UPDATE
You can listen to the podcast Here
Related article here
Monica Showalter of Investor’s Business Daily joins us today at a special time, 10AM Eastern.
We’ll talk about the US’s dependence on foreign oil, Latin America and American politics, and how all these topics are related.
Chat’s open by 9:45AM and the call-in number is 646 652-2639. Join us!
Cross-posted at Fausta’s blog
Left wingnuts are forever trying to play down the distinct possibility that our intelligence estimates of when Iran will cross the nuclear weapons threshold are vastly, complacently overstated. Ditto the possibility that al Qaeda may in fact have some manner of nuclear weapons capability. Recall Barack Hussein Obama’s “Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, et al are ‘tiny countries’ that don’t pose a ’serious threat’” speech. As though erring on the side of caution is criminal, but taking whimsical chances with the lives of millions is perfectly okay.
Well, guess what, gentles - things are worse than we thought:
An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.
The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.
The computer contents — among more than [a tera]byte of data seized — were recently destroyed by Swiss authorities under the supervision of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, which is investigating the now-defunct smuggling ring previously led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
But U.N. officials cannot rule out the possibility that the blueprints were shared with others before their discovery, said the report’s author, David Albright, a prominent nuclear weapons expert who spent four years researching the smuggling network.
So. Not only will Iran have the capability of churning out nukes within as little as two months, but they probably already possess the means of deploying them as soon as they come off the assembly line.
And, evidently, nobody cares. Nobody realizes, nobody is willing to face the sober fact, that the “international community,” but especially Europe, Israel, and the United States, are teetering on the edge of the unthinkable abyss. All they still are capable of is chest-puffing about yet another round of useless, toothless “sanctions” that will be irrelevant at best, just like all their predecessors (see the twelve years of sanctions that didn’t slow down Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs one jot or tittle), or at worst will encourage Iran, convinced time is no longer on their side, to strike us like Imperial Japan sixty-seven years ago - only with a much bigger “stick”.
As if to pointedly highlight their oceanic contempt for our galloping impotence, Iran bellicosely reiterated - again - the facts of mullahgarchic life:
Iran said on Tuesday uranium enrichment was its “red line” and would continue, despite an enhanced offer of incentives from big powers to stop activity the West fears could yield nuclear bombs…
The incentive package agreed by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany last month and delivered by Solana is a revised version of one rejected by Iran in 2006…
The incentives package offers Iran the chance to develop a civilian nuclear program with light water reactors — seen as harder to divert into bomb-making than the technology Tehran is now developing — and legally binding fuel supply guarantees.
It also offers trade and other benefits, including the possibility of Iran buying civil aircraft from the West.
You know, I read things like this and the absurdity of it makes me want to gag. The fact that this morony is putting my life and the lives of my family in potentially mortal danger is something I know intellectually, but even I have difficulty wrapping my mind around the reality of what it would mean in practical terms. Not, I suspect, unlike those who were beholding world events in 1939, 1940, and 1941. “Oh, no, the Japs will NEVER attack US; they know better than to commit national suicide.” “C’mon, all Hitler wants is the Sudetenland - he explicitly said so! If we give it to him, he’ll be satisfied and we can maintain the peace.” Almost nobody in the West had any grasp of the possibility that maybe, just maybe, Adolph Hitler DID want to conquer the world and WAS willing to wage total war to do it, and the Japanese WOULD attack us believing that we were (drumroll) soft and would quickly tire of any attempt at resisting their conquest of the Pacific once we encountered the savagery of their warriors and sue for peace instead.
Thus did our grandfathers go from sitting at home listening to our politicians drone about “peace in our time” to flying bomber fleets firebombing German cities and cutting their way across one jungle-covered Pacific island after another within the space of three years. Thus did sixty million human beings - including, of course, six million Jews - needlessly perish in a planetary conflagration that could so easily have been pre-empted with a little military action applied early enough to make a difference.
Do we learn from this lamentable history? Of course not. It’s not in human nature to learn from past mistakes. Why else do they get endlessly repeated? And so we keep offering the rabid theocrats in Tehran bigger and bigger dollops of appeasement to cease developing nuclear weapons that they see as the ticket to the return of their Messiah and the Global Islamic Caliphate, and they keep telling us to shove it. A literally vicious cycle that will continue right up until the the nuclear-tipped Shahab-3s and Shahab-5s and 6’s fly for Israel, Europe, and the US, respectively. And, I imagine, the appeasement dollops grow proportionately.
