestinian militant group said it killed an 18-year-old Jewish settler kidnapped in the West Bank. Israeli security officials said Eliahu Asheri's body was found buried near Ramallah. They said he was shot in the head, apparently soon after he was abducted on Sunday. ... Army Radio said the arrested Hamas leaders might be used to trade for the captured soldier. Israel had refused earlier to trade prisoners for the soldier's release. More than 30 lawmakers were detained,...
Did The Palestinians Fire WMD At Israel?
Reuters reports that Palestinian terrorists have claimed an attack on Israel that they say used a chemical weapon warhead (via 4 The Little Guy): A spokesman for gunmen in the Gaza Strip said they had fired a rocket tipped with a chemical warhead at Israel early on Thursday. The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the claim by the spokesman from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement. This follows the AAMB claim this weekend of WMD capability. The Israelis, however, can confirm neither the chemical attack nor any attack as described by the AAMB. So far, then, it appears that the terrorists have no WMD except in their own minds. Hopefully, that remains the case. If they do start using chemical weapons in their attacks, the Americans should take a serious interest in how the Palestinians acquired these weapons, and where...
June 29, 2006
France Blasts Israel; Palis Invade Egypt
France leveled criticism at Israel this morning for its incursion into Gaza, the Jerusalem Post reports. Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy condemned Israel's arrests of senior Hamas leadership, now up to 60, and insisted that diplomacy should be used instead of violence: French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy condemned on Thursday the arrest of over 60 Hamas members by Israeli forces early in the morning. He said that diplomacy was the only solution to the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and that political figures should not be arrested. Israel stated that the arrests were made as part of a criminal investigation into the Hamas officials' involvement in a terrorist organization. Israeli officials insisted that the detainees would be entitled to legal representation, and would be released if it were to be found that the suspicions against them were unfounded. Over 60 Hamas members, including ministers in the Palestinian Authority parliament,...
Canada Balks At Swift Program
The backlash from the Times continues today, this time in Ottawa. Canadian politicians have expressed concern over the use of SWIFT data to track terrorist financing, giving the floundering Liberals an issue to exploit against the ascendant Conservatives: Bank of Canada governor David Dodge knew in 2002 that the U.S. government wanted data from an international banking organization for use in its war on terror. ... Like other central bankers around the world, Dodge does not appear to have raised any red flags in the past four years. John McCallum, finance critic for the federal Liberals, said Canadians should be worried if personal information was sent to the CIA. It would fly in the face of Canadian law and banking practice, said McCallum, a senior executive with Royal Bank of Canada before joining former prime minister Paul Martin's cabinet as minister and secretary of state for financial institutions. ... No...
Bush Loses On Hamdan
The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Bush administration, ruling that the US cannot stage military trials for detainees captured in the war on terror. The court ruled 5-3 to overturn the appellate court ruling on Hamdan, relying oddly on the Geneva Convention although the enemy in this war does not qualify for its protections: The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees. The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and Geneva conventions. The case focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against U.S....
Why Bush Got Angry
Scott Shane provides an interesting and balanced look at George Bush' reaction to the publication of the covert Swift intel program, ironically in today's New York Times. In it, Shane acknowledges the effect that his newspaper's reporting will have on efforts to track terrorist financing: Ever since President Bush vowed days after the Sept. 11 attacks to "follow the money as a trail to the terrorists," the government has made no secret of its efforts to hunt down the bank accounts of Al Qaeda and its allies. But that fact has not muted the fury of Mr. Bush, his top aides and many members of Congress at the decision last week by The New York Times and other newspapers to disclose a centerpiece of that hunt: the Treasury Department's search for clues in a vast database of financial transactions maintained by a Belgium-based banking consortium known as Swift. ... Experts...
Bush Economy Continues To Impress
Although the national media has not covered it in any depth whatsoever, the Bush economy has turned into one of the strongest booms in the last several years. Despite predictions that it had run its course, the opening quarter of this year shows that we continue to expand at a phenomenal rate of 5.6%: The economy sprang out of a year-end rut and zipped ahead in the opening quarter of this year at a 5.6 percent pace, the fastest in 2 1/2 years and even stronger than previously thought. The new snapshot of gross domestic product for the January-to-March period exceeded the 5.3 percent growth rate estimated a month ago, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The upgraded reading — based on more complete information — matched economists' forecasts. The stronger GDP figure mostly reflected an improvement in the country's trade deficit, which was much less of a drag than previously...
Olmert Holds Off On Northern Gaza Operation
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has delayed the IDF incursion into northern Gaza due to an unexpected and unspecified diplomatic initiative, the Jerusalem Post reports. Olmert says that the initiative has paid no dividends as of yet, but apparently he wants to play it out a little further: In a meeting with Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Thursday evening, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the delay of an IDF incursion into northern Gaza . Government sources emphasized that the order was not a cancellation, but rather a postponement. The delay is related to an undisclosed development on the diplomatic front. Earlier Thursday, Peretz revealed that a "surprising diplomatic breakthrough" was possible in the attempts to release kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Shalit, but did not elaborate on the development. "We are in one of the most crucial stages of establishing the rules of conduct between us and the Palestinian terror organizations," he...
So Much For Trials
In reviewing the opinions of the Supreme Court in their Hamdan decision today, it seems pretty clear what action the Bush administration will take in the future with the detainees of the war on terror. More to the point, we know what action they will not take, at least if we rely on Justice Stevens' opinion. On page 80, in section VII of his opinion, Stevens writes: We have assumed, as we must, that the allegations made in the Government’s charge against Hamdan are true. We have assumed, moreover, the truth of the message implicit in that charge—viz., that Hamdan is a dangerous individual whose beliefs, if acted upon, would causegreat harm and even death to innocent civilians, and who would act upon those beliefs if given the opportunity. It bears emphasizing that Hamdan does not challenge, and we do not today address, the Government’s power to detain him for...
