Tag Archives: Defense

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday, saying that his scathing published remarks about administration officials undermine civilian control of the military and erode the needed trust on the president’s war team.

Obama named McChrystal’s direct boss—Gen. David Petraeus—to take over the troubled 9-year-old war in Afghanistan. He asked the Senate to confirm Petraeus for the new post “as swiftly as possible.”

The president said he did not make the decision to accept McChrystal’s resignation over any disagreement in policy or “out of any sense of personal insult.” Flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the Rose Garden, he said: “I believe it is the right decision for our national security.”

Obama hit several gracious notes about McChrystal and his service, saying that he made the decision to sack him “with considerable regret.” And yet, said he said that the job in Afghanistan cannot be done now under McChrystal’s leadership, asserting that the critical remarks from the general and his inner circle in the Rolling Stone magazine article displayed conduct that doesn’t live up to the necessary standards for a command-level officer.

Obama seemed to suggest that McChrystal’s military career is over, including in his praise of the general that the nation should be grateful “for his remarkable career in uniform.”

McChrystal left the White House following his Oval Office call to accounts, and returned to his military quarters at Washington’s Fort McNair. A senior military official said there is no immediate decision about whether he would retire from the Army, which has been his entire career. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

With the controversy have the effect of refueling debate over his Afghanistan policy, Obama took pains to emphasize that the strategy was not shifting with McChrystal’s outster.

Read the full article here.

Shortly after President Obama assumed the Commander-in-Chief duties, he retired the existing commanding general in Afghanistan and hand-picked his successor: General Stanley McChrystal.  McChrystal was always known as a brash and outspoken military man, an expert in counterinsurgency, greatly respected by the troops under his command, and as having little patience for fools.

His requirement to have to answer to Obama, then, was a trainwreck waiting to happen.

Last year, McChrystal made no secret of his desire to have as many as 80,000 additional troops to press the fight in Afghanistan.  He went to the press to state that objective and to dismiss those, like VP Joe Biden, who opposed any kind of surge.

That outspokenness got him into trouble: Obama summoned him aboard Air Force One in Europe and dressed him down a bit.  And while McChrystal was right on policy (never commit militarily to an operation without committing overwhelming force and having a clear plan), he was wrong to go public with his troop level requests, and his concerns and reservations.

Today we’ve got another trainwreck smash-up.

McChrystal is being recalled to the White House to meet with Obama tomorrow to explain disrespectful comments he and his aides made to Rolling Stone magazine about Obama, Biden, other top national security officials, and the war strategy.  Once again, McChrystal is right on policy (Obama is a destructive, disengaged, uninterested fool whose withdrawal timetable and
ridiculous hamstringing rules of engaement are costing us lives and progress), but he was wrong to go public with that criticism.

Obama will decide if he’s Harry Truman and McChrystal is Douglas MacArthur.

But there are 2 big points to consider as this story unfolds:

1.  McChyrstal is a four star general, graduate of West Point, has extensive combat experience and a chest full of medals.  In other words, he knows what he’s doing.  This was NOT a mistake.  These comments were not “off the cuff” or limited to just one or two flippant remarks.  And the interview was deliberately given to far-Left, anti-war Rolling Stone.  None of this was a
coincidence.

That can only mean one thing:  that McChrystal is playing a game of chicken with Obama.  He was daring Obama to respond.  Obama runs a huge risk if he fires him.  If the war goes under, it’ll be Obama’s fault for firing an insubordinate and prickly but effective general.  If he doesn’t fire him, he may look weak and McChrystal will likely feel freer to do what he needs to do to win on the battlefield.  Either way: McChrystal has made his point.

2.  Many are asking today:  Does Obama still have the necessary trust and confidence in McChrystal?  I think the more appropriate and important question is:  Does McChrystal have ANY trust and confidence in the Commander-in-Chief?

I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened. Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard. I have enormous respect and admiration for President Obama and his national security team, and for the civilian leaders and troops fighting this war and I remain committed to ensuring its successful outcome.”
-General Stanley McChrystal, 6/22/2010

The interview of General McChrystal and his in Rolling Stone was not an accident, it’s a perfect  example of suicide by interview.  The General knew that every criticism would be “on the record.”  He also knew that the President will have no choice but to relieve the General of his command after their meeting tomorrow. The Military Code of Justice  provides that a General does not criticize the Commander-in-Chief publicly however,  the General criticized  Obama in a major way and even picked the perfect vehicle to do it in the most visible of ways.

McChrystal’s statements clearly point to the fact that he believes the war cannot be won under the President’s parameters, a tepid escalation to protect the president from his political supports. McChrystal  is clearly frustrated by  Barack Obama and his administration and finds it necessary to protect his men. He finds himself having to take radical steps to protect his troops in the face of an administration trying to fight a war on a half-assed basis.

According to Fox, Some of the highlights of the up-coming article include:

• Although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start. Obama called McChrystal on the carpet last fall for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops. The President did not want to hear his advice. “I found that time painful,” McChrystal said in the article, on newsstands Friday. “I was selling an unsellable position.”

• It quoted an adviser to McChrystal dismissing the early meeting with Obama as a “10-minute photo op.Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. The boss was pretty disappointed,” the adviser told the magazine.

• The military is clearly unhappy about Obama’s arbitrary deadline of July of next year. The White House’s troop commitment was toed a pledge to begin bringing them home in July 2011. Counterinsurgency strategists advising McChrystal regarded as an arbitrary deadline.

• The article list of administration figures said to back McChrystal, including Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and puts the SCHMOTUS (Schmo of the United States), Vice President Joe Biden at the top of a list of those who don’t. The article says McChrystal has seized control of the war “by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”

• Asked by the Rolling Stone reporter about what he now feels of the war strategy advocated by the SHMOTUS  last fall (fewer troops, more drone attacks), McChrystal and his aides attempted to come up with a good one-liner to dismiss the question. “Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal  joked. “Who’s that?” “Biden?” one aide was quoted as saying. “Did you say: Bite me?”

• Another aide called White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones, a retired four star general, a “clown” who was “stuck in 1985.

• Some of the strongest criticism, however, was reserved for Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. “The boss says he’s like a wounded animal,” one of the general’s aides was quoted as saying. “Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous.”

• If Eikenberry had doubts about the troop buildup, McChrystal said he never expressed them until a leaked internal document threw a wild card into the debate over whether to add more troops last November. In the document, Eikenberry said Afghan President Hamid Karzai was not a reliable partner for the counterinsurgency strategy McChrystal was hired to execute. McChrystal said he felt “betrayed” and accused the ambassador of giving himself cover. Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books,” McChrystal told the magazine. “Now, if we fail, they can say ‘I told you so.”‘

McChrystal is a Four-Star General, a position you do not achieve by being an idiot. Today’s military leadership is well schooled not only in war-making but in diplomacy.  He knew what the content of the article would be. He also knew that the article would lead his own dismissal (or the proverbial resignation letter where he says he’s quitting to spend more time with his family).

The Rolling Stone interview highlights the difference in the leadership styles of the President and the General. When this President faces a crisis,  he looks for someone either internally or externally to blame. On the other hand, the General sees the War in Afghanistan reaching a crisis point because of the way it is being waged, rather than looking to find a scapegoat in his ranks as Obama would do, McChrystal found a way to let the country know what is really happening, while at the same time redirect any criticism for the war effort, away from his men and on to his own wide shoulders.

Notice that even in his apology above,the General does not take back the comments, he simply apologizes for making the comments. The Military commander was sending his troops and the administration a message.  To the troops he was saying ” I have your backs even to the point of hurting my own career.” The message for the administration was, “Your way isn’t working,  let us do what is necessary to win this war.  Even though this was a violation of the Code of Honor, the General’s statements were a service to America and to his men by confirming what we all suspected, the President and his administration does not have a clue.

Bad news today for President Obama, his Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Advisor, John Brennan, and other proponents of the idea that the United States can safely reach out to “moderate” elements within terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban.  In a 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court found that no distinction can be made between violent and non-violent wings of such groups and that the former will be beneficiaries of whatever “material support” is given them.

As Stephen Landman of the indispensable Investigative Project on Terrorism’s IPT News reported in a post Monday:

“The court roundly rejected the claims that there’s a distinction between aid to a terrorist group’s “social” wing, as opposed to its military wing….:

Material support meant to “promote peaceable, lawful conduct” can further terrorism by foreign groups in multiple ways. Material support is a valuable resource by definition. Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends. It also importantly helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups – legitimacy that makes it easier for those groups to persist, to recruit members, and to raise funds – all of which facilitate more terrorist attacks.

As a result of this ruling upholding the material support statute, it remains illegal to provide to designated terrorist groups “any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instrument or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (one or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.”

The Court found:  “Whether foreign terrorist organizations meaningfully segregate support of their legitimate activities from support of terrorism is an empirical question. When it enacted section 2339B in 1996, Congress made specific findings regarding the serious threat posed by international terrorism. One of those findings explicitly rejects plaintiffs’ contention that their support would not further the terrorist activities of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and the Tamil Tigers (LTTE): ‘Foreign organizations that engage in terrorist activity are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates that conduct.’”

The ruling in Holder v. The Humanitarian Law Project also determined that: “Material support meant to ‘promote peaceable, lawful conduct’ can further terrorism by foreign groups in multiple ways. Material support is a valuable resource by definition. Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends. It also importantly helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups – legitimacy that makes it easier for those groups to persist, to recruit members, and to raise funds – all of which facilitate more terrorist attacks.”

The logic of the Supreme Court’s decision on material support suggests that it would be illegal to provide $400 million via the so-called “moderates” of the Palestinian Authority to the designated terrorist organization (DTO) Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip – something President Obama has announced he intends to do.  It should also preclude the sort of “outreach” to the so-called “moderates” of another DTO, Hezbollah, as presidential advisor Brennan has twice indicated he thinks is in order.  Ditto negotiations with “moderate” members of the Taliban, at least to the extent such a process entails what amounts to material support to that terrorist organization in the form of financial or other substantial inducements to their cooperation.

What is more, the Supremes’ ruling in this case essentially upholds a landmark en banc opinion issued last year by the 7th Circuit in Boim v. Holy Land Foundation.  The latter decision written for the majority by highly esteemed Judge Richard Posner found that a contribution made to an organization embracing a doctrine like Shariah that calls on its adherents to engage in jihad amounts to material support.  This outcome was particularly gratifying for the Center for Security Policy as it filed an amicus brief in the case making precisely that argument.

Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the Supreme Court actually endorsed a broad interpretation of the material support statute.  Solicitor General Elena Kagan espoused the view that the law regulates conduct only, not speech per se. The Court found that the statute does indeed regulate speech and that Congress can criminalize speech on behalf of a known terrorist organization – even if such speech is for legal ends, as long as that speech also provides material support to said organization.

Accordingly, it appears that, for example, if an imam were to issue a Shariah fatwa “to, under the direction of, or in coordination with foreign groups that the speaker knows to be terrorist organizations,” he would be guilty of violation of the material support statute.  This could constitute a powerful new tool for countering the stealth jihad inside the United States.

By the same token, the Supreme Court ruling would apply to overseas activities as well, such as the so-called “humanitarian flotilla” that sought to break Israel’s naval blockade of Hamastan in Gaza.  Any U.S. organization that coordinated their support for this affair with Hamas in any way would be guilty of providing material support in violation of the statute.

In short, the top court in a federal judiciary that has in recent years handed a succession of victories to America’s terrorist foes – dare we call it “material support? – has rendered a decision in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project of signal importance.  It now behooves the Obama administration to conform its own policies and behavior to the letter and spirit of this sensible ruling, even as it enforces the law vigorously.

Barack Obama’s problem with top Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McCrystal is one of his own making.

McCrystal and his staff – in a much-ballyhooed article in Rolling Stone set to be published on Friday – are reportedly disdainful and disrespectful to the White House, Afghanistan envoy retired Gen. Karl Eikenberry and Vice President Biden.  That they were cannot be an accident.  McCrystal (and his boss, Gen. David Petraeus) were uncharacteristically vocal in the months Obama pondered his Afghanistan strategy.  They didn’t trust Obama then, and don’t now.

Obama chose McCrystal to command the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan (read “nation-building” for “counterinsurgency”).  Both McCrystal and Petraeus (who helped draft the plan) agreed with President Obama’s July 2011 deadline for the campaign.

But it was – and is metaphysically impossible for the plan to work, as Petraeus and McCrystal both knew.  A counterinsurgency can succeed, but only with an open-ended commitment to it, and a decisive action to end the involvement of out-of-country allies of the insurgents.

Simply put, basing a strategy on nation-building is the catastrophic mistake that George W. Bush made in Iraq that Obama is now compounding in Afghanistan.

First, you cannot defeat an insurgency without providing both long-term security and offering a form of government more attractive to the populace than the insurgent offers.  Neither in Iraq nor in Afghanistan is there such a form of government offered – far less credibly offered – to the population.  And in neither place can we offer security for any length of time past the moment the last US trooper climbs into a truck to head to the airport for a flight home.

Second, neither Bush in Iraq or Afghanistan nor Obama in the latter has been willing to even admit that Iran and other nations’ intervention in support of the insurgents in both countries is the deciding factor in the insurgents’ campaigns.  So long as the outside support pours in, the insurgents stay on the attack.  And so they will in Afghanistan, long past the July 2011 deadline.

So as Stanley McCrystal comes back to Washington this week for a proper scolding by the president, what choice does Obama have?

He can’t fire McCrystal without giving McCrystal’s successor more time to accomplish the mission.  If McCrystal is fired this week, how can anyone replace him and be expected to win in the next twelve months?

I predict McCrystal won’t be fired for that reason alone.  It’s vastly more important to Obama to maintain the July 2011 withdrawal date than it is to succeed.  McCrystal will be scolded, maybe even publicly, by Obama and sent back to do what the general and his military superiors must know is an impossible mission.

Last week, Congresswoman Giffords met with General Patraeus on Capitol Hill. This meeting took place after we have lost over thirty American soldiers in Afghanistan this month. The burning question on Ms. Giffords’ mind was: what are we doing to “green” our bases?

This is a disgrace. Ms. Giffords sits on the House Armed Services Committee and yet seems to be unaware of the ever-changing and deteriorating situation in our longest war ever – Afghanistan. Instead, she used that meeting for political grand-standing to please the Obama Administration.

Ms. Giffords, my Democrat opponent in the race for the 8th Congressional District, has little respect for the gravity and seriousness of her office. In November, she will answer for that.

Alexander Litvinenko was a hero in the mold of Mosab Hassan Yossef, the so-called “Son of Hamas,” who the US is sickeningly threatening to deport.  In fact, their fates may be quite similar if this is to happen, as in 2006 Litvinenko as you may recall was poisoned with Polonium-210, an extremely rare radioactive substance, and essential ingredient to early nuclear bombs.

Why was he poisoned?  Litvinenko, a former KGB/FSB agent who left the service and defected to London was a staunch critic of the Putin regime, and apparently knew too much for the Kremlin to bare.  For Litvinenko implicated the Russian government in a variety of terrorist attacks, abroad for example through their training of Al-Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri in 1998, and disgustingly at home through an attempted bombing of an apartment complex in 1999, and the infamous 2002 Moscow theater and 2004 Beslan school attacks.

I recently read his book Allegations, which in light of recent events is proving quite prescient.

One argument he makes that should resonate with all of us regards political resistance to the criminal Russian government:

There is no need to break any law, even most cruel one, in order to remain humans and citizens.  All we need to do is to take a civic stance, to demand that the authorities strictly obey the constitution.  Putin and his propaganda team know this, so they try to divide us, to set us against each other.  In doing so, the Kremlin strategists appeal to the lowest instincts, using every ethnic, religious or property differences we may have.  That is exactly why we must understand that our common enemy now is Putin’s regime (Allegations, 100).

Is this not precisely what we are witnessing today?  Our citizens are peacefully demanding a return to the Constitution, while our Progressive Putins try to spark racial and class warfare to divide and conquer us.

Much like the great Russian novelists who observe and depict the human soul with unparalleled clarity, too Litvinenko has great insight with regard to the souls of our pols.  Speaking of the lack of a will in the West to defend Eastern European states from Russian provocations, he argues in the case of Lithuania that:

It would be very naive to expect the West to protect you.  You should count on your own forces rather than anything else.  Western politicians are pragmatics, and are not prepared to fight for the freedom of Lithuania against Russia, with its nuclear and bacteriological arsenals.  Unfortunately, the major Western leaders seem to have forgotten world history.  They live from an election to an election and do not even try to see further than the next four years.  They try to play with Putin like they played with his Nazi predecessors on 1930s’ Germany.  They sacrifice the democratic principles for the short-term tactical interests.  Indeed, they may get some tactical benefits, but they are losing strategically (168).

Could not we replace Lithuania with Israel?  And have not our Western leaders forgotten history and sacrificed long-term survival for short-term victories in every political sphere?  Are we not making serious strategic errors when it comes to the Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians and other rogue states and their terrorist allies?  Are we not slowly but surely sacrificing Western civilization to Sharia?  Are we not blinded in devising policy based on multiculturalism and specifically the belief that all peoples are the same and share the same goals and aspirations?

One of the more refreshingly pointed parts of Litvinenko’s work lies in his criticism of the UN.  He argues (with my emphasis added):

First of all, we should remember that the UN is an outdated and wasteful organization, which only discredits the international law, values of humanity, and basic moral principles.  It was created after the Second World War by Stalin and Roosevelt. The difference between the two founders’ political ideals was not so big: if Stalin was a Bolshevik, Roosevelt was a Menshevik.  Mensheviks disagreed with Bolsheviks on some tactical issues, such as how money should be collected from party members, but their ultimate goals were the same: to take away our property, to share it ‘justly’, and to force all of us into one socialist prison camp.

The UN founders’ idea was that the organization would solve international conflicts and restrain the aggressive states such as Nazi Gemany.  In reality, it could play such a role only for a few years, until the Cold War started.  Ever since then, the USSR and then Russia [and we might insert any other enemy powers here] skillfully manipulated the UN, to use it only against the United States and the West in general – against precisely those countries which abide by international law.

If the Soviet Union and later Russia wanted to start a war, they would just do that, without asking UN permission.  If the US or the UK wanted to much as to introduce sanctions against some fascist dictator, they had to spend years pleading for the UN to pass a resolution allowing that.

It has never happened in history that the UN effectively opposed a dictatorship or a dictator. The only exception was the 1949 Korean War, where the Western armies fought against communism under the UN flag, and that happened only by chance.  The Soviets, still experienced in manipulating international organizations, made a tactical mistake – walked out of a meeting, — so an anti-communist resolution was passed.  But ever since then, the UN always ignored human rights abuses in North Korea and Cuba, USSR and China and now Russia and Chechnya.

Being a predominantly US-financed organization, the UN however has become a cover for a great many of spies from Russia and other tyrannies and dictatorships.  Whenever the Soviet regime or its Russian successors [or again, most any other hostile regimes] were in trouble, they simply manipulated the UN into passing or rejecting a respective resolution.  So, they would get authoritative judgments saying that there was nothing wrong in their actions, while all their opponents were real war criminals (169-70).

Yet our President believes that our allies should be subject to show trials at the hands of this this morally bankrupt, hypocritical, illegitimate and dangerous institution.  John Bolton, we need you now more than ever.