Well, boys and girls, at least one group in this crisis isn’t paralyzed by historical amnesia:
A large Israeli military exercise this month may have been aimed at showing Jerusalem’s abilities to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.
In a substantial show of force, Israel sent warplanes and other aircraft on a major exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean early this month, Pentagon officials said Friday.
Israel’s military refused to confirm or deny that the maneuvers were practice for a strike in Iran….
The big exercise the first week of June was impossible to miss and may have been meant as a show of force as well as a practice on skills needed to execute a long-range strike mission, one U.S. official said.
The New York Times quoted officials Friday as saying that more than 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s staged the maneuver, flying more than 900 miles, roughly the distance from Israel to Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, and that the exercise included refueling tankers and helicopters capable of rescuing downed pilots.
You have to love Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s scolding the Israelis against attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities on the grounds that there’s “no proof” that the mullahs are building nukes. That’s a hoot considering that his implied threshold of “proof” would be mushroom clouds rising above the atomized remains of Tel Aviv and Haifa - after which he would be quick, I’m sure, to extend Russia’s “condolances” for the Second Holocaust that his intereference-running for the mullahs had helped to fruition.
The Jews are not going to sit there like a potted plant and let their enemies gain, mount, and deploy the means of their annihilation against them. If nothing else, they will ensure that if they do go down, so will the mullahs.
Meanwhile, we were generously given another reminder of Iran’s other ability to strike the U.S. homeland, and what, aside from the alleged absence of nuclear ordnance, is holding them back:
Intelligence officials tell ABC News [Hezbollah] has activated suspected “sleeper cells” in Canada and key operatives have been tracked moving outside the group’s Lebanon base to Canada, Europe and Africa…
Suspected Hezbollah operatives have conducted recent surveillance on the Israeli embassy in Ottawa, Canada and on several synagogues in Toronto, according to the officials.
Latin American is also considered a possible target by officials following Hezbollah’s planning…
Officials say the CIA, the NSA, and British and Canadian intelligence agencies began to pick up a steady stream of information - from electronic intercepts, human sources and surveillance - about a possible Hezbollah attack on February 17, just days after the Beirut funeral of Mugniyah where Hezbollah leaders publicly declared they would seek revenge…
[Former CIA intelligence officer Bob] Baer says his Hezbollah contacts told him an attack against the US was unlikely because Iran and Hezbollah did not want to give the Bush Administration an excuse to attack.]
But next year, when the Winnie the Pooh Doctrine is firmly in place? The sky’s the limit, baby.
Thus does Yates’ question arise anew: “What rough beast, its hour come round [again], slouches towards Bethlehem to be [re]born?”
The rough beast is on its way. The Hundred Acre Wood won’t know what hit it.
[cross-posted at 
]
Further insight into the pacifist sewer that is Barack Hussein Obama’s “strategic thinking”:
Barack Obama says if Osama bin Laden were captured on his watch, he’d want to ensure he doesn’t become a martyr if he were prosecuted. Obama said he’s not sure that the terrorist mastermind would be captured alive.
But if he were, Obama said he would want to bring him to justice “in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he’s engaged in and not to make him into a martyr.”
Uh, don’t you have to be killed in order to become a “martyr”? If you’re captured alive, that doesn’t fit within that definition, right?
And why would it require a “way of bringing him to justice” for “the entire world” to understand his murderous acts? Didn’t “the entire world” spend the morning of September 11, 2001 sitting in either shock or racous celebration (you know in which part of the world) before their televisions as passenger jets flew into both towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and, but for the heroism of four passengers on the fourth one, the White House or the U.S. Capitol? And how much of a “martyr” would bin Laden really be if he got captured after the meat-grinder through which al Qaeda has been fed by the U.S. military over the past six years at the Bush Administration’s direction?
No, Senator, the danger isn’t that he’d become a martyr, even by your misdefinition; it’s that he’d become a hero, as his trial would take place in a U.S. civilian court, with bin Laden accorded full constitutional rights, including the right of discovery into every intelligence secret on al Qaeda the U.S. government has, and the ability to turn his trial into an O.J. Simpson-like media circus and ultimate mockery of justice. That IS what the U.S. Supreme Court decreed last week. Which makes it far more likely that he would be killed on the battlefield - martyred in actuality, and in the anonymity he doubtless fears - an anonymity to which you would doubtless contribute as you wouldn’t want to be known as the man who “murdered” George W. Bush’s “public enemy #1″ without due process and all that rotgut.