Fatah: Violence Is Hamas' Fault
A senior Fatah official in the Palestinian Authority told Israeli Radio today that, while he condemns the IDF incursion into Gaza, responsibility for this cycle of violence lies squarely with the extremists of Hamas. The advisor to Mahmoud Abbas blames Khaled Mashaal and the hardliners of Hamas for turning the world against the Palestinians: A senior Fatah member said on Thursday that although Israel should be condemned for its incursion into the Gaza Strip and the arrest of senior Hamas officials, it was Hamas who brought these actions upon the Palestinian people. He blamed Hamas' uncompromising, extremist approach - especially that of Hamas leader in Damascus Khaled Mashaal - for turning the whole world against the Palestinians. The official, an associate of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, told Israel Radio said that Mashaal interfered with any attempt at moderation or mitigation of the economic embargo on the Palestinians. The Hamas-Fatah...
How I Spend My Summer Vacation
Since I have a limited number of options for fun and frolic while I recover from my back surgery (which is coming along nicely, thank you!), I got a chance to do a little consulting for my sister, who's visiting this week. She needed to buy a laptop -- her first -- and she wanted something that would have the latest in technology. I got an opportunity to take a field trip to a new Best Buy that just opened down the street from me and give her some advice on a purchase. We took a look around at the laptops; prices have come down a bit since I boughtthe Vaio last year, so the higher end of technology is more accessible. We settled on the HP DV-8000, which was actually on clearance. It comes with plenty of features: Centrino technology, Intel duo processors, DVD burner, TV tuner, all sorts...
Dutch Government Falls Over Ayaan
The government of the Netherlands has fallen as a direct result of their handling of former MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende resigned over the controversy started by Rita Verdonk: The Dutch government has decided to resign after losing the support of its junior coalition partner in a row over Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said. The resignation follows a conflict within the coalition government about the way VVD minister Verdonk handled the controversy surrounding the citizenship of Somali-born Islam critic and former lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Just minutes before Balkenende announced in parliament that the entire government would step down, the three ministers of junior coalition party D66 said they could no longer be part of a cabinet with the controversial Verdonk. This ends the fallout of Verdonk's decision to strip Ayaan of her Dutch citizenship after the outspoken critic of...
Jihad -- A Family Affair
The Globe & Mail has a disturbing look at the family life of some of the Toronto terror cell broken up by Canadian authorities. Although the particular strain of Islam espoused by terrorists does its best to oppress women, it turns out that the wife of the cell leader believed so much in holy war that she wanted to make it a condition of their marriage: When it came time to write up the premarital agreement between Zakaria Amara and Nada Farooq, Ms. Farooq briefly considered adding a clause that would allow her to ask for a divorce. She said that Mr. Amara (now accused of being a leader of the alleged terror plot that led to the arrests of 17 Muslim men early this month) had to aspire to take part in jihad. "[And] if he ever refuses a clear opportunity to leave for jihad, then i want the...
June 30, 2006
Mubarak To Assad: Get Hamas Out Of Syria
The hesitation of Ehud Olmert to order the movement of ground troops into northern Gaza for unspecified diplomatic initiatives now can be understood. Reports have Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak demanding that Bashar Assad expel Hamas from Syria if the terrorist group does not release IDF soldier Gilad Shalit: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak demanded from his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad to deport the Syrian-based Hamas leadership unless it agrees to release kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, Palestinian sources said on Friday. The demand was made in the context of a compromise that Egypt was attempting to draft between the Israel and Hamas, whose Damascus leader, Khaled Mashaal was demanding that thousands of Palestinian detainees, held in Israeli prisons, be released. Mubarak warned Mashaal that his position was leading the Palestinians to disaster, Israel Radio reported. According to the Palestinians, the Egyptian compromise calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from...
Iranian Fighters Captured In Iraq
Guess what the Iraqis and Americans found when they captured a number of Shi'ite militia fighters in Baquba? Iraqi and U.S. troops battled Shi'ite militiamen in a village northeast of Baghdad on Thursday, and witnesses and police said U.S. helicopters bombed orchards to flush out gunmen hiding there. Iraqi security officials said Iranian fighters had been captured in the fighting, in which a sniper shot dead the commander of an Iraqi quick reaction force and two of his men. They did not say how the Iranians had been identified. ... "We captured a number of militants and were surprised to see that some of them were Iranian fighters," the police intelligence captain said. An Interior Ministry official, who did not want to be named, also said Iranian gunmen had been captured. Baquba lies 90 km (60 miles) from the Iranian border. The United States and Britain have accused Shi'ite Iran...
Hamas Hypocrisy
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, says that Hamas will not negotiate under fire for the release of Gilad Shalit. He turned down the idea of swapping Shalit for the dozens of Hamas politicians arrested by Israel in the West Bank in response to the Shalit abduction: In his first public address since Israel began its offensive into the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas on Friday said his government would not cave into Israeli demands but said he was working hard to end a five-day-old crisis with Israel. Though Haniyeh did not directly address Israel's demand that Palestinian terrorists hand over abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, he implied that the government would not trade him for eight Cabinet ministers and 56 other Hamas officials arrested on Thursday. "When they kidnapped the ministers they meant to hijack the government's position, but we say...
Obama's Prayer For The Democrats
EJ Dionne takes note of the controversy created by former left-wing hero Barack Obama, who alienated a number of pundits when he scolded Democrats for eschewing religion in their politics. Dionne, whose writings often touch on matters of faith, schools Democrats to pay attention to Obama when he counsels an outreach to the faithful: [T]here is often a terrible awkwardness among Democratic politicians when their talk turns to God, partly because they also know how important secular voters are to their coalition. When it comes to God, it's hard to triangulate. So, when a religious Democrat speaks seriously about the relationship of faith to politics, the understandable temptation is to see him as counting not his blessings but his votes. Thus did the Associated Press headline its early stories about Barack Obama's speech to religious progressives on Wednesday: "Obama: Democrats Must Court Evangelicals." Well, yes, Obama, the senator from Illinois...