Meanwhile, today President Obama maintains a cozy relationship with Russia, as reflected in a recent White House press release on the upcoming June 22-24 meeting between Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.  The statement reads:

Over the last eighteen months, the United States and Russia have made significant strides in resetting relations between our two countries in ways that advance our mutual interests. Since first meeting in London in April 2009, President Obama and President Medvedev have collaborated closely to enhance the security and well-being of the American and Russian people, including the expansion of the Northern Distribution Network, which supplies our troops in Afghanistan; the signing of the New START Treaty, which reduces our nuclear arsenals, enhances transparency about our strategic forces, and demonstrates U.S. and Russian leadership in support of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; new sanctions against North Korea, designed to compel North Korea to adhere to its international obligations; the full and active pursuit of the dual track strategy that seeks Iran’s compliance with its international obligations regarding its nuclear program, including most recently UN Security Council Resolution 1929; and the creation of a Bilateral President Commission, which has expanded dramatically the interactions among Americans and Russians on a whole range of issues, including emergency disaster response, space, counternarcotics, counterterrorism, energy efficiency, and trade and investment, among others.

Politico notes further:

In a separate statement marking Russia Day, President Obama stressed the two nation’s “strong partnership”:

“On behalf of the American people, I extend my best wishes to all those who observe Russia Day. On June 12, 1992, the first Congress of the Russian Federation declared a new sovereign nation. But the relationship between our peoples goes back much further. This year, we celebrated the 65th Anniversary of the end of World War II, and it was the joint Allied forces that defeated fascism. Today, our two nations continue in our strong partnership, mutual respect and friendship, and I am proud of the new START Treaty and our joint efforts to reduce our nuclear arsenals. Beyond that, our two nations continue to expand our commercial and economic ties. Here in America, many Americans can trace their origins to Russia, and all of them are an important part of our national identity.“

What would Litvinenko say of this newfound love based on “mutual respect and friendship,” with a Russia that is a cesspool of corruption, graft and violence run by former KGB leaders?  Juxtapose the White House’s glowing statements with Alexander’s (again, my emphasis added):

Indeed, the greatest real threat to world civilization today is the Russian Mafia orchestrated by special services.  Covertly, without drawing much attention, it spreads its tentacles all over the world.

Russian Mafia, along with its Western accomplices like former German Chancellor Schroeder, presents a real threat to Western democracy…Western police agencies, obsessed with the so-called war on terrorism, resort to collaborating with the Russian Mafia, represented by people like Putin, Patrushev, Ivanov and their likes.  The problem is that it is natural for Mafia to corrupt the statehood, like the rust which eats metal away.  If Western democracies collaborate with the KGB regime long enough, they are at risk of degrading to the level of backward and corrupt Russia. Western countries can simply lose their democratic statehoods to the Mafia, leaving their citizens defenceless in front of that mortal danger (204).

In an interview with the Chechen press, note as well the following exchange:

Chechenpress: What can you say about the terrorist attacks in London?  Which forces have masterminded these attacks?  From which part of the world are they?

Litvinenko: There is only one thing I know for certain.  The centre of the world terrorism today is not in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Chechen Republic.  The terrorist threat which spreads all over the world originates from the Kremlin and Lubyanka offices.  Terrorism will not end, more bombs will explode and more blood will shed, unless the Russian special services are dissolved, banned and condemned.  There are no statutes of limitation for terrorism.  We must pursue and prosecute all those involved in it as long as they are alive, not award them Nobel Peace Prizes and erect monuments to them.  I must say it again: the leaders of Soviet and Russian special services, such as Yuri Andropov, Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev, were (and in some cases still are) behind all the terrorists I named.  These people are the world’s chief terrorists, and their place is not among the leaders of civilized nations, but in the dock.  Unless they are condemned like the Nazi Gestapo, there will be no end to the terrorism in the world (218).

For background, Litvinenko in Allegations refers not just to al-Zawahiri, but also Carlos the Jackal, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein and numerous others as trained KGB agents or at a minimum close allies, and many of these ties have been corroborated as information has seeped out of Russia over the years.

It is clear throughout his writings that Litvinenko had an axe to grind when it came to the Russian regime that commanded him to commit murder, an order that led him to resign.  Nevertheless, even if we assume that he exaggerates and Russia is not a mortal threat to us, there still seems to be value beyond particular allegations.

Litvinenko provides another potential layer of evidence of the alliance between the leftists, in this case of the ruthless Eastern garden variety and the militant Muslim world.  Also, based upon his scathing critique of the Putin government, even leaving aside the necessarily conspiratorial aspect to his arguments, Litvinenko gives us serious pause, in light of an Obama administration that nixes plans for defense shields, reduces nuclear stockpiles, deepens economic ties and palls around with Russian leaders; the Russians who in addition to allegedly sponsoring terrorism and shepherding in all sorts of criminality ally with the the likes of the Iranians, the Turks and the Venezuelans.

In closing, while Russia in particular may represent only one threat among many to the Western world today, Alexander Litvinenko’s warnings and wisdom appear valuable more generally.  For their must have been more than a grain of truth in his words, given his horrific assassination.

Most importantly, his was a clarion call that we must stop the madness of our foreign policy in which our Progressive Putins ally themselves with the forces of evil and thumb their noses at the forces of good, lest we become the evil ourselves.

After the Israeli action against the Turkish jihad flotilla aroused more international condemnation of Israel, Iran is now sending two of its own Islamic jihad flotillas – Moetillas – to Gaza. The war ship convoy (which the media affectionately has called a “humanitarian flotilla” while the “aid workers” set out to slice and dice the Jews) operated by jihad gangs from thug countries is the new way to wage war in the twenty-first century, if you’re not already busy blowing up buildings, trains, planes and other civilian targets.

The jihad flotilla. It melds propaganda together with violence, usually conducted separately, to wage war. The “aid ship” is the face of this century’s warship, like lipstick on a pig.

Of course, all of this is possible because the world media is aligned with the terror force. So when the jihadists, with the help of their leftist whores, paint up their weapon-filled warships like $2 homicidal trollops and call them “aid ships,” the media laps it up like a dog returning to its vomit.

There is no humanitarian crisis in the terror statelet of Gaza, and there is no such thing as a “Palestinian.” It was historically just a geographical designation: there were Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Muslims before ‘48. But no state. No history. No nationality distinct from that of the other Arabs in the area. No flag of this fakestinian narrative. That land is Jewish land. That history is Jewish history. That flag is the star of King David.

The only humanitarian crisis in Gaza is the lack of humanity in Gaza. They elected Hamas, whose charter specifically demands in its first paragraph the destruction of the state of Israel.

Israel asked Egypt to block these warships, a.k.a. “aid ships,” but Egypt has refused. And so now Egypt, which also shares a border with that terror statelet of Gaza, and which has, I might add, strictly enforced that border — more gravely and more violently than has Israel — is throwing in with the killers.

What happened to the peace Israel and Egypt established more the 30 years ago? Israel gave Egypt all of the Sinai, which Israel had captured from the Egyptians not once but twice, in 1956 and 1967. But at the end of the day, it always goes back to the Koran and Islamic anti-Semitism.

Egypt is the third largest recipient of US foreign aid, which it receives as a direct result of its having signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. But now Egypt feels free to do this because the world’s policeman, the United States, has walked off the beat.

Barack Obama refused to speak a word against the Islamic regime of Iran as it viciously put down the nationwide rebellion of its own people, Iranians from all walks of life, whose crime was to march for freedom in response to a corrupt and stolen election. Now I guess the Iranian mullahcracy has taken a breather from killing, raping, and imprisoning its own people, as it was missing out on all the barbaric fun the Jew-killing jihadis were having on their Islamic jihad Moetillas.

And so now Iran has gone back to its real love, the provocation of Jewish genocide as mandated by Koranic texts such as the ones that say that Jews are the Muslims’ worst enemies (5:82) and that they’re under Allah’s curse (2:89, 9:30). This Islamic anti-Semitism is the motivation of all of these Islamic countries against the tiny Jewish state.

The Muslims have always been waging war against the Jews – since the beginning of Islam, when Muhammad annihilated the Jews of Medina, the Qurayzah tribe, and then massacred the remaining Jews of Arabia at the Khaibar oasis. Why do you think the jihadis on the Turkish flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, were chanting, “Khaibar, Khaibar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return?” Islamic scholar Mark Durie explains:

The discriminatory shari’a regulations applying to non-Muslims, who are referred to in Islamic law as dhimmis, are based upon the precedent of Khaibar. Through a twist of history the defeat of the Jews of this little-known Arabian oasis helped determine the treatment of many millions of non-Muslims after Islamic conquest, including the once-vast Christian populations of the Middle East.

For this reason, the name of Khaibar has great significance for us all. For extremist Muslims like Amrozi, it stands for the defeat of infidel enemies, and their humiliation and subjugation under shari’a conditions, an enduring signpost to the hope of an Islamist victory.

And now, as those Iranian warships approach Gaza, they’re moving in for the kill again.

June 25th is fast approaching and I hope this year, given the international tensions all around us, we pause and consider that it is not just another day but the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

When the 300,000 troops of the North Korean People’s Army supported by tanks and artillery violently smashed across the 38th parallel to invade and overrun most of the South, they unleashed a conflagration that would grow to be a three year bloodbath pitting the forces of Communism and the Western Democracies against each other for the first time.  (It would also be the first time that the nascent United Nations would commit military forces to halt the aggression of one nation against another, showing that the UN must be backed by military will to be effective.)  After initial see-saw fighting down to Pusan, then up to the Yalu River after the Inchon landings, and then back down again after the massive Chinese intervention, the fighting settled into a brutal stalemate along a line that eventually would mimic the original pre-war border.  When the fighting finally ended in July 1953, the war left in its wake four million military and civilian casualties, including 37,000 American dead and another 100,000 wounded.  South Korea’s army would suffer almost 1 million casualties, the other UN nations’ a combined 17,000 as well. An estimated 520,000 North Koreans and another 900,000 Chinese were casualties.

One of the wounded from that war was a young Second Lieutenant Jack Schaeffer from the 1st US Marine Division, my father.   In his more reflective moments, usually after a pint or three, he would tell me bits and pieces of what he saw and did there.  Needless to say, they were disturbing.  And the one thing I believe always went through his mind was this: was the sacrifice made by him and his fellow soldiers worth it?

The answer lies in the contrast between the two nations six decades later.  The tragic fact is that every day 23 million North Koreans are forced to endure an horrific existence in what can justifiably be classified a slave state.  I will not get into the nitty-gritty of the starvation, exposure, poor health conditions, the physical and mental abuse, the forced labor camps, and general privations these isolated people suffer as this has been well-documented.

When you compare this dismal picture with the vibrant and modern South, the true value of the Allies’ intervention in 1950 reveals itself.   I could list all of South Korea’s accomplishments, including its economic prowess, its high standard of living, its relatively free and open society and juxtapose that against the hermit kingdom north of the DMZ but I think this famous satellite photo says it all:

Guess where South Korea ends and North Korea begins?

So here then in black-and-white is the legacy of the US-led military action to stave off flagrant communist aggression and protect a vibrant society so that it could develop unmolested by those in Pyongyang who would like nothing more than to bring the South under their control by force.  Like all conflicts, the Korean War had its ugly moments, but the overall value of our actions, and the service we performed for humanity,  cannot be denied. There are in fact 48 million people living in sunlight today thanks to men like my father.

The strangely underreported sinking of a South Korean naval ship Cheonan by a Northern vessel in March is but the latest in a series of bizarre tantrums on the part of Kim Jong-il to get noticed.  He wants something.  But what he wants, no one can say. After all, it’s hard to read the mind of a sexually deviant murdering lunatic.   And even if we could, we simply do not wield the military power (or the political will) in the region needed to contain him.  The sad reality is that with regards to North Korean affairs, the Chinese call the shots now.  And given that  Beijing likes having a buffer between Manchuria and the free nations, especially Japan — cynically condemning millions of innocents to hell on earth to protect their selfish aims — do not hold your breath waiting for them to sit on the lillipution miscreant in Pyongyang, or his son and heir, Kim Jong-un, any time soon.  So with North Korea, as with so many other rogue states, we find an example of where the rubber of Obama’s sense of his ability to use his charisma as a foreign policy tool, meets the road of the reality that it is a very dangerous world in which not all leaders want what we want… and in fact care little for our way or life or human rights as a whole.

The President seems to operate under an assumption that international conflicts are mere “misunderstandings” and that if we talk just it out, we’ll get back to a harmony that he believes is the natural state between nations.  Unfortunately, as the date June 25, 1950 reminds us, history teaches otherwise.

If Mr. Obama remains feckless in the face or Kim’s tiresome threats and provocations, if he fails to stifle their nuclear ambitions, he will join a long succession of ineffectual administrations that spans decades and both political parties.  Still I think it is time for the intellectual-in-chief to retire the “yes we can” teleprompter and instead seriously consider the nature of the despots he is trying to engage be they in Pyongyang, Caracas or Teheran.  And if he takes anything constructive away from his dealings with any of them, I hope it is a deeper appreciation of the misery that great swaths of the world’s populations would be subjected to without America’s imprint.  At least, I would like him to admit just once that no other nation in history has sacrificed so much for the benefit of others.

Maybe the next time he embarks on one of his Apologia Americana tours, Barack Obama might first fly at night over the sprawling city of Seoul with its skyscrapers, bright lights, vibrant colorful streets and teeming masses of free people – and then cast his eyes northward to peer into the dark void in the gloomy distance beyond the DMZ.  Perhaps then he may reflect upon the fact that the United States made this contrast possible.  That the country whose standard he now bears has done a lot of good in the world.  And that six decades ago, proud Americans like Lt. Jack Schaeffer, USMC, bestowed upon the South Koreans a precious gift of freedom and prosperity as their legacy, giving meaning to their grim suffering far from home, in a foreign land, for future generations they would never knew.

All warfare is intertwined with politics in some way.  But in our latest edition of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson talks with acclaimed author Sebastian Junger (famous for The Perfect Storm) about the experience of war.

Beginning in 2007, Junger embedded for fourteen months with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, making five trips to the Korengal Valley of eastern Afghanistan, a location that saw more combat than any other in the Afghan theater.

In the end, Junger finds war to both insanely exciting and fraught with complications.  Whatever political rationale there is for war disappears once fighting begins – what’s left is the bond of the platoon and the willingness to do ones job, no matter the consequences.

As a news man Junger says that it is impossible to be objective when covering war, and that often that is okay.  He discusses the role of the media and its biases in reporting on the war.

Junger argues that Afghanistan is a winnable war, but only if those involved have the political will to do what it takes to see a victory.  He points out that all European countries have felt the threat of Al Qaeda, and warns that if we give up on putting Afghanistan back together that we will all feel that threat again.

Watch the full show below.  Also, consider joining our Facebook Page or following us on Twitter.

There is very little that can bring Republicans and Democrats together these days, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing considering the natural inclination of both over the last few years has been to spend money like it’s an Olympic event and they’re going for the gold. But every once in a while the two parties experience a sort of harmonic convergence and come together to do something that is actually based upon long-term thinking, not electoral advantage or political gamesmanship. Such is the case with the F-35 Strike Force Fighter, America’s next generation of fighter plane. But this wouldn’t be Washington, DC, were there not fight to be had somewhere, and in this case how best save money – in the short-term or the long-term. Therein lies where we join our story…

Normally the idea of Republican Leader John Boehner and liberal stalwart Dennis Kucinich agreeing on something would mean it would have to be about what time it is or from which direction the sun rises, but only sometimes. To say those two, and similarly aligned Members of Congress, regularly agree would be akin to saying the Washington Nationals have some room for improvement as a baseball team. But on this issue they are simpatico. Why?

Safe to say they didn’t lose a bet.  The real reason is quite simple – long-term savings potential.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that if what Boehner, Kucinich and ideological brethren voted for were to become law, the F-35 project could see savings of up to 12 percent in the long-term.  While 12 percent may not be enough to get you off the couch for a TV priced at $500, we’re talking about significant savings when dealing with billions of dollars.

So what is this project? It is the decision of who is going to make the next generation engine for the F-35. While this doesn’t seem like it should be an issue inspiring any sort of controversy, it wouldn’t be Washington if it didn’t.

Seems there are two companies vying to make their engine the engine the choice for the F-35.

Generally speaking, competition is the lifeblood of innovation, inspires and without it there is little incentive to improve quality of decrease price.  But the company that currently has the contract to make the engine for the F-35, a company called Pratt and Whitney, doesn’t, as companies that have an advantage, don’t want the competition, which in this case is coming from General Electric and Rolls-Royce.

The House of Representatives, on a bipartisan basis, agreed with GE & RR, that competition is a good thing. According to a study by the Institute for Defense Analyses, aside from potential economic benefits, “Competition could be expected to bring nonfinancial benefits in the form of fleet readiness, contractor responsiveness, and an enhanced industrial base.”

But competition never makes sense for the company with most to lose, in this case Pratt and Whitney, so they’ve undertaken a public relations campaign to kill the competition.

There are many things that make strange bedfellows, but none are as strange as the bedfellows made in politics. This issue has seen groups as diverse as the Center for American Progress and Citizens Against Government Waste joining forces to oppose competition. Why?

It may well be principle, it may be, in the case of CAP, undying loyalty to President Obama, who has been on the side of Pratt and Whitney and is being urged to veto the Defense Appropriations Bill if the competitive provision remains. Erick Erickson at RedState has speculated on the motives of CAGW.

Whatever the case may be, the free-market position and the practical long-term solution to addressing our spending addiction is competition.

While this may seem like an insignificant squabble between two companies that has no impact on the day to day life of you and other Americans, but it has real world implications, and not just on matters of national security. If the government can’t take simple money saving measures like introducing competition its own accounting office says will save us money in the long-term, what hope do we have to address the more serious spending issues that run risk of bankrupting the country in the not too distant future?

As with every type of addict, the first step is admitting you have a problem, then taking steps everyday to avoid falling back into the old, self-destructive habits that led to your addiction in the first place. Since politicians are not known for admitting mistakes, even when obvious, let’s be happy with the passive acknowledgement of the former and move on to the latter by introducing competition in as many aspects of government contracting as possible, starting with the F-35.

In politics, temperament matters – it matters a great deal, as Barack Obama has unwittingly shown us time and again.

Some women and men love to posture, talk, debate, and negotiate. Temperamentally, they are suited for a legislative role. It is said – only partly in jest– that, in Washington, DC, the most dangerous space to occupy is that which lies between a United States Senator and a microphone.

Other women and men – think of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, and Ronald Reagan – were born to take charge. When Harry Truman put a sign on his desk, reading, “The buck stops here,” he knew what he was talking about. As Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, it is vital that we have in our Constitution a unitary executive because, in human affairs, emergencies are commonplace; secrecy, vigor, and dispatch are often requisite; and, in such circumstances, there has to be someone in high office able, willing, and even eager to take responsibility for the conduct of affairs.

Americans have an instinctive understanding of what is at stake. Ordinarily, they choose as Presidents men with executive experience – men with a track record in directing affairs that can be judged. George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had been prominent generals before they were elected Presidents, and Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Theodore Roosevelt had also demonstrated an aptitude for leadership in war.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush had held the vice-presidency. Jefferson and Van Buren had also been Secretary of State, and the same can be said for James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and James Buchanan. Monroe had also been Secretary of War, and this was true was well for William Howard Taft. Herbert Hoover had managed relief efforts in Europe early in and after World War I; he had served as Food Administrator within the United States after we entered that war; and, from 1921 to 1928, he served as Secretary of Commerce.

Many of the others elected to the presidency had previously held gubernatorial office.

