Live Chat With CQ

Given that I’m feeling under the weather today and am trying to recover from a nasty cold, I though this might be a good day to try a live chat for CQ readers. I’ll be discussing any topic that interests those who join the session, which will run from 1 – 2 pm Eastern time. I’ll be hosting this chat on AOL Instant Messenger, so if you want to join, either leave your screen name in the comments of this post or send it to me in an e-mail with the subject “CQ Chat” (so I can find it easily). I’ll invite you to the chat as soon as I start setting up the chat.
If I can figure out how to do it, I’ll post the session as an update to this post.
UPDATE: The chat room title is “CQ Chat”, but I think I still need to invite people to it. If you are interested, be sure to post your AIM screen name in the comments or on e-mail.
UPDATE II: Well, that didn’t work. I had trouble with my end of the chat, and it wound up being a frustrating experience for the one hardy soul who tried to make it work. When we do this again, I’ll give a lot more warning and make sure everything’s working properly.

Kurtz On Katrina

Howard Kurtz reviews the raging storm over the media coverage on Katrina and the supposedly new revelations that Bush was somehow warned about levee breaches without the word “breach” ever being mentioned. He also notes that the “newly uncovered” video footage actually had been in the possession of all the networks for months:

Since the AP released the videotaped Katrina meetings, liberals have been ripping the president for claiming he didn’t know the extent of the devastation in those crucial early hours.
This is in no way a defense of the absolutely awful administration response to the hurricane, but the tape doesn’t quite show Bush being told the levees were breached or were about to be breached. A government official named Max Mayfield says there is great concern “whether the levees will be topped or not,” which is still a huge deal, but not a full-scale breach.
In fact, we’ve already had transcripts of the meeting, so all this did was provide television with some much-needed pictures. (In fact, all the networks had the FEMA video in their archives but didn’t realize the news value.)
NBC’s Lisa Myers yesterday obtained a videotape of another meeting in which Brownie–who’s been blaming just about everything on the White House and Chertoff–said Bush was “really engaged” and “asking a lot of good questions.” On that tape, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blano reports that the New Orleans levees had not been breached.

Kurtz stops short of actually concluding that this is a non-story, declining to give an opinion on the matter despite being a media critic. However, he does point out the essential problems in this story and provides links to various voices in the media and blogosphere, including CQ. He includes in these links, but not in his preface, the fact that Governor Kathleen Blanco told Bush on the 29th — in response to his direct question — that the levees had not been breached. The AP now has the videotape of that sequence, something they left out of their initial reporting. I noted this yesterday when I compared the AP report to that of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Rather than being distant and uninterested, Brown says that the president had been very engaged, calling him twice on the morning of the 29th before the meeting started at noon for updates — and it was Bush who brought up levee breaches first, responding to media reports, and he got bad information from Blanco herself.
For anyone interested in media critique, Howard Kurtz is always a must-read; his column provides an invaluable look at what the media considers the hot controversy of the moment, and he is one of the few establishment media critics to engage the blogosphere.

Visiting TortureWorld

Michael Totten has returned from a trip to Iraq, where he toured one of Saddam’s torture facilities — this one apparently specifically designed for Kurdish victims. He posts several pictures (work safe) and writes eloquently about his experiences:

Suleimaniya is the most liberal city in Iraqi Kurdistan, partly because of its long-standing and deep ties to nearby Iran, one of the most culturally liberal countries in the Middle East. The Iraqi Kurds I met who have been to Iran wanted me to know – and they want you to know, as well – that the distance between the Iranian people and their hideous regime is galactic. I heard the same refrain over and over again: “Persians are just like us.” In other words, they are liberal, secular, pro-Western, and fed up with tyrants. “Iranians love America,” the Kurds told me. “They have nothing to do with Ahmadinejad.”
All the way back in 1973 Moula Mustafa Barzani, the famous and beloved leader of the anti-Baathist Kurdish resistance, said he wanted Iraqi Kurdistan to become the 51st American state. Nowhere did Barzani’s fierce campaign resonate more deeply than it did in Suleimaniya. Suli isn’t only the cultural capital of the region – its New York, if you will. It also is the capital of Kurdish nationalism. Saddam Hussein called it “The Head of the Snake.”
He answered with genocide. No one in Iraq experienced the full wrath of Saddam’s Black Arabism more than the Kurds. If the Kurds refused to morph themselves into loyal little Baathists, he would erase them from the face of the earth.

And as Michael’s pitcures testify, he did exactly that. Read the entire essay.

Just How Long Is This Eleventh Hour Anyway?