I Was A Teenage Maniac
The Globe & Mail continues its in-depth look into Canada's home-grown terrorists and how they became radicalized while living in a tolerant, multicultural Western society. Yesterday the G&M reviewed the case of Nada Farooq, the wife of Zakaria Amara, one of the cell's ringleaders. Today they focus on Amara himself: More than anything, Zakaria Amara wanted to serve God. But it was never easy, especially not while living in Canada. During the summer of 2004, the then-18-year-old felt disgusted by women who were immodestly dressed. For the same reason, he couldn't watch television. He and his wife Nada Farooq stopped going to movies. One of his devout friends in England sent him a desperate e-mail asking for help in beating an addiction to pornography. But the forces tugging at Mr. Amara -- who now stands accused of being one of two leaders in a terrorist plot -- in the years...
Infirmary Update: On The Road Again
I had a productive day today, two weeks after my surgery, which is why posting has been light. I got to drive my own car for the first time in three weeks, just in the local neighborhood. I took the First Mate to dialysis under the watchful eye of my sister, who made sure that I didn't get in trouble. It felt great; I didn't realize how much being at the mercy of others for transportation needs had gotten me down. I even got the car washed and drove to my optometrist before picking the FM up from her appointment. The back got pretty sore by the time I finished, but it still felt pretty good to get out under my own steam. The optometrist gave me less thrilling news, unfortunately. I haven't had an exam in three years, and my eyes have changed enough now where I need bifocals....
About
Ed Morrissey has blogged at Captain's Quarters since 2003, and has a daily radio show at BlogTalkRadio, where he serves as Political Director. Called "Captain Ed" by his readers, Ed is a father and grandfather living in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, a native Californian who moved to the North Star State because of the weather.
My Other Blog
The Crows Nest
Infirmary Update: On The Road Again
I had a productive day today, two weeks after my surgery, which is why posting has been light. I got to drive my own car for the first time in three weeks, just in the local neighborhood. I took the First Mate to dialysis under the watchful eye of my sister, who made sure that I didn't get in trouble. It felt great; I didn't realize how much being at the mercy of others for transportation needs had gotten me down. I even got the car washed and drove to my optometrist before picking the FM up from her appointment. The back got pretty sore by the time I finished, but it still felt pretty good to get out under my own steam.
The optometrist gave me less thrilling news, unfortunately. I haven't had an exam in three years, and my eyes have changed enough now where I need bifocals. That sends the message Welcome To Middle Age in letters big enough even for me to read them. I'll have to wear glasses everywhere now, which is pretty much what I had been doing with my reading glasses anyway. Also, the doctor spotted a retinal abnormality with the retinal photography this clinic uses. It looks like a little fluid has penetrated under the retina at the far edge of the right eye, along with some old spot bleeding. It may have been there all along, but she wants a retinal surgeon to take a look at it. At worst, I'll need some laser treatment to tack it back down, but it's small and in an area that doesn't affect my vision.
Let this be a reminder to you to have your eyes checked every year. Skipping your annual exam can be dangerous to your health. The FM, my sister, and the doctor all threatened me with physical violence if I miss another one, so that can serve as your example.
The FM continues to improve. The viral load on the BK infection has come down dramatically, but the CMV load has decreased only slightly. The hemoglobin still shows some instability, and now we think that one of her medications may be a contributing cause; the doctors have to all get together to review the pharmacology and determine if changes are needed. She still needs oxygenation, but her coloring and energy levels have improved quite a bit since her last hospitalization.
Hope all of you have a great weekend.
I Was A Teenage Maniac
The Globe & Mail continues its in-depth look into Canada's home-grown terrorists and how they became radicalized while living in a tolerant, multicultural Western society. Yesterday the G&M reviewed the case of Nada Farooq, the wife of Zakaria Amara, one of the cell's ringleaders. Today they focus on Amara himself:
More than anything, Zakaria Amara wanted to serve God. But it was never easy, especially not while living in Canada.During the summer of 2004, the then-18-year-old felt disgusted by women who were immodestly dressed. For the same reason, he couldn't watch television. He and his wife Nada Farooq stopped going to movies. One of his devout friends in England sent him a desperate e-mail asking for help in beating an addiction to pornography.
But the forces tugging at Mr. Amara -- who now stands accused of being one of two leaders in a terrorist plot -- in the years leading up to his arrest this month extended well beyond those annoyances.
In 2004, he had just married a woman whose own take on Islam was often far more extreme than his own. His wife would soon become pregnant with their first child and, on little income, he struggled to balance the needs of his family and his dreams for the future. Some of his closest friends, and later fellow suspects, were also becoming more extreme. The preachers he admired -- both on-line and in Mississauga's mosques -- expressed often anti-Canadian sentiments.
Again, it seems that Canada never felt like home to these Muslims, prodded into separatism by radical imams and inspired by their Internet communications. He sees temptation everywhere, from television and films to daily interaction with secular Canadians. And while he grows more insistent on rejecting Western mores, he also becomes somewhat addicted to video games and surfing the Internet.
The Amara postings that G&M finds show someone with more than a little paranoia, feeding his identity as an outsider. Even his parents come under fire for taking a mortgage on their house, and later for demanding that he cut his hair after a hajj to Saudi Arabia. He also gets his share of disappointment for his commitment to Islam; a university in Medina rejected his application, forcing him to study at Ryerson Univeristy in Toronto instead of an Islamic college as he wanted.