This was true for Jefferson, Monroe, Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, and, if one counts his service as governor of the Philippines, for Taft as well. It applies also to James K. Polk, Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, William Jefferson Clinton, and George H. Bush.

The only men ever elected to the presidency who had no executive experience of any sort were Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, and the hapless incumbent we have today.

No one – not even, in retrospect, his own political party – thought that Pierce did a decent job. It was during his administration (1853-1857) that the Union began to come apart. Harding is best remembered for the scandals that beset his short-lived administration (1921-1923). And although, thanks to the slavish devotion of his acolytes in the media and in the academy, JFK is in some circles revered, his actual performance in office prior to October, 1962 was deplorable. As Donald Kagan pointed out on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall Kennedy was so weak, so irresolute and indecisive, so feckless in his dealings with the Soviet Union that his conduct encouraged Nikita Khrushchev to think that he could get away with introducing missiles tipped with nuclear warheads into Castro’s Cuba and brought us thereby to the brink of nuclear war.

Executive experience does not guarantee wisdom and competence in office. Pierce, Harding, and Kennedy were by no means the only elected Presidents to fall short. But, as the American people generally appreciate, the lack of executive experience is a good indicator of fecklessness to come.

Witness Barack Obama. Leave aside his first year in office. As I pointed out in posts entitled “Barack Obama and the Exhausted Presidency” and “Obama’s First Year,” from the outset, he conducted himself in an irresponsible fashion that is highly unpresidential.

He forgot that, in the larger world, the President represents his country. Out of personal pique, he persistently insulted our friends abroad, displaying disdain for Gordon Brown, stiffing Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, treating Benyamin Netanyahu with open contempt, and turning his back on the people of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Iran. At the same time, he embraced Hugo Chavez, sucked up to Vladimir Putin, and kowtowed to the rulers of Saudi Arabia and China – all to no avail.

With regard to domestic affairs, he seems not to have recognized that, under our Constitution, it is the President of the United States who represents the national interest; that Congressmen more often than not cater to particular interests; that, if legislation is left to the latter, principle tends to give way to patronage; and that the result can be a profound embarrassment. And so he stood idly by while Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the like drafted legislation – a so-called “stimulus bill” and healthcare reform, each more than a thousand pages in length, each embodying a multitude of corrupt bargains, each threatening to bankrupt the country. And, like a political hack, faithful to his party to the bitter end, he promoted and signed their handiwork.

All of this was obvious long ago, and it was evident as well that, if there were a real crisis, he would check out. This is what he did when Major Nidal Malik Hassan gunned down thirteen Americans at Fort Hood. This is what he did when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly brought down a jetliner at Christmas time. And this is what he did when Faisal Shahzad was found to have planted a bomb in Times Square. All three cases revealed an egregious failure of our intelligence apparatus. In all three cases, the danger had its source in developments within Islam And, in the face of all of this, the President of the United States signaled that he could hardly bear to take a few minutes off from his vacation at the beach in Hawaii, cancel a party or two, or give up his golf game to acknowledge and address the failures of his administration, and at no time has he been willing to level with us about the source of our peril.

Maureen Dowd and those who think that politics is about play-acting – here is her latest column on this theme – lament that, like Spock in Star Trek, No-Drama Obama is simply incapable of displaying any sense of urgency. The real problem is much more serious, for our well-being is to a considerable degree in this man’s hands, and, when things go wrong, he seems not to feel any sense of urgency at all.

The oil spill that began in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April is the latest example. Some say that President Obama is no more responsible for the spill than President Bush was for Hurricane Katrina. This claim is, in fact, untrue. Bush had nothing to do with Katrina. Barack Obama, as President, was responsible for insuring that the regulatory agencies overseeing the drilling operations did their job properly. While campaigning for the presidency, he charged that the Bush administration had, in effect, allowed the oil industry to regulate itself, and he promised that, if he were elected, he would set things right. During that campaign, he took a wad of cash from folks at BP (more than they had ever given any other candidate); and, when the time came to reform the Minerals Management Service, as Tim Dickinson has shown in fine detail in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the new administration’s appointees did nothing of the sort.

Nor was the Obama administration quick off the mark in doing what could be done to contain the spill. Instead, while the govenors in the Gulf states clamored for action, the President played golf and partied and the bureaucracy dithered, delaying by weeks efforts to prevent the oil from coming ashore, from fouling beaches, and killing wildlife. Nearly two months have passed since the accident on the Deepwater Horizon, and to date President Obama has issued no waiver to the Jones Act, which stands in the way of foreign ships with foreign crews helping to contain and suck up the spill.

The environmentalists are reportedly giving the Obama adminstration a pass. By now, they are reliable partisans, and they have their eye on cap-and-trade. The people of Louisiana are much less happy. They recognize the deepwater drilling moratorium imposed by the Obama administration for what it is – a ploy designed to persuade those not in the know that something decisive is being done – and, according to the left-liberal outfit Public Policy Polling, more than three-quarters of the voters in that state still favor offshore drilling. Moreover, half of the voters polled “think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama’s done dealing with the spill,” 31% of self-described Democrats agree, and only 35% of those polled give Obama higher marks.

Only one politician has gained ground in the course of this crisis, and that is Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana. The poll recently taken shows that “63% of voters approve of the job he’s doing,” which is the highest approval rating that Public Policy Polling “has found for any Senator or Governor so far in 2010. There’s an even higher level of support, at 65%, for how he’s handled the aftermath of the spill.” Jindal is evidently a man of executive temperament. He is not better placed to deal with the spill than is Barack Obama, but he has done as much to keep it off the beaches and out of the swamplands of southern Louisiana as lay within his power.

As the reports make abundantly clear, Barack Obama did not help himself at all with the speech he gave on Monday night from the Oval Office. As our President plays golf, parties, and pauses from time to time to bloviate and pose for photo-ops, his popularity steadily sinks under the weight of his evident indifference to our security and well-being.

It is high time that Republicans start asking the obvious question: who, in their number, is best prepared to do what this presidential incumbent has no desire to bother with: to take what the authors of The Federalist called responsibility. Governor Jindal may not be at the very top of the list of possible presidential contenders, but he is certainly high on it.

The Gaza Flotilla incident, which would really be more aptly called the Hamas Flotilla incident, needs to be viewed from a wider perspective to be more fully understood and appreciated for what it represents – A Marxist-Progressive Jihad on Israel, and by proxy, the United States, wherein the American Progressive Left is engaged in an open and working relationship with Islamist radicals.

The Hamas Flotilla action was not an isolated event. It was but the latest in a carefully programmed series of actions that have been taking place since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a violent coup in 2007, designed by community organizations that have been operating in the region since at least the mid-1990s.

The umbrella organization of this recent series of actions is called the Free Gaza Movement, and represents several international organizations, as well as many prominent American Progressive organizations.

The international organizations include George Galloway’s Viva Palestina, IHH, and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

The American Progressive community is organized against Israel under the banner of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

The US Campaign to end the Israeli Occupation is a co-production of Global Exchange/CodePink/United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) (All founded by Medea Benjamin), and a group called the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR).

The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) has been organizing on the ground in Palestinian territories since 1996.

One of the mainstream Progressive organizations that has pledged its support to this anti-Israel movement is the Progressive Democrats of America, a group organized by Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Donna Edwards, Tom Hayden (founder of SDS), and Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans of Global Exchange/CodePink.

The Progressive Democrats of America are but one in a slew of mainstream American Progressive groups taking part in these actions against Israel on behalf of Hamas.

Another Progressive organization whose board members are helping Hamas with this program of actions is the Movement for a Democratic Society, or (MDS). Their members include a who’s who of 1960s domestic radicalism.

The full list of the November 2006 MDS board members is available here, but some names jump right off the page:

Bernardine Dohrn – Domestic Terrorist, Northwestern University Professor.
Rashid Khalidi – Very close friend of President Obama, (details at the link). Sits on the Advisory Board of the US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation.
Carl Davidson – Former SDS. Co-organized the anti-war protest where Barack Obama came out against the Bush Administration.
Tom Hayden – Former leader of SDS, member of Progressive Democrats of America.
Alan Haber – First President of SDS

Below is a diagram of major Progressive groups responsible for the Free Gaza marches and flotillas (Click to view full size image):

These groups have attracted a great deal of public support from some very interesting people and organizations.

One very notable celebrity supporter and on-the-ground participant in these actions is Author Alice Walker (Color Purple). She’s so notable, in fact, that President Obama continues to prominently stream from his Presidential YouTube channel her impassioned and detailed 2008 presidential campaign endorsement-commercial. If you are a fan of irony, you will really love the 2:58 minute mark of the Alice Walker video below:

When America elected President Barack Obama, more than anything else, they were getting a community organizer. Given that he marketed himself on this particular credential, this is not at all a racist slander (as some have suggested of any criticism of his Presidency), but merely an empirical observation.

Until Barack Obama ran for the Presidency, most people didn’t have the faintest clue as to what a community organizer was, let alone the name of one of their groups. That made it very difficult for most people to understand the choice they were making when they pulled the lever for Barack Obama. It didn’t help that the mainstream media in this country had neither the will nor the skill to educate the American public about community organizing beyond an altruistic and sterilized fairytale of selfless volunteerism.

These are the days of Google, however, and with a little bit of time and curiosity (something absent in alleged news organizations like Tribune), anyone can answer for themselves such questions as: who organized the Gaza-Hamas flotilla? Or, who organized the bank protests? Or, who organized the violent protests during the 2008 Republican National Convention? Or, who organized the violent protests in Seattle during the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization? Or, who organized all those Jihad photo-ops of children throwing rocks at tanks?

In each and every single case mentioned above, the answers to those questions lead to the same core group of people in the American social organizing community. They are easy to identify and their motives are clear because they frequently write openly about what they are doing.

If the people of the United States are to understand the presidency of Barack Obama and today’s Progressive-controlled Democrat party, they can only do so by knowing and trying to understand the American/global community organizing industry. There are several community organizing mega-corporations in America, and they each have their key players.

This article will attempt, in very basic terms, to offer a foundational knowledge of these groups, their leaders, and their actions. Hopefully this information will aid people’s understanding of incidents like the Gaza Flotilla, as well as the actions and programs that have come before it – and that will surely follow.

GROUP: Global Exchange

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: CodePink, United For Peace and Justice, US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Global Citizen Center

BACKGROUND: Founded by Medea Benjamin and her husband Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange has launched several entities over the years, including CodePink, but more notably, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ).

UFPJ was the umbrella organization for almost ALL of the large scale “anti-war” marches that unfolded in America. They are also responsible for the protests that took place in Denver and St. Paul during the Democrat and Republican conventions.

Among the members of the UFPJ steering committee is Marilyn Katz, former SDS head of “security” during the ‘68 Chicago riots. Katz is also a big money bundler for President Barack Obama, and a member of his National Finance Committee. Katz, along with former SDS Carl Davidson, organized the 2002 anti-Iraq war rally in Chicago where Barack Obama came out publicly against the War.

The US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation is the Grand Central Station of US Marxist Progressive community organizing directed against Israel. We shall return to that in a moment.

Through the US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation, Global Exchange and CodePink staged the Gaza Freedom March and the Flotilla. Many notable people and groups either supported or took part in this action. Among them, the Progressive Democrats of America, Author Alice Walker (Color Purple), Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

Medea Benjamin sits on the Advisory board of Progressive Democrats of America.

It is also worthwhile to mention that Van Jones, former Obama Green Jobs Czar, sits on the board of Global Citizen Center, Global Exchange’s environmental organization.

Global Exchange also has significant ties to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Read their detailed and gushing blog post describing their interactions with Hugo.

So let us take a moment to acquaint ourselves with the motive power behind these various entities. Here is a video of Medea Benjamin at a Gaza border check point. Be sure to catch the part at the front where she openly talks about her working relationship with the Hamas terrorist government of Gaza.

GROUP: Alliance of Community Trainers (ACT) & Root Activist Network Trainers (RANT)

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, 1999 Seattle WTO Protests, 2004 Republican Convention Protests in NYC, 2008 DNC/RNC Convention protests

BACKGROUND: Founded by Lisa Fithian, Starhawk, and Juniper.

Their specialty appears to be ‘direct action’ protests designed to cause significant confrontation. Together with UFPJ and the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), they organized the Anarchy movement and made it a key component of their street confrontations with police in Seattle, St. Paul, and elsewhere.

RANT has been a member of the UFPJ Steering Committee since its inception.

Co-founder Starhawk took part in CodePink’s Gaza actions in 2009/2010

Co-founder Starhawk is a board member of the radical Movement for a Democratic Society.

GROUP: International Solidarity Movement (ISM)

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: UFPJ (Steering Committee), US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation.

BACKGROUND: Founded in 2001 by Huwaida Arraf and her husband Adam Shapiro as an international component to US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation, among ISM’s chief tasks is to organize Americans and other Westerners to go serve as human shields in places like Iraq and Israel.

Regarding Jihad terrorism, Arraf and Shapiro have written:

“Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics, both violent and nonviolent. But most importantly, it must develop a strategy involving both aspects. Nonviolent resistance is no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation.”

For a disturbing look inside the US recruiting program of the ISM, read the article at FrontPage Mag entitled Solidarity With Terror.

ISM gained notoriety back in 2003 when one of its organizers, Rachel Corrie, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer. According to Israel, she was accidentally killed while they were destroying smuggling tunnels leading from Egypt into Gaza. According to the Organizing Industry, the Israeli Bulldozer ran her over on purpose. Either way, Rachel Corrie is dead and now the ISM names their boats after her.

The sea vessel Rachel Corrie was last seen attempting to run Israel’s blockade of Hamastan, in the ISM-orchestrated Free Gaza Flotilla. The Flotilla was merely the latest in a series of Actions run under the Free Gaza program.

ISM Founder Huwaida Arraf Chairs the Free Gaza Movement.

ISM Founder Huwaida Arraf currently sits on the advisory board, and has served on the Steering Committee of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

ISM Founder Huwaida Arraf is a member of Global Exchange’s Speakers bureau.

ISM also organized people on the ground at the Democrat and Republican party conventions in 2008.

GROUP: Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: Organizing trips to Cuba, US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation

BACKGROUND: Founded in 1967, they have been dedicated to busting the US blockade/sanctions against Cuba. Their contemporary claim to fame is coordinating congressional visits to Cuba. From their website:

2000: Reps. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Barbara Lee (D-CA) traveled to Cuba in a February delegation organized by IFCO. They cut the ribbon at the opening of the first-ever US-Cuba Medical Trade Fair. They dedicated the trade fair to Elián González and all the Cuban children who were deprived of medicines because of the US economic blockade.

The second official delegation of the Congressional Black Caucus, organized by IFCO, visited Cuba in May-June 2000.

Most recently, IFCO has coordinated funds for the American arm of Viva Palestina, the George Galloway component of the Free Gaza Movement.

GROUP: Center for Economic and Social Rights

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: Research/Education (Propaganda) related to the Palestinian Territories. US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation.

BACKGROUND: Founded in 1993 by Roger Normand, Sarah Zaidi and Chris Jochnick, this group works with the Jihadis to produce research that they then use for propaganda educational tours in America and elsewhere. They also handle fundraising for the umbrella group US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation.

Since 2001, together with Global Exchange and their other partners under the US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation, they have organized many direct action campaigns against Israel, the latest being the Free Gaza Movement in all of its incarnations.

GROUP: USAction

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: Health Care For America Now (HCAN), TrueMajority.org, Showdown in America

BACKGROUND: Founded by former 60s radicals Heather and Paul Booth as Illinois Public Action Council, it eventually grew into a national network called Citizen Action. The national organization folded after numerous scandals including Teamstergate, and a multi-million dollar embezzlement conviction against Obama campaign organizer Bob Creamer, then Citizen Action treasurer. Most of the locals renamed and reorganized under the new national banner of USAction.

In 2005 the president of USAction, William McNary, delivered a rousing keynote address to the CPUSA (Communist Party of the United States) that had the crowd roaring. President Obama worked for William McNary organizing a Get Out The Vote campaign, ostensibly for Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.

During the Clinton administration, Heather Booth was hired to coordinate organizing for the DNC.

President Obama’s now deceased Doctor Quentin Young (regarded as the godfather of Obamacare) was an important member of Illinois Citizen Action.

In 2008-2010, USAction used HCAN (Healthcare for America Now) to stage rallies to spearhead the successful effort to push the health care bill through congress.

Their most recent work includes co-organizing the Showdown in America protest actions, including the ones that terrorized a teenager alone in his home, and stormed into Federally-regulated bank buildings.

GROUP: Movement for a Democratic Society

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: New SDS

BACKGROUND: Founded by former members of the original 1960s Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and their spin-off terrorist group, Weather Underground. Some of the more prominent ones are Bernardine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Carl Davidson, Tom Hayden, Alan Haber, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Noam Chomsky, Mark Rudd, Jeff Jones, Bert Garskof, and Starhawk.

Bernadine Dohrn and her husband Bill Ayers have taken part in Free Gaza Movement Actions, and were members of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.

Tom Hayden is on the board of Progressive Democrats of America, and was a member of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.

Rashid Khalidi is on the Advisory Board of the US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation.

Bill Fletcher is on the Advisory Board of the US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation.

Noam Chomsky is on the board of advisers for the Free Gaza Movement, a sub-group of the US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation.

Marc Rudd was a member of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.

Jeff Jones was a member of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.

Bert Garskof was a member of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.

GROUP: The New Party / Working Families Party

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: Running 3rd party and fusion candidates in targeted races.

BACKGROUND: The Progressive movement – not unlike the Libertarian movement – felt locked out of a one party system masquerading as a 2 party system. They set out to take control of the Democrat party where they couldn’t defeat it outright.

The New Party collapsed in the 1990s when they lost a Supreme Court case involving the backbone of their strategy, fusion voting. They re-organized as the Working Families Party, and boast such prominent members as Hillary Clinton, Elliot Spitzer, and John Edwards.

An excellent background resource for the New Party can be found here, but for the purposes of this article, the pertinent point is that President Barack Obama was an important member of the New Party, and still is a member of the Working Families Party.

If you look at the list of New Party members, you will see that a large number of them are involved in the Gaza actions against Israel, as outlined above.

——————

From storming banks and personal property, to rioting in Seattle and St. Paul, to Palestinian children throwing stones at tanks in Israel, the groups listed above (among others) are the community organizers responsible for most of it.

Don’t like health care being pushed through? Too bad, that’s what community organizing looks like.

Don’t like protesters storming bank lobbies and private residential property? Too bad, that’s what community organizing looks like.

Don’t like anarchists rioting in Seattle or St. Paul? Too bad, that’s what community organizing looks like.

Don’t like CodePink organizing marches and flotillas in support of Hamas? Too bad, that’s what community organizing looks like.

These groups and their leaders are openly Marxist and virulently opposed to Capitalism.

Consistent with their worldview that all means are justified by their ends, they have intentionally organized Anarchists into their movements.

Consistent with their worldview that Capitalist America is the evil empire and Israel is her colony built on land stolen from indigenous peoples, they have organized the Jihadis. They hide behind the language of human rights and justice, but their bias is betrayed by the complete lack of honesty when it comes to representing the narrative of that region. Absent from their movement is any mention of the word Hamas. Search their English websites and you will be hard pressed to find a single mention of the Iran-supported terrorist government of Gaza, Hamastan. It is as if Hamas has gone missing. Come to think of it, there isn’t much mention of Jihad either. Or Sharia, Or Dhimmitude.