The BBC reports the failure of “eleventh-hour” negotiations between Iran and the EU to stop nuclear-weapons development in the Islamic Republic, a tiresome description made possible by the inertia in the international community that has delayed any meaningful action against the mullahcracy:

Last-minute talks between Iran and EU nations over Tehran’s nuclear programme have broken up without agreement.
The discussions were called by Iran in a last-ditch bid to avoid possible UN action over its nuclear programme.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, will decide on Monday if action is needed. …
At Friday’s talks, officials from the UK, France and Germany – the so-called EU3 – said they were there to listen to Iran, but they presented no new plans of their own.
A letter from the EU3 to Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, warned Iran earlier this week that any progress would be dependent on Iran stepping up co-operation with UN inspectors.
After the meeting, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said talks “were carried out in a constructive atmosphere but finally we were unable to reach agreement.”

The EU and Russia have entered frantic negotiations to stop Iranian development of nuclear material since the IAEA voted to refer the matter to the UN Security Council, but have shown no results. Iran has issued conflicting statements about the Russian proposal to enrich the uranium they supposedly need for energy generation; they swing between expressing an interest in the compromise and dismissing it altogether. The end result is more delays and more obfuscation on the part of the Iranians.
Time is running out. The UNSC should take this matter in hand as soon as possible and impose some kind of sanctions on Iran, a plan that will hurt the mullahcracy more than just a revenue pinch. The UNSC should vote to fund democratic reform in Iran, the one strategy that would really result in disarmament in Teheran. Show support for reformers, fund their organizations, use UN resources to bolster their lines of communication, and make clear to the Supreme Governing Council that their pursuit of nuclear weapons will end with them lined up against the wall in the coming revolution.
Of course, with Russia and China wielding veto power, it will never happen; any such action will wind up a dead letter in Turtle Bay. When that happens, the US and as many partners as it can find should take that action themselves. Not only will it accelerate the liberation of Iran from its theocratic fringe, but it will once again show that the UN is nothing more than an incompetent, impotent haven for despots and kleptocrats rather than an organization that represents the people of the world.
And then we can start talking abour the UN’s eleventh hour and pray that it doesn’t become as interminable as Iran’s nuclear showdown.

…And Generalissimo Franco Valiantly Remains Dead

Russia incurred the criticism of the West by inviting Hamas to the Kremlin, arguing that engagement with the terrorist group would alllow them to moderate their stance towards Israel. Hamas, in turn, used its diplomatic opening today to announce that it will never recognize Israel’s existence:

Hamas’ political leader, on a groundbreaking visit to Russia, rejected on Friday any discussion about the militant group’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist, dealing a setback to Moscow’s efforts to persuade it to soften its stance.
“The issue of recognition (of Israel) is a decided issue,” said Hamas’ exiled political leader, Khaled Mashaal, upon arrival in Moscow for talks with Russian officials. “We don’t intend to recognize Israel.” …
After arriving in Moscow, Mashaal accused Israel of blocking the Mideast peace process and said Israel’s “occupation” of Palestinian lands will top the agenda in the Moscow talks.
“No conditions will be put forward during our visit to Moscow,” Mashaal said. “We will listen to Russia’s position and clarify ours.”

I’d say that Mashaal’s position hardly requires clarification, but apparently in Moscow it does. Despite having campaigned for the destruction of Israel for the entirety of its 19-year history and the litany of statements from Hamas that it will not change that goal, Vladimir Putin invited the terrorists to Russia anyway. That seems a rather strange action to take, with Putin defending the Caucasus against Islamists similar to Hamas. One has to wonder how the planned tour of the Kremlin will be received by Russian commanders in Chechnya and other restive territories on the southern border.
Putin will live to regret giving Islamofascist terrorists this kind of credibility, but he won’t be the only one. It turns out that South Africa has also invited Hamas for a state visit. That is a disappointing but not terribly surprising development. All this does is to legitimize terrorism rather than force the Palestinians to take responsibility for producing true negotiators for peace. Russia and South Africa have endorsed a long and bloody war with their diplomatic recognition of Hamas.
I wonder why the UN has not balked at this. When was the last time that member states offered diplomatic access to officials of a group that explicitly calls for the annihilation of another member state? Why bother to join the UN if it doesn’t offer any diplomatic defense for its members, especially one that the organization played such a role in founding? Need I wonder at all?