Given that Senator Obama did, almost by rote, praise that oligarchical atrocity, it’s all the more emblematic of his candidacy that he exposed his off-the-cuff ignorance yet again in butchering his “don’t make bin Laden a martyr” metaphor:
Obama, a former senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, cited “that principle of habeas corpus, that a state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process — that’s the essence of who we are. I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday.”
(Though Obama was clearly referring to the principle of giving criminals a day in court, it’s worth pointing out the distinction here, that the Nuremberg trials did not give Nazi war criminals access to U.S. courts, but to a special international military tribunal created by the U.S., USSR, France and the U.K. Though Nuremberg currently is considered a model for international law, it’s not as if Rudolph Hess had access to challenge his detention in U.S. federal court.)
Ensign Ed piles on with further clarification:
It’s not as if the military tribunals offered by Congress and the Bush Administration fell below Nuremberg standards, either. They allowed for even more rights for the defendants than Nuremberg, or would have if the Supreme Court hadn’t twice stopped them before determining whether they worked. In fact, the tribunals as conceived in the last iteration closely match what American soldiers receive for their own trials under the UCMJ.
And just imagine: under traditional international law and rules of war, it is entirely within a country’s rights and privileges to summarily execute, without trial OR due process, captured un-uniformed, illegal enemy combatants. The Bushies bent over backwards for the terrorists even before they came under relentless pro-jihadi harassment by congressional Democrats and their counterparts on Olympus, who have now added the powers of commander-in-chief of the armed forces to their trophy case. And now Barack Hussein Obama is either blantantly lying about de facto American citizenship for al Qaedastanis being analogous to the Nuremberg war crime tribunal, or he really is too chowder-headed to understand the difference.
Or, to put it in Ace-ian terms:
Apparently Obama is to be praised for doing the simplest and easiest things, like he’s a [bleep]ing retard who needs to be unduly complimented for making it through a tapioca break without [bleep]ing himself too much.
Maybe the MSM knows something about Barack Obama’s cognitive powers we don’t. Maybe he should be lavishly praised for a [bleep]-free tapioca.
And this man is going to be the next president of the United States?
UPDATE: Here’s how Khalid Sheikh Mohammed expressed his appreciation to Justices Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, and Breyer:
“I cannot accept any attorney who is not governed by sharia [Islamic] law. I will represent myself. I will not be represented by anybody even if he is a Muslim, because he will be sworn to your American Constitution. I consider all the U.S. Constitution and laws evil. They are allowing for same-sexual marriages and many things that are very bad … Do you understand what I said?”
You can see where this is headed, cantcha?
[cross-posted at ]
A tripartite follow-up on Barack’s ballsy, bellowing bellicosity….
First, from Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Barry’s “nebulous” commitment to stage an Iraq “publicity stunt”:
Mr. Zebari, who has served as foreign minister in every Iraqi government since 2003, finds Mr. Obama’s proposal worrying. In a meeting with Post editors and reporters Tuesday, he said that after all the pain and sacrifices of the past five years, “we are just turning the corner in Iraq.” A precipitous withdrawal, he said, “would create a huge vacuum and undo all the gains and achievements. And the others” — enemies of the United States — “would celebrate.”
Mr. Zebari said he told Mr. Obama that “Iraq is not an island.” In other words, an American withdrawal that destabilized the country would also roil the region around it and embolden U.S. adversaries such as al-Qaeda and Iran. “We have a deadly enemy,” Mr. Zebari said. “When he sees that you commit yourself to a certain timetable, he will use this to increase pressure and attacks, to make it look as though he is forcing you out. We have many actors who would love to take advantage of that opportunity.” Mr. Zebari says he believes U.S. forces can and should be drawn down. His point is that reductions should be made gradually, as the Iraqi army becomes stronger.
Sounds like BO was doing more listening than talking, doesn’t it? And that Minister Zebari was telling him what he didn’t want to hear.
So, in keeping with False Messiah’s neurotic conflict aversion, he evidently told the Iraqi poobah what he thought the man wanted to hear - nebulously, of course:
The foreign minister said “my message” to Mr. Obama “was very clear. . . . Really, we are making progress. I hope any actions you will take will not endanger this progress.” He said he was reassured by the candidate’s response, which caused him to think that Mr. Obama might not differ all that much from Mr. McCain. Mr. Zebari said that in addition to promising a visit, Mr. Obama said that “if there would be a Democratic administration, it will not take any irresponsible, reckless, sudden decisions or action to endanger your gains, your achievements, your stability or security. Whatever decision he will reach will be made through close consultation with the Iraqi government and U.S. military commanders in the field.”
