All part of the price of PC

Thomas Lifson reminds us of some sad truths:

That didn't take long. Human nature (male variety) remains constant. The BBC reports:

A Heathrow Airport security guard was given a police warning after he was allegedly caught staring at images of a female colleague in a body scanner.

Israel manages to overcome the most threatening environment for airline terrorism in the world by use of profiling, but in the United States, thanks to political correctness, we insist on considering elderly grandmothers from Iowa a threat as serious as the Detroit crotch bomber.

As a result, attractive females can expect to be ogled at airports. Sorry, ladies. PC strikes again.

Actually we don't consider elderly grandmothers from Iowa to be threats. We (meaning the TSA) consider them to be cover. There is a difference.

TSA screeners have been instructed to avoid singling out anyone who appears to be of Middle Eastern descent as much as possible, but if they absolutely must pay special attention to someone who appears to be an "Arab" they need to be able to document that they have also payed such special attention to at least ten white people on the same day.

This is the way this works out in real life. Say you have a group of three Middle Eastern-looking men standing in line at the security station having a loud discussion about how they are going to drive the infidel from sacred Muslim soil and saying prayers in Arabic in which the words "jihad" and "Osama" can be clearly discerned. Your ever vigilant TSA employees will want to subject these men to a heightened level of security but to do so without being sued they will also have to pull aside 30 Caucasian businessmen, grandmothers, boy scouts and elderly Congressional Medal of Honor recipients to balance out the Arabs.

Think about this

Hi everybody. I'm working overtime to get all work orders completed and all paperwork done for the end of the year so I won't be around much till Friday.

If you are all like me you are watching the developments in the case of the "underwear bomber" and the Obama administration's attempts to spin their way out of the growing scandal of how this jihadi was able to so much as buy a plane ticket to the United States much less board the plane with a bomb.

Here's another question that needs to be seriously asked and seriously answered. Since the Department of Homeland Security was created in the Bush administration every person to hold the cabinet level post of Secretary of Homeland Security, whether under the Republican Bush or the Democrat Obama has had all the intelligence of a number 2 lead pencil.

Why?

Why have two presidential administrations been unable to find a person to head up that very important department who isn't an abject moron?

Now I leave you with this Very Short Story that I wrote three years ago. I hope I don't wind up giving anyone ideas.

Christmas airline bombing foiled - Updated

ROMULUS, Mich. (AP) - An attempted terrorist attack on a Christmas Day flight began with a pop and a puff of smoke - sending passengers scrambling to subdue a Nigerian man who claimed to be acting on orders from al-Qaida to blow up the airliner, officials and travelers said.

The commotion began as Northwest Airlines Flight 253, carrying 278 passengers and 11 crew members from Amsterdam, prepared to land in Detroit just before noon Friday. Travelers said they smelled smoke, saw a glow, and heard what sounded like firecrackers. At least one person climbed over others and jumped on the man, who officials say was trying to ignite an explosive device.

"It sounded like a firecracker in a pillowcase," said Peter Smith, a passenger from the Netherlands. "First there was a pop, and then (there) was smoke."

Smith said one passenger, sitting opposite the man, climbed over passengers, went across the aisle and tried to restrain the man. The heroic passenger appeared to have been burned.

Afterward, the suspect was taken to a front-row seat with his pants cut off and his legs burned. Multiple law enforcement officials also said the man appeared badly burned on his legs, indicating the explosive was strapped there. The components were apparently mixed in-flight and included a powdery substance, multiple law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said.

The White House said it believed it was an attempted act of terrorism and stricter security measures were quickly imposed on airline travel. Dutch anti-terrorism authorities said the U.S. has asked all airlines to take extra precautions on flights worldwide that are bound for the United States.

The incident was reminiscent of Richard Reid, who tried to destroy a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes, but was subdued by other passengers.

Multiple law enforcement officials identified the suspect in Friday's attempted attack as Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab. He was described as Nigerian.

One law enforcement official said the man claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over U.S. soil, but other law enforcement officials cautioned that such claims could not be verified immediately, and said the man may have been acting independently - inspired but not specifically trained or ordered by terror groups.

All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was continuing.

Intelligence and anti-terrorism officials in Yemen said they were investigating claims by the suspect that he picked up the explosive device and instructions on how to use it in that country. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

It would be easy to write this guy off as a moron wannabe because his bomb fizzled out but remember nearly all terrorist plots look like something cooked up by the Three Stooges conspiring with the Keystone Cops - until they pull them off successfully. After all if the 9/11 terrorists had been caught the evening of 9/10 the idea that they were going to hijack four airliners and fly them into major American landmarks while armed only with box-cutters would have been greeted with howls of laughter.

I hope that there is some recognition for the quick-acting passenger who jumped the terrorist. Before 9/11 that article would have went out of its way to quote law enforcement and airline officials saying that what the man did was "brave but also foolish". That the best thing to do in that situation is to remain in your seat and allow the flight crew to deal with the problem.

No one thinks like that any more.


UPDATE -

This is from American Thinker:

The passengers of Northwest/Delta Airlines Flight 253 are lucky they are still alive. They should be the last passengers in the US exposed to this kind of risk because of political correctness.

The incident would have never happened on a plane flying out of Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, because the Israelis do it right. They try to find out what is on the passenger's mind, not what is in his bag or shoe.

How many dead innocents will it take before the US realizes it has to do the same? Since almost all the terrorist are jihadists who are either Muslims or converts to Islam, security personnel should concentrate on finding out who are the passengers such a mindset, instead of wasting time randomly checking everybody with the same intensity.

At what point will the responsible authorities realize they have to change policy? Is anybody looking forward to being in the unfortunate group whose killing will finally trigger a change? Why not do it NOW?

We all know what the problem is. After Fort Hood only the most stubborn ostriches refuse to acknowledge Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan motives displayed in his power point presentation available in the Washington Post.

It is time to hold politicians who refuse to protect their fellow citizens from jihadi terror accountable. Or would the majority of Americans rather be dead than viewed as politically incorrect?

Here's the problem. The left has succeeded in using America's past racial sins as a stick to beat the nation over the head with to the point that the average American can think of nothing worse than to be branded a racist.

Now the average American knows in his head that it is better to be called a racist than to be killed by a terrorist BUT the average American doesn't really believe in his heart that he is in much danger from terrorism.

Yeah, 9/11 happened but that was over 8 years ago. . .

What it will take to change the average American's mind on these things is for America to experience the kind of terrorism that Israel has experienced.

When Americans know in both their hearts and their heads that a plane which is not screened by Israeli methods will probably be hijacked by jihadists then we will change airport security.

When Americans know in both heart and head that sometime in the next few months that they are going to be on the street of their hometown and a car full of Muslim terrorists will stop and those terrorists will start spraying automatic weapons fire into the crowd. When Americans know that the only thing that can stop a massacre is for the ordinary citizens to be armed and ready to put the terrorist down then average Americans will start carrying pistols and sub-machine guns.

When Americans know in heart and head that Muslim suicide bombers WILL target the places where they and their children shop, eat, work and play they will demand that both their police and private security guards at places like shopping malls be trained to recognize the warning signs of a suicide bomber and be ordered to shoot first, even if they are not 100% sure.

In short nothing will cause America to change its ways other than the average American coming to believe that his life and the lives of his loved ones are in constant danger from Islamic terror.

If that day ever comes I believe that Americans will look at Israel's security measures as a starting point and move well beyond them in order to keep Americans safe.

Fatboy Dim begs Obama

I have said in print before that I am singularly unimpressed when the Left offers us some Hollywood celebrity or group of celebrities advocating for or against some issue. I'm sure we all remember actors like Sean Penn, Alex Baldwin, Eric Roberts, Susan Sarandon and Janeane Garofalo making the rounds of talk shows arguing against the war in Iraq. I'm sure we've all seen comedian Jon Stewart's faux-news show, The Daily Show, and been dismayed when we heard that it was the primary news source for a depressingly large percentage of young people of high school through college age.