Domestic Terrorists Find Out Times Have Changed

Six animal-rights activists that ran a front group for pipe-bombers discovered that the nation has lost patience with violent protests, and now face as much as 23 years behind bars for their connections to vandalism, bombings, and death threats against medical researchers. The verdict is the first conviction under a law passed fourteen years ago to stop attacks on research facilities and their staffs:

An animal rights group and six of its members were convicted of terrorism and Internet stalking yesterday by a federal jury that found them guilty of using their Web site to incite attacks on those who did business with or worked for a British company that runs an animal testing laboratory in New Jersey.
The case was the first test of the Animal Enterprise Terror Act, enacted in 1992 to curb the most aggressive tactics used by activists. The verdict, which came after 14 hours of deliberation, was called an insidious threat to free speech by some activists, but was cheered by research scientists, some of whom are lobbying Congress to tighten restrictions on protesters.
During the three-week trial, defense lawyers acknowledged that a Web site run by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty posted home addresses and other personal information about animal researchers and others. But the activists said they were simply trying to shame their targets into dissociating themselves from the company, Huntingdon Life Sciences, and they disavowed any involvement with the vandalism, death threats, computer hacking and pipe bombs against those on the Web site.
Although federal prosecutors presented no evidence that the defendants directly participated in the vandalism and violence, they showed jurors that members of the group made speeches and Web postings from 2000 to 2004 that celebrated the violence and repeatedly used the word “we” to claim credit for it.
Prosecutors also produced telephone records indicating that the president of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, Kevin Kjonaas, called a man charged with bombing a California biotech lab shortly after the explosion.
Jurors were also shown a videotape of SHAC’s director, Lauren Gazzola, at a protest in Boston, making reference to the previous acts of violence and warning a target, “The police can’t protect you!”

Supporters of SHAC claimed that the law and the verdict amounted to an infringement on free speech, but the First Amendment has never been held to protect death threats and admissions of complicity in crimes. The leaders of front groups such as SHAC have routinely acted as political mouthpieces for terrorists, and this verdict now shows that a price will come from voluntarily acting as accessories to their crimes.
Anyone who bombs, vandalizes, or issues death threats to achieve what they cannot win through the legislative process is a terrorist, regardless of the cause. It does not matter whether that cause is abortion, the environment, animal research, or eliminating the designated hitter rule. Ends do not justify means, and living in a democracy means accepting the legitimacy of a loss in the democratic process. For years, people who acted violently in support of political issues found too much sympathy from their peers. Those days appear over, and not a moment too soon.
Advocacy groups that front for people like the Animal Liberation Front should take a lesson from this prosecution. Especially after 9/11, distinctions between the terrorists and those that enable and protect them have been eliminated. Apologists for bombthrowers only damage the credibility of their cause, and in cases like SHAC, their own liberty as well.

The Message Behind The India Deal

George Bush won an important diplomatic victory, one he has long sought, in bringing India into close ties with the United States. He and Indian PM Manmohan Singh signed a deal to support nuclear energy initiatives in the world’s largest democracy despite earlier sanctions arising from India’s nuclear testing eight years ago, prompting Singh to declare the US-Indian relationship healthier than ever before:

The agreement between the world’s oldest and largest democracies allows India to buy nuclear technology and fuel from the US to power its fast-growing economy.
It marks a major shift in American policy towards India, which Washington punished with sanctions after it conducted nuclear weapons tests in 1998.
“Things change,” Mr Bush said as he announced the deal with Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India.“It’s in our interests that India have a civilian nuclear industry to help take the pressure off of the global demand for energy.”
Mr Singh declared: “History was made today.
“Our discussions today make me confident that there are no limits to Indo-US partnerships.”

In an even more surprising development, IAEA chief Mohammed ElBaradei endorsed the deal despite India’s refusal to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Some have speculated that Bush might have trouble getting this new treaty ratified because of the NPT issue, but ElBaradei told the press that the new program aimed at strengthening India’s civilian nuclear-energy program will assist in containing proliferation. Any potential opposition in the Senate will find themselves undercut by that statement — and the natural alliance that should exist between the two democracies will find too much sympathy for opposition on any other grounds.
This deal sends a strong message of solidarity to the Indians, who for too long got forgotten by the US after successive governments decided to play footsie with the Soviet Union and the Non-Aligned Movement rather than ally India with the democracies of the West. However, that’s not the only message this deal sends, and at least one of the other recipients listened closely.
Bush has long desired to build stronger ties with India as a counterweight to China. This move isn’t a shot in the dark, either. The US policy under George Bush in central and southern Asia pushes democracy as a bulwark against increasing Russian autocracy and Chinese expansionism. The effort lines up nicely with the US push in the ‘stans to expand American influence through the support of free and open political structures. Having India as an ally helps build credibility and underscores Bush’s commitment to freedom.
Bush also sent a message to China about both North Korea and Iran by dismissing India’s status as a nuclear power. The Chinese have not proven very helpful in resolving either conflict, allowing Kim Jong-Il to dither on disarmament and quietly obstructing a clear and timely resolution to the Iranian showdown. China has made clear that it will not support even economic sanctions against the mullahcracy, making the UNSC referral somewhat of a moot point.
In shrugging at India’s nuclear weapons and concluding this far-reaching agreement despite India’s status on the NPT, Bush has dropped the other shoe on both China and Russia. Russia has been playing at Great Game efforts of late, especially on Iran. Now Bush has answered both China and Russia with an influential and public counterweight to Russia’s designs on influence in Asia and China’s attempt at political and economic hegemony.
India also gains by landing the US as an ally against both nations and regaining Western focus. No doubt Delhi has paid attention to the rise of radical Islam in the region, being surrounded by the phenomenon and having their own internal issues with restive Muslims. They need friends in the West more than ever now, and the predominantly Hindu nation understands the consequences of falling victim to dhimmitude.
This may well wind up being the most significant diplomatic victory of the Bush administration, for economics, globalization, and geopolitics. Hopefully the Senate will not attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when the time comes to ratify the deal.