Ultimately, Amara falls into relationships where his radical Islamic impulses find expression. He married his wife at 18, and as yesterday's installment shows, her radical religious philosophy far outstripped Amara's extremism, at least at first. He sought and found radical places of worship, eventually hooking up with the middle-aged Qayyum Abdul Jamal in an odd mentoring relationship. The pair wound up plotting together, and now will stand trial together.
Will this give Canadians any clue to solving the mystery of how Canadian citizens can grow up to be terrorists? Perhaps not explicitly. However, one point should be clear from the two articles: multiculturalism cannot replace assimilation. Canadian efforts to give Muslims the ability to conduct their own social interactions, including mediation of civil disputes in the mosques instead of the Canadian justice system, only increases the isolation and apartness of Muslims in their society. This should prompt Canadians -- and Americans as well -- to question previous assumptions of multiculturalism and its role in creating a tolerant and stable society.
Obama's Prayer For The Democrats
EJ Dionne takes note of the controversy created by former left-wing hero Barack Obama, who alienated a number of pundits when he scolded Democrats for eschewing religion in their politics. Dionne, whose writings often touch on matters of faith, schools Democrats to pay attention to Obama when he counsels an outreach to the faithful:
[T]here is often a terrible awkwardness among Democratic politicians when their talk turns to God, partly because they also know how important secular voters are to their coalition. When it comes to God, it's hard to triangulate.So, when a religious Democrat speaks seriously about the relationship of faith to politics, the understandable temptation is to see him as counting not his blessings but his votes. Thus did the Associated Press headline its early stories about Barack Obama's speech to religious progressives on Wednesday: "Obama: Democrats Must Court Evangelicals."
Well, yes, Obama, the senator from Illinois who causes all kinds of Democrats to swoon, did indeed criticize "liberals who dismiss religion in the public square as inherently irrational or intolerant." But a purely electoral reading of Obama's speech to the Call to Renewal conference here misses the point of what may be the most important pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy's Houston speech in 1960 declaring his independence from the Vatican.
Obama, as Dionne explains, wants to move past the church-state separation arguments by emphasizing the benefits to the faithful of such an arrangement. However, this seems rather patronizing and pointless. Very few among the faithful -- I won't say none -- expect the US government to recast itself into a theocracy, where a Guardian Council of high priests pass judgement on all legislation. (We already have that with the Supreme Court, in some ways, which is why so many of us argue for the literal interpretation of the Constitution.)
We value the power granted to the people in crafting legislation, based on shared values and limited by the Constitution. What we do not appreciate is the systematic exclusion of the voices of the faithful in these debates. The secular underpinnings of the modern Democratic Party has done their level best to make religious belief a disqualifier for public service. All we need remember are Charles Schumer's thinly veiled attacks on "deeply held personal beliefs" of Catholics such as the reason why he would not vote for their confirmation to understand the hostility felt by Democratic leadership to people of faith.
Dionne has a good point when he reminds people that the Bible contains many teachings, among them service to the poor and disadvantaged. The teachings of both Christianity and Judaism extol the values of tolerance and ethics, the holiness of working for those who have nothing or nobody, and the essential requirement of living in the world but not being of the world. In earlier times before Democrats became Christophobes, they relied on those passages to attract support for well-intentioned social programs intended to eliminate poverty and hunger. Even conservatives of faith acknowledge the strength of those arguments, and at least it provided a commonality of purpose, even when we could not agree on the means.
Now, however, the Democrats have abandoned the morality of our faith while demanding tribute to a government that has shown itself incapable of delivering any progress on the programs that their faith at one time demanded. In fact, they use the same government that forces us to support an ever-expanding set of social programs that also demands the removal of all symbols and speech of faith from the public square. The Democrats have replaced the church with the bureaucracy, and up to now have purged all that supported public expressions of faith.
It appears that the same dynamic has come into play with Barack Obama. When he made the common-sense statement that government cannot cure the soul of a man who would shoot indiscriminately into a crowd -- a crime that happened recently in Minneapolis, resulting in the death of a random bystander -- the Left excoriates him for what essentially amounts to heresy. We see no mere rhetorical device in the argument that the Left has created their own religion out of secular humanism, and the demand that Obama repent for his apostasy confirms it.
Dionne provides one of the few voices of the Left still around to speak on faith in public policy. Democrats should heed his words and get over their own form of religious intolerance. Don't force Obama to mutter E pur si muove under his breath.
UPDATE: Howard Kurtz has more on the blogospheric reaction to Obama's speech.
Hamas Hypocrisy
Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, says that Hamas will not negotiate under fire for the release of Gilad Shalit. He turned down the idea of swapping Shalit for the dozens of Hamas politicians arrested by Israel in the West Bank in response to the Shalit abduction:
In his first public address since Israel began its offensive into the Gaza Strip, Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas on Friday said his government would not cave into Israeli demands but said he was working hard to end a five-day-old crisis with Israel.Though Haniyeh did not directly address Israel's demand that Palestinian terrorists hand over abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, he implied that the government would not trade him for eight Cabinet ministers and 56 other Hamas officials arrested on Thursday.
"When they kidnapped the ministers they meant to hijack the government's position, but we say no positions will be hijacked, no governments will fall," he said.
This will come as news to Israel. After all, the entire incident came as a result of an act of war by Palestinian terrorists ferom Gaza who invaded Israel, killed two IDF soldiers, and kidnapped a third. Hamas refused to intercede for Shalit's release, and instead demanded the release of prisoners held by Israel to trade for Shalit.
And now Haniyeh refuses to negotiate under fire? Since when?
Israel changed the game on Hamas. Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal gambled that the Israelis would sit back and take no action, falling back to earlier strategies of prisoner trades for hostages. They also expected the neighboring governments and Western nations to pressure Israel to accept Hamas terms for negotiations under fire. Except for France, the Hamas strategy has backfired spectacularly. Western nations have done nothing to restrain Israel, and Egypt has called for the expulsion of Hamas' leadership in Syria.