This is, of course, diametrically the opposite of what he has said pretty much forever on this subject, while still leaving enough wiggle room (It depends on what the definition of the words “irresponsible,” “reckless,” and “sudden” are….) to pursue an immediate retreat as quickly after noon next January 20th as humanly possible. Besides, who’ll ever know what Lucifer promised a nameless, faceless Iraqi official who’ll be among the first executed by the Iranian/al Qaeda terror regime that conquers Iraq after we leave?
Next, behind Door #2, we have this nicely done RNC reminder of St. Barack’s anti-terrorism instincts from a Donk primary debate last summer:
Q: Senator Obama, if, God forbid a thousand times, while we were gathered here tonight we learned that two American cities had been hit simultaneously by terrorists, and we further learned beyond the shadow of a doubt that it had been the work of al-Qaeda, how would you change the US military stance overseas as a result?
A: Well, the first thing we’d have to do is make sure that we’ve got an effective emergency response, something that this administration failed to do when we had a hurricane in New Orleans. And I think that we have to review how we operate in the event of not only a natural disaster, but also a terrorist attack.
The second thing is to make sure that we’ve got good intelligence, a., to find out that we don’t have other threats and attacks potentially out there, and b., to find out, do we have any intelligence on who might have carried it out so that we can take potentially some action to dismantle that network. But what we can’t do is then alienate the world community based on faulty intelligence, based on bluster and bombast. Instead, the next thing we would have to do, in addition to talking to the American people, is making sure that we are talking to the international community.
Because as already been stated, we’re not going to defeat terrorists on our own. We’ve got to strengthen our intelligence relationships with them, and they’ve got to feel a stake in our security by recognizing that we have mutual security interests at stake.
That the perps of this hypothetical attack were al Qaeda was explicitly stated in the question. But apart from it is where His Eminence’s emphasis falls: maybe he’d take some potential action if he’s ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY SURE that it’s al Qaeda, but only if he gets undisputed permission from the “international community,” because “we can’t defeat terrorists on our own.” After the way he’ll gut what’s left of the military after Bill Clinton disembowled it, that’ll probably be correct.
Senator Obama forgets that, for the time being, no other member of “the international community” has anywhere near the multi-faceted military capabilities we do. So if we “can’t defeat the terrorists on our own,” the “international community” won’t be any help, even if they were inclined to view the war on terror as anything but the “law enforcement operation” that Ba-ROCK sees it as. Which they’re not.
And leave us not forget that in the intelligence game, there’s no such thing as having all the facts. There aren’t any sure things. There are only educated guesses. No president EVER has complete knowledge of a crisis situation, and he can’t afford to sit on his thumb and wait indefinitely in the forlorn hope that he will, or countless more Americans and allies will die.
Do you even want to contemplate this man facing an Iranian nuclear ultimatum?
Which brings us to Door #3:
Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else.
Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”
I swear I’m not making that up. Or, at the very least, if somebody is, it’s way up the cyberstream from me.
But there’s more:
Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children’s classic, which says: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.”
This man is actually saying that the national security policy of the most powerful nation on the planet should be patterned after the whimsical antics of a miniature, taxidermized, exhibitionist, bulemic ursine mammal named after excrement. And he’s going to be the next National Security Advisor of the United States.
But leave aside the puerile, mentally unbalanced metaphorical imagery, and focus in on the guiding principle underlying it: “If it” - our national security strategy - “is causing you too much pain, try something else.” This, by implication, is a reference to the insurgency we’ve been fighting for the past five years in Iraq. Or, rather, the fact that we’ve been fighting it instead of just running away, abandoning the Iraqis to get slaughtered (again), providing our enemies with a huge strategic victory, and encouraging them to further escalate their already existing war against us. The last time the Pooh Doctrine guided our national security decisions, the result was an escalating series of al Qaeda and Hezbollah attacks culminating in “Holy Tuesday” six years, nine months, and seven days ago. It seems to me that losing three thousand American civilians in the space of forty-five minutes was all kinds of “too much pain,” and fleeing the Islamic Fundies now would cause us a grievously huger load of it.
One can, of course, more succinctly and candidly rephrase Danzig’s slogan: Take the easy way out. Cut & run. Wave a worthless piece of paper around, crow that “it is peace in our time,” and watch the world - or at least Israel, Europe, and our own homeland - go up in atomic flames, one city at a time.
These are the people on whose judgment the lives of you and your loved ones will depend for at least the four years beginning next January 20th, gentlebeings. My only questions are two:
1) Now are we expected to trot off into bovine obedience by Barry’s manly swagger or just moo?