Their thin cloak of human rights legitimacy is torn to shreds when their tactics include weapon wielding ‘peace activists’ invoking ‘death to the Jews’:

The Marxists explain that the only reason the terrorist groups gain traction is because outside Western empire powers stole that land for the Jews, who have turned it into a militarized apartheid state. They fail to mention that within the concepts of Sharia and Dhimmitude, Jewish self-determination has been a non-starter for the Arabs since day one. Also, no mention of the repeated and relentless stream of Jihad terrorist attacks against innocent men, women, and children, guilty of nothing more than being Jews, and who were hoping only for the dignity of self-determination on one tiny shred of their ancestral homeland, among a sea of Sharia states demanding dhimmitude for ‘peace’. Also, no mention of the Palestinian involvement in the Holocaust. Nope. Just racist-evil-maniacal Israel – colony of America.

The Marxists and their Islamist clients like to say that it is all about the occupation. This has nothing to do with occupation. This decades-long Jihad against the Jews began long before the occupation. Long before the Holocaust.

The Jews, who by chronological logic were there first, are the tiniest minority in an ocean of Muslim countries. All they want is to have one small piece of their birthplace and to be safe there, but the bigotry of dhimmitude will not allow it. Never has, never will.

And the Marxists have fooled the world into thinking the Israelis are maniacal aggressors beating up on innocent defenseless Muslims.

Some of the President’s closest friends and financial supporters are admittedly working with and supporting Jihad terrorists in an effort to defeat the Little Satan – Israel. Are we supposed to assume that they will stop there? Or will they work together to also defeat the Great Satan?

Is it okay to question their patriotism yet?

Timing couldn’t be worse on this one, and frankly, we are broke.  Via the NYT:

President Obama promised a $400 million aid package for the West Bank and Gaza on Wednesday, as the United States scrambled to come up with a way out of the stalemate in the Middle East exacerbated by the Gaza flotilla incident last week.

Mr. Obama, meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, said that the money would go to housing and schools. White House officials said that the money also would help increase access to drinking water and to help address health and infrastructure needs.

“While we work with our partners in the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Egypt, and the international community to put such a strategy in place, these projects represent a down payment on the United States’ commitment to Palestinians in Gaza, who deserve a better life and expanded opportunities, and the chance to take part in building a viable, independent state of Palestine, together with those who live in the West Bank.”

Is this Obama’s way of saying he agrees with Helen Thomas–by offering the Palestinians a huge payout of American tax dollars.  Nothing says ‘Sorry, I’m with you,’ like $400 million in US aid.

Aren’t the liberals out there tired of our money being sent overseas yet? That $400 million could be used for public schools, roads, bridges, and, of course, health care.

And in reality, did Helen’s remarks really differ that much from the administration’s position of standing with Palestine and rebuking Israel.  It just comes out better and much more diplomatic when speech writers prepare your remarks and you rehearse it, than when someone asks you out of the blue.

And, yes, you can equate Israel, stop building settlements/neighborhoods with “Get the hell out of Palestine.”

The question (because there is always the same question) is Why?  Why did Obama quickly throw Helen Thomas under the bus?  It really wasn’t a secret what Thomas thought , and it wasn’t a secret that Obama fully supported Palestine.

Now, it will be even more interesting to find out who takes Helen’s empty chair in the front row.

I just can’t help but hum “The Wheels on the Bus.”

One month ago we broke the exclusive story of Mullah Omar’s capture.

Additional confirmations have come from The Jawa Report, Oliver North, Milblogger Baba Tim, Blackfive.net, and even The Nation.

Then, two weeks ago, Newsweek published a report that the Taliban is in serious turmoil because Mullah Omar is MIA.

Today, Iranian State Television reports that the Pakistanis are indeed harboring Mullah Omar.

Mullah Abdul Salam Hanafi, a former senior member of the Taliban and governor of central Urozgan Province under the Taliban regime, is quoted as saying:

Pakistani security forces are harboring the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Omar in Karachi.

As the tempo of Omar stories increases, so does the pressure on Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), as well as the Obama administration and the CIA to deal with the Omar issue.

My prognostication is that sooner, rather than later, we’ll hear that Omar was taken out in a successful drone strike. This will allow the Pakistanis to avoid having to admit they ever had him in the first place (thereby circumventing Taliban reprisals and large scale rioting across Pakistan) and it will also allow the Obama Administration to claim they were able to do something the Bush Administration couldn’t — kill Mullah Omar.

However it comes down, I don’t expect to ever see Mullah Omar alive again.

The Obama administration’s response to the Israeli blockade of Gaza has been, to put it charitably, uncertain. Are the Israelis right to try to prevent ships of any kind bound for Gaza from bringing offensive weapons into the Hamas terror state? Gaza is not some remote location. Gaza abuts Israel. Four thousand rockets have been fired by Hamas from Gaza into Israel proper, into civilian areas, into Jewish homes, shops, and houses of worship. Hamas has declared war on Israel. Hamas is dedicated to eradicating “the Zionist entity.” They won’t even name the Jewish state.

After initially proclaiming, chest out, that there would not be “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel’s right of self-defense, the Obama administration began backtracking. Like Annie, unnamed officials began to sing: “The sun will come out tomorrow.” They could hardly admit, after all, that the administration’s Mideast policy is shambolic. (That’s a nice internationalist touch for you. “Shambolic” is Brit slang for chaotic, disorderly.)

What we need is clarity. The Israelis had no choice but to intercept the Turkish-sponsored “flotilla.” What ensued when Israeli commandos repelled onto the deck of a Turkish ferry boat was indeed shambolic. The “peace” activists who crowded the deck set upon the Israeli soldiers with their palm fronds. Or was it olive branches? Try lead pipes.

And the Israeli commandos, those aggressive brutes, fired back. The French would understand very well this aggressive behavior. They have a phrase: “This animal is very mechant (wicked). When you attack it, it defends itself.”

Compare today’s response of daylight not showing between us and our Israeli allies, then peeping through, with the clear, hard determination of President Kennedy when we were threatened by Soviet missiles in Cuba, or, “Cuber,” as our brave young leader pronounced it. Here’s how Kennedy described U.S. actions on 22 October 1962:

To halt this offensive buildup a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

Is this not precisely what the Israelis were trying to do with Gaza? Cuba was 90 miles off our shores. Gaza is right there. What were the Israelis attempting to do other than to inspect “all ships of any kind?” Didn’t the U.S. plan to do precisely that with Soviet freighters approaching Cuba? And if one those Soviet ships had decided to defy the U.S. quarantine, we probably did not plan to send in boarding parties. Kennedy probably planned instead to send a shell through their pilot house. The Israelis are being blamed for not sinking the Turkish ferry.

The Israelis allow the “necessities of life” to get through to Gaza. But they join with Arab Egypt in a blockade that attempts to prevent weapons from going in to Gaza. In Gaza, “humanitarian” aid takes the form of ambulances that transport rockets and hospitals that store them.

Vice President Joe Biden warned us of this. He said the world would test our young leader. And he pleaded for patience and understanding when that test came. It would not be immediately apparent that the administration was pursuing the right course, Biden told Democratic party donors in Seattle, just before the `08 election. That’s why their support was especially crucial.

Well, Joe got that part right. It is not immediately clear that this administration’s Mideast policy is on the right course. We are in a military and diplomatic fog that is totally unnecessary. And it has all been brought about by confusion at the top. What we need is a profile in courage, like that shown by the young, untested President John F. Kennedy. What we are hearing is an uncertain trumpet. Who can respond to that?

Click to Play

From Palo Alto, Oaklahoma City, Washington DC, the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Instanbul Turkey, to The Republic of Georgia, we go totally global this week. But enough about us, here’s our new and improved and by popular request Ricochet podcast index:
0:00 to 9:45  Peter and Rob chat
9:45 to 21:23  Mickey Kaus on his quixotic run for US Senate in California as he battles the unions and pension funds.
22:50 to 37:10  Matt Continetti on his travels to the Republic of Georgia.
39:50 to 1:06:34    Claire Berlinski from and on life in Istanbul. Key phrase: 7 cats.
1:09:30 to 1:33:33  Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour talks about oil in the gulf and catfish in Central Park.
1:33:35 to End    Wrap Up

Click to Play

From Palo Alto, Oaklahoma City, Washington DC, the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Instanbul Turkey, to The Republic of Georgia, we go totally global this week. But enough about us, here’s our new and improved and by popular request Ricochet podcast index:
0:00 to 9:45  Peter and Rob chat
9:45 to 21:23  Mickey Kaus on his quixotic run for US Senate in California as he battles the unions and pension funds.
22:50 to 37:10  Matt Continetti on his travels to the Republic of Georgia.
39:50 to 1:06:34    Claire Berlinski from and on life in Istanbul. Key phrase: 7 cats.
1:09:30 to 1:33:33  Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour talks about oil in the gulf and catfish in Central Park.
1:33:35 to End    Wrap Up

Click to Play

From Palo Alto, Oaklahoma City, Washington DC, the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Instanbul Turkey, to The Republic of Georgia, we go totally global this week. But enough about us, here’s our new and improved and by popular request Ricochet podcast index:
0:00 to 9:45  Peter and Rob chat
9:45 to 21:23  Mickey Kaus on his quixotic run for US Senate in California as he battles the unions and pension funds.
22:50 to 37:10  Matt Continetti on his travels to the Republic of Georgia.
39:50 to 1:06:34    Claire Berlinski from and on life in Istanbul. Key phrase: 7 cats.
1:09:30 to 1:33:33  Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour talks about oil in the gulf and catfish in Central Park.
1:33:35 to End    Wrap Up

Since the early twentieth century, periods of real or perceived national emergency have been “critical episodes” in the growth of government’s size, scope, and power in the United States and in many other countries. Hence, the concise conceptualization: Crisis and Leviathan (the main title of my 1987 book on the growth of government in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century).

In the past century, the first five such critical episodes in the United States were: World War I; the Great Depression; World War II; a multi-faceted set of crises associated with the civil-rights revolution and the Vietnam War, roughly coincident with the presidencies of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon; and the post 9/11 events associated with the so-called War on Terror and the U.S. attacks on and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. We are now amid another such critical episode, which springs from the housing bust that began in 2006, the economic recession that began late in 2007, and the financial debacle that reached its climax in September 2008.

The current troubles are complex and raise a multitude of questions. Many books and articles no doubt will be written to analyze these various issues in scholarly depth and detail, and certainly anything we might say today must be regarded as preliminary, at best. I focus here on a few aspects of the present episode that relate closely to my own research on the growth of government, a field of study to which I have returned again and again over the past thirty years.

I

The current recession has elicited many comparisons with earlier business downturns, especially with the Great Depression. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is often described as an expert on the Great Depression who takes its lessons, as he understands them, deeply into account as he formulates and implements Fed policies. Likewise, many other economists have revisited the Great Depression recently in search of lessons applicable to current policy-making. In all of these reflections, the mainstream economics profession in general has distinguished itself by an astonishing superficiality of historical knowledge and lack of theoretical prowess.

The swiftness with which a great many mainstream economists have reverted to the simplistic “vulgar Keynesianism” that had its heyday from the late 1940s to the late 1960s has been nothing short of shocking, given that by the end of the 1970s such old-fashioned Keynesianism seemed to have been completely discredited and superseded in the leading echelons of the mainstream economics profession. Now it has come roaring back.

Of course, the general public, whose understanding of such matters is always primitive, and the politicians, who are always looking for plausible intellectual rationales to excuse their insatiable spending, borrowing, and power-grabbing, had never abandoned vulgar Keynesianism, so they were elated to find that the economic “experts” were again confirming their own self-interested inclinations.

From such vulgar Keynesian thinking flowed the succession of “stimulus” spending measures, beginning with the Bush administration’s, carried out in the spring of 2008. Other governments have gone down the same foolish path. Of course, as any competent economist could have testified even fifty years ago, such temporary government-spending surges give people money that, for the most part, they save or use to pay off debts, rather than spending it along the lines envisioned by Keynesian “multiplier” analysis to set in motion an upward spiral of income, expenditure, real output, and employment. Much of the so-called stimulus spending in the United States has served only to bulk up the pay and benefits of government employees (federal, state, and local), effectively transferring income from the private sector to the government sector, and to reward other groups, such as the United Auto Workers and low-income home buyers, for their support of the Obama administration—past, present, or future.

Bernanke and his colleagues in other central banks are taking credit for saving the financial system and even for saving the world from a repetition of the Great Depression—claims that must be treated with extreme skepticism. In any event, however, they have certainly created the potential for rapidly accelerating consumer-price inflation, should the banks become less apprehensive about their balance sheets and employ their vast excess-reserve balances to resume their lending and investing on a more normal basis.

Bernanke expresses confidence that he has the “tools” to rein in such potentially inflationary bank action, mainly by raising the interest rate the Fed pays banks on their deposits at the Fed, but one may well doubt whether he will be able to use those tools effectively. When interest rates begin to rise substantially, as they must sooner or later, great political pressure will be brought against tighter-money actions by the Fed and other central banks; the politicians will protest increases in interest rates at a time when unemployment remains at an elevated rate and other aspects of the recession linger, as well. So, even if Bernanke has the effective tools he claims to have, the question remains as to whether he will have the personal courage and the political support required to use those tools effectively.

II

One aspect of the current crisis that has come as anything but a surprise is that the politicians and their supporting coalition of crony capitalists and other backers have certainly not (in the immortal words of Barack Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel) allowed “a crisis to go to waste.” The past two years have witnessed one power-grab or institutional takeover after another, most notably of AIG, Fannie, Freddie, General Motors, and Chrysler. Under the TARP scheme, the Treasury has taken ownership positions in hundreds of large banks by acquiring preferred shares and warrants. Virtually all residential mortgage lending now ultimately springs from the secondary market and guarantees provided by Fannie, Freddie, Ginnie Mae, FHA, and VA. This aspect of the government’s power-grab has been especially important because by continuing to pump funds into dodgy mortgages, the government is preventing the necessary restructuring of the housing-construction industry and the mortgage-credit sector, propping up unqualified and underwater borrowers and ill-managed and even insolvent lenders, and thereby creating great potential for a second round of the housing/housing-finance bust in the near-term future.

As the huge recent expansion of the government’s size and scope has proceeded, the Treasury’s fiscal condition has deteriorated badly. The federal deficit jumped from an amount equal to about 3 percent of GDP in fiscal 2008 to an amount equal to about 10 percent of GDP in fiscal 2009, and even the government’s forecasts now project deficits in the neighborhood of $1 trillion per year for the next decade. Thus, the U.S. government’s debt has exploded, and will continue to rise relentlessly—or, it will do so as long as willing buyers can be found for bonds promising only modest nominal yields, a market that Uncle Sam can no longer assume will persist indefinitely. (The Chinese and other major buyers are already grousing and insisting that the U.S. Treasury act more prudently.)

While the government proper was expanding its size, scope, and power, the Fed was greatly expanding the magnitude and scope of its own balance sheet and, in effect, engaging in “industrial policy” by singling out particular firms and industries for assistance, while steering clear of others in equally dire condition. If the Fed is not “picking winners,” it is certainly deciding who will be spared a market-determined fate as a loser. Fed officials insist that they intend to withdraw from many of the new areas they have recently entered, once the crisis has passed, but it will be surprising if the recent “emergency” policies do not remain in the Fed’s arsenal, bulking up its power, and equally surprising if it sloughs off all of the unusual types of “securities” it has acquired in the past two years.

At the moment, the Fed is seeking—and it, the FDIC, or another government regulatory entity may well be given—wide-ranging statutory authority to reorganize preemptively any seemingly failing firm (not only banks) whose failure would pose, in the Fed’s estimation, a “systemic risk.” Such authority would greatly expand the Fed’s current power as a monetary central planner by adding a role as risk-management central planner. Regardless of whether the Fed, the FDIC, or another government regulatory entity ends up the winner of the current power scramble, the possible repercussions of this expanded power on the operation of the capital markets is frightful to contemplate.

III

As the current troubles have led many economists and others to revisit the government’s policies during the 1930s, some have concluded that even though the New Deal’s hodgepodge of policies never brought about full recovery, the action that most economists believe did effect a full recovery—in Paul Krugman’s words, “the large public works program, otherwise known as World War II, that ended the Great Depression”—suggests a remedy for today’s recession along similar lines. In retrospect, it is clear that this belief in the creation of “wartime prosperity” by massive government spending and deficit financing did more than anything else to bring about acceptance of the Keynesian paradigm in the 1940s and 1950s. Even today, not only the general public but most professional economists remain firmly convinced that, as the familiar saying maintains, “the war got the economy out of the Great Depression,” and hence a serious recession such as the present one naturally causes them to recall this supposed “lesson” of economic history. Among many lesser lights, Martin Feldstein, one of the country’s most eminent and influential economists, has recently proposed what amounts to an exercise in military Keynesianism as a stimulus measure.

The fly in this ointment, however, is that the lesson almost everyone has drawn from the events of the 1940s is false; the common belief is a myth. When we take apart the simplistic Keynesian analysis of the war’s effect on the economy and look carefully at what actually happened to the various components of the labor force, the capital stock, and the gross domestic product, we see that the economic events of the war years represent a classic case of a command economy’s sacrificing butter—not to mention life, liberty, and property—for the sake of producing and deploying more guns.

A single graph suffices to give us a more accurate portrayal of the economy’s performance in the 1930s and 1940s (for a complete analysis, see the first five chapters of my 2006 book Depression, War, and Cold War).

As the graph shows, real GDP dropped sharply in the early 1930s, then recovered rapidly after 1933, but it did not reach its high-employment growth trend until 1941, when the nature of the economy’s output (shifting rapidly into war production) was beginning to obscure the meaning of data that purport to measure “real output.” If we accept the standard data, a huge war boom appears to have occurred during the war years, followed by a sharp downturn, concentrated in 1946, after which the economy moved closely along its high-employment growth trend (shown in the figure by the straight line connecting the [logarithms of the] values for 1929 and 1948).

Looking at the private part of GDP—the part with a much clearer meaning, owing to its derivation from freely-made consumer and investor choices about the use of privately owned funds—we see a similar pattern during the 1930s, but a completely different pattern during the 1940s. After 1941, private output of both consumer and investor goods fell to much lower levels and remained submerged far below the high-employment growth trend throughout the war years. Private real output did not exceed its 1941 rate until 1946, when it shot up by about 30 percent in a single year. Afterward, the private economy moved closely along its high-employment growth trend. Real prosperity had been achieved at last, for the first time since 1929.

But wait, the critics protest: didn’t the war wipe out mass unemployment? Of course, it did. However, this elimination of mass unemployment had nothing to do with Keynesian fiscal policy (or, for that matter, with the concurrent, highly expansive monetary policy) and everything to do with the military draft, which pulled the equivalent of 22 percent of the prewar labor force into the armed forces. If the economy has 5–7 million persons unemployed, then drafting 10 million prime-age workers (and thereby inducing millions of others to enlist “voluntarily”) will “solve” the unemployment problem every time. To use the same policy today, the U.S. authorities need only to conscript about 30 million men—not, I daresay, a political idea whose time has come.

Indeed, the idea is preposterous, and so, more generally, is looking to the government’s alleged “large public works program, otherwise known as World War II” as a model of how to deal with today’s economic crisis. Rather than allow ourselves to be mesmerized by a statistically spurious bulge of real GDP during World War II, we are better advised to recall the wartime rationing of many ordinary consumer goods, the shortages or complete production closures of many consumer goods (e.g., automobiles, most consumer durables), the preemption of public transport by the military authorities, and the wage, price, and rent controls that caused, among many other undesirable consequences, drastic deterioration in the quality of many goods and services. Whatever else the war might have accomplished, it certainly did not produce conditions that we may properly describe as genuine prosperity.