If Hamas doesn't want to negotiate under fire, then they should stop playing with matches. This time, they have burnt themselves.
Iranian Fighters Captured In Iraq
Guess what the Iraqis and Americans found when they captured a number of Shi'ite militia fighters in Baquba?
Iraqi and U.S. troops battled Shi'ite militiamen in a village northeast of Baghdad on Thursday, and witnesses and police said U.S. helicopters bombed orchards to flush out gunmen hiding there.Iraqi security officials said Iranian fighters had been captured in the fighting, in which a sniper shot dead the commander of an Iraqi quick reaction force and two of his men. They did not say how the Iranians had been identified. ...
"We captured a number of militants and were surprised to see that some of them were Iranian fighters," the police intelligence captain said.
An Interior Ministry official, who did not want to be named, also said Iranian gunmen had been captured. Baquba lies 90 km (60 miles) from the Iranian border.
The United States and Britain have accused Shi'ite Iran of meddling in Iraq's affairs and providing military assistance to Iraq's pro-government Shi'ite militias. However, there have been few instances of Iranians actually being captured inside Iraq.
Surprise! The mullahcracy has been caught with its pants down. The Iranians have long wanted to exercise control over Iraq through the large Shi'ite population in the south. It has contested for power with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who wants to see Najafian Shi'ism come to the fore over the Iranian activist form based on Qom's scholarship. Their hopes rest on Moqtada al-Sadr, and the militia movement serves their interests in dividing Iraq and undermining their democracy.
The report states that the method used to identify these Iranian agents was not known, but as Dafydd at Big Lizards notes, it would not be difficult for Iraqis to identify Persian accents. Iranians do not speak Arabic as a native language but Farsi. Having lived in the area, they can differentiate between the accents easily enough, even if Westerners cannot.
What does this mean for the international situation? The Iranians will have to explain their presence in Iraq. This may not cause the angst some of us would like, however, as the Iranians have their own gripe about outside infiltrators in the Kurdish unrest in their own country. Unlike the Iraqis, though, the Iranians have not yet captured any of these outside infiltrators, and so they have little but secondhand information to use for their own PR purposes.
And let's face it: if we're not willing to press the issue on nuclear weapons any harder than we already have, then a handful of Iranian mercenaries will not push us into a confrontation with the mullahcracy.
However, it does provide some context for the difficulties facing the Iranians. The unrest does not spring entirely from an impulse to be rid of foreign troops of occupation. The Iranians have acted as provocateurs in the southern regions, and the absence of foreign troops at this point would only make that worse. This will also remind the Sunnis who do object to foreign troops that an early exit by the Coalition will make it that much easier for Iran to push the Shi'ite militias towards annihilation of the Sunni minority, at least until the Iraqi security forces can stand up to them.
The ultimate effect of these arrests may be a renewed push for a peaceful end to the Sunni-based native insurgencies.
Mubarak To Assad: Get Hamas Out Of Syria
The hesitation of Ehud Olmert to order the movement of ground troops into northern Gaza for unspecified diplomatic initiatives now can be understood. Reports have Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak demanding that Bashar Assad expel Hamas from Syria if the terrorist group does not release IDF soldier Gilad Shalit:
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak demanded from his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad to deport the Syrian-based Hamas leadership unless it agrees to release kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit, Palestinian sources said on Friday.The demand was made in the context of a compromise that Egypt was attempting to draft between the Israel and Hamas, whose Damascus leader, Khaled Mashaal was demanding that thousands of Palestinian detainees, held in Israeli prisons, be released. Mubarak warned Mashaal that his position was leading the Palestinians to disaster, Israel Radio reported.
According to the Palestinians, the Egyptian compromise calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, as well as the release of prisoners who were already scheduled to be released within the next year.
Meanwhile, Mubarak stated in an interview to Egypt's leading pro-government newspaper, Al-Ahram that Shalit's kidnappers have agreed to his conditional release, but Israel has not yet accepted their terms. ...
The president said he had asked Prime Minister Ehud Olmert "not to hurry" the military offensive in Gaza, but to "give additional time to find a peaceful solution to the problem of the kidnapped soldier."
The compromise still relies on Israel's release of prisoners convicted in court for attacks against them, and the Israelis are probably not terribly enthusiastic about trading them for someone abducted by terrorists. It still rewards the act of kidnapping IDF soldiers, something that will guarantee more kidnappings. If the Israelis don't jump at this deal, it's hard to blame them.
On the other hand, having Mubarak point out publicly that Hamas started the problem and that their policies are to blame for the current situation certainly represents some progress. The Israelis would love nothing more that to have top Hamas terrorist Khaled Mashaal flushed from his cave. Given Hamas' history of negotiations, they could easily welch on any deal, in which case Mubarak's call to expel Hamas would be given even more force.
Hamas had better hope that Shalit remains in good health. It looks like their southern neighbor has had enough of their leadership in Gaza, and Shalit's death might be the last straw.
Jihad -- A Family Affair
The Globe & Mail has a disturbing look at the family life of some of the Toronto terror cell broken up by Canadian authorities. Although the particular strain of Islam espoused by terrorists does its best to oppress women, it turns out that the wife of the cell leader believed so much in holy war that she wanted to make it a condition of their marriage:
When it came time to write up the premarital agreement between Zakaria Amara and Nada Farooq, Ms. Farooq briefly considered adding a clause that would allow her to ask for a divorce.She said that Mr. Amara (now accused of being a leader of the alleged terror plot that led to the arrests of 17 Muslim men early this month) had to aspire to take part in jihad.