2) You don’t really think you’re going to get any sleep tonight, do ya?
[cross-posted at ]
This morning we bring you good news and bad news. Which would you like first?
Just kidding - you’re not getting that choice:
Evidence of al-Qaida’s problems in Iraq is weighty and convincing. It has been badly hit by the fightback from the American-backed Sunni “Sons of Iraq” and the US troop “surge”. Western intelligence agencies estimate that the number of foreign fighters is down to single figures each month. The border with Syria is now harder to cross.
Iraq-watchers point, too, to financial strain caused by the arrests of al-Qaida sympathisers in Saudi Arabia, mafia-like disputes over alcohol licences and difficulties recruiting the right calibre of people. Last month, a sympathetic website carried a study showing a 94% decline in operations over a year. The Islamic State of Iraq claimed 334 operations in November 2006 but just 25 a year later. Attacks dropped from 292 in May 2007 to 16 by mid-May this year.
Dia Rashwan, an Egyptian expert on radical Islamists, says recent al-Qaida propaganda footage from Iraq is old and cannot mask the crisis it is facing. “They have not got new things to say about Iraq though they are trying to give the impression that they are still alive. The material isn’t convincing.” Nigel Inkster, former deputy head of MI6, now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, agrees: “Al-Qaida is starting to prepare their people for strategic failure in Iraq.”
Al-Qaida is also perceived as being “on the back foot” because of attacks by Muslim clerics on its takfiri ideology and revulsion at the killing of innocent Muslims. Participants in Zawahiri’s recent “open dialogue” on Islamist websites compared al-Qaida’s performance unfavourably with the successes of Hamas in Palestine and Hizbullah in Lebanon.
Challenges to the use of violence by Sayid Imam al-Sharif, founder of the Egyptian Jihad group, have rattled his old colleague Zawahiri, says Rashwan. Influential Saudi clerics have helped undercut al-Qaida’s theological arguments. How far such rarified debates affect radicalised Muslim youth in Bradford or Madrid is a different question.
What’s the key difference between the U.S. in Iraq and Israel in Gaza and Lebanon? The regime of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, confronted with the opportunity to eradicate both Hamas and Hezbollah two years ago after both Iranian proxies helpfully provided the provocation by kidnapping several IDF soldiers, lost its nerve and let the “international community” intervene and impose a ceasefire that handed the Jewish state’s enemies a qualified military victory and a gargantuan propaganda/morale triumph. For the first time since Israel was reborn as a nation in 1948, external Muslim enemies had attacked her and fought her to a standstill. Not because the Hezbos and Hamastanis were better soldiers or had superior weapons or tactics, but because Israel’s political leadership, fearing a “world opinion” that will NEVER favor them whatever the circumstances, was afraid to fight.
President Bush, faced with a similar situation in Iraq six months later, a near-unanimous domestic and international demand for U.S. retreat, and a confident Iran-al Qaeda axis believing their conquest of Iraq was only a matter of time, tacked directly into that ferocious defeatist gale with the appointment of General David Petraeus and the implementation of the “Surge” strategy instead.
Today Israel is looking down the barrel of another war with a much better armed and trained Hezbollah, which now all but rules Lebanon, while a few hundred miles to the east, al Qaeda has been massacred, the mullahs have lost Sadr and the Madri Army, and democratic Iraq has stabilized. Or, distilled further, Ehud Olmert was afraid to win, and so lost; George W. Bush chose to win, and did - a fact so incontrovertible that not even European leftist publications are bothering to deny it any longer.
The Guardian piece does fret about al Qaeda opening up “new” fronts in Algeria, Yemen, and Somalia, none of which, as Ensign Ed details, are truly new.
But that brings us to today’s bad news. If al Qaeda is going to make a major move somewhere else, there are two likely candidates - Pakistan, and the United States of America:
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.
The justices handed the Bush Administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The vote was 5-4, with the court’s liberal justices in the majority.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said, “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times.” …
In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts criticized his colleagues for striking down what he called “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants.”
Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas also dissented.
Well, that’s it, then. After nibbling around the edges for almost seven years, the American Left, via its media, congressional, and finally its judicial strongholds, has finally turned the policy clock all the way back to September 10, 2001. There is now nothing left of the steps taken in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks to defend our country from this enemy and its insidious mode of warfare.