IV

Even if policy makers decline to adopt World War II-type policies as remedies for the current recession, the immense magnitude of the present-day military-industrial complex certainly complicates all efforts to effect a recovery, by draining more than $1 trillion a year from the economy’s potential to produce private consumer and producer goods. The current long-running wars and military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, which will probably never end, although eventually they may be scaled back somewhat, only add to the economic drain on U.S. resources. So far, more than $1 trillion has been expended for these ill-fated adventures, and their total cost may eventually cumulate to several times this amount, not simply because they, like the U.S. military presence in Japan, Korea, and various European countries, will continue indefinitely, but also because of the need to care for a multitude of physically and psychologically disabled veterans over a span of several decades.

Even if the wars in the Middle East were concluded overnight, however, a huge distortion would continue to affect the U.S. economy, owing to the normal operation of the military-industrial complex and the maintenance of the current armed forces and their far-flung empire of more than 800 large overseas bases. This military hypertrophy reflects not an attempt to pump up the macroeconomy, as military Keynesians would have it, but rather the devotion of U.S. ruling elites to the maintenance of global military hegemony, ultimately capped by the attainment of “full-spectrum dominance”—“control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources” over the entire world.

Why do U.S. policy makers seek such god-like control of the planet? To the extent that the military leadership itself contributes to shaping national-security policies, this o’erleaping ambition merely expresses the latest phase of the military’s longstanding maniacal quest for total power—the undoubted ability to win any and all conceivable wars. Among the civilian leadership, the motives range more widely. An important impulse, though it is never mentioned frankly in polite company, is to maintain a foreign military presence configured so as to make the state of Israel as secure as possible. Another abiding interest is to control the worldwide distribution of petroleum, if necessary by bribing, intimidating, or taking military action against the governments of important oil-producing countries, especially in the Persian Gulf region.

Related to this wholly unnecessary quest to control the world’s oil-distribution channels—after all, it does not serve the interests of the oil producers to withhold their product from the world market—is the ambition to play the Great Game by throwing up barriers to the expanding influence of China and India and the residual potential of Russia in southwest Asia, especially in the Caspian Sea region, where vast stores of oil and gas remain to be tapped and brought to market. For more than half a century, U.S. leaders have been obsessed with projecting their country’s power into petro-military adventures of all sorts. However senseless this fixation might seem in a purely economic perspective, we can scarcely deny that the coziest crony capitalists in the oil and related industries have reaped a great deal of income along the way, and owing to their extraordinary political clout, they have every expectation of continuing to reap such income in the future, with the vital assistance of U.S. diplomats and armed forces to grease the skids.

Although the military-industrial-congressional complex is one of the most powerful interest groups in U.S. politics, and we may certainly expect it to struggle forcefully to retain or even to increase the flow of wealth placed at its disposal, the U.S. government’s increasingly precarious financial condition may compel even this powerful coalition to settle for a smaller space at the trough, especially if stagflation sets in as the U.S. economy’s normal condition during the next decade (as I suspect it will). If America’s economic future turns out to be even worse than I now foresee—for example, with rapid inflation, price and capital controls, and a flight from the dollar—then even greater retrenchment of the U.S. military presence abroad will be unavoidable. Such economic ruin would be a heavy price to pay for reining in America’s global hegemony, but, nevertheless, the military retrenchment itself would be a consequence that most of the world’s people would celebrate.

Earlier this week, I reported here and here about an incident that took place between Ken Moffett and U.S. Rep. Phil Hare, a two-term Democrat from Rock Island, Ill., who is running for re-election in Illinois’ 17th Congressional District.

It seems Congressman Hare has been selling himself on the campaign trail as a tried-and-true military veteran when, in fact, he does not meet the qualifications for “veteran status” (i.e., he is not a person who served in the active military, naval, or air service who was discharged or released therefrom under conditions other than dishonorable).

When Moffett, a veteran from Moline, Ill., asked Hare if he was going to stop telling people that he was a veteran, a heated discussion ensued. It was toward the end of that discussion, Moffett contends, that he heard Hare instruct one of his aides to follow Moffett to his car and get his license plate number so he could find out who he was.

While complete details of the exchange are outlined in a June 2 letter Moffett sent to Blake Chisam, chief counsel and staff director of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, curiosity got the best of me, and I decided to launch an inquiry into what the law says about Congressman Hare’s alleged actions.

Is it legal for a high-ranking elected official like Congressman Hare to obtain personal information about a constituent by having someone within the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles “run” his license plate number through the DMV computer system?

Dave Druker, press secretary for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, told me by phone Friday afternoon that — hypothetically speaking, of course — it is not legal for any employee of the State of Illinois’ Department of Motor Vehicles to provide personally-identifiable information about Illinois license plate holders to elected officials, including members of Congress. In fact, he said, providing such information to a congressman — again, hypothetically speaking and not related to the allegations against Hare — constitutes a violation of the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994.

Druker (sounds like “Drucker”) also explained, however, that the law does makes exceptions for members of the news media when it’s determined that providing them with the information is “in the public interest”. Odd. But I digress.

When I tracked down Congressman Hare’s daughter, Amy Hare, by phone at the Illinois Secretary of State DMV facility in Silvis, Ill., I asked her if her father had recently asked her to “run” the plates of any of his constituents through the “Land of Lincoln” DMV database in order to obtain confidential personal information about them. Not surprisingly, she said he had not.

But will he? He might if he takes cues from folks who contribute to his campaign.

The action Hare is alleged to have threatened to take violates the same law that members of UNITE HERE violated, according to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in April 2009, when they acquired the personal information of CINTAS employees through confidential motor vehicle records.

Not familiar with UNITE HERE? Here’s a primer: It’s a labor union comprised largely of the same kinds of people and espousing the same kinds of radical ideas as their brethren in the Service Employees International Union. It was formed in 2004 when UNITE (formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees) joined forces with HERE (formerly the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union).

According to Federal Election Commission records, the congressman has received $10,000 from that UNITE HERE so far in 2010. That’s the same amount he received from the Purple People Beaters SEIU last year.

U.S. Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill.) is back in the news two months after he was caught on video, saying, “I don’t care about the Constitution.” This time, however, he’s drawn the ire of a military veteran who wants the two-term congressman from Illinois’ 17th Congressional District to stop calling himself a veteran.

In a letter to Blake Chisam, Ken Moffet informs the chief counsel and staff director of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct of an incident during which he asked Congressman Hare if he was going to stop telling people that he was a veteran:

On Monday, May 31, 2001, Mr. Hare and I were engaged in a conversation concerning the statements he is making around the district about being a veteran.  After I pointed out that according to the law he is not a veteran, he became very upset and demanded to know my name.  I refused to tell him my name, saying that this was about his claim of being a veteran and not about me.

Mr. Hare then told one of his aids who was with him, to follow me to my car and get my license plate number so he could find out who I was.  I have since been told that Mr. Hare’s daughter works for the DMV.

I then asked Mr. Hare if he was going to stop telling people that he was a veteran.  Mr. Hare again demanded to know my name, and again told his aide to get my name or to follow me to get my license plate number so he could find out who I was, so he could tell all the former reservist what I said.

I asked Mr. Hare if he as a public official was going to use his official office to run name checks on private citizens, in order to intimidate them into not asking questions he did not want to answer.

As Mr. Hare was turning to walk away form me he paused, and turning back to my direction, he glared at me intently, and while leaning forward pointed his finger at me, and in a threatening and intimidating manner said, “I’ll find out who you are!”  Given the nature of Illinois politics and Mr. Hare’s reputation as a mean politician, I felt intimidated by the power of Mr. Hare’s office and what he might do.

The Moline, Ill., resident goes on to explain that Hare became enraged upon learning that, under the law, he doesn’t qualify as a veteran, but I’ll leave it to you to read the rest of the letter.  It’s a juicy one!

Meanwhile, the world waits to see whether or not Congressman Hare continues to claim he is a veteran and, if he does, whether or not Chisam will recommend the House take any action against him for it.

Hamas ally Jodie Evans and President Barack Obama, October 15, 2009.

Democrat party front group Media Matters for America has released several statements in recent days seeking to throw reporters off the trail of the strong ties between President Barack Obama and Jodie Evans, co-founder of the terrorist support group Code Pink.

Media Matters attempts to influence public opinion by getting their politically-slanted, factually-challenged reports in the hands of sympathetic liberal reporters who then either regurgitate Media Matters’ propaganda to the public as news or use it as guidance to bury news.

In this case, Media Matters was responding to a report by World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein, picked up by Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit and Big Government, and by Glenn Beck, tying Obama to leaders of the so-called Gaza Freedom Movement, the group behind the terror flotilla intercepted by Israel as the six ship convoy attempted to break a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt on the terrorist enclave of Gaza.

Much of the information forming the basis for Klein’s report was originally researched and published at Big Government months ago, which Klein (a solid researcher in his own right who has added much to this story) acknowledged at the time.

Klein reported last weekend that Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers, his wife Bernardine Dohrn and Obama funder Jodie Evans each had ties to Obama and the Gaza Freedom Movement.

In spite of plenty of evidence that shows that Obama and the Ayerses were more than just neighbors in Hyde Park, Chicago, Media Matters devotes much energy into dismissing any notion of political connections between Obama and the unrepentant terrorists. In fairness, no direct ties were documented between Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and Ayers and Dohrn.

The same cannot be said when it comes to Obama and Jodie Evans. Media Matters initially dismissed as “flimsy” reports by Klein (and Hoft) of ties between Obama and Jodie Evans:

“Klein’s effort to connect Jodie Evans to Obama is equally flimsy. To wit: the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Obama ‘dropped into an exclusive VIP dinner,’ during an October 2009 California fundraiser “for about 160 high-level party donors, some of whom wrote checks of $30,400 or more for a pair of tickets and the privilege of shaking hands and taking a picture with him. The Chronicle further reported:

“Jodie Evans, a co-founder of Code Pink, paid $30,400 for a pair of tickets to the VIP dinner, where she presented Obama with a petition from women in Afghanistan urging him not to send additional troops. Evans said she spent several minutes discussing the war there with the president and told him that the country’s women “want a place at the table” in resolving the conflict.”

As anyone who has followed the reports on Big Government knows, Media Matters was lying. Jodie Evans’ ties to Obama are anything but flimsy.

Two days later, after Glenn Beck picked up the story, Media Matters acknowledged that Jodie Evans was a bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign, but then downplays that by saying she was just one of 560 bundlers and that 324 bundlers did better than she in bundling for Obama.

“Beck links Evans to Obama because she was a bundler for his campaign. After tying Evans to the Gaza flotilla, Beck and his producer Stu Burguiere linked Evans to Obama on the basis that she was a bundler for the Obama campaign:

“BECK: Evans, she’s with Code Pink, right? And Stu, was she not a bundler for Obama as well? [...]

“BURGUIERE: By the way, confirmed, that was a Politico story that reported that Jodie Evans was a bundler for Obama, meaning that she was raising over $50,000 for the campaign.

…”Evans was one of hundreds of bundlers to the Obama campaign.

“More than 300 bundlers directed more money to Obama’s campaign then did Evans. Beck ties Evans to Obama solely on the basis that she was a bundler for the Obama campaign. OpenSecrets.com lists 560 Obama bundlers of $50,000 or more; at least 324 of those bundlers directed more money to Obama than did Evans.”

For the benefit of reporters who have been misled by Media Matters, here are some details of Obama’s ties to Jodie Evans:

February 2007 — Jodie Evans co-hosts Obama’s breakthrough Hollywood fundraiser just weeks after he announced his candidacy. She gives the maximum $2300 to Obama’s primary effort. The other co-hosts were her husband Max Palevsky (now deceased) and the Dreamworks Trio of Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg (Note to Media Matters: That makes Jodie Evans one out of five). A few weeks before the fundraiser, Jodie Evans was in Cuba as a guest of that state sponsor of terrorism.

April 2007 — Obama campaign announces early fundraising bundlers. Jodie Evans is on the list.

June 2008 — Jodie Evans meets with Obama at a high dollar fundraiser days after she expresses sympathy in a radio interview for Osama bin Laden.

Jodie Evans: …”We were attacked because we were in Saudi Arabia, that was the message of Osama, was that because we had our bases in the Middle East, he attacked the United States.”

Paul A. Ibbetson: “Do you think that’s a valid argument?”

Jodie Evans: “Sure. Why do we have bases in the Middle East? We totally violated the rights of that country. Why do we get to have bases in the Middle East?”

Late August 2008 — Jodie Evans attends the Democrat national convention. As a bundler, she was invited to private receptions with Obama and his vice presidential nominee Joe Biden on successive nights.

A week later, in early September, Jodie Evans stole people’s identities to crash events at the Republican national convention. She was detained by the Secret Service as she tried to rush the stage during vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech.

Shortly thereafter, Jodie Evans attended two exclusive Hollywood fundraisers with Obama — one a private dinner with about one hundred donors. Two weeks later she met with a state sponsor of terrorism, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in New York City.

In October, Jodie Evans worked with Code Pink’s Los Angeles chapter on a get out the vote effort for Obama.

After Obama’s election in November, Jodie Evans and Code Pink traveled to Iran at the personal invitation of Ahmadinejad. Their government minders took them to the power centers of the Islamic Republic, Tehran and Qom.

In 2009 Jodie Evans and Code Pink led several trips to Gaza, Egypt and Israel to deliver “humanitarian aid” to Hamas and propagandize against Israel. During one trip to Gaza in early June, Hamas gave Code Pink a letter for Obama. On June 19, Jodie Evans visited the White House and met with Buffy Wicks, the deputy of Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett.

Also in June, Jodie Evans visited the White House residence, according to White House records.

After Jodie Evans met with the Taliban in Afghanistan in September 2009, she was videotaped giving a propaganda package from that trip directly to Obama at the aforementioned San Francisco fundraiser.

The next day, Jodie Evans says, Obama’s deputy chief of staff gave her a briefing.

When Obama announced his new Afghanistan strategy in November 2009, White House staff coordinated dissent against Obama’s own war policy with Jodie Evans.

December 2009, bearing a letter of support from Sen. John Kerry, Jodie Evans and Code Pink led over 1000 global leftists to Cairo to deliver “humanitarian aid” to Hamas in Gaza. Joining them were Ayers and Dohrn.

Jodie Evans enlisted the aid of Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak to allow passage into Gaza while Code Pink and their fellow leftists tried to provoke the Egyptian government into violence in the streets of Cairo.

Eventually, around 100 activists were allowed into Gaza in a trip controlled by Hamas. Before the trip, the Hamas terrorists guaranteed the safety of the Code Pink group in Gaza.

In January 2010, Jodie Evans and Code Pink beseeched the jihadists of the Muslim Brotherhood to “join us in cleansing our country!” by kidnapping former President and Mrs. Bush, Karl Rove and other members of his administration.

On May 31, Code Pink released a statement demanding that the U.S. condemn and cut off all aid to Israel for what Code Pink called a “terrorist act” by Israeli commandos armed with paintball guns who boarded the terror flotilla ships.

Obama and Jodie Evans share many radical policies, even if they have a few disagreements on the war. Areas where they largely agree include: an anti-American, anti-free enterprise worldview; radical environmentalism (they both worked with Van Jones); marijuana decriminalization; abortion on demand; gays in the military; closing Gitmo; kow-towing to radical Islam; and working with unrepentant terrorists.

Reporters, don’t let Media Matters fool you into not investigating why the president of the United States works with someone with this current history.

Jodie Evans and Code Pink have worked with state sponsors of terrorism including the governments of Saddam Hussein, Cuba’s Castro brothers, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syria’s Bashar Assad as well as the anti-American governments of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

Jodie Evans and Code Pink have also worked with terrorists including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Sunni terrorists in Iraq and the father of Islamic terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood. They brag about giving cash and humanitarian aid to terrorists who murder Americans, Israelis and free Iraqis.

Bonus tip: Jodie Evans and Code Pink delivered cash and humanitarian aid to “the other side” in Fallujah in late 2004 as U.S. forces were clearing the Iraqi city of al Qaeda community organizers.  Sen. Barbara Boxer reportedly gave a letter of support for Code Pink’s effort. Jodie Evans is a big money donor to Boxer, also.

[Attention reporters: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink, its co-founder Jodie Evans and President Obama. Click here to read earlier articles.]

Hamas ally Jodie Evans and President Barack Obama, October 15, 2009.

Democrat party front group Media Matters for America has released several statements in recent days seeking to throw reporters off the trail of the strong ties between President Barack Obama and Jodie Evans, co-founder of the terrorist support group Code Pink.

Media Matters attempts to influence public opinion by getting their politically-slanted, factually-challenged reports in the hands of sympathetic liberal reporters who then either regurgitate Media Matters’ propaganda to the public as news or use it as guidance to bury news.

In this case, Media Matters was responding to a report by World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein, picked up by Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit and Big Government, and by Glenn Beck, tying Obama to leaders of the so-called Gaza Freedom Movement, the group behind the terror flotilla intercepted by Israel as the six ship convoy attempted to break a blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt on the terrorist enclave of Gaza.

Much of the information forming the basis for Klein’s report was originally researched and published at Big Government months ago, which Klein (a solid researcher in his own right who has added much to this story) acknowledged at the time.

Klein reported last weekend that Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers, his wife Bernardine Dohrn and Obama funder Jodie Evans each had ties to Obama and the Gaza Freedom Movement.

In spite of plenty of evidence that shows that Obama and the Ayerses were more than just neighbors in Hyde Park, Chicago, Media Matters devotes much energy into dismissing any notion of political connections between Obama and the unrepentant terrorists. In fairness, no direct ties were documented between Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and Ayers and Dohrn.

The same cannot be said when it comes to Obama and Jodie Evans. Media Matters initially dismissed as “flimsy” reports by Klein (and Hoft) of ties between Obama and Jodie Evans:

“Klein’s effort to connect Jodie Evans to Obama is equally flimsy. To wit: the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Obama ‘dropped into an exclusive VIP dinner,’ during an October 2009 California fundraiser “for about 160 high-level party donors, some of whom wrote checks of $30,400 or more for a pair of tickets and the privilege of shaking hands and taking a picture with him. The Chronicle further reported:

“Jodie Evans, a co-founder of Code Pink, paid $30,400 for a pair of tickets to the VIP dinner, where she presented Obama with a petition from women in Afghanistan urging him not to send additional troops. Evans said she spent several minutes discussing the war there with the president and told him that the country’s women “want a place at the table” in resolving the conflict.”

As anyone who has followed the reports on Big Government knows, Media Matters was lying. Jodie Evans’ ties to Obama are anything but flimsy.

Two days later, after Glenn Beck picked up the story, Media Matters acknowledged that Jodie Evans was a bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign, but then downplays that by saying she was just one of 560 bundlers and that 324 bundlers did better than she in bundling for Obama.

“Beck links Evans to Obama because she was a bundler for his campaign. After tying Evans to the Gaza flotilla, Beck and his producer Stu Burguiere linked Evans to Obama on the basis that she was a bundler for the Obama campaign:

“BECK: Evans, she’s with Code Pink, right? And Stu, was she not a bundler for Obama as well? [...]

“BURGUIERE: By the way, confirmed, that was a Politico story that reported that Jodie Evans was a bundler for Obama, meaning that she was raising over $50,000 for the campaign.

…”Evans was one of hundreds of bundlers to the Obama campaign.