Of course celebrities have every right to express their opinions. Too many of America's soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines - not to mention merchant marine and Coast Guard - have bled and died on battlefields ranging from the frozen North Atlantic to the burning deserts of Iraq to preserve our Constitutionally recognized freedoms. Even the freedom of stupid people to express idiotic opinions about things that they clearly know nothing about.

Which brings us to this weird screed from movie maker Michael Moore (who is known on this blog as Fatboy Dim). Moore posted this open letter to President Obama on his blog yesterday:

Dear President Obama,

Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so.

It is not your job to do what the generals tell you to do. We are a civilian-run government. WE tell the Joint Chiefs what to do, not the other way around. That's the way General Washington insisted it must be. That's what President Truman told General MacArthur when MacArthur wanted to invade China. "You're fired!," said Truman, and that was that. And you should have fired Gen. McChrystal when he went to the press to preempt you, telling the press what YOU had to do. Let me be blunt: We love our kids in the armed services, but we f*#&in' hate these generals, from Westmoreland in Vietnam to, yes, even Colin Powell for lying to the UN with his made-up drawings of WMD (he has since sought redemption).

[. . .]

All of us that voted and prayed for you and cried the night of your victory have endured an Orwellian hell of eight years of crimes committed in our name: torture, rendition, suspension of the bill of rights, invading nations who had not attacked us, blowing up neighborhoods that Saddam "might" be in (but never was), slaughtering wedding parties in Afghanistan. We watched as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were slaughtered and tens of thousands of our brave young men and women were killed, maimed, or endured mental anguish -- the full terror of which we scarcely know.

When we elected you we didn't expect miracles. We didn't even expect much change. But we expected some. We thought you would stop the madness. Stop the killing. Stop the insane idea that men with guns can reorganize a nation that doesn't even function as a nation and never, ever has.

Stop, stop, stop! For the sake of the lives of young Americans and Afghan civilians, stop. For the sake of your presidency, hope, and the future of our nation, stop. For God's sake, stop.

Tonight we still have hope.

Tomorrow, we shall see. The ball is in your court. You DON'T have to do this. You can be a profile in courage. You can be your mother's son.

We're counting on you.

Yours,
Michael Moore

The thing that occurs first to anyone with a functioning memory is the question, didn't Fatboy listen to Obama during the campaign?

Obama said that the war in Iraq was a waste of time and resources which should be devoted to Afghanistan! Afghanistan was - according to Obama- the "war of necessity", the "war which must be won".

Obama promised the American people that he would provide VICTORY in Afghanistan after Bush's "mishandling" of the war there.

Fatboy, are you so delusional that you simply tuned out Obama's pounding the war drum on Afghanistan all through his campaign or is it that you thought that he was lying?

Ann Coulter thought he was lying. She pointed out in her writings that Obama's rhetoric on the Afghan war matched past Democrat policy of always supporting the war that we were not fighting and never the war that we were fighting.

Mr. Dim, poll the American people issue by issue and you will find that the socialist agenda that you support gets the support of only about 20% of the American people. In order to gain enough support from the other 80% Obama had to pretend to be something that he wasn't. He was successful enough at this to fool a narrow majority of the electorate (a few percentage points dose not a "landslide" make) and so became president.

Obama has shown average Americans over and over again that he is not the man that they thought they were electing.

The question that he must face now is whether to pander to the 20% by surrendering in the war that he said we absolutely had to win or whether he is going to show us one of those rare moments when he manages to rise above the narrow leftism of his inner nature and puts the nation first.

Also Fatboy, do you really want to consign the 25 million people of Afghanistan to the unspeakably cruel rule of the Taliban? Are you utterly lacking compassion for the vast majority of those people who do not wish to see the likes of Mullah Omar returning to torment them?

Is it your attitude that their lives and freedom are worth less than ours because they are not - what - white, Christian, don't speak English? If so have the courage to say so and proudly take your place around the burning cross with others who think like you.

After all one cannot plausibly claim that the war against the Taliban is not morally and legally justified. They invited al Qaeda into Afghanistan. They provided them with land to set up training camps. They provided part of their funding and they used their military to protect them. Osama bin Laden was a part of the Taliban government in everything but name.

So what is the basis of your opposition to the war in Afghanistan, Fatboy? If it isn't racism then what is it? Could it be that you simply hate the United States so much that you don't think we have the right to defend ourselves when attacked?

If that is the case, and I suspect it is, then you should have the courage to come out and say so. But good luck getting anyone other than that 20% who are your and Obama's true soul-mates to go along with you.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

MUSLIM SUFFERS BRUISED EGO IN FORT HOOD TRAGEDY
by Ann Coulter
November 11, 2009


The massacre at Fort Hood last week is the perfect apotheosis of the liberal victimology described in my book "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America."

According to witnesses, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan entered a medical facility at Fort Hood, prayed briefly, then shouted "Allahu akbar" before he began gunning down American troops. Now I don't know which to be more afraid of: Muslims or government-run health care systems.

President Obama honored the victims by immediately warning Americans not to "jump to conclusions" -- namely, the obvious conclusion that the attack was an act of Islamic terrorism. As conclusions go, it wasn't much of a jump.

But the mainstream media waited for no information -- indeed actively avoided learning any information -- before leaping to the far less obvious conclusion that the suspect's mass murder was set off by "stress."

The day after the slaughter, The New York Times ran one editorial and two of three op-eds asserting as much -- which was at least one more than the Times usually runs about psycho-killer soldiers going on rampages.

Two days after the mass shooting, the Times' laughably predictable headlines about the Fort Hood bloodbath were:

-- "Preliminary Inquiry Finds No Link to Terror Plot"

-- "Painful Stories Take a Toll on Military Therapists"

-- "When Soldiers' Minds Snap"

The Los Angeles Times jumped to the exact same conclusion, running an article on the massacre titled: "Fort Hood Tragedy Rocks Military as It Grapples With Mental Health Issues." Time magazine followed suit, posting an article titled: "Stresses at Fort Hood Were Likely Intense for Hasan."

Inasmuch as Maj. Hasan had never been deployed overseas, much less seen combat, liberals seem to have discovered the first recorded case of "pre-traumatic stress syndrome."

Their point was: The real victim of Fort Hood was Maj. Hasan. Indeed, all Muslims were the victims that day.

The media quickly set to work assembling lachrymose accounts of taunts Hasan had been subjected to in the military for being a Muslim, the most harrowing of which seems to have been his car being keyed at his off-base apartment complex.

I suppose we should be relieved that liberals weren't claiming Hasan snapped because of the dimming prospects for a health care bill by the end of the year.

The evidence for the manifestly obvious conclusion we were supposed to avoid jumping to is rather more extensive.

According to numerous eyewitness accounts, Hasan denounced the "war on terror" as a war against Islam, said Muslims should attack Americans in retaliation for the war in Iraq, defended suicide bombers and said he was "happy" when a Muslim murdered a soldier at a military recruiting center in Arkansas earlier this year.

Stranger still, he wasn't auditioning for his own show on MSNBC when he made these statements.

Hasan shared a "spiritual adviser" with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, whose unseemly enthusiasm for jihad got him banned from speaking in Britain, even by video link.

A few years ago, Hasan delivered an hour-long PowerPoint lecture to an audience of doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, arguing that non-Muslims should be beheaded and have burning oil poured down their throats.

He had tried to contact al-Qaida, and at least one U.S. intelligence official says the Army knew it.

Despite being well aware of Hasan's disturbing views and conduct, the Army did nothing.

Far less offensive speech has been grounds for discipline or even removal from duties in the military. In the aftermath of the Tailhook scandal, for example, two Navy officers were reprimanded and reassigned after putting up a sign with the words of a nursery rhyme altered to include a vulgar sexual reference to liberal congresswoman Patricia Schroeder.