Let’s tally it up: the ability to extract intelligence from captured jihadis in a war where the extraction of intelligence is maximally critical to the saving of American civilian lives was sacrificed on the alter of imaginary “torture” objections. The ability to disrupt the financing of terrorist networks (the SWIFT program) was exposed and nullified by the New York Times. The ability of the NSA to monitor jihadi communications worldwide was first exposed by the Times, then subjected to FISA oversight, and now is forbidden altogether, and has been for nearly six months. And now the Supreme Court, by the usual 5-4 liberal majority, has decreed that the War Against Islamic Fundamentalism is no longer a war, but is a conventional, civilian “law enforcement” matter once more.
And here I thought it was going to be President Hussein who turned all those Gitmo bloodmisters loose to rejoin the Global Jihad against us. Turns out it’ll be President Bush. The rapturous, ecstatic orgasms of the fever swamps at such delectible irony must be seismic this morning.
If they wanted irony, they should have had the Supremes wait to issue this ruling until September 11th. Maybe they figured that if they did, nobody would remember why that would be so ironic.
Here’s another irony: by deciding that “the Constitution applies worldwide rather than just to the US and its residents,” Justice Kennedy’s majority has issued what is literally an act of judicial imperialism in the most liberal sense imaginable: he has imposed NOT American power, NOT American rule, NOT American law on the entire planet, but only its civil liberties protections. Just as congressional Dems have successfully ruled that U.S. intelligence cannot monitor ANY enemy communications ANYWHERE on the globe if, at some point, they flow through so much as a single American communications hub or server, now five robed oligarchs have decreed that all an enemy has to do to literally get away with mass murder on American soil is not wear a uniform and wage war from amongst our civilian population, then hide behind the very freedoms they are trying to destroy, get sprung by another dhimmized American judge, and continue the jihad.
The fact that we’ve never, in 232 years of national history, lavished captured enemy prisoners in time of war with full constitutional rights, or treated illegal combatants as legitimate POWs, or that the Geneva Convention defines illegal combatants with precisely the criteria that describe Islamic terrorists? Non-functional. Obsolete. Superceded.
Olympus has spoken. The American people are now officially on death row. The only question is when and where the next mass attack in the homeland comes. We can only hope and pray that our men and women in uniform (who are now going to have to rotate home to testify in civilian criminal trials, and who will presumeably have to read each captured jihadi his Miranda rights, and who will, in practice, be more likely to kill them in battle than capture them, cutting us off from a primary avenue of vital intelligence gathering) have bought us more time to come to our voting senses than the SCOTUS has gifted to bin Laden & Co. to get back on their feet and exploit the “get out of jail free” card they’ve been so foolishly handed.
UPDATE: Mark Levin provides a Jeremiac lament:
It has been the objective of the left-wing bar to fight aspects of this war in our courtrooms, where it knew it would have a decent chance at victory. So complete is the Court’s disregard for the Constitution and even its own precedent now that anything is possible. And what was once considered inconceivable is now compelled by the Constitution, or so five justices have ruled. I fear for my country. I really do. And AP, among others, reports this story as a defeat for “the Bush Administration.” Really? I see it as a defeat for the nation.
Well, remember, Mark - for liberals, America is only “their” nation when they get to rule it. Otherwise, they see it as their enemy, which goes a long way in explaining this suicidal ruling and the Left’s - and, doubtless, al Qaeda’s - raucous celebration of it.
UPDATE: Hugh Hewitt has tons and tons and tons more. Though I’ve gotta differ with him on one point: where’s the bona fide indication that Senator McCain would appoint federal judges and SCOTUS Justices that would have dissented against this spectacularly unconstitutional, not to mention literally lethal, usurpation of Legislative and Executive power when he’s done everything in his power for years to block such appointments in the Senate and holds a Homeland Security stance that is far more in tune with the five-justice lib majority?
UPDATE II: The blistering dissents of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Scalia.
[cross-posted at ]
My friend Steven posted this video, A Trip Across Israel - as you can see,
This video documents a drive across the entire width of Israel from the West Bank wall to the Mediterranean Sea. The point is to illustrate how small and intrinsically vulnerable it is.
The video is at liveleak: A Trip Across Israel.
Memorial Day means more than bar-b-qued hamburgers and hot dogs. It is more than just a day off from work. Memorial Day is a time to thank those who have sacrificed their lives for this nation, and a time to thank those who are currently laying it all on the line everyday to keep this nation safe. These men and women are most deserving of our deepest respect and gratitude for all they have done on behalf of our great country.
It is my sincere hope that everybody takes the time to pay tribute to those heroes who have paid the ultimate sacrifice while protecting our freedom, and also recognize the tremendous sacrifices that our Veterans have made and our active duty troops are making everyday.