"[And] if he ever refuses a clear opportunity to leave for jihad, then i want the choice of divorce," she wrote in one of more than 6,000 Internet postings uncovered by The Globe and Mail.
Wives of four of the central figures arrested last month were among the most active on the website, sharing, among other things, their passion for holy war, disgust at virtually every aspect of non-Muslim society and a hatred of Canada. The posts were made on personal blogs belonging to both Mr. Amara and Ms. Farooq, as well as a semi-private forum founded by Ms. Farooq where dozens of teens in the Meadowvale Secondary School area chatted. The vast majority of the posts were made over a period of about 20 months, mostly in 2004, and the majority of those were made by the group's female members.
The wives spent a lot of time on the Internet, wheedling and cajoling their readers to support and to wage jihad on Western society. Farooq wanted a baby badly, and she wanted to name it after a Chechen Islamist commander killed by the Russians. Her dream was to have her children follow in his footsteps, apparently all the way to the grave. She called openly for death by crushing for gays in Muslim societies, and she posted a prayer to Allah for the Jews to be crushed as well. Crushing, apparently, gets big play in the Amara/Farooq household. Canada doesn't fare any better in Farooq's tightly wound world. She repeatedly refers to our northern neighbor as "this filthy country". and explicitly declared in one message that "we hate Canada".
Cheryfa McAulay Jamal doesn't think too highly of Canada, either. She derides the secular nature of Canadian society, advising young Muslims not to vote or participate in its politics. She also finds membership in the United Nations objectionable -- something that might amuse the UN's critics here in the US -- and opposes the rights given to Western women. She used the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Somalia to urge her young readers to violent jihad on a number of occasions.
The portrait painted by the G&M are of an angry subculture that praises oppression and opposes the freedoms that they exploit to pursue their recruitment to jihad. It also paints them as rather naive and foolish; they obviously never considered the trail they left behind them of missives and screeds that support the image of militant jihadis. They may not mind that image, but their husbands will find it very inconvenient when they come to trial.
UPDATE: I forgot to credit Newsbeat1 with the hat tip -- sorry!
Dutch Government Falls Over Ayaan
The government of the Netherlands has fallen as a direct result of their handling of former MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Dutch PM Jan Peter Balkenende resigned over the controversy started by Rita Verdonk:
The Dutch government has decided to resign after losing the support of its junior coalition partner in a row over Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said.The resignation follows a conflict within the coalition government about the way VVD minister Verdonk handled the controversy surrounding the citizenship of Somali-born Islam critic and former lawmaker Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Just minutes before Balkenende announced in parliament that the entire government would step down, the three ministers of junior coalition party D66 said they could no longer be part of a cabinet with the controversial Verdonk.
This ends the fallout of Verdonk's decision to strip Ayaan of her Dutch citizenship after the outspoken critic of radical Islam acknowledged that she had changed her name when applying for asylum. Ayaan had gained sympathy and support from her participation in the film by Theo Van Gogh that highlighted the harsh treatment of women in traditional Islam, a film that led to the assassination of Van Gogh by Muslim extremists.
Michael van der Galien, who has followed this story from The Netherlands, writes:
One of the key issues of the debate last night was the declaration signed by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Prime-Minister Balkenende explained that this declaration was necessary for legal purposes: in it she 'promissed' that she would use the name 'Ali' in the future and would not change it to 'Magan'.However; in the last paragraph Ayaan 'admitted' that solely she was to blaim for the mess and that she was very sorry. Ayaan, however, said that she did not want to sign that declaration, due to the last paragraph because she did not agree with it. But; if she didn't sign the entire declaration things would have taken much more time. So, to be sure that she would keep her Dutch nationality, she signed it anyway.
Balkenende admitted, during the debate, that the last paragraph - in which Ayaan takes complete responsibility - was initiated by Verdonk, so it 'could be acceptable' to her.
Where I'm from we call that 'blackmail'. One of the government coalition parties D66 agreed with me.
D66 not only agreed with Michael, they put their opinion to use: they withdrew from the governing coalition after their motion to impeach Verdonk failed. The Dutch will now have to hold new national elections and put together a new government, while Ayaan has had to pay for her bravery with threatened deportation and humiliation. Rita Verdonk has had quite an impact on Dutch politics -- one that she will never live down.
How I Spend My Summer Vacation
Since I have a limited number of options for fun and frolic while I recover from my back surgery (which is coming along nicely, thank you!), I got a chance to do a little consulting for my sister, who's visiting this week. She needed to buy a laptop -- her first -- and she wanted something that would have the latest in technology. I got an opportunity to take a field trip to a new Best Buy that just opened down the street from me and give her some advice on a purchase.
We took a look around at the laptops; prices have come down a bit since I boughtthe Vaio last year, so the higher end of technology is more accessible. We settled on the HP DV-8000, which was actually on clearance. It comes with plenty of features: Centrino technology, Intel duo processors, DVD burner, TV tuner, all sorts of fun stuff. It also comes with an unsual feature -- a ten-key along with the regular laptop-style keyboard. The wide dimensions that allow the 17" screen also allows enough room for the extra keys.
I de-installed the Norton anti-virus security, having learned the lesson from my own laptop, and installed PC-Cillin. I also installed Microsoft Office at her request and removed some trial software she'll never use. I haven't played around with the TV tuner, which seems a little klugy to me, but I may in the next couple of days. The machine is pretty impressive; it runs fast, and the 200 GB of hard drive would allow for a lot of video editing. Pretty nice way to spend my down time! Too bad she's taking it with her when she leaves.