But a Muslim Army doctor can go around a military installation somberly advocating the beheading of infidels, and the girls running the military treat him like he's Nicole Kidman and they're press junket reporters.

The Army's top brass, Gen. George Casey, responded to the military's shocking decision to keep a terrorist-sympathizing Muslim in the Army by announcing: "Our diversity ... is a strength." And I thought gays couldn't openly serve in the military.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims moved to the top of liberals' victim pantheon on the basis of having slaughtered 3,000 Americans. Muslims were "victims" of Americans' displeasure with them for the biggest terrorist attack in world history. The only American deserving of more coddling than a Muslim is the first African-American president.

So, now any dyspeptic expression toward a Muslim is grounds for calling in a diversity coordinator. And when the "victim" attacks, as at Fort Hood, the rest of us are supposed to feel guilty because Hasan's car got keyed once. As with all liberal "victims," it is the victim who is massively guilty.

About the "taunts" that Hasan was on the recieving end of and the business about having his car keyed.

Perhaps the ill will was directed at him not because he was Muslim but because he was being outspoken in his opposition to the war that his fellow soldiers were currently fighting and dying in and because he said things like Muslims ought to attack American servicemen and so on.

Just maybe other soldiers didn't like him because he went so far out of his way to make himself obnoxious to them.

I'm just saying. . .

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

NATURAL-BORN LOSERS
by Ann Coulter
October 14, 2009

The question of whether President Obama should send more troops to Afghanistan misses the point.

What Obama really needs to do is: Invent a time machine, go back to the 2008 presidential campaign and not say, over and over and over again, that Afghanistan was a "war of necessity" while the war in Iraq was a "war of choice." (Oh, and as long as you're back there, ditch Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett and that gay "school safety" czar.)

The most important part of warfare is picking your battlefield, and President Bush picked Iraq for a reason.

Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan attacked us on 9/11 -- or the dozen other times American embassies, barracks and buildings came under jihadist onslaught since Jimmy Carter presided over "regime change" in Iran in 1979. Both countries -- and others -- gave succor to terrorists who had attacked the U.S. repeatedly, and would do so again.

As liberals endlessly reminded us during the three weeks of war in Afghanistan before the U.S. military swept into Kabul, Afghanistan has all the makings of a military disaster. It is mountainous, cave-pocked, tribal, has no resources worth fighting for and a populace that makes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed look like Alistair Cooke.

By contrast, Iraq had a relatively educated, pro-Western populace, but was ruled by a brutal third-world despot.

It's always something with the Muslims. You either have mostly sane people governed by a crazy dictator -- Iraq, Iran and Syria (also California and Michigan) -- or a crazy people governed by relatively sane leaders -- Pakistan and Afghanistan, post-U.S. invasion (also Vermont and Minnesota). There are also insane people ruled by insane leaders (but enough about the House Democratic Caucus). Sane people with sane rulers has not been fully tried yet.

Not only could regime change in Iraq work, but Iraq's countryside was susceptible to America's overwhelming air power. Also, Iraq has fabulous natural resources. Once the U.S. got control of Iraq's oil fields, the Shia, Sunni and Kurds could decide to either prosper together or starve together. (And it's not just oil: They're basically sitting on top of most of the world's proven reserves of cab drivers.)

By contrast, there aren't a lot of sticks that can be used in a wasteland like Afghanistan, where the people live in caves and scratch out a living in the dirt. The only "carrot" we might be able to offer them would be actual carrots.

But Democrats couldn't care less about military strategy -- at least any "strategy" that doesn't involve allowing soldiers to date one another. To the extent you can get liberals to focus on national security at all, you will find they are rooting against their own country.

Liberals sneered at Bush's description of Iraq as the "central front of the war on terror" and a step toward the "democratization of the Middle East" -- as Mark Danner did in the Sept. 11, 2005, New York Times -- because sneering was all they could do. By design, Iraq was the central front in the war on terrorism.

Any fanatic who hated the Great Satan, owned an overnight bag and was not already working for The New York Times was lured across the border into Iraq ... to be met by the awesome force of the U.S. military. Bush chose the battlefield that made the best flytrap for Islamic crazies and also that was most amenable to regime change.

Now nearly all denizens of the Middle East want the U.S. to invade them, so they can live in democracy, too. As Thomas Friedman inadvertently admitted, Lebanese voters credit their recent free election, in which the voters threw out Hezbollah, to President Bush. (American liberals, naturally, gave the credit to Obama, who they also believe is responsible for the sun rising every morning.)

Brave Iranian students who protested the tyrant Ahmadinejad did so because of Iraq -- and then they stopped because of Obama's indifference. Sadly for them, America's foreign policy will now be based on a calculus of political correctness, not national security.

During the campaign, Obama prattled on about Iraq being a "war of choice" and Afghanistan a "war of necessity" for no more thoughtful reason than a desire to win standing ovations from treasonous liberals.

But lo and behold, those very liberals who were champing at the bit to fight in Afghanistan are suddenly full of objections to the war there, too. As Frank Rich points out: "Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention."

Now they notice.

Afghanistan is a brutal battlefield, largely invulnerable to modern warfare -- something the British and Russians learned. But as our military under Bush showed the world in 21 days, scimitar-wielding savages are no match for the voluntary civilian troops of a free people.

Bush removed the Taliban from power, captured or killed the lunatics and, for the next seven years, about the only news we heard out of Afghanistan were occasional announcements of parliamentary elections, new schools, water and electricity plants.

The difficult choice Obama faces in Afghanistan is entirely of his own making, not his generals' and certainly not Bush's. It was Obama's meaningless blather about Afghanistan being a "war of necessity" during the campaign that has moved the central front in the war on terrorism from Iraq -- a good battleground for the U.S. -- to Afghanistan -- a lousy battlefront for the U.S.

And it was Obama's idea to treat war as if it's an ordinary drug bust, reading suspects their Miranda rights and taking care not to put civilians in harm's way.

A Democrat is president and, once again, America finds itself in an "unwinnable war." I know Democrats will never learn, but I wish the voters would.

Many people, including myself, have made this point about the wisdom of changing the battlefield from Afghanistan to Iran being in our best interests.

But, as usual, the left is immune to any kind of true reason.

Obama can't vote "Present" this time

From the Telegraph:

The relationship between President Barack Obama and the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan has been put under severe strain by Gen Stanley McChrystal's comments on strategy for the war.

According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week.

The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago's unsuccessful Olympic bid.

In an apparent rebuke to the commander, Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, said: "It is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations, civilians and military alike, provide our best advice to the president, candidly but privately."

When asked on CNN about the commander's public lobbying for more troops, Gen Jim Jones, national security adviser, said:

“Ideally, it's better for military advice to come up through the chain of command.”

Asked if the president had told the general to tone down his remarks, he told CBS: "I wasn't there so I can't answer that question. But it was an opportunity for them to get to know each other a little bit better. I am sure they exchanged direct views."

An adviser to the administration said: "People aren't sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn't seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly."

In London, Gen McChrystal, who heads the 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan as well as the 100,000 Nato forces, flatly rejected proposals to switch to a strategy more reliant on drone missile strikes and special forces operations against al-Qaeda.

He told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to "Chaos-istan".

When asked whether he would support it, he said: "The short answer is: No."

He went on to say: "Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support."

The remarks have been seen by some in the Obama administration as a barbed reference to the slow pace of debate within the White House.

Gen McChrystal delivered a report on Afghanistan requested by the president on Aug 31, but Mr Obama held only his second "principals meeting" on the issue last week.

He will hold at least one more this week, but a decision on how far to follow Gen McChrystal's recommendation to send 40,000 more US troops will not be made for several weeks.

A military expert said: "They still have working relationship but all in all it's not great for now."

Some commentators regarded the general's London comments as verging on insubordination.

Bruce Ackerman, an expert on constitutional law at Yale University, said in the Washington Post: "As commanding general, McChrystal has no business making such public pronouncements."