“More than 300 bundlers directed more money to Obama’s campaign then did Evans. Beck ties Evans to Obama solely on the basis that she was a bundler for the Obama campaign. OpenSecrets.com lists 560 Obama bundlers of $50,000 or more; at least 324 of those bundlers directed more money to Obama than did Evans.”

For the benefit of reporters who have been misled by Media Matters, here are some details of Obama’s ties to Jodie Evans:

February 2007 — Jodie Evans co-hosts Obama’s breakthrough Hollywood fundraiser just weeks after he announced his candidacy. She gives the maximum $2300 to Obama’s primary effort. The other co-hosts were her husband Max Palevsky (now deceased) and the Dreamworks Trio of Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg (Note to Media Matters: That makes Jodie Evans one out of five). A few weeks before the fundraiser, Jodie Evans was in Cuba as a guest of that state sponsor of terrorism.

April 2007 — Obama campaign announces early fundraising bundlers. Jodie Evans is on the list.

June 2008 — Jodie Evans meets with Obama at a high dollar fundraiser days after she expresses sympathy in a radio interview for Osama bin Laden.

Jodie Evans: …”We were attacked because we were in Saudi Arabia, that was the message of Osama, was that because we had our bases in the Middle East, he attacked the United States.”

Paul A. Ibbetson: “Do you think that’s a valid argument?”

Jodie Evans: “Sure. Why do we have bases in the Middle East? We totally violated the rights of that country. Why do we get to have bases in the Middle East?”

Late August 2008 — Jodie Evans attends the Democrat national convention. As a bundler, she was invited to private receptions with Obama and his vice presidential nominee Joe Biden on successive nights.

A week later, in early September, Jodie Evans stole people’s identities to crash events at the Republican national convention. She was detained by the Secret Service as she tried to rush the stage during vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech.

Shortly thereafter, Jodie Evans attended two exclusive Hollywood fundraisers with Obama — one a private dinner with about one hundred donors. Two weeks later she met with a state sponsor of terrorism, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in New York City.

In October, Jodie Evans worked with Code Pink’s Los Angeles chapter on a get out the vote effort for Obama.

After Obama’s election in November, Jodie Evans and Code Pink traveled to Iran at the personal invitation of Ahmadinejad. Their government minders took them to the power centers of the Islamic Republic, Tehran and Qom.

In 2009 Jodie Evans and Code Pink led several trips to Gaza, Egypt and Israel to deliver “humanitarian aid” to Hamas and propagandize against Israel. During one trip to Gaza in early June, Hamas gave Code Pink a letter for Obama. On June 19, Jodie Evans visited the White House and met with Buffy Wicks, the deputy of Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett.

Also in June, Jodie Evans visited the White House residence, according to White House records.

After Jodie Evans met with the Taliban in Afghanistan in September 2009, she was videotaped giving a propaganda package from that trip directly to Obama at the aforementioned San Francisco fundraiser.

The next day, Jodie Evans says, Obama’s deputy chief of staff gave her a briefing.

When Obama announced his new Afghanistan strategy in November 2009, White House staff coordinated dissent against Obama’s own war policy with Jodie Evans.

December 2009, bearing a letter of support from Sen. John Kerry, Jodie Evans and Code Pink led over 1000 global leftists to Cairo to deliver “humanitarian aid” to Hamas in Gaza. Joining them were Ayers and Dohrn.

Jodie Evans enlisted the aid of Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak to allow passage into Gaza while Code Pink and their fellow leftists tried to provoke the Egyptian government into violence in the streets of Cairo.

Eventually, around 100 activists were allowed into Gaza in a trip controlled by Hamas. Before the trip, the Hamas terrorists guaranteed the safety of the Code Pink group in Gaza.

In January 2010, Jodie Evans and Code Pink beseeched the jihadists of the Muslim Brotherhood to “join us in cleansing our country!” by kidnapping former President and Mrs. Bush, Karl Rove and other members of his administration.

On May 31, Code Pink released a statement demanding that the U.S. condemn and cut off all aid to Israel for what Code Pink called a “terrorist act” by Israeli commandos armed with paintball guns who boarded the terror flotilla ships.

Obama and Jodie Evans share many radical policies, even if they have a few disagreements on the war. Areas where they largely agree include: an anti-American, anti-free enterprise worldview; radical environmentalism (they both worked with Van Jones); marijuana decriminalization; abortion on demand; gays in the military; closing Gitmo; kow-towing to radical Islam; and working with unrepentant terrorists.

Reporters, don’t let Media Matters fool you into not investigating why the president of the United States works with someone with this current history.

Jodie Evans and Code Pink have worked with state sponsors of terrorism including the governments of Saddam Hussein, Cuba’s Castro brothers, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syria’s Bashar Assad as well as the anti-American governments of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

Jodie Evans and Code Pink have also worked with terrorists including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Sunni terrorists in Iraq and the father of Islamic terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood. They brag about giving cash and humanitarian aid to terrorists who murder Americans, Israelis and free Iraqis.

Bonus tip: Jodie Evans and Code Pink delivered cash and humanitarian aid to “the other side” in Fallujah in late 2004 as U.S. forces were clearing the Iraqi city of al Qaeda community organizers.  Sen. Barbara Boxer reportedly gave a letter of support for Code Pink’s effort. Jodie Evans is a big money donor to Boxer, also.

[Attention reporters: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink, its co-founder Jodie Evans and President Obama. Click here to read earlier articles.]

There is very little difference between what intelligence analysts do and what ordinary folks try to accomplish when they pick up a newspaper, listen to the evening news, or read the posts on this and other sites. In every case, wittingly or not, they attempt to separate the revealing details from the background noise.

That is what we should do with regard to the violent incident that took place when the Israelis boarded the six ships constituting the so-called Gaza Flotilla. Most of what we have learned in the aftermath is true and appalling but, in the long run, inconsequential.

The Israeli soldiers who landed on the Mavi Marmara (in Turkish, the Blue Sea of Marmara) in preparation for conducting the ship to an Israeli port – from which the goods being carried could be sent on to Gaza – were, in fact, ambushed, as Allison Kaplan Sommer indicates in her lucid analysis of the evidence that has become available, and all of the usual suspects quickly lined up to condemn Israel for crimes she did not commit.

This is a tiresome, all-too-predictable business reminiscent of the campaign launched in the wake of the clearing action undertaken some years ago at the Jennin refugee camp and of the campaign launched after the Israelis intervened in in 2008 to put an end to Hamas’ firing of missiles into Israel from their stronghold in Gaza. It is part and parcel of a long struggle on the part of the PLO in days gone by and of Hamas now to stage incidents and rally world public opinion against the Israelis for doing what they have to do to defend themselves.

I do not mean to say that the Israelis have never erred. They have. Nor would I want to be taken to suggest that they did not overstep in establishing some of the settlements set up on the West Bank. There, also, I believe they did wrong. But what they did in Jennin, in Gaza, and on the Mavi Marmara was a matter of self-defense. All of this should be obvious.

There is another aspect to this matter, however, that deserves much more attention. This time, the incident staged has a new wrinkle, and Ralph Peters has been virtually alone in recognizing its significance. There were six ships in the Gaza Flotilla. Only one of them was the source of any trouble, and it was a Turkish craft to a considerable degree manned by Turks. That Hamas and its allies should have staged such an incident is only what we should expect. That the Turkish government should have a hand in such a matter, as it evidently did –. that is disturbing in the extreme.

I lived in Turkey from 1984 to 1986, learned the language, and married a Muslim from Istanbul. In those years, as a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs, I traveled throughout the country, visited Greece (which I knew tolerably well from previous trips), and spent some weeks in Cyprus on both sides of the green line. While in Istanbul, I came to have a deep appreciation for the Turks and for the accomplishments of Mustafa Kemal – the man who called himself Atatürk (”Father of the Turks”).

When the Greeks tried to take over Anatolia in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, it was this man Atatürk who defeated and drove them from the land. In the aftermath, he overthrew the Sultan, abolished the Caliphate, and established in Anatolia a secular republic modeled on the nation states of Europe. He taught the Turks that they were not simply Turkish-speaking Muslims; they were a people – and in the eight-and-a-half decades that have passed since he carried out his revolution, Turkey has conducted its affairs in a more or less admirable way.

Of course, when I lived in Turkey, I was aware that there was an Islamist underground fostered by the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia and supported as well, after the Iranian revolution at the very end of the 1970s, by the Ayatollah Khomeini and his minions. But in those days Turkey’s answer to the Muslim Brotherhood was of no great importance, and the nation stood behind the army, which was resolute in its defense of Turkish secularism.

I was last in Turkey in March, 2002. At that time, nothing seemed amiss. But a year later, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party came to power, and things began to change. Erdoğan was savvier than his Islamist predecessors, and he posed as a moderate – intent on cleaning up the corruption that had long bedeviled Turkish politics – and this to his credit he to a considerable extent accomplished. His administration also managed to stabilize the currency  (an unheard-of feat), and they brought a measure of prosperity to the country that it had never experienced before and improved social services. They also initiated the process necessary for Turkey’s entrance into the European Union. This earned Erdoğan and his party re-election with an improved margin in 2007 and accolades abroad.

Then, after being re-elected, Erdoğan and his supporters began slowly but steadily to take over the state apparatus and to install Islamists in positions of responsibility that had always been reserved for the Kemalist admirers of Atatürk. They are now on the verge of completing that effort. A referendum is scheduled for 12 September, and if the Turkish people approve the proposal put forth by Erdoğan’s party, the Islamists will be able to pack the courts and rein in the military. Ordinarily, the latter would be a welcome move. But, in modern Turkey, the military has always been the mainstay of the secular regime. What we are witnessing is the gradual overthrow of the Kemalist republic, and what happened on the Mavi Marmara this past Monday, as well as the response of the Turkish government in the aftermath, is a sign of trouble to come.

I have argued elsewhere that Arab nationalism has run its course, that no one in the younger generation is committed to it, and that Islamic revivalism on something like the Iranian model is likely to become hegemonic in the Arab-speaking world. Turkish nationalism may also have run its course. If Recep Tayyip Erdoğan succeeds in his quest, there will be a major change in the balance of power in the Middle East. These days, apart from the Islamic Republic of Iran and its ally Syria, there is no state of any real significance in the Middle East that sponsors terrorism. But Turkey now appears to be coming down on the side of Hamas and Hezbollah, and that really matters. Turkey is a regional power of no mean importance. It has a first-rate army and a fine military tradition; and, when Turks throw themselves into a fight, they mean business. Turkey has weight.

Meanwhile, in Egypt, an epoch is about to come to an end. Soon, Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for nearly thirty years, will pass from the scene. I would not be surprised if his successor, responding to the impulses felt by the younger generation, were to ally himself with the Muslim Brotherhood. There is a storm gathering in the Middle East, and at the White House, alas, it is amateur hour, for the United States now has a President who appears to be blithely unaware of the consequences – or worse: unconcerned or even vaguely sympathetic to the transformation about to take place.

Regarding the recent Gaza flotilla incident…predictably, Progressive Democrats are blaming Israel. In a most intriguing case of egomaniacal projection, they are calling it “Israel’s Kent State!”

The unflappable pro-Gaza writer, MJ Rosenberg, even goes so far as to blame the current lack of knee-jerk condemnation from America toward Israel on the ‘Zionist controlled Congress.’

Meanwhile in Washington, the word is that Obama will ease the pressure on settlements and the strangulation of Gaza to keep pro-Israel donors to the Democratic party writing checks for the November election.

I certainly don’t know what will happen. However, given that nothing has changed since Bibi’s last visit, any demonstration of love from the administration will be proof that US policy is dictated by campaign contributions.

The usual suspects are already rushing to offer the usual double talk to defend what Israel did. Here is typical claptrap from the Israel-is-always-100%-right American Jewish Committee. AIPAC and its media acolytes are also out there to tell us that the Israelis are the victims, and if you don’t think so, you are an anti-Semite. Or a self-hating Jew.

But the massacre happened in international waters and the attack was launched by military commandos against civilians trying to relieve other civilians suffering under an illegal blockade.

There is only one spot in this country where the lobby will be able to sell the story that the humanitarian flotilla was the aggressor and that Israel is the victim here. That is the United States Congress.

Despite Rosenberg’s preemptive straw-man charges that he is an anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew, we will take him at his word that he is neither of those things. But in the case of the writing above, we might accuse him of having a small problem with bigotry.

Bigotry is sometimes like pornography:  you know it when you see it. What Rosenberg has written above and in the past sure does walk and sure does quack like a bigoted duck. But let’s even go so far as to take Rosenberg at what would surely be his word on this issue, and assume that he is not penning bigotry. That only leaves one explanation for his, and his Progressive allies who reflexively blame Israel for every horrible incident in this decades-long Jihad against the Jewish state:  ignorance.

Let’s review the details of the flotilla incident that have emerged thus far as an illustration of Progressive ignorance regarding Hamas-controlled Gaza and the existential threat they pose to Israel.

1) Gaza is controlled by Hamas.

2) Hamas is a Jihad terrorist organization.

3) Israel offered to guarantee the delivery of any truly humanitarian aid to the Jihad-terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip, if only they would submit to an inspection. The Islamists and their Progressive co-organizers refused.

4) Israel warned the Progressive Jihadis that they would be intercepted and explicitly warned that the Jihad flotilla would be boarded. The flotilla pressed on despite the warnings.

5) Some commandos landed on the flotilla with paintball guns!

6) The commandos were immediately attacked violently (something they should have expected from Jiahdis).

7) When the commandos feared for their lives, they opened fire with real weapons.

Yet, even with all of these details, it is still Israel’s fault, because according to Rosenberg and the Progressive establishment at Media Matters, the blockade of the terrorist Gaza Strip of Hamas is illegal, and as with all things Progressive, the ends justify the means.

Rosenberg and his friends on the Progressive Left have very few options to justify the kind of things they are writing in defense of Hamas-controlled Gaza. They either need to argue that Hamas is not a Jihad terrorist group, or that Gaza is not run by Hamas. That, or they need to argue that lifting the blockade of a Jihad terrorist state will lead to a safer Jewish state next door.

As to the argument that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, or that Gaza is not their base, the Progressive movement will have to take that up with the Clinton/Obama State Department:

Entering the Gaza Strip: The Department of State urges U.S. citizens to avoid all travel to the Gaza Strip, which is under the control of Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization. American citizens in Gaza are advised to depart immediately.

Short of any substance to their argument that the blockade is illegal, or what the alternative would look like, they are left open to accusations of antisemitism, self-loathing, bigotry, and/or ignorance.

Lastly, as to the initial analogy, the only thing this flotilla incident has in common with Kent State is the participation of the Progressive Left.

What a shock. A majority of the arrested “peace activists” who brutally attacked the Israeli soldiers with pipes, metal rods. chairs and knives are linked to terror groups including Al-Qaeda. Several are members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The activists include Turks, Yemenites and Indonesians. And, many of the arrested “peace” fanatics have no identification papers.

The terror-linked “peace activists” even brought their own “Hezbollah slingshots” with them on their “peace” mission. (IDF)

YNET News reported:

The ongoing interrogation of passengers who were aboard the Marmara – the Gaza aid flotilla’s flagship – revealed that the majority of those who attacked the Israeli Naval Commandos boarding the ship have direct and indirect Global Jihad ties.

Israel’s investigation has revealed some 100 people infiltrated the peace and humanitarian aid activists making their way to Gaza, with the explicit design to attack Israeli soldiers using cold arms.

Some among that group are believed to have ties with World Jihad groups, mainly al-Qaeda.

The majority of suspects are Turks, but some are Yemenites and Indonesian. One Yemenite Islamist was photographed with a dagger in his belt prior to the raid.

The suspects are not cooperating with investigators. Most of them have no identification papers, and Israeli authorities are still trying to ascertain their identity.

So, will the Western media omit this from their reports, too?

More… There were 3 Pakistanis with the Gaza Flotilla, too.

UPDATE: Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S, said the terrorists had ties to Al-Qaeda.
WCBS reported:

Israel also said terrorists were involved that have ties to al Qaeda.

“I believe that the organization involved in organizing the Turkish part of the flotilla was deeply linked to Islamic extremist organizations in the world,” Ambassador Oren said. “This is not just Israel’s conclusions. There is evidence from the CIA.”

Still more… MEMRI had this on the jihadists:

Arab Media Reports on Flotilla Participants: Writing Wills, Preparing for Martyrdom, Determined to Reach Gaza or Die

The Egyptian flotilla delegation included two members of the Muslim Brotherhood bloc in the Egyptian parliament: Muhammad Al-Baltaji and Hazem Farouq.

Al-Baltaji, who is deputy secretary-general of the Muslim Brotherhood parliamentary bloc in Egypt, said at a March 2010 conference, “A nation that excels at dying will be blessed by Allah with a life of dignity and with eternal paradise.” He also said that his movement “will never recognize Israel and will never abandon the resistance,” and that “resistance is the only road map that can save Jerusalem, restore the Arab honor, and prevent Palestine from becoming a second Andalusia.[1]

More…

Prominent activists in the Yemeni flotilla delegation were three MPs from the Al-Islah party, an Islamist party that is close to the Muslim Brotherhood. One, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Hazmi, was photographed on the deck of the Mavi Marmara brandishing his large curved dagger.

“Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”  Those words first voiced in 1815 by Captain Stephen Decatur Jr., America’s first post-revolution hero and, to this day, the youngest Captain ever commissioned by the US Navy, should be on the mind of every American President and every American Secretary of State every waking hour.

Though condensed and trivialized over time to the over simplified, “My country right or wrong,” and ridiculed by those who are embarrassed by patriotism, Decatur’s words, we believe, revealed a prescient understanding that future leaders of the then still very young republic would be called upon to make difficult decisions if the unique quality of American Liberty was to be preserved…decisions that could drastically impact the lives of many Americans.  Decatur also understood that while mistakes might be made from time to time, as long as the mission was the preservation of liberty and freedom, the republic deserved the support of the people.

We don’t believe Decatur was being cavalier and we don’t wish to be either.  He had seen war up close and personal, having commanded an incredibly heroic raid at Tripoli harbor that the legendary British Admiral Horatio Nelson, later called “the most bold and daring act of the age.”  Decatur had been dispatched, along with the newly established First Marines, by Thomas Jefferson to the shores of Tripoli on the Barbary Coast in support of what may have been the most important and long enduring foreign policy decision since the birth of the new American nation.  America would protect its interests, any place, any time and at any cost.  Defending liberty has always required determination and a clear sense of purpose.  Often its cost would be high.  Thirty-five American servicemen were lost on the Barbary Coast as the young nation first asserted its right to sail the high seas anywhere in the world.

A century and a half later John F. Kennedy made the same point when he pronounced, “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Nothing ambiguous about Jefferson’s policies, or those of James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy or those of most any other American Administration up until the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 when Jimmy Carter’s vacillation and lack of resolve caused foreign leaders to doubt America’s willingness to defend its interests even in the face of an act of war against it.

The cost of establishing and then preserving a nation predicated on the audacious idea of liberty and personal freedom has been high.  America has lost 1,315,000 men and women fighting for and preserving its freedom since its founding 235 years ago.  Ninety five percent of those losses are accounted for by the Civil War (626,000) and the two World Wars (623,026).  The Civil War was, by far, the most costly in terms of deaths per day and percentage of population lost.  America has, throughout most of its history, sent a clear message that it would face down any threat to its core value of liberty and personal freedom…its raison d’être.