Fatah: Violence Is Hamas' Fault
A senior Fatah official in the Palestinian Authority told Israeli Radio today that, while he condemns the IDF incursion into Gaza, responsibility for this cycle of violence lies squarely with the extremists of Hamas. The advisor to Mahmoud Abbas blames Khaled Mashaal and the hardliners of Hamas for turning the world against the Palestinians:
A senior Fatah member said on Thursday that although Israel should be condemned for its incursion into the Gaza Strip and the arrest of senior Hamas officials, it was Hamas who brought these actions upon the Palestinian people.He blamed Hamas' uncompromising, extremist approach - especially that of Hamas leader in Damascus Khaled Mashaal - for turning the whole world against the Palestinians.
The official, an associate of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, told Israel Radio said that Mashaal interfered with any attempt at moderation or mitigation of the economic embargo on the Palestinians.
The Hamas-Fatah split does not seem to have improved under fire. Fatah may see this as a golden opportunity to sell themselves as moderates that can deliver better conditions for Palestinians while negotiating on a hard-line basis with Israel and the West. They lost the last election due to their overwhelming corruption, but the Palestinians may soon long for the days when they let the crooks run the asylum rather than the lunatics.
The agreement between Hamas and Fatah on national unity may soon become a casualty to the Gaza incursion. After the border invasion and kidnapping that Hamas at least sanctioned, Fatah will be more cautious about marrying itself to the leadership of Khaled Mashaal. When the IDF leaves Gaza, look for the civil war to follow in their wake.
So Much For Trials
In reviewing the opinions of the Supreme Court in their Hamdan decision today, it seems pretty clear what action the Bush administration will take in the future with the detainees of the war on terror. More to the point, we know what action they will not take, at least if we rely on Justice Stevens' opinion. On page 80, in section VII of his opinion, Stevens writes:
We have assumed, as we must, that the allegations made in the Government’s charge against Hamdan are true. We have assumed, moreover, the truth of the message implicit in that charge—viz., that Hamdan is a dangerous individual whose beliefs, if acted upon, would causegreat harm and even death to innocent civilians, and who would act upon those beliefs if given the opportunity. It bears emphasizing that Hamdan does not challenge, and we do not today address, the Government’s power to detain him for the duration of active hostilities in order to prevent such harm. But in undertaking to try Hamdanand subject him to criminal punishment, the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in thisjurisdiction.
Shorter Stevens: Don't attempt to hold trials at all for GWOT detainees, and you will have no problems with us. That affirms the treatment of these detainees as POWs in some sense, but in that effort, it makes clear that these detainees have no rights to any court. Stevens only says that if the government wants to try them, then the government must use civil courts, a strange ruling nonetheless when one reviews the relevant articles of the Geneva Convention.
I'm satisfied with that agreement. Lock all of them up until Islamofascists surrender or die. When the Islamist terror networks give up their war on the United States, then we will release them. Until then, they can remain in Guantanamo Bay or wherever we set up detention facilities for them.
Olmert Holds Off On Northern Gaza Operation
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has delayed the IDF incursion into northern Gaza due to an unexpected and unspecified diplomatic initiative, the Jerusalem Post reports. Olmert says that the initiative has paid no dividends as of yet, but apparently he wants to play it out a little further:
In a meeting with Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Thursday evening, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the delay of an IDF incursion into northern Gaza . Government sources emphasized that the order was not a cancellation, but rather a postponement.The delay is related to an undisclosed development on the diplomatic front.
Earlier Thursday, Peretz revealed that a "surprising diplomatic breakthrough" was possible in the attempts to release kidnapped Cpl. Gilad Shalit, but did not elaborate on the development.
"We are in one of the most crucial stages of establishing the rules of conduct between us and the Palestinian terror organizations," he asserted.
His aides, however, said that diplomatic efforts "were not bearing fruit," but added that a new development was possible soon.
The initiative has not kept the Israelis from pressing their incursion in the south. The IDF has to ensure that the breached southern border does not allow the terrorists holding Gilad Shalit to escape into Egypt. They want to box the terrorists into as small an area as possible in Gaza. If the situation with Shalit changes for the worst, the IDF wants to have a concentration of targets to attack.
Arab diplomats have no illusions about any diplomacy involving Hamas. The Post reports that they have started to flee Gaza, fearing the results of this standoff. That report comes not from Israel but from the Hebollah television network Al-Manar. They understand that the Israelis mean business on this mission, and that without Hamas surrendering Shalit and any other Israelis they have abducted, the Israelis intend on inflicting serious damage to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and any terrorist infrastructure they can find.
This development should mature in the next few hours. Olmert will not wait forever for the diplomats to provide a solutiion and to return Israeli hostages to the IDF.
Bush Economy Continues To Impress
Although the national media has not covered it in any depth whatsoever, the Bush economy has turned into one of the strongest booms in the last several years. Despite predictions that it had run its course, the opening quarter of this year shows that we continue to expand at a phenomenal rate of 5.6%:
The economy sprang out of a year-end rut and zipped ahead in the opening quarter of this year at a 5.6 percent pace, the fastest in 2 1/2 years and even stronger than previously thought.The new snapshot of gross domestic product for the January-to-March period exceeded the 5.3 percent growth rate estimated a month ago, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The upgraded reading — based on more complete information — matched economists' forecasts.
The stronger GDP figure mostly reflected an improvement in the country's trade deficit, which was much less of a drag than previously estimated.
The economy does not get much press in a Republican administration unless the news is bad. That isn't just the fault of the media, but also of the people who run communications at the Treasury and the White House. One of the reasons that John Snow had been rumored to be on his way out for so long was the lack of attention given to the four years of economic expansion under George Bush. Apparently, this trend still continues.
One might expect that a better-than-expected trade deficit might get some attention, especially considering the controversies drummed up by political opponents over outsourcing. Again, the improvement will probably escape the notice of the media, due to the lack of bad news.