He added that it was highly unusual for a senior military officer to "pressure the president in public to adopt his strategy".

Relations between the general and the White House began to sour when his report, which painted a grim picture of the allied mission in Afghanistan, was leaked. White House aides have since briefed against the general's recommendations.

The general has responded with a series of candid interviews as well as the speech. He told Newsweek he was firmly against half measures in Afghanistan: "You can't hope to contain the fire by letting just half the building burn."

As a divide opened up between the military and the White House, senior military figures began criticising the White House for failing to tackle the issue more quickly.

They made no secret of their view that without the vast ground force recommended by Gen McChrystal, the Afghan mission could end in failure and a return to power of the Taliban.

"They want to make sure people know what they asked for if things go wrong," said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defence.

Critics also pointed out that before their Copenhagen encounter Mr Obama had only met Gen McChrystal once since his appointment in June.

During the Bush administration there was a "shadow government" operating out of the State Department, CIA headquarters and the Pentagon which sought to undermine the war effort though leaks and through "creatively" writing summaries to reports which told a different story that the body of the reports did.

This was done in order to sabotage the presidency of George W Bush and was actively aided by the mainstream media which abandoned everything but the most microscopically thin pretense of objectivity and became enthusiastic advocates for the left-wing of the Democrat party.

What this cabal of Bush haters did was treason because America was (and is) fighting a war and their efforts to damage the president also damaged American chances for victory.

What Gen. McChrystal is doing is insubordinate but not treasonous.

The General is insubordinate because he is going outside the chain of command and making public statements critical of his commander-in-chief.

The General is not treasonous because he knows that if the President continues on the course that he seems bent on that American troops will remain deployed in Afghanistan fighting and dying in a war which National Command Authority has no intention of allowing them to win.

Gen. McChrystal is placing his career on the line to force the President to either commit to a course of action which will bring about victory in Afghanistan or else withdraw completely. And he is making sure that both the public knows the consequences of withdrawal and that the President knows that they know.

The ball is now in Barak Hussein Obama's court. He is absolutely within his legal rights to fire McChrystal as Truman fired MacArthur. But if he does he will be telling the nation, our allies and (even more importantly) our enemies that he has no real interest in winning the war.

For a soldier to reach the rank and position which McChrystal has attained requires a lifetime of dedication and hard work and one does not do it without a great deal of ambition. There are many men who would place the furtherance of their career ahead of the lives of the men under their command, ahead of the lives and freedom of the people who it is his mission to liberate and even against his nation's long-term interests.

That McChrystal is willing to fling his stars into the nearest dumpster along with his hopes of closing out his career as the chairman of the JCS speaks volumes about his character.

The man is a hero, albeit and insubordinate one.

The rest of Cheney's speech

Here are parts 2-4 of former Vice President Dick Cheney's speech at the American Enterprise Institute (part 1 can be seen here):



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4

This nation owes Mr. Cheney a great debt. His speaking up and standing for the truth has rocked the administration and put Obama seriously off his game. Cheney's almost single-handed defense of the Bush administration's extremely successful national security policies (coupled with Nancy Pelosi's almost unbelievably stupid performance in "briefing-gate") has put little Barry and his lickspittle spokesmen and surrogates onto the defensive and given his opponents (otherwise knows as patriotic American who don't want to see their nation driven into the ground like a tent peg) the chance to delay or even derail his plans to nationalize the auto industry and the health care industry.

This is why the left is so eager to shut Mr. Cheney up and to convince Republicans that he is harming them politically.

Why Cheney is growing more popular

Part 1 of Dick Cheney's speech at the American Enterprise Institute. I'll post the rest if it becomes available:

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

Without any pretense of an argument, which liberals are neurologically incapable of, the mainstream media are now asserting that our wussy interrogation techniques at Guantanamo constituted "torture" and have irreparably harmed America's image abroad.

Only the second of those alleged facts is true: The president's release of the Department of Justice interrogation memos undoubtedly hurt America's image abroad, as we are snickered at in capitals around the world, where they know what real torture is. The Arabs surely view these memos as a pack of lies. What about the pills Americans have to turn us gay?

The techniques used against the most stalwart al-Qaida members, such as Abu Zubaydah, included one terrifying procedure referred to as "the attention grasp." As described in horrifying detail in the Justice Department memo, the "attention grasp" consisted of:

"(G)rasping the individual with both hands, one hand on each side of the collar opening, in a controlled and quick motion. In the same motion as the grasp, the individual is drawn toward the interrogator."

The end.

There are rumors that Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney wanted to take away the interrogators' Altoids before they administered "the grasp," but Department of Justice lawyers deemed this too cruel.

And that's not all! As the torments were gradually increased, next up the interrogation ladder came "walling." This involves pushing the terrorist against a flexible wall, during which his "head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a C-collar effect to prevent whiplash."

People pay to have a lot rougher stuff done to them at Six Flags Great Adventure. Indeed, with plastic walls and soft neck collars, "walling" may be the world's first method of "torture" in which all the implements were made by Fisher-Price.

As the memo darkly notes, walling doesn't cause any pain, but is supposed to induce terror by making a "loud noise": "(T)he false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock and surprise." (!!!)

If you need a few minutes to compose yourself after being subjected to that horror, feel free to take a break from reading now. Sometimes a cold compress on the forehead is helpful, but don't let it drip or you might end up waterboarding yourself.

The CIA's interrogation techniques couldn't be more ridiculous if they were out of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch:

Cardinal! Poke her with the soft cushions! ...
Hmm! She is made of harder stuff! Cardinal Fang! Fetch ... THE COMFY CHAIR!

So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair! ...

Now -- you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunchtime, with only a cup of coffee at 11.

Further up the torture ladder -- from Guantanamo, not Monty Python -- comes the "insult slap," which is designed to be virtually painless, but involves the interrogator invading "the individual's personal space."

If that doesn't work, the interrogator shows up the next day wearing the same outfit as the terrorist. (Awkward.)

I will spare you the gruesome details of the CIA's other comical interrogation techniques and leap directly to the penultimate "torture" in their arsenal: the caterpillar.

In this unspeakable brutality, a harmless caterpillar is placed in the terrorist's cell. Justice Department lawyers expressly denied the interrogators' request to trick the terrorist into believing the caterpillar was a "stinging insect."

Human rights groups have variously described being trapped in a cell with a live caterpillar as "brutal," "soul-wrenching" and, of course, "adorable."

If the terrorist manages to survive the non-stinging caterpillar maneuver -- the most fiendish method of torture ever devised by the human mind that didn't involve being forced to watch "The View" -- CIA interrogators had another sadistic trick up their sleeves.

I am not at liberty to divulge the details, except to mention the procedure's terror-inducing name: "the ladybug."

Finally, the most savage interrogation technique at Guantanamo was "waterboarding," which is only slightly rougher than the Comfy Chair.

Thousands of our troops are waterboarded every year as part of their training, but not until it was done to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- mastermind of the 9/11 attack on America -- were liberal consciences shocked.

I think they were mostly shocked because they couldn't figure out how Joey Buttafuoco ended up in Guantanamo.

As non-uniformed combatants, all of the detainees at Guantanamo could have been summarily shot on the battlefield under the Laws of War.

Instead, we gave them comfy chairs, free lawyers, better food than is served in Afghani caves, prayer rugs, recreational activities and top-flight medical care -- including one terrorist who was released, whereupon he rejoined the jihad against America, after being fitted for an expensive artificial leg at Guantanamo, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

Only three terrorists -- who could have been shot -- were waterboarded. This is not nearly as bad as "snowboarding," which is known to cause massive buttocks pain and results in approximately 10 deaths per year.

Normal human beings -- especially those who grew up with my older brother, Jimmy -- can't read the interrogation memos without laughing.