War is costly in blood and treasure.  But history does not stand still.  Victory in war has not brought us everlasting peace.  Evil exists in every generation and must be confronted, first through seeking diplomatic solutions, albeit mindful of President Theodore Roosevelt’s cautionary remark about effective diplomacy, “Walk softly but carry a big stick.”

Ronald Reagan understood this far better than his predecessor, and was determined to reassert American resolve following the Carter years.  When asked what his vision was regarding the cold war he famously responded, “we win, they lose.”  While his response may have seemed somewhat flippant to the intellectual elite, Reagan clearly wasn’t joking.  Years later when Mikhail Gorbachev was asked what ended the cold war; he answered, without hesitation, “Reagan at Reykjavik.” Reagan was passionate about freedom and he, like Jefferson, had no illusions about the dangers of taking our hard-won freedoms for granted.  “Freedom”, he said, “is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

There may be a place for ambiguity in the art of diplomacy, but ambiguity as policy is fraught with danger. Ambiguity signals to friend and foe alike that we may not have a policy for a major area of concern, or that it is evolving or that it is being reconsidered or revised.  Friends may feel far less secure and scurry to cover their bases through new alliances.  Enemies may feel far more emboldened.

If the Obama Administration has a policy with respect to Iran’s determination to develop nuclear arms capability we cannot determine what it is.  We don’t believe Iran knows what American policy is either, nor do we think, Israel does, or the EU or Russia or China. Perhaps, even more disturbing, we seriously doubt whether America knows what its policy will be when Iran finally confirms what every nation already knows.  In fairness, President Obama’s predecessors all stumbled over Iran ever since Jimmy Carter’s ill-conceived handling of the Iran hostage crisis helped cement the radical mullahs hold on power.

President Obama articulated a new policy of engagement with Iran when he assumed the presidency.  America offered an olive branch to the mullahs.  The mullahs responded by accelerating Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts.  We gave Iran a deadline for accepting our outstretched hand.  The deadline came and passed leaving our outstretched hand dangling as a daily reminder by Iran to the rest of the world that it considers America yesterday’s news.

In an effort to entice Iran and other rogue nuclear states into compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, America announced that it would unilaterally commit to foregoing a nuclear response to any non-nuclear attack against us by any nation that was in compliance with the treaty.  Iran responded by calling President Obama “wicked and untrustworthy.” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during a meeting with the Iranian Armed Forces chief of staff and other top military officials, accused the United States of threatening to use nuclear weapons against Iran.  In other words, the Supreme Leader almost immediately dismissed America’s candor in explicitly explaining its new strategic nuclear arms policy, a policy that limited American retaliatory options, with a back-of-the-hand wave off.

The harder we try to entice, if not appease, Iran the more dismissive they become of us.  And now, to complicate matters further, Turkey and Brazil have journeyed to Tehran to provide a fig leaf for Iran’s continued nuclear enrichment program.  They will take approximately half of Iran’s uranium for further safe enrichment while Iran gets to keep the rest (and to presumably acquire more) and to keep increasing their enrichment activity in violation of numerous UN resolutions.  So far, what passes for American policy with respect to Iran has produced no tangible progress, not so much as an atom’s worth of forward progress.

Months of negotiating sanctions against Iran and compromising with Russia and China who consistently seek to water down the effectiveness of any sanctions regime have now been put in abeyance in deference to the “fig leaf” provided by Brazil and Turkey.  At the end of the day, if we may use a frightfully overused expression, America is going to have to look after its own interests and those of its friends who may be threatened and need our help.  Procrastination in the face of a hostile nation seeking to develop nuclear weapons is worse than negligent.  It is gambling with the survival of liberty in America and around the world.  Exhibit A to the consequences of allowing a rogue nation to “go nuclear” are in front of our eyes right now in Korea.  Forming “coalitions of the willing” to take forceful action generally work only when our prospective partners know we are willing, even if they are not.

North Korea, now a nuclear state, and not wanting to take second place to anyone when it comes to exposing America’s waning influence in the world committed a blatant act of war against South Korea, a critical American ally. They torpedoed a non-threatening South Korean vessel, the Cheonan, which was clearly in international waters killing all forty-six men onboard.  North Korea understands perfectly well the size and the extent of American forces on the Korean Peninsula and the enormity of our firepower there as well.  What they have every reason not to understand is the depth of our commitment and our willingness “to support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”  Consequently, they must have felt relatively safe in initiating the most provocative and dangerous act to take place on the peninsula in half a century.  Assuredly their leaders took into account that South Korea and America are aware that they have a nuclear capability.  Their uncertainty about our resolve to “support any friend” cannot be laid entirely at the feet of President Obama.  George Bush blundered when he removed North Korea from the list of states that sponsor terrorism.   Time and again we have rewarded North Korea for promises it soon breaks.  We have dithered our way to the current state of affairs and North Korea has provided a dramatic answer to the question of where such mollycoddling leads.

We have maintained an uninterrupted armed presence in South Korea for over fifty years. We have troops there whose grandfathers served in Korea and in less than five years we will have troops there whose great grandfathers served there.  Just what is our policy with respect to North Korea? Does South Korea know?  Does North Korea know?  Does the Administration know?

South Korea has, appropriately, suspended all trade with the North and says it will, with US support, block North Korean ships from entering South Korean waters.  The United States and South Korea have also announced joint military maneuvers in the area.  These are strong, but inadequate steps.  The entire international community must act in solidarity with South Korea, and China must make clear, in no uncertain terms, that North Korea can no longer count on The People’s Republic to defend its indefensible behavior.  Unfortunately, we are not optimistic that such solidarity will materialize.  This may, indeed, be the moment when America is called upon “to support any friend and oppose any foe…”

Next we come to the Middle East where America’s first foray into foreign affairs began on the Barbary Coast so many years ago.  Here too our friends, both Arab and Israeli, nervously watch the high-stakes game of chicken being played out between America and Iran.  They and the rest of the world were told by President Obama that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a “game changer.” But no one knows what that statement means in the real world.

We have delivered a very public tongue lashing to the Israelis over the clumsy announcement of planned new construction in a Jewish neighborhood contiguous to Arab housing in East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority then promptly demanded that we impose a solution on Israel to resolve the half-century old dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.

We are apparently pursuing a policy of rapprochement with Syria, and to show our good will we have dispatched an ambassador to the former axis-of-evil state, to which Syria has responded by sending longer-range rockets to its proxies, Hezbollah, in Lebanon.  The rockets, of course, make their way to Lebanon from Iran though Syria.  Meanwhile, Israel’s ability, like America’s ability, to influence events with respect to the Iranian nuclear threat diminishes every day.

We understand the difficulty faced by the Administration.  These are not problems of their making and they are quick to remind us of that.  But they are problems they have been elected and appointed to deal with.  The threats from our adversaries are growing and they are not apt to go away on their own.    Events are hurtling toward either conflict or resolution.  Decisions, very difficult decisions, will have to be made.  As Stephen Decatur said two hundred years ago, “may (America) always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”  We have no doubt that liberty is at stake and, once again, by defending it America would be in the right.

By Hal Gershowitz and Stephan Porter

The so-called peaceful leftists and Pro-Gaza activists who attacked the Israeli soldiers today with pipes, metal rods and chairs belong to a terrorist-linked organization. The International Humanitarian Fund (IHH), which plays a central role in organizing the Gaza Flotilla, is a Turkish humanitarian relief fund with a radical Islamic anti-Western orientation. The president of IHH (Bulent Yildirim) recruited “Jihad warriors” and transferred firearms, and explosives to Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists organizations.

For some strange reason the state-run media forgot to mention this in their reports today?

Here is one video that shows the Gaza Flotilla activists chanting “Kill the Jews”.
Via Palestinian Media Watch:

From the video: Gaza flotilla participants chanted Islamic battle cry invoking killing of Jews. The name Khaibar mentioned in battle cry was the last Jewish village defeated by Muhammad’s army in 628. The battle marked the end of Jewish presence in Arabia. There are Muslims who see that as a precursor for future wars against Jews. At gatherings and rallies of extremists, this chant is often heard as a threat to Jews to expect to be defeated and killed again by Muslims.

One Jerusalem reported more on the terror-linked organization today:

In the wake of the deadly battle at sea, Israel has been telling the world that the prime sponsor of the so-called “Gaza Flotilla” is a terrorist linked organization. Many news organizations, (including the New York Times, Reuters, and the British Broadcasting Corporation), are ignoring this charge and continue to refer the so-called victims as peaceful Palestinian advocates.

A week ago, the Republic of Cyprus denied the flotilla any access to its ports. Despite some international criticism, the Cypriot government did not want to be party to a dangerous scheme by a confrontation minded group.The Cypriots clearly did their homework – something that the news media did not.

A quick search of Internet reveals that Turkish based International Humanitarian Fund (IHH) is embedded with terrorists and their organizations. Like Hamas they provide humanitarian aid but their clients include Al Qaeda, Hamas, etc. Turkish security forces raided the Istanbul office of IHH. IHH activists were arrested, and Turkish security forces found explosives, manuals, and weapons. (For authoritative information on IHH click here.)

According to the French intelligence, the president of IHH (Bulent Yildirim) recruited “Jihad warriors” and transferred firearms, and explosives to Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorists organizations. IHH has also been fingered for producing documents so Islamic terrorists can travel by air posing as relief workers. And IHH was involved with the terrorist who tried to smuggle 1320 pounds of explosives to be used to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.

This is a partial picture of the forces challenging Israel. These are people who are determined to destroy the Jewish State. These facts are not being broadcast in the many hours of news time being given to the Flotilla story.

And, The Weekly Standard reported that the terror linked group transferred millions of dolllars to Hamas:

The Turkish nonprofit belongs to a Saudi-based umbrella organization known to finance terrorism called the Union of Good (Ittilaf al-Kheir in Arabic). Notably, the Union is chaired by Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, who is known best for his religious ruling that encourages suicide attacks against Israeli civilians. According to one report, Qardawi personally transferred millions of dollars to the Union in an effort to provide financial support to Hamas.

Don’t expect to see this in any of the Western media reports on the incident.

Memorial Day is a day to recognize the sacrifice of all the men and women who have given their lives in defending our country. It began during the Civil War when cities and towns held special days to lay flowers on the graves of fallen, husbands, sons, and fathers. Women of the fallen who organized groups to place flowers on the graves of their loved ones may have started it.

Memorial Day has grown over the years to be commemorated with flag waving ceremonies, military parades and memorial services held at military cemeteries and parks across America.  Many cities and towns line the streets with the American Flag and some do not.  Patriotic citizens fly the flag in front of their homes on days like this, do you?

I lived in Simi Valley, California for over 10 years, it is infamous for the Rodney King trial and the home to many Los Angeles Police Officers, and has been rated in the top ten safest cities in America several times.  It is not like a city full of “rednecks” like some believe.  My neighbor on one side was a family from Mexico; next to him was a black family, across the street were some Arabs and down the street lived a Chinese family.  Yes there are many folks from India running the local gas stations and 7 Elevens and they are all very polite.  Simi Valley is a great place to raise a family.

On holidays like the 4^th of July and Memorial Day one could drive down any residential street in Simi Valley and see numerous American flags. Now I live in a neighborhood near the San Fernando Valley, where out of over 500 homes only one or two flags are flown. But when the Lakers are in the playoffs their flag adorns many cars.

It seems like political correctness dictates that flying your countries flag is not politically correct. Folks from countries like El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, etc. will adorn their cars with their flag, why don’t more Americans?

After the Civil War the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was founded in Decatur, Illinois in 1866.  Like today’s Veterans Administration, it was formed to assist veterans.  The GAR was comprised of about 500,000 veterans of the Civil War.  It was not unlike a political party and five of its members went on to be elected President of the United States.

The GAR also elected its Commander-in-Chief, General John Logan. On May 5, 1868 General Logan officially declared May 30^th “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet church-yard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.” Thus it became known as Decoration Day. It is believed that May was picked because of the availability of spring flowers to place on the graves.

The following is a paragraph from General Logan’s written order:

We are organized, comrades, as our regulations tell us, for the purpose among other things, “of preserving and strengthening those kind and fraternal feelings which have bound together the soldiers, sailors, and marines who united to suppress the late rebellion.” What can aid more to assure this result than cherishing tenderly the memory of our heroic dead, who made their breasts a barricade between our country and its foes? Their soldier lives were the reveille of freedom to a race in chains, and their deaths the tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms. We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance. All that the consecrated wealth and taste of the nation can add to their adornment and security is but a fitting tribute to the memory of her slain defenders. Let no wanton foot tread rudely on such hallowed grounds. Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.

The first recognized “Decoration Day” at Arlington National Cemetery began with a ceremony at the Arlington mansion the former home of General Robert E. Lee.  General and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant were present and administered the ceremonies.  Following speeches from members of the GAR and children from the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Orphan Home flowers were placed on the graves while hymns were sung and prayers were recited.

Memorial Day was always observed to honor those who died in the Civil War until after World War I when it was broadened to include those who had died in all U.S. wars. It wasn’t until 1966 that President Johnson declared Waterloo, N.Y. the “birthplace” of Memorial Day. In 1971 Congress acted to declare the last Monday in May as Memorial Day.

Today at Arlington and many Veterans cemeteries across the nation American Flags are placed on every grave.  Today 1.1 million Americans have given their lives for our freedom and freedom around the world. In 2000 “The National Moment of Remembrance Act” was signed into law. This law formed the White House Commission on the National Moment of Remembrance whose treaty was to “encourage the people of the United States to give something back to their country, which provides them so much freedom and opportunity”.

The National Moment of Remembrance takes place at 3 p.m. local time on Memorial Day with one minute of silence to salute those who have died in service to The United States of America. As the founder of Moment of Remembrance, Carmella LaSpada stated, “It’s a way we can all help put the memorial back in Memorial Day.”

My flag will be flying at half-staff, will yours?

On Tuesday, May 18, in busy rush hour traffic, a suicide bomber drove his Toyota minivan, packed with 1650 lbs. of explosives, alongside a NATO convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan and detonated. Eighteen people were killed, including five American soldiers and one Canadian. Forty-seven others were wounded.

According to an NYPD Shield Intelligence brief, it was the deadliest attack on foreign forces operating in Kabul this year. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

2010-05-18-NYPD-SuicideBombingInKabul –

The very next day, an estimated thirty to forty Taliban fighters launched a brazen, pre-dawn assault on U.S.-run Bagram Airbase, thirty miles north of Kabul. Though sixteen Taliban insurgents (four of whom were intended to be used as suicide bombers) were killed, at the end of the spectacular attack one U.S. contractor had been left dead and nine to twelve service members were wounded.

The Taliban took credit once again and claimed that seven suicide bombers had detonated at Bagram’s gates while thirty other fighters slipped inside; a report the U.S. military flatly denies. But did the U.S. military have advance information that the suicide bombing attacks were imminent? According to sources in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the answer appears to be yes.

A team of highly-skilled, clandestine intelligence professionals charged with gathering force protection intelligence passed a series of urgent situation reports (Sitreps) to the U.S. military and Military intelligence in the days leading up to the attacks. We have attached three of these Sitreps, which are considered “must reads” in theater and are referred to as “outside-the-wire” reports. They have been thoroughly redacted and in no way pose any harm to ongoing operations or sources.

From them, you will learn the following:

The intelligence-gathering team first reported that a group of Haqqani suicide bombers had made their way into Kabul. The coordinates for the safe house they were using were communicated, as was the area they were operating in, along with the name of a local business which was providing the cell members cover.

The intelligence-gathering team next reported on the suicide bombers’ apparent targets – Kabul International Airport and/or an area known as Charikar (sic).

When further intelligence gathering revealed that Kabul International Airport was not one of the targets, but rather Bagram Airbase was, that reporting was fed into the reporting stream. The information was greeted at some point in the chain with a newfound skepticism. “The Taliban won’t attack Bagram,” was one such response. This despite the fact that the team had been providing a steady stream of exceptional intelligence, including intelligence that had led to stopping two prior suicide bombing attacks against American troops.

After Tuesday’s suicide bombing, the members of the cell responsible fled to a mosque in Kabul. The intelligence gathering team confirmed the presence of the cell members at the mosque, as well as the fact that a white Toyota Corolla (which may have been used in the next attack) was being prepped as a VBIED. They passed this intelligence along, but nothing happened. And then, less than twenty-four hours later, the attack on Bagram took place.

Nineteen people have now been killed, six of those Americans, and more than sixty people have been injured. Had these attacks come out of the blue, it would have been a horrific tragedy. The fact that cell members involved in both of these potentially preventable attacks had been identified to the U.S. Military beforehand makes this unnecessary loss of life even more tragic.

What is the point of gathering timely force protection intelligence if it isn’t going to be used to protect our forces?

With the resignation of Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, more public focus is being placed on the “rampant politicization” of intelligence. And while Director Blair may be held up as a victim of that politicization, the real victims are those who were killed and injured last week in Kabul.

I have no idea why such important, lifesaving information was not heeded. Even a modest investigation into these Sitreps would have produced results.

The Secretary of Defense should instruct his Intelligence Oversight investigators to focus on why this critical intelligence was not acted upon. I am sure the families of the dead and wounded would both agree and appreciate it. It needs to be done now, before more lives are lost. Pursuing a Star Chamber-like investigation of Michael Furlong – the man who caused this professional intelligence collection operation to be put in place – is a waste of time and resources.

This operation has succeeded in doing the one thing our billion dollar Federal intelligence community could not do: fulfill our information needs in Afghanistan.

If this doesn’t happen, I will make a very grim prediction — the horrific loss of life America saw last week is only a preview of much worse things to come.

The Sitreps follow:

Subject: SITREP #440

SITREP #440(based on a278) MOST URGENT

Cooperator:

Subject: Preliminary Report Regarding Preparations for Suicide

Bomb Attacks in Kabul Area

DOD: 14 May 2010

DOA: 15 May 2010

Cooperator Description: An experienced surveillance team directed at the Haqqani target.

1. On the evening of 14 May 2010, four Haqqani suicide bombers arrived in Kabul, via Khost and Pul-i Kandahari, Logar Province. Two of the suicide bombers are Afghans; two are foreigners. The explosive-laden vests are already in the Kabul area, either in Kabul City or at Charikar (sic). (Cooperator Comment: The targets appear to be the Kabul International Airport (KBL), aka Khwaja Rawash Airport, and/or Charikar.

2. In Kabul, the suicide team is being housed at Haqqani safe sites inside the Kabul metropolitan area. These are located at:

a. XXX XXX (alias Project XXX)

b. XXX XXX

c. Some XXX

3. (Comment: We are actively following all leads to the current location of the suicide bombers and will update as soon as we have something to offer. All of our resources in Kabul are being directed to this target. If the US military authorities will cooperate with us, we can probably prevent a disaster).

The second sitrep:

Subject: SITREP #442 Goggle Map follows

Sitrep #442 URGENT NOFORN

Cooperator:

DOD: 18/5/10

DOI: 18/5/10

QUICK UPDATE ON PURSUIT OF KABUL SUICIDE BOMBERS

REFERENCE: Sitrep #440

Our surveillance team leader claims that he has just seen a XXX with two of the suicide team at a mosque near to XXX XXX – the mosque of XXX XXX. We received this report at 06.00 GMT. Supposedly the people are still in the mosque and can be expected to spend today there. Coordinates are provided.

Details of three SB :

XXX, name unknown, is a Pashto-speaker from Shomali. One artificial leg. Short.