Simple words cannot convey my gratitude. As a veteran myself I understand the oath, and I understand the difficult journey. However, as a peace-time veteran, I will never fully understand the taste of freedom that graces the hearts and souls of our war-time veterans, and the brave men and women currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In fact, there are only two words that I can say that truly relay how I feel. They are simple words, insignificant by themselves, but filled with emotion and honor when placed together and delivered to a member of the United States Military.
Thank You.
——————————————–
Tonight on Political Pistachio Radio we will pay tribute to those fine members of the military, past and present, living and dead. I encourage the veterans that read this site and listen to the show to call in so that we may thank you personally.
——————————————–
The men and women that protect this nation serve in many more ways other than the military. Our Border Patrol is also an agency tasked with keeping us as a nation safe, not only from illegal immigrants who have broken the law to be here and are tapping into a system they have neither contributed to, nor have the legal right to access, but the Border Patrol also protects us from members of enemy Islamic factions and Mexican drug cartels. One out of three persons crossing the border along the San Diego county line are of Middle Eastern descent. The Drug Cartels in Mexico are at war with the government and each other, and that war is attempting to spill over into this country. The Border Patrol is our line of defense against both of these dangers. Unfortunately, our government, which is fast becoming a judicial oligarchy, has determined that if Border Patrol Agents do their job, their actions are punishable by prison.
Two Border Patrol agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, attempting to interrupt a cross-border drug smuggling operation, fired their weapons in self-defense at an admitted illegal alien, drug smuggler, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila. The smuggler managed to escape across the border into Mexico, but he left his vehicle, loaded with more than 700 pounds of marijuana. It was another good bust. Rather than be congratulated for doing their job, the Border Patrol agents were charged with attempted murder, indicted, placed under house arrest for eight long months. The two agents were later sentenced to 11 and 12 years in federal prison, respectively, on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and for violation of the drug smuggler’s civil rights. They remain in prison serving their unfair sentence that President George W. Bush could pardon, but won’t because of his globalistic position, and lack of cajones against the liberal left which would lambaste him if he so dared.
Last Friday I attended a Free Ramos and Compean Sidewalk Rally in Irvine, California near where First Lady Laura Bush was autographing copies of the book she authored with Jenna Bush, “Read All About It!” While I was there I interviewed a number of the folks holding up signs and waving American Flags in support of our unjustly jailed Border Patrol Agents, Ramos and Compean. Tonight on Political Pistachio Radio, after the tribute to our American Military Heroes, past and present, I will play for you the audio of those interviews. Don’t miss this broadcast! This will be a show you will remember for a lifetime.
Join us tonight at 10:00 PM Eastern Time on Political Pistachio Radio.
Below are photos I took from the Rally. The first is of the line waiting to meet Laura Bush. The last picture is of a woman born in South America who declares proudly she is an American, and she is the final, stirring interview you will hear tonight.
Fighting Words, Revisited
Mark Hosenball
NEWSWEEK
Back in 2004, when the Senate intelligence committee began investigating whether public statements by U.S. officials about Saddam Hussein’s pre-invasion Iraq were “substantiated” by existing intel, Republicans controlled Congress and the committee’s inquiry was aimed at figures on both sides of the aisle. The idea was to examine the fighting words of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as well as prominent Democrats including Al Gore, Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Hillary Clinton. But Democrats, who took over the panel after winning Senate control in 2006, decided that the final report would examine only statements by “policymakers”—in other words, the Bush administration. So in the report, due out this week, no Democratic comments will be parsed. That includes an Oct. 10, 2002, speech by Clinton in which she criticized Saddam’s WMD ambitions and accused him of giving “aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members.” (Continued…)
[Little late getting this up]
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., May 13, 2008 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates saluted North American Aerospace Defense Command’s role as the guardian of North American skies at the organization’s 50th anniversary observance here last night.
NORAD, a U.S.-Canadian military organization, was established May 12, 1958, to defend North America from air and space threats.
“Both of our nations are dedicated to protecting North Americans from air attacks, and this institution remains a vital part of the defense of the continent,” Gates said during his address at NORAD’s Golden Jubilee Ball. (Continue reading…)
“For the first time in many years heavy military equipment will be used. This is not sabre-rattling. We are not threatening anyone and don’t plan to,” Putin said ahead of the traditional Victory Day parade on Friday.