At Al-Jazeera, they don't believe these interrogation memos are for real. Muslims look at them and say: THIS IS ALL THEY'RE DOING? We do that for practice. We do that to our friends.

But The New York Times is populated with people who can't believe they live in a country where people would put a caterpillar in a terrorist's cell.

Once again Miss Ann hits the nail on the head.

Al Qaeda must be pissing themselves from laughing so hard at what the American left considers "torture". Of course Americans are going to die because of this. Our enemies are subhuman savages who will attack when they sense weakness and Obama has made us appear contemptibly weak.

The bad guys now know that no matter what they do to us the worst we'll do to them is menace them with a larva.

Since the West has no will to survive

From American Thinker:

The Obama administration looks like it's going to acquiesce in the face of a nuclear-armed radicalized Pakistan, just as Jimmy Carter bowed down low in the face of Ayatollah Khomeini. Soon we will have two radicalized Muslim states with nuclear weapons and long-range missiles: A Shiite Iran, and a Sunni Pakistan.

Afghanistan is slipping out of control. But worse, Afghanistan is no longer the main battleground: a Taliban-controlled Pakistan is.

And in case you've forgotten, in the decade before 9/11 Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaida suiciders found safe haven with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Talibs are Islamist fanatics just like Ahmadinejad. They will die for Allah. That means they may not be rational actors in the Western sense. They certainly will stir up terror attacks in India and maybe Sri Lanka and the Philippines, just as the Iranians are sponsoring terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Gaza and Egypt.

Once they have nuclear weapons, they will have safe havens for further terrorist attacks. Expect nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to start spreading even faster.

Weakness? Our enemies have taken the measure of Obama and Hillary Clinton. They are not bothering to wait. They know this is Jimmy Carter II in the White House, and they are acting accordingly. Expect push, push, push on all the fronts: South America with Chavez, Ortega and the Castro brothers, now trying to control Brazil; Africa with Zuma, another mad radical now in control of the modern state of South Africa; the Sudan under its genocidal regime, backed by the Arab League and tolerated by the UN; Iran and Syria now within reach of their own nukes and missiles; and Russia, which will play big power games in the Middle East as long as it hurts the West.

The Taliban just accepted Pakistan's surrender in six provinces. They promptly moved on the seventh province, and are now within a day's drive of the capital of Pakistan. And the West? The West can't even hold down medieval terrorist pirates in little speed boats, who are making a good living off kidnapping Westerners and terrorizing Western shipping companies. The pirates are making the West pay for the Shabab Islamist rebellion in Somalia.

Remember Osama Bin Laden's strong horse and weak horse? Barack Obama is the weak horse. The Muslim world may have hated Bush, but they despise weakness.

Go read the rest.

It is just possible that a radical Islamist takeover in Pakistan could be the best possible thing to happen.

Of course the United States under the "leadership" of on B. Hussein Obama will do nothing in the face of such a catastrophe (other than seek to appease) however India might very well invade and crush the new Islamofascist state, destroying or capturing its nuclear weapons.

I have long said on this blog that India would be a far better ally for the US than most of Old Europe. The Indians have the kind of hatred of Islam that only people forced to share a border with an Islamic state or forced to endure the presence of a large Muslim minority living among them can feel. That is the Indians have the natural reaction to Islam of any sane people forced to see it up close - revulsion.

India has already indicated that it if pushed it would consider the limited nuclear strike that Pakistan could launch against it an acceptable price to pay for the eradication of Muslim Pakistan.

An out and out Islamist takeover of Pakistan is likely one of the contingencies which would trigger an all out invasion of Pakistan by India and since the United States and Western Europe will not do what must be done to preserve their own culture from the barbarians seeking to destroy it all the civilized and sane people of the West (there are still some) can do is hope that some third party will step up and defeat our enemies for us.

Now if we can just get Israel to take out Iran. . .

Terrorist training camps in America

And I'm not talking about DNC "leadership" seminars.

Here is an interview with Martin Mawyer about the documentary Homegrown Jihad which is being released this month.



Part 1



Part 2

Here are portions of an interview with Ryan Mauro about the documentary that appears in today's Front Page Magazine:

“Homegrown Jihad” documents the networks of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, a terrorist group run by a radical Muslim leader in Lahore, Pakistan named Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, an individual who, as I said in my last interview, does us the favor of not hiding his true colors. While he casts himself as a peace-loving Muslim, his actions and the actions of his network are anything but. In the documentary, we show a secret videotape, one which Gilani strictly instructs his followers to keep hidden, where he personally engages in terrorist training, from killing guards to hijacking vehicles to setting off explosives. On this tape, he says that those seeking to “join one of the most advanced training courses in Islamic military warfare” can contact any of his “Muslims of America” compounds in the United States, almost all of which still operate today.

“Muslims of America” is a group set up by Gilani to act as a thinly-veiled front for Jamaat ul-Fuqra. There are at least 35 “Muslims of America” compounds in the U.S. alone, along with at least 3,000 members, many of which have criminal backgrounds. The websites of these compounds do not hide the fact that they are devoted to, and are led by, Sheikh Gilani. The compound at Red House, Virginia, even has a street named after him. With Gilani saying things like “We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are in America”, “Jews are an example of human Satans,” and “Act like you are a friend, then kill him”, we need to question the motives and beliefs of those who live in and are educated in his communities and take action to stop them from acting upon these beliefs.

Members of this group continue to be arrested and convicted for involvement in terrorism and all sorts of criminal activity. Members are also required to make a pledge: “I shall always hear and obey, and whenever given the command, I shall readily fight for Allah’s sake.” They continue to recruit members, build and expand compounds, and operate in isolation, away from the eyes of the public.

Perhaps the most riveting part of the documentary is when CAN travels to several of these compounds in an attempt to get members of the group to view the terrorist training videotape and get a reaction. Before joining CAN, I personally visited the 70-acre large headquarters in Hancock, New York. Although the residents were friendly, almost immediately after greeting the man who I spoke to, he said with a disarming smile, “Are you Jewish? It’s clear that the anti-Semitism and overall beliefs of Sheikh Gilani are present at these compounds.

I would urge everyone to go over to ChristianAction.org and get a copy. When and if it is seralized on YouTube I will post it here.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

Morose that there hasn't been another terrorist attack on American soil for seven long years, liberals were ecstatic when Hurricane Gustav was headed toward New Orleans during the Republican National Convention last week. The networks gave the hurricane plenty of breaking-news coverage -- but unfortunately it was Hurricane Katrina from 2005 they were covering.

On Keith Olbermann's Aug. 29 show on MSNBC, Michael Moore said the possibility of a Category 3 hurricane hitting the United States "is proof that there is a God in heaven." Olbermann responded: "A supremely good point."

Actually, Olbermann said that a few minutes later to some other idiotic point Moore had made, but that's how Moore would have edited the interview for one of his "documentaries," so I will, too. I would only add that Michael Moore's morbid obesity is proof that there is a Buddha.

Hurricane Gustav came and went without a hitch. What a difference a Republican governor makes!

As many have pointed out, the reason elected officials tend to neglect infrastructure projects, like reinforcing levees in New Orleans and bridges in Minneapolis, is that there's no glory when a bridge doesn't collapse. There are no round-the-clock news specials when the levees hold. You can't even name an overpass retrofitting project after yourself -- it just looks too silly. But everyone's taxes go up to pay for the reinforcements.

Preventing another terrorist attack is like that. There is no media coverage when another 9/11 doesn't happen. We can thank God that President George Bush didn't care about doing the safe thing for himself; he cared about keeping Americans safe. And he has, for seven years.

If Bush's only concern were about his approval ratings, like a certain impeached president I could name, he would not have fought for the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq. He would not have resisted the howling ninnies demanding that we withdraw from Iraq, year after year. By liberals' own standard, Bush's war on terrorism has been a smashing, unimaginable success.