Companion 1 : A Pakistani Wazir, 25-30 yrs. Known as XXX – presumably is an alias. He was mainly in contact with the chap who killed XXX

Companion 2 : An Afghan, originally from Zurmat, but linked to XXX XXX. Real name XXX. Alias is. XXX Has been brought up in Pakistan and studied in Haqania, Akora Khattak.

Also, the chap who killed himself – his alias was XXX. On his false refugee card he was identified as XXX. Also XXX. About 23 yrs old. Tall. Medium length beard, light coloured hair.

COMMENTS : IF THIS REPORT CAN BE GIVEN TO PEOPLE ON THE GROUND IN TIME, IT IS WORTH THEIR WHILE CHECKING OUT THE XXX LEAD IMMEDIATELY AS IT MIGHT PROVIDE AN OPPORTUNITY TO FORESTALL THE REST OF THE GROUP’S SABOTAGE PROGRAM IN KABUL

The third sitrep:

Subject: SITREP #443

Sitrep #443 (based on a281) URGENT NOFORN

Cooperator:

DOD: 18/5/10 (1545GMT)
DOA: 18/5/10

SUBJECT: Update on Kabul Suicide Bombers (SB)

REFERENCES: Sitreps # 440 & 442 & its addendum

Cooperator reports we have the ability to follow and track SB cell. Cooperator reported that the SBs had moved on. Cooperator and the team will try to catch up again with the current batch of SBs and to get us a stronger identity for the mullah they report in XXX XXX.

A propos team leader’s report that the two SBs were being looked after by the XXX XXX mullah, all we know about the mullah so far is that he is a XXX Pashtun who was an uluswal in XXX in the XXX period. He XXX XXX XXX XXX.

Team leader also reported that he visited Commander XXX XXX in XXX XXX, Project AXXX yesterday and claims that he spotted a white corolla there which was in safekeeping for one of the SB missions.

A clarification on the mosque : there are two mosques in XXX XXX. One is newly-constructed and called XXX XXX XXX XXX, and the other one is an old one (XXX XXX XXX XXX). The mullah in question is in the XXX (the XXX one).

(Field Comment: Report that Bagram Airfield is a target for these
suicide bombers staging out of Paghman side of Kabul has been
relayed to Kabul orally for passage as appropriate).

At a press conference last Wednesday with Mexican President Felipe Calderon, President Barack Obama said his administration was taking a “very close look” at Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law, “for any implications, especially for civil rights.”

So while the Obama Administration looks at civil rights implications, the big question to ask is will they also look at the implications of the radical Islamic terrorists in America—including those who have taken advantage of the broken U.S. immigration system?

What? Radical Islamic terrorists are in America?

According to a previously disclosed 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment, the answer is a resounding yes, and among them are members of; Al-Qa’ida, Al-Shabaab, HAMAS, Hizballah, Jama’at al-Tabligh, Jama’at ul Fuqra, Lashkar-e Tayyiba, the Muslim Brotherhood, Sunni Extremists, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Islamic Jihad Union, and the Taliban.

This information you will not learn from the Obama Administration’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who considers acts of terror to be man-made disasters. The same Secretary Napolitano, who quickly condemned the Arizona immigration law (intended to do the job the Federal government failed to do), even though she had not read it.

Nor would you know that Islamic radical terrorists have taken advantage of America’s immigration crisis by listening to Attorney General Eric Holder either. Instead, for instance, he obfuscated then refused to identify radical Islam as the motive behind the failed Times Square terrorist attack earlier this month, after Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen (via marriage) from Pakistan, who returned to the States after five months of terror training in Waziristan, was arrested. Holder is considering suing Arizona over their immigration law even though, as he admitted last week, he had not read it either.

For unknown reasons the Obama Administration has deliberately refused to publicly address the clear and present danger of radical Islamic terrorists and the immigration crisis. As previously reported here, Terrorists have applied for Green Cards, and as the 215-page 2009 Virginia Terrorism Threat Assessment confirms, “The international terrorism threat to Virginia and the nation as a whole stems from several radical Islamic militant groups….”

Moreover, as the threat assessment documents, there is a connection with radical Islamic terrorists and immigration:

Marriage fraud is a common method of facilitating the extended stays of foreign
terrorists in the U.S….Known cases of sham marriages exist involving al-Qa’ida, Hizballah, and individuals with radical ties. Fraudulent marriages have enabled individuals affiliated with al-Qa’ida, Hizballah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to remain in the U.S. One regional example is the Charlotte Hizballah cell, where a key figure “helped secure three fraudulent visas and three sham marriages for the purpose of ‘legally’ bringing in the United States his brother, his brother-in-law, and sister so that they might become legal permanent residents…

… one Virginia-linked case occurred in which a Norfolk police officer testified against an Ohio-based Jordanian man who had tried to recruit him online for a terrorist cause. Subsequent federal investigation showed this subject likely entered the U.S. through a fraudulent marriage to a Kansas City woman in 2001; the marriage was annulled five months later…

… Many individuals enter the U.S. on student visas and never enroll in school… [or] individuals may enroll and seem to be legitimate students but may still be working as operatives. The three categories of nonimmigrant student visas monitored and tracked by DHS are F visas for academic study, M visas for vocational study, and J visas for cultural exchange. Such visas can be exploited by terrorists not only as a method to legally penetrate the borders, but also present a legitimate opportunity to study technical fields which may be of use in future attacks.

One of the FBI’s most wanted subjects, Aafia Siddiqui, who has ties to al-Qa’ida, entered the U.S. on a student visa and lived in the country for over a decade while studying and teaching at Brandeis and MIT… she was found with handwritten notes referring to a ‘mass casualty attack’ at various prominent locations in the U.S., such as the Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, and the Brooklyn Bridge… Separate FBI reporting advised that an individual in the U.S. had sponsored several individuals from Egypt to enter to the U.S. on F-1 student visas. This individual had an identified contact at Strayer University who prepared and filed the visa paperwork through the University… The sponsor and the university contact allegedly hold radical Muslim beliefs…

Borrowing from Secretary Napolitano, the immigration crisis is a federal government-made disaster that occurred under both Republican and Democratic leadership. The consequences of the unsecured borders and the broken, backlogged United States Citizenship & Immigration Services do not exclusively adversely and dangerously affect Arizona– but the nation. It’s time for the Obama Administration to stop deflecting reality and tell the truth about the threats facing America.

Cross-posted at marinkapeschmann.com

Last week, I published a column that details the disgraceful silence of the Obama Administration over the election of Iran to the UN women’s rights commission.

This week, I’m happy to update this story with a positive development — Representative Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) introduced House Resolution 1371, “Condemning the selection of the Government of Iran to serve on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.”  The original Cosponsors of this measure represent a diverse, bipartisan group including Rep. Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Rep. Burton (R-IN), Rep. Campbell (R-CA), Rep. McCaul (R-TX), Rep. Inglis (R-SC), and Rep. Polis (D-CO).

On April 28, Iran was handed a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women despite efforts by Iranian “gender-equality activists” and supporters to block this appointment.  The US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, made no attempts to thwart Iran’s bid for a seat on this committee and on the day of the election, she did not even bother to show up for the meeting.  Despite public outcry, the Obama Administration still fails to publicly condemn the appointment of Iran to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Several members of Congress, however, have taken the lead in voicing the concerns of the American people.

House Resolution 1371 points out that “Iran’s Islamic civil and penal codes discriminate against women” and notes that “according to the Department of State’s 2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Iranian women are only ‘nominally’ granted ‘equal protection under the law… in conformity with Islam.’”  The resolution also highlights some of the human rights violations against women including:

• “under Iranian law, spousal rape is legal”
• “Iranian penal code dictates a punishment of lashings or a fine if a woman appears in public without an appropriate hijab”
• “Iranian law permits men to have as many as four wives”
• “adultery is punishable by death by stoning, and a man who kills his wife…may easily escape punishment,”

The proposed resolution not only “condemns” this UN appointment, but also “calls on the Administration to denounce the selection of the Government of Iran to serve on the Commission” and “urges the President to direct the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations to use the voice, vote, and influence of the United States at the United Nations to advocate for the removal of the Government of Iran from the Commission.”

The Representatives who cosponsored Resolution 1371 have taken leadership in Congress by standing in opposition to Iran serving on the UN’s “global policy-making body” for women’s rights. Although the Obama Administration currently still refuses to condemn the appointment of Iran to the UN women’s rights commission, Congress members are taking initiative and expressing the concerns of the American people.  Voters who are interested in seeing this resolution passed should contact Congress and voice their support for House Resolution 1371.

Last week, I published a column that details the disgraceful silence of the Obama Administration over the election of Iran to the UN women’s rights commission.

This week, I’m happy to update this story with a positive development — Representative Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) introduced House Resolution 1371, “Condemning the selection of the Government of Iran to serve on the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.”  The original Cosponsors of this measure represent a diverse, bipartisan group including Rep. Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Rep. Burton (R-IN), Rep. Campbell (R-CA), Rep. McCaul (R-TX), Rep. Inglis (R-SC), and Rep. Polis (D-CO).

On April 28, Iran was handed a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women despite efforts by Iranian “gender-equality activists” and supporters to block this appointment.  The US Ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, made no attempts to thwart Iran’s bid for a seat on this committee and on the day of the election, she did not even bother to show up for the meeting.  Despite public outcry, the Obama Administration still fails to publicly condemn the appointment of Iran to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Several members of Congress, however, have taken the lead in voicing the concerns of the American people.

House Resolution 1371 points out that “Iran’s Islamic civil and penal codes discriminate against women” and notes that “according to the Department of State’s 2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Iranian women are only ‘nominally’ granted ‘equal protection under the law… in conformity with Islam.’”  The resolution also highlights some of the human rights violations against women including:

• “under Iranian law, spousal rape is legal”
• “Iranian penal code dictates a punishment of lashings or a fine if a woman appears in public without an appropriate hijab”
• “Iranian law permits men to have as many as four wives”
• “adultery is punishable by death by stoning, and a man who kills his wife…may easily escape punishment,”

The proposed resolution not only “condemns” this UN appointment, but also “calls on the Administration to denounce the selection of the Government of Iran to serve on the Commission” and “urges the President to direct the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations to use the voice, vote, and influence of the United States at the United Nations to advocate for the removal of the Government of Iran from the Commission.”

The Representatives who cosponsored Resolution 1371 have taken leadership in Congress by standing in opposition to Iran serving on the UN’s “global policy-making body” for women’s rights. Although the Obama Administration currently still refuses to condemn the appointment of Iran to the UN women’s rights commission, Congress members are taking initiative and expressing the concerns of the American people.  Voters who are interested in seeing this resolution passed should contact Congress and voice their support for House Resolution 1371.

In an interesting development the House Armed Services Committee unanimously approved legislation that would block Gitmo, Illinois from coming to fruition. In fact, they’ve blocked any Gitmo terrorist from being transferred anywhere into the interior of the USA. This is a blow to Obama’s desires to shut Gitmo down and to bring terrorists to a prison near you.

Wednesday the committee approved a defense bill for 2011 that includes language to prevent moving detainees into any US facility inside our borders and also blocked any funding to even study the possibility.

The bill does, however, state that the Secretary of Defense must submit to Congress a full report that “adequately justifies” any such proposal in the future which seems to signal that they haven’t shut the door on the possibility of a later opening of a detainee facility inside US borders.

This would appear to be a case of Congress telling the president that he overstepped his position when he announced that he had the power to transfer terrorists to the states.

You might recall that that in December of 2009, Barack Obama’s Justice Department issued a memo authorizing the transfer to Illinois of terror suspects being housed at Guantanamo Bay. In December, Obama tried to invoke his powers as commander-in-chief of America’s armed forces as the authority by which he could commandeer the Thomson Correctional facility in Illinois and place Gitmo terror suspects there for housing. This was a desperate effort not to make the lie to his 2009 executive order setting a Jan. 2010 deadline for shutting down the Guantanamo facility — a deadline he’s missed badly.

But now Congress is slapping his hand and telling him that “memo” or no, he can’t transfer terrorists to facilities inside US borders and even if he thinks he does have that power, Congress won’t pay for it all.

Amusingly, the New York Times tried to spin this as the Republican’s fault. After noting that Obama missed his own self-imposed, one-year deadline to close Gitmo, The Times tries to make readers think that this newest setback it is all because of those mean ol’ Republicans that are blocking Obama’s valiant efforts.

Mr. Obama had declared he would close the prison within a year of taking office. The administration argues that Guantánamo is a symbol used for terrorism recruitment, so closing it would enhance national security.

But many Republicans have maintained that Guantánamo should stay open, arguing that the Thomson plan would waste money and create a national-security risk. Some libertarians also oppose institutionalizing indefinite detentions without trial on domestic soil.

Newsflash, NYT, this approval to block Gitmo, Illinois was unanimous. If you need help with that big word it means all the Democrats on the committee voted to block their own president’s Gitmo plans. And this is not to mention that the Democrats control Congress and could easily have approved of Obama’s plans if they had wanted to.

The more interesting story, NYT, might be to ask why all the Democrats voted to block Obama on this. I guess that is too much like work for the Times, though.

So, no Gitmo, Illinois any time in the near future. Now, I wonder if the extreme left will begin to call Obama a war criminal and torturer for not closing Gitmo like they did Bush for all those years? Do you hear that? It’s crickets. They love the sound of crickets in the morning.

I am one of the featured speakers at the Inaugural statewide Tea Party Convention in Tennessee’s beautiful Smoky Mountains this weekend. But look at this: the unindicted co-conspirator, terror-tied Muslim Brotherhood front group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is trying to get the good, decent Americans of the Tennessee Tea Party to crush free speech by dropping me from the Tea Party convention this weekend.

Why is CAIR starting this campaign now? This is all about the mosque that Muslims are planning to build near Ground Zero. I spoke the truth about this supremacist initiative on the Sean Hannity radio show last week, in a debate with Islamic apologist Michael Ghouse. Who won the debate? Well, you be the judge:

The next day I was scheduled to be on the Mike Huckabee Show on Fox News along with a representative from the mosque, but at the last minute they decided not to send anyone. They sent Huckabee a written statement, which he read to me on the air. And now CAIR sends around this press release full of lies and distortions, trying to intimidate the Tennessee Tea Partiers into canceling me. The CAIR press release starts this way:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on the organizers of the inaugural Tennessee Tea Party Convention to be held this weekend in Gatlinburg to drop an anti-Islam speaker who claims that ‘Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by Islam’ and that Islam ‘mandates’ lies and deception.

Sounds terrible, right? Except for one thing: it’s true.

Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by Islam. Hitler is on record saying that he was sorry that the Muslims didn’t conquer Europe, because warlike Islam would have been a better religion for the German people than peaceful Christianity. And Adolf Eichmann’s assistant, Dieter Wisliczeny, testified this during the Nuremberg trials about Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem. The Mufti:

… repeatedly suggested to the Nazi authorities – including Hitler, von Ribbentrop and Himmler – the extermination of European Jewry. … The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan… He was one of Eichmann’s best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures.

During World War I, Hajj Amin al-Husseini was an officer of the Ottoman Empire, which used primitive gas chambers to exterminate Armenians. The Nazis used these gas chambers as templates for their own, more sophisticated versions – maybe the Mufti gave them the idea while he was urging Eichmann to “accelerate the extermination measures.”

And does Islam mandate lies and deception? Islamic scholar Robert Spencer says that the Koran “warns believers not to take unbelievers as ‘friends or helpers’ (َأَوْلِيَا — a word that means more than casual friendship, but something like alliance), ‘unless (it be) that ye but guard yourselves against them’ (3:28). This is a foundation of the idea that believers may legitimately deceive unbelievers when under pressure.” Spencer quotes the revered Islamic scholar Ibn Kathir saying that “believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers” may “show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, ‘We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.’”

We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them. Sounds like lies and deception to me.

In a certain sense, it’s a tribute. Of course the Muslim Brotherhood CAIR wants to shut me up. Truth begets hatred. It’s a sign of their fear, and their tacit acknowledgment that I am telling the truth about the 9/11 Mosque initiative. Thanks, CAIR! But this is all because CAIR and its parent group, the Muslim Brotherhood (which says it’s engaged in a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house”), know what the 9/11 Mosque will mean, and they are determined to destroy anyone who stands in its way. The 9/11 Mosque will be the icon, the rallying point for every devout Muslim and jihadist across the world. They must have their symbol of conquest.

Who stands with me? Who is coming to Tennessee to stand for our unalienable rights endowed by G-d? Contact the Tennessee Tea Party Convention organizers and let them know what you think of this campaign by Hamas-linked CAIR.

Freedom of speech is the line in the sand. Once we lose that, the war is over. This is the battle, the information battle space. Guns, bombs, bloodshed are the result of what happens in the war of ideas. This is where we must make a stand – or bow down and accept our chains.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is attempting to bully the Tennessee Tea Party Convention into dropping Pamela Geller as one of their speakers for their event this weekend in Gatlinberg.

In a stirring piece of Orwellian propaganda, CAIR cautioned the group via press release:

“The Tea Party needs to decide whether it is a legitimate national political movement or just a safe haven for bigots and extremists,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad. “We ask that convention organizers not legitimize Geller’s extremist anti-Muslim rhetoric by offering her an official platform.”

And CAIR should know a little something about being a safe haven for bigots and extremists. After all, their former communications director sits in jail right now after pleading guilty to weapons and explosives charges. He also admitted helping terrorists gain entry to a training camp in Pakistan.

While concerned about Ms. Geller’s exercise of free speech and the Tea Party’s exercise of free association, we missed CAIR’s press release denouncing the violation of human rights in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, etc… We’re sure they wrote one, it just wasn’t distributed as widely as this one.

Geller gives her initial response here, but we suspect this won’t be the last we hear on this one.

Imagine the American response in 1950 if the Japanese government sought to erect a shrine to its World War II Emperor in Pearl Harbor, right next to the sunken wreckage of the USS Arizona.

Would “outrage” be strong enough to describe the response?

Now fast forward to 2010.

Less than nine years after the worst terrorist attack on American soil in our history, an imam who blames America for the 9/11 attack wants to construct a 13 story, $100 million dollar mosque and Islamic center 600 feet from “Ground Zero.”

And he wants to unveil it to the world on September 11, 2011 – the ten year anniversary of the greatest jihadist atrocity ever perpetrated against America on its own soil.

News and blog sites across the country are heating up over this.  ACT! for America, the nation’s largest grassroots organization dedicated to combating radical Islam and global jihad, today launched a national petition opposing the mosque, which says in part:

We are opposed to the grotesque symbolism represented by the building of this mosque at “ground zero…”  We are deeply disturbed by the insensitivity to the families of the victims of the 9/11 jihadist attack exhibited by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his supporters.

As a measure of the public’s outrage , over 5,000 people had signed the petition in the first three hours.

Families of the victims of 9/11 are stunned by the news that this mosque is proceeding ahead.  It does not appear to be the mosque per se, but the audacity of those pushing for it to be located on what one firefighter survivor described as “sacred ground,” that is striking a nerve.

Debra Burlingame, the sister of the American Airlines pilot whose jet was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon, is the founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America.  In a recent Fox News interview she said:

“The idea that you would establish a religious institution that embraces the very Shariah Law that terrorists point to as their justification for what they did … to build that where almost 3,000 people died, that is an obscenity to me.”

The views of the imam of the proposed mosque are also roiling the waters.  Madeline Brooks, an ACT! for America chapter leader in Manhattan, wrote the following recently in American Thinker:

During a recent Friday sermon, this writer did due diligence as a mosque monitor and heard Rauf