Able Danger, The Lawsuit

The principals in the Able Danger story have filed suit to restrain the Department of Defense from retaliating against Tony Shaffer and to allow these witnesses to retain counsel during the closed hearings that Congress has scheduled into the data-mining program. Mark Zaid, representing Shaffer as well as contractor J. D. Smith, filed the suit on Monday against the DoD, DIA, the Army, and their attorneys in the DC district court.
I’ve copied the text into the extended entry of this post. Most of those who have followed Able Danger will not be surprised by the allegations in the lawsuit. However, the extent of obstructionism should raise some eyebrows in Congress, who may wonder why the DIA will not allow these witnesses to share the fruits of the Able Danger effort with their committees, even in closed session:

25. In September 2005, both Shaffer and Smith were scheduled to testify before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss their involvement with ABLE DANGER. Shaffer submitted proposed testimony to the DoD for classification review, but the DoD has never responded. In any event, the defendants claimed all information concerning ABLE DANGER was classified and refused to consent to allow the 8 testimony. Their undersigned counsel, Mark S. Zaid, testified in their place on September 21, 2005.
26. Just days before Shaffer was to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the DIA revoked his security clearance amidst allegations of criminal conduct and unfavorable credibility determinations. The DIA specifically asserted that Shaffer had lied during appeal proceedings. Upon information and belief, the revocation of Shaffer’s security clearance, particularly the speed at which it occurred, was, in part or in whole, in retaliation for Shaffer’s public and/or private comments concerning ABLE DANGER. Additionally, as part of Shaffer’s security clearance adjudication process, the undersigned counsel was provided access to classified information.
27. By letter dated February 2, 2006, the plaintiffs renewed their request to share relevant classified information with their counsel, particularly in order to appear in a closed, classified House of Representative’s hearing.
28. By letter dated February 14, 2006, defendant Peirce responded on behalf of all defendants denying the undersigned counsel’s request for access to classified information. Upon information and belief, defendant Berry participated in drafting and formulating the defendants’ response. Peirce, as DIA General Counsel, does not possess the authorization or qualifications to render clearance determinations under the circumstances.

Why has the DoD assigned questions of classification to its counsel rather than the top brass? Peirce apparently addressed the security issue directly rather than simply passing along a finding by those in Defense tasked with reviewing the use of classified material. Under the circumstances, this looks a bit suspicious, especially since so much of AD has already been discussed in public, thanks to the 9/11 Commission’s bout of obtuseness that kept it from their review of the terror attacks and the US defense posture at the time.
Congress should ask these same questions of the DIA and DoD. Their commission report has lost credibility thanks to the effort of some at the Pentagon to keep the defunct program under wraps. One would hope that they would find some interest in getting to the real truth about pre-9/11 knowledge of AQ and the obstacles that the AD team faced.

Continue reading “Able Danger, The Lawsuit”

Katrina Tape Transcripts Show Media Hack Job

For those who want to see the transcripts themselves of the video conferences, the New York Times has them for the August 28th and August 29th briefings. The transcript for the 29th makes one garbled mention of the levees around New Orleans (page 6). After making the point that the storm surge would cause the greatest devastation in the Gulfport area of Mississippi, going as high as 21 feet, Max Mayfield then turns to New Orleans:

MAX MAYFIELD: … The rest of the track we have 10 to 15 feet, in a few areas up to 16 feet. At least glimpsed it out, and Louisiana can talk a little bit more about this than I can, but it looks like the Federal levies [sic] around the City of New Orleans will not have been (incomprehensible) any breaches to.