A year after the 9/11 attack, The New York Times' Frank Rich was carping about Bush's national security plans, saying we could judge Bush's war on terror by whether there was a major al-Qaida attack in 2003, which -- according to Rich -- would have been on al-Qaida's normal schedule.

Rich wrote: "Since major al-Qaida attacks are planned well in advance and have historically been separated by intervals of 12 to 24 months, we will find out how much we've been distracted soon enough." ("Never Forget What?" New York Times, Sept. 14, 2002.)

There wasn't a major al-Qaida attack in 2003. Nor in 2004, 2005, 2006 or 2007. Manifestly, liberals thought there would be: They announced a standard of success that they expected Bush to fail.

As Bush has said, we have to be right 100 percent of the time, the terrorists only have to be right one time. Bush has been right 100 percent of the time for seven years -- so much so that Americans have completely forgotten about the threat of Islamic terrorism.

For his thanks, President Bush has been the target of almost unimaginable calumnies -- the sort of invective liberals usually reserve for seniors who don't separate their recyclables properly. Compared to liberals' anger at Bush, there has always been something vaguely impersonal about their "anger" toward the terrorists.

By my count, roughly one in four books in print in the world at this very moment have the words "Bush" and "Lie" in their title. Barnes & Noble has been forced to add an "I Hate Bush" section. I don't believe there are as many anti-Hitler books.

Despite the fact that Hitler brought "change," promoted clean, energy-efficient mass transit by making the trains run on time, supported abortion for the non-master races, vastly expanded the power of the national government and was uniformly adored by college students and their professors, I gather that liberals don't like Hitler because they're constantly comparing him to Bush.

The ferocity of the left's attacks on Bush even scared many of his conservative allies into turning on him over the war in Iraq.

George Bush is Gary Cooper in the classic western "High Noon." The sheriff is about to leave office when a marauding gang is coming to town. He could leave, but he waits to face the killers as all his friends and all the townspeople, who supported him during his years of keeping them safe, slowly abandon him. In the end, he walks alone to meet the killers, because someone has to.

That's Bush. Name one other person in Washington who would be willing to stand alone if he had to, because someone had to.

OK, there is one, but she's not in Washington yet. Appropriately, at the end of "High Noon," Cooper is surrounded by the last two highwaymen when, suddenly, his wife (Grace Kelly) appears out of nowhere and blows away one of the killers! The aging sheriff is saved by a beautiful, gun-toting woman.

As I write this it is the evening of Sept. 10, 2008. Tomorrow will be the seventh anniversary of 9/11/01. I will bet you that tomorrow will pass without another terrorist attack on US soil. This will mark seven years that George W Bush has kept America safe from the Islamofascists by taking the fight to them on their territory.

As Miss Ann points out his thanks have been to be insulted and vilified and to have approval numbers which hover around 30% (making them only three times as high as those enjoyed by congress).

The left is trying to say that electing McCain would lead to a "third term for Bush". From their lips to God's ears.

VDH wants credit to be given where credit is due

Recent studies showing a decline in global incidents of Islamic terror have been interpreted as solely a Middle-East intramural affair. Sometimes the good news is said to be a naturally occurring phenomenon. We are supposed to believe that American policies of counter-terrorism at home have been of little value, if not McCarthyesque. Beefed-up security, the fight against the terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the cultural creation of a repugnance — and penalty — for jihadism (as in contrast to the 1990s), have likewise supposedly played no role.

But surely the catalyst for the decline in terrorist incidents worldwide was the radically different response of the U.S. to terrorism and 9/11 that finally brought jihadism into an open-shooting war against the West (e.g., cf. the Left’s “creating terrorists”), in which the terrorists are losing the battle-space, along with the hearts and minds of those in the Middle East — as their own websites and cries of anguish attest.

The successful toppling of Saddam was followed in short order by the shutdown of Dr. Khan’s atomic shop, the surrender of WMDs by the Libyans, and the supposed sidetracking of the Iranian nuclear bomb program (at least according to the National Intelligence Estimate) — and yet no one thought the timing of all these events was odd (even when Ghaddafi himself reportedly connected his decision to abandon a weapons of mass destruction program to Saddam’s fate).

By the same token, the rise of governments that are sympathetic to the U.S. in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe is never associated with a shared and growing worry over Islamic radicalism — or a grudging, often private acknowledgment of the U.S. role abroad in beating back jihadism. How surreal to see a constitutional government in Iraq, with broad popular support, fighting and defeating terrorists and insurgents of both the Wahhabi and Iranian brand — at a time when the consensus is that Iraq only made terrorism much worse. As we’ve seen from recent events, there are many governments abroad that deserve criticism, whether in China, the Sudan, or Burma, but Iraq is not one of them.

So these are upside-down times when facts and events on the ground simply do not support the general pessimism of the Western media, the serial publication of gloomy he-did-it,-not-me memoirs about the post-9/11 supposed failures, and the shrill rhetoric of the Democratic primaries.

In general, the hard efforts of the last six years against radical Islam — that bore fruit by the radically changed atmosphere in Iraq, the decline in terrorism worldwide, the lack of a follow-up to 9/11, and polls that showed a marked fall in approval for al Qaeda, bin Laden, and the tactic of suicide bombing — are explained away in various ways. The common theme, however, is that one never mentions the efforts of the bogeyman George Bush.

[. . .]

We have not won the war on terror, but we are starting to see how the combination of domestic security, international cooperation, military action, cultural ostracism of those who condone terrorism, and promotion of constitutional government in the Middle East can, and will, marginalize and eventually defeat the jihadists. We know this not just by the anguished complaints of the Islamists themselves, and real progress on the ground — but also by the mantra of increasingly ossified critics who still insist that things are either worse, or were never that bad, or abruptly got better on their own.

Some of the most loyal and effective allies the jihadists have had have been American Democrats in elected office, the academy and the media. When will we "ostracize" them?

The nation was at war and Pelosi, Reid, Murtha, Obama, Clinton, The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, the broadcast networks, almost the entire faculties of the Ivy League and a great many other state and private colleges and universities along with Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, Lew Rockwell and so many others did everything but strap on explosive belts themselves and try to blow up Marine Corps recruiting stations in an effort to make us lose.

When do they get handed the bill for their treason?

I don't mean legal action. I mean when do the people of the United States tell these abominable people that although they have the right to go on living here (one of the liberties protected by the military whose defeat they attempted to engineer) that their fellow citizens will not extend to them the normal respect and inclusion which we normally treat those with whom we must share our national living space?

Dick Morris gets one right

From Front Page Magazine:

In an ABC interview on Monday, Sen. Barack Obama urged us to go back to the era of criminal-justice prosecution of terror suspects, citing the successful efforts to imprison those who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993.

It was key to his attack on the Bush administration, which he charged, has "been willing to skirt basic protections that are in our Constitution . . . It is my firm belief that we can crack down on threats against the United States, but we can do so within the constraints of our Constitution. . .

"In previous terrorist attacks - for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in US prisons, incapacitated."

This is big - because that prosecution, and the ground rules for it, had more to do with our inability to avert 9/11 than any other single factor.

Because we treated the 1993 WTC bombing as simply a crime, our investigation was slow, sluggish and constrained by the need to acquire admissible evidence to convict the terrorists.

As a result, we didn't know that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were responsible for the attack until 1997 - too late for us to grab Osama when Sudan offered to send him to us in 1996. Clinton and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger turned down the offer, saying we had no grounds on which to hold him or to order his kidnapping or death.

Obama's embrace of the post-'93 approach shows a blindness to the key distinction that has kept us safe since 9/11 - the difference between prosecution and protection.

Pre-9/11, the priority was what it had always been - to identify the guilty, gather evidence to convict and punish them by imprisonment.

Post-9/11, the goal changed - now it's to identify and frustrate any and all pending terrorist attacks.

Should the effort to stop the attacks lead to arrests and provide enough admissible evidence to incarcerate or deport those responsible, fine. But gathering intelligence - not court-admissible evidence - lies at the core of the mission.