No that is not supposed to raise questions, but God forbid there be a DEFENSIVE missile system near by. Or HIS talk of new Russisn missiles that can penetrate “any missile defense system.” Don’t worry about it at all!
Previous work done on the topic, that can help you form an opinion on the matter: USSR Watch, II, IV, V
The United States provides assistance to the Palestinian Authority in the hopes of helping the people. However, there is evidence that this aid is not being used as the U.S. intends, but actually funds the Palestinian Authority with weapons, money, and training, meaning that the U.S. is actually funding terrorism. Israel is constantly bombarded by Hamas and Hezbollah, but former president Jimmy Carter claims that Hamas only wants peace. However, after denouncing the recent Israeli seminary school shooting, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas’ official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper is holding the terrorist up as a hero, calling him a martyr who died while fighting jihad.
James Hutchens, PhD, a former U.S. Military Chaplain who retired with the rank of Brigadier General says that our aid to the Palestinians is in violation of our laws, and states that Jimmy Carter’s so-called peace-seeking friends have a charter calling for the total annihilation of Israel.
But why should we defend Israel? Why is our alliance with Israel so important?
James Hutchens is also the President of the JerUSAlem Connection, the foremost Christian Zionist magazine in America, and he is on a mission for Israel. He is on the battle front in the area of informing, educating, and activating America’s Christian community on issues related to Israel from a Biblical perspective. His military experience also makes him well acquainted with the concept of “Mission,” decorated with a Purple Heart as a result of his time as a battle chaplain in Viet Nam.
He joins us tonight on Political Pistachio Radio at 10pm Eastern Time. Please Join Us.
cross-posted at various sites in the Political Pistachio Family of Sites
If the reports are true the SECDEF will be recommending a new position for the above Person of the Year ‘07 (in my eyes). General Petraeus may take the reigns at CENTCOM for the departing Admiral Fallon. Lt. General Odierno would fill Petraeus’s boots leading the fight in Iraq.
Also for those engaged in the “war over lies” debates, I only post these for you to reference. Are they nukes? No. WMDs yes.
Tonight on the Andrea Shea King Show, one of my favorites will be joining me to talk politics. And you’re invited to eavesdrop. Or call in with your two cents!
Chuck Muth, former exec of the American Conservative Union, President and CEO of Citizen Outreach, political consultant and the all around cure for the common conservative, brings a plethora of stuff to talk about.
Political stuff. McCain, the imitation Democrat. Inside baseball. (Like what’s going on with Republican-turned-Libertarian Bob Barr.) Pet peeves. Major peeves. (Like the TSA gestapo you have to go through at every airport. Or the attack on home schooling. ) Good interesting stuff. Chuck’s connected. And engaged.
We get underway at 9p ET (6p PT). Hit the link then to launch the program:
Walid Shoebat was born in Bethlehem of Judea, Israel. As a young man, he became a member of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), and participated in acts of terror and violence against Israel. He was later imprisoned in the Russian Compound, Jerusalem’s central prison for incitement and violence against Israel.
After his release from the Russian Compound, Walid Shoebat continued his life of terrorism, violence, and rioting in Bethlehem and on the Temple Mount. After entering the United States, he worked as a counselor for the Arab Student Organization at Loop College in Chicago while continuing his anti-Israel activities. During that time he became disenchanted with the PLO as being to moderate, and joined the Muslim Brotherhood (forerunner of the terrorist organization Hamas) and was trained for the expected coming Islamic Jihad in America.
In 1993 Walid experienced a spiritual journey after a challenge from his Christian wife. While studying both the Holy Bible and secular history he came to the realization that all he had been taught about Jews and Christians was a lie. Convinced he had been on the side of evil, he became an advocate for his former enemy, and against terrorism.
After speaking around the world and in the media about his life and experiences, as well as his unique position and insight as someone who was part of the Jihadist movements, there are forces challenging his credibility in an attempt to silence him. Tonight Walid Shoebat joins Political Pistachio to discuss these recent attacks against his credibility. Join us at 10pm Eastern, 7pm Pacific on Political Pistachio Radio.
TONIGHT on my radio program, we’ll talk with Richard S. Lowry, military historian and author of The Gulf War Chronicles and Marines in the Garden of Eden about today’s testimony by Gen. Dave Petraeus and Ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker before the Senate Armed Forces and Foreign Relations committees.
Also on board: Jim Antle of The American Spectator with analysis of former Congressman Bob Barr, Republican turned Libertarian, who is contemplating a third party run for the presidency.
Join us at 9p EDT on Blog Talk Radio — hit the link. We’ll be there.
*****