That certainly doesn’t sound like a warning — and this was on the day the levees broke. That transcript clearly shows that the conference considered the storm surge and precipitation runoff to be the major threats of flooding in New Orleans. The possibility of breaches, even on the 29th, had been discounted.
The transcript from the August 28th meeting talked more about levees, but in the same vein, and this time no one mentions the word “breach”. Starting on page 5, Max Mayfield again talks about the dangers of Lake Pontchartrain, but only in the context of the winds created a surge that could overtop the levees:

One of the valleys here in Lake Pontchartrain, we’ve got on our forecast track, if it maintains its intensity: about 12 1/2 feet of storm surge in the lake. The big question is going to be: will that top some of the levies? And the currrent track and the forecast we have now suggests there will be minimal flooding in the city of New Orleans itself, but we’re — we’ve always said that the storm surge model is only accurate within 20 percent.
If that track were to deviate just a little bit to the west, it would — it makes all the difference in the world. I do expect that there will be some of the levies over top even out here in the western portions where the airport is. We’ve got valleys that can’t overtop some of the levies.
The problem we’re going to have here — remember, the winds go counterclockwise around the center of the hurricane. So if the really strong winds clip Lake Pontchartrain, that’s going to pile some of that water from Lake Pontchartrain over on the south side of the lake. I don’t think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levies will be topped or not, but that’s obviously a very, very grave concern.

Again, the entire briefing that related to levees only focused on the effects of the wind on Lake Pontchartrain and its effect in pushing water over the top of the levees. Mayfield never even addressed the possibility of breaches in the levee walls. And in fact, the storm track shifted eastward in the final hours before Katrina hit, which eliminated much of the predicate for even the worries Mayfield expresses in this transcript.
The media got it wrong yet again on Katrina. The notion that the experts warned of levee breaches is nothing more than a hack job initiated by the AP and continued by the rest of the Exempt Media even after the source material has proven it false.

Europe Puts On Its Blinders

In a spectacularly misguided effort, the European Union has released a report scolding members for allowing the CIA and other American agencies to operate unfettered on the Continent in its search for Islamofascist terrorists, failing to mention at all the fact that so many can be found there:

Europe has become “a happy hunting ground” for foreign intelligence agents looking to kidnap terrorist suspects, the leader of the continent’s top human rights group said Wednesday, urging European governments to crack down on operatives working for the CIA and other spy services.
Terry Davis, chairman of the Council of Europe, also criticized several European countries for not being more forthcoming about whether they have helped the CIA carry out extralegal counterterrorism operations on their soil. These include the secret detention and abduction of suspected members of al-Qaeda.
“I strongly support cooperation between Europe and the United States of America on all issues and especially the fight against terrorism,” Davis said at a news conference at the council’s headquarters in Strasbourg, France.
“But I also insist that European governments should have sufficient confidence to participate in such cooperation as equal partners.”

According to Davis, the pressing problem for the EU is not the fact that their countries have been infiltrated by terrorism to such an extent that they present a “happy hunting ground”, it’s that they haven’t forced the CIA to get a hunting permit. They complain that the CIA does not operate under European sensibilities for legality and human rights. However, Davis doesn’t understand that the CIA isn’t a law-enforcement agency but an intelligence and espionage organization; by definition, that means that their agents operate outside the law and in a covert manner. Not only that, but somehow Davis manages to avoid drawing the line between the amount of terrorists found in their countries and those same legal and human-rights standards that keep Europe from doing much about it.
Europe plays the same game that the American Left does at home — draw no distinction between the terrorists and the people trying to catch them and keep civilians safe. This effort treats terrorists as if they were the equivalent of the American intelligence forces that wish to capture them, almost as if the EU looks at them as the successor to the KGB. Terrorists are not spies or moles, at least not primarily; they are mass murderers, intending on killing large amounts of civilians if not stopped. The CIA and the intelligence agencies with whom they work have to disrupt those plans and grab the perpetrators before they can attack in order to achieve success. That’s why this is a war and not a law-enforcement action.
In fact, the report itself states that it has no real factual basis on which to make these claims:

The report contends that the CIA has unfettered ability to mount covert counterterrorism operations in Europe with little regard to European legal and human rights standards. But the council said it was unable to collect any fresh evidence or obtain independent confirmation of several alleged CIA plots to apprehend or detain suspects on the continent.

So in the end, all the Davis report does is regurgitate the rumors and anonymously-sourced news reports to condemn the CIA and the nations that understand the threat of terrorism. If we wanted that, we could have just bought the New York Times for a buck.