So when we found Jose Padilla - a terrorist planning to build a dirty bomb and explode it in a populated area - we couldn't prosecute him for his plans. We had the evidence, but it hadn't come to us in a form that made it admissible in a criminal court. So we prosecuted him on lesser charges of aiding terrorists by providing them with funds and supplies - something for which we had sufficient admissible evidence.

Would Obama require all our investigations to be conducted within the procedural framework needed to bring a criminal prosecution? That would slow our anti-terror efforts - fatally.

It has before. Following Obama's logic, Attorney General Janet Reno and her deputy, Jamie Gorelick, ruled that evidence seized in an immigration prosecution couldn't be turned over to intelligence operatives investigating terrorism.

The "Gorelick Wall" barred anti-terror investigators from accessing the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, already in custody on an immigration violation.

He was taking flying lessons in Minneapolis at the time, so we wondered what he was up to. But we didn't look at his computer, and find the e-mail addresses and records of fund-transfers to each of the 9/11 hijackers - information that might well have prevented the attacks.

Our constitutional protections are wonderful and shouldn't be abridged on any account. But the protections in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments relate to prosecution under criminal law.
Intelligence that doesn't lead to prosecution isn't covered. But Obama would cover it anyway. He'd require us all to proceed in the way we had to in the halcyon days after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing - procedures that led us to miss the point of what was going on, to fail to identify the real culprits until it was too late and left us unprepared for future attacks.

The other factor which must be considered is the lack of deterrent effect which a law enforcement approach to anti-terrorism has upon the terrorists themselves. We did manage to capture and prosecute and imprison most of those responsible for the 1993 WTC attack however that in no way stopped the 2001 attack.

The fact that president Clinton responded to the 1993 attack by essentially calling the cops (FBI) and issuing a statement asking the American public not to "overreact" (presumably by wanting to go to war or something like that) was a major contributor to Osama bin Laden's conclusion that the United States was a "paper tiger". In other words the fact that America took a law enforcement approach in 1993 gave al Qaeda the confidence to plan and execute 2001.

I'm sure that if David Axelrod anticipates this line of attack against Obama he will write something like this for Obama to say: "Any terrorist or hostile foreign government who believes that America under my leadership will be a "paper tiger" will be in for a terrifying awakening when they finds themselves facing the full might of either the United States' criminal justice system or the United States military - whichever is appropriate." *

There are two flaws in this line of reasoning. The first is that taking a reactive approach to terrorism is to wait for an attack before doing anything. That means that you do nothing until after thousands of Americans are dead and billions of dollars worth of property have been destroyed and perhaps the economy has been driven into recession.

President Bush's doctrine of preemption aims to locate and destroy the threat before it has a chance to act and this policy has kept American soil safe from further terrorist attacks for nearly seven years now. When America took a law enforcement approach to terrorism under Bill Clinton Osama bin Laden was living in Afghanistan where he was treated like a king by the Taliban government. He was free to raise funds and send out terrorists to commit 9/11.

After the institution of the Bush Doctrine of preemption Osama bin Laden is hiding in a cave somewhere sending out video tapes where he rages impotently at the "Great Satan".

Let's review:

The Law enforcement approach equals the Word Trade Center in rubble, the Pentagon damaged and Flight 93 and its passengers scattered across a field in Pennsylvania.

The military approach equals most of al Qaeda leadership dead or captured, 20,000 al Qaeda fighters dead in Iraq, no terrorist attacks on US soil since 9/11 - and a handful of video tapes of Osama bin Laden's ravings being broadcast on al Jazeera.

Which approach to terrorism leaves you feeling safer?


*Of course if Obama faces the question without prepared remarks the answer will look more like: "If we are attacked . . . September 11 . . . we will answer, respond with inappropriate, no I mean appropriate. . . It will cost us, no them. . . Eight years of Bush. . . I can't hear myself. . . What was the question?"

Miss Ann is talking

And that means that YOU are listening!

In a conversation recently, I mentioned as an aside what a great president George Bush has been and my friend was surprised. I was surprised that he was surprised.

I generally don't write columns about the manifestly obvious, but, yes, the man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents.

Produce one person who believed, on Sept. 12, 2001, that there would not be another attack for seven years, and I'll consider downgrading Bush from "Great" to "Really Good."

Merely taking out Saddam Hussein and his winsome sons Uday and Qusay (Hussein family slogan: "We're the Rape Room People!") constitutes a greater humanitarian accomplishment than anything Bill Clinton ever did -- and I'm including remembering Monica's name on the sixth sexual encounter.

But unlike liberals, who are so anxious to send American troops to Rwanda or Darfur, Republicans oppose deploying U.S. troops for purely humanitarian purposes. We invaded Iraq to protect America.

It is unquestionable that Bush has made this country safe by keeping Islamic lunatics pinned down fighting our troops in Iraq. In the past few years, our brave troops have killed more than 20,000 al-Qaida and other Islamic militants in Iraq alone. That's 20,000 terrorists who will never board a plane headed for JFK -- or a landmark building, for that matter.

We are, in fact, fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them at, say, the corner of 72nd and Columbus in Manhattan -- the mere mention of which never fails to enrage liberals, which is why you should say it as often as possible.

The Iraq war has been a stunning success. The Iraqi army is "standing up" (as they say), fat Muqtada al-Sadr --the Dr. Phil of Islamofascist radicalism -- has waddled off in retreat to Iran, and Sadr City and Basra are no longer war zones. Our servicemen must be baffled by the constant nay-saying coming from their own country.

The Iraqis have a democracy -- a miracle on the order of flush toilets in that godforsaken region of the world. Despite its newness, Iraq's democracy appears to be no more dysfunctional than one that would condemn a man who has kept the nation safe for seven years while deifying a man who has accomplished absolutely nothing in his entire life except to give speeches about "change."

(Guess what Bill Clinton's campaign theme was in 1992? You are wrong if you guessed: "bringing dignity back to the White House." It was "change." In January 1992, James Carville told Steve Daley of The Chicago Tribune that it had gotten to the point that the press was complaining about Clinton's "constant talk of change.")

Monthly casualties in Iraq now come in slightly lower than a weekend with Anna Nicole Smith. According to a CNN report last week, for the entire month of May, there were only 19 troop deaths in Iraq. (Last year, five people on average were shot every day in Chicago.) With Iraqi deaths at an all-time low, Iraq is safer than Detroit -- although the Middle Eastern food is still better in Detroit.

Al-Qaida is virtually destroyed, surprising even the CIA. Two weeks ago, The Washington Post reported: "Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaida, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

It's almost as if there's been some sort of "surge" going on, as strange as that sounds.

Just this week, The New York Times reported that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups in Southeast Asia have all but disappeared, starved of money and support. The U.S. and Australia have been working closely with the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, sending them counterterrorism equipment and personnel.

But no one notices when 9/11 doesn't happen. Indeed, if we had somehow stopped the 9/11 attack, we'd all be watching Mohammed Atta being interviewed on MSNBC, explaining his lawsuit against the Bush administration. Maureen Dowd would be writing columns describing Khalid Sheik Mohammed as a "wannabe" terrorist being treated like Genghis Khan by an excitable Bush administration.

We begin to forget what it was like to turn on the TV, see a tornado, a car chase or another Pamela Anderson marriage and think: Good -- another day without a terrorist attack.

But liberals have only blind hatred for Bush -- and for those brute American interrogators who do not supply extra helpings of béarnaise sauce to the little darlings at Guantanamo with sufficient alacrity.

The sheer repetition of lies about Bush is wearing people down. There is not a liberal in this country worthy of kissing Bush's rear end, but the weakest members of the herd run from Bush. Compared to the lickspittles denying and attacking him, Bush is a moral giant -- if that's not damning with faint praise. John McCain should be so lucky as to be running for Bush's third term. Then he might have a chance.

Miss Ann provides some badly needed perspective on president Bush.

And she utters a truth which needs to be shouted from the roof tops that if we had busted the 9/11 hijackers before they got on the planes they would have looked like a bunch of incompetent "keystone terrorists" and their idea of destroying the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the Capitol Building with nothing more than box cutters and seat belt extenders would have been laughed to scorn by the left-wing media.

The truth is that because George W Bush chose to fight al Qaeda in Iraq we have not had to fight them in New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles or Chicago. For that alone he deserves our gratitude and to be remembered with honor.

Al Qaeda near defeat

From The Washington Post:

Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda's allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group's core leadership.

While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden said Osama bin Laden is losing the battle for hearts and minds in the Islamic world and has largely forfeited his ability to exploit the Iraq war to recruit adherents. Two years ago, a CIA study concluded that the U.S.-led war had become a propaganda and marketing bonanza for al-Qaeda, generating cash donations and legions of volunteers.

All that has changed, Hayden said in an interview with The Washington Post this week that coincided with the start of his third year at the helm of the CIA.

"On balance, we are doing pretty well," he said, ticking down a list of accomplishments: "Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally -- and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' -- as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam," he said.

The sense of shifting tides in the terrorism fight is shared by a number of terrorism experts, though some caution that it is too early to tell whether the gains are permanent. Some credit Hayden and other U.S. intelligence leaders for going on the offensive against al-Qaeda in the area along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the tempo of Predator strikes has dramatically increased from previous years. But analysts say the United States has caught some breaks in the past year, benefiting from improved conditions in Iraq, as well as strategic blunders by al-Qaeda that have cut into its support base.

"One of the lessons we can draw from the past two years is that al-Qaeda is its own worst enemy," said Robert Grenier, a former top CIA counterterrorism official who is now managing director of Kroll, a risk consulting firm. "Where they have succeeded initially, they very quickly discredit themselves."

During the Cold War it was said that the best recruiting tool that the West had for attracting defectors from the Soviet Bloc was the KGB. Al Qaeda is apparently unable to learn the lesson that the worse you behave the fewer people there are who will support you. Of course when you movement is composed of the most satanically evil dregs of an already dysfunctional religious/social system it is hard to behave any other way than they do.

I have many problems with George W Bush. He has made more than his share of mistakes in any number of areas. However he will go down in history as one of the great presidents because he has had the courage and the sheer stubbornness to stay the course both in Iraq and in the general war on terror.

Osama bin Laden believed that the US was a "paper tiger" which would fold when pushed. Bush has proven him wrong and in the end it was the house that bin Laden built that proved to be made of paper.

Finding out what we need to know

Heather Mac Donald writes on NRO:

The release of another previously classified Justice Department memo on the interrogation of terrorists (here and here) has reignited the specious “torture narrative,” propounded gleefully by Bush-administration critics. The narrative holds that the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib was the direct and even intended consequence of a set of executive-branch legal opinions on the status of terrorist detainees and the president’s wartime authority. The New York Times announced in an April 4 editorial that the latest declassified memo leaves no doubt that the “abuse of prisoners” was “calculated policy” rather than “rogue acts.” “When the abuses at Abu Ghraib became public, we were told these were the depraved public actions of a few soldiers,” the editorial concludes. “The Yoo memo makes it chillingly apparent that senior officials authorized unspeakable acts.”

Besides smearing the Bush administration, the torture narrative aims to discredit the use of stress-interrogation techniques by equating such techniques with torture. The persuasiveness of this equation rests on one crucial condition: ignorance of the actual techniques that the Pentagon approved for use on captured terrorist suspects. Those techniques, designed to overcome the detainees’ fierce resistance to traditional interrogation methods, had nothing to do with the Abu Ghraib sadism and are light years from torture. Nor do they depend on the controversial claims about executive power in this latest DOJ memo and others like it. Nevertheless, thanks to unimpeded agitation by rights activists and administration opponents, the use of stress techniques is now wholly discredited, despite their reported efficacy and necessity.

Two points. One the "torture" of prisoners at Abu Ghraib consisted mainly of making them pose in embarrassing positions while naked (the sort of thing done to college fraternity pledges) and making them watch a couple of the guards have sex (Lindie England wasn't all that good looking but torture is a bit over the top). To be fair some of them were punched or hit with batons, but to be even more fair that also goes on with fraternity pledges (remember Animal House, "Thank you sir, may I have another")

I'm not saying that any of this is right, but making the prisoners participate in and watch the kind of things which are labeled "performance art" and can be seen in pretty much any public place in San Francisco on any Saturday afternoon when the weather is warm seems a bit of a thin excuse to have the kind of cow the congressional left and the media establishment tried to give birth to over the affair.

And what makes it all so infinitely sadder is that the Republican party's nominally Republican nominee has jumped on the anti-torture bandwagon and grabbed the reigns.

Ms. Mac Donald reminds us of exactly what these now banned stress-interrogation techniques consisted of:

The seven additional interrogation methods that the Secretary of Defense authorized in April 2003 for use on resistant detainees at Guantanamo Bay, relying in part on Yoo’s March 14 memo, fell far short of the outer boundaries of presidential power. They did not violate any laws against torture or criminal assault. Since the proponents of the torture narrative work so hard to keep those methods (since withdrawn) out of the public eye, it is worth reprinting them in full:

—Change of Scenery Up: Removing the detainee from the standard interrogation
setting (generally to a location more pleasant, but no worse).

—Change of Scenery Down: Removing the detainee from the standard interrogation setting and placing him in a setting that may be less comfortable; would not constitute a substantial change in environmental quality.

—Dietary Manipulation: Changing the Diet of a detainee; no intended deprivation of food or water; no adverse medical or cultural effect and without intent to deprive subject of food or water, e.g., hot rations to MREs [meals ready to eat].

—Environmental Manipulation: Altering the environment to create moderate discomfort (e.g., adjusting temperature or introducing an unpleasant smell). Conditions would not be such that they would injure the detainee. Detainee would be accompanied by interrogator at all times.

—Sleep Adjustment: Adjusting the sleeping times of the detainee (e.g., reversing sleep cycles from night to day.) This technique is NOT sleep deprivation.

—False Flag: Convincing the detainee that individuals from a country other than the United States are interrogating him.

—Isolation: Isolating the detainee from other detainees while still complying with basic standards of treatment. [Caution: The use of isolation as an interrogation technique requires detailed implementation instructions, including specific guidelines regarding the length of isolation, medical and psychological review, and approval for extension of the length of isolation by the appropriate chain of command. This technique is not known to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days. Those nations that believe detainees are subject to POW protections may view use of this technique as inconsistent with the requirements of Geneva III.]

The foregoing guidelines insist that interrogators take care to avoid inflicting any injury on a detainee. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reiterated that “U.S. Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely, and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of the Geneva Conventions.” All interrogation methods — whether conventional or supplementary — required a specific interrogation plan, the presence or availability of qualified medical personnel, appropriate supervision, and senior approval.

Now I want you to understand something. If they are terrorists or if they are taken on the battlefield bearing arms against America or its allies in the cause of Islam then you can't hit them hard enough to please me. As far as I'm concerned you can tie them down and snip off three or four fingers with a bolt cutter just as a way of saying hello and letting them know that you are serious and then start asking them questions.

But that's not how the law sees things. But aggressive interrogation techniques like the above mentioned stress methods and waterboarding must be allowed in a world where Russia cannot account for all its Soviet era nukes, where a rogue state with a starving population like North Korea and an Islamic nation like Pakistan already have nukes and where an Islamofascist theocracy like Iran will soon have nukes.

The stakes are just too damn high for us to not use every tool in the toolbox to keep our people safe.

The NRO article concludes with this:

. . . The new rules for interrogation, issued in September 2006, are even stricter than the previous ones interrogators found so useless. If the country is attacked again on a large scale, however, the country will have to reopen these debates and answer some hard questions.

Hard questions indeed.