Cheer up. though, because analysts believe the Q2 figure will drop to around 3%. We can then expect headlines screaming that growth fell by almost half between the two quarters, with plenty of doomsayers to explain why the Bush tax policies are to blame. At that point, they will have to report that Q1 showed such excellent economic strength and hope that viewers and readers can't connect the dots.
Why Bush Got Angry
Scott Shane provides an interesting and balanced look at George Bush' reaction to the publication of the covert Swift intel program, ironically in today's New York Times. In it, Shane acknowledges the effect that his newspaper's reporting will have on efforts to track terrorist financing:
Ever since President Bush vowed days after the Sept. 11 attacks to "follow the money as a trail to the terrorists," the government has made no secret of its efforts to hunt down the bank accounts of Al Qaeda and its allies.But that fact has not muted the fury of Mr. Bush, his top aides and many members of Congress at the decision last week by The New York Times and other newspapers to disclose a centerpiece of that hunt: the Treasury Department's search for clues in a vast database of financial transactions maintained by a Belgium-based banking consortium known as Swift. ...
Experts on terror financing are divided in their views of the impact of the revelations. Some say the harm in last week's publications in The Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal may have been less in tipping off terrorists than in putting publicity-shy bankers in an uncomfortable spotlight.
"I would be surprised if terrorists didn't know that we were doing everything we can to track their financial transactions, since the administration has been very vocal about that fact," said William F. Wechsler, a former Treasury and National Security Council official who specialized in tracking terrorism financing.
But Mr. Wechsler said the disclosure might nonetheless hamper intelligence collection by making financial institutions resistant to requests for access to records.
"I wouldn't be surprised if these recent articles have made it more difficult to get cooperation from our friends in Europe, since it may make their cooperation with the U.S. less politically palatable," Mr. Wechsler said.
The problem did not come from the knowledge of our efforts to track financing; it comes from the exposure of the specific tactics we used to do so. As my previous post on Canada shows, that exposure has created pressure on those people who cooperated with American intel agencies to track those transactions. The damage will not limit itself to that particular effort either, but to all instances where we need to discreetly receive cooperation from allies. The Paper of Record has made sure than no one can rely on American discretion.
The House has competing resolutions regarding this revelation, as Shane reports. Republicans have proposed one that supports the Swift effort and scolds unnamed media outlets for jeopardizing national-security efforts. The Democrats have offered an alternative that skips over the generic finger-wagging. Neither resolution has any meaning or teeth, and both should be withdrawn as an embarrassment to the politicians who sponsored them.
Instead of meaningless resolutions, Congress needs to hold hearings immediately on the rash of leaks coming from our intel agencies and Department of Defense. They need to demand an investigation by the Department of Justice that will identify the perpetrators and charge them with the felonies they have committed by their unauthorized release of classified information.
We need to forget about prosecuting the Times for the releases. That dog won't hunt politically, and legally it will be a necessarily tough sell. The people who leaked this information, however, violated a number of laws in doing so. The reporters involved in these stories need to have subpoenas issued to them for their testimony -- and if they do not cooperate, then they need to sit in jail until they do.
Bush Loses On Hamdan
The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Bush administration, ruling that the US cannot stage military trials for detainees captured in the war on terror. The court ruled 5-3 to overturn the appellate court ruling on Hamdan, relying oddly on the Geneva Convention although the enemy in this war does not qualify for its protections:
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that President Bush overstepped his authority in ordering military war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees.The ruling, a rebuke to the administration and its aggressive anti-terror policies, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, who said the proposed trials were illegal under U.S. law and Geneva conventions.
The case focused on Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who worked as a bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan, 36, has spent four years in the U.S. prison in Cuba. He faces a single count of conspiring against U.S. citizens from 1996 to November 2001.
I haven't read the decision, but the reliance on the Geneva Convention seems strange. The convention binds nations when dealing with other signatories, not with those who have not agreed to reciprocity. The terrorists we have captured do not wear uniforms to distinguish themselves from civilians; in fact, they take great pains to hide themselves among civilians, deliberately target civilians, and use civilians as human shields. Applying Geneva Convention protections to these terrorists undermines the primary reason for these conventions: protection of civilians. They now will pay no penalty for their disregard for the rules of war, thanks to SCOTUS.
In fact, if one follows the rules of Geneva, these prisoners would not get access to criminal courts, either. Article 84 makes this clear:
A prisoner of war shall be tried only by a military court, unless the existing laws of the Detaining Power expressly permit the civil courts to try a member of the armed forces of the Detaining Power in respect of the particular offence alleged to have been committed by the prisoner of war.
Since members of our armed forces would face a court-martial for crimes against civilians during a time of war, this tends to negate the exception offered under 84. Article 96 states:
Without prejudice to the competence of courts and superior military authorities, disciplinary punishment may be ordered only by an officer having disciplinary powers in his capacity as camp commander, or by a responsible officer who replaces him or to whom he has delegated his disciplinary powers.
Article 97 also states:
Prisoners of war shall not in any case be transferred to penitentiary establishments (prisons, penitentiaries, convict prisons, etc.) to undergo disciplinary punishment therein.
The Convention forbids criminal trials for those captured in war, except in cases of discipline breaches at the holding facility or POW camp. Prisoners must be held until the end of the conflict, and then repatriated to their nation of origin. All that the Convention allows is a military tribunal to determine their status under the rules of war, ie, whether they qualify as POWs. SCOTUS seems to argue that we must violate the Geneva Conventions in order to uphold them.
The opinion should have some interesting tap-dancing. In any case, the Supreme Court has effectively negated the ability for us to detain terrorists. Instead, we will likely see more of them die, since the notion of having the servicemen who captured these prisoners forced to appear to testify to their "arrest" is not only ridiculous but would require us to retire combat units as a whole whenever their prisoners appear for trial.
Congress needs to correct this issue immedately. The mischief that this enables will not only hamstring this war on terror, but any future war we may be forced to wage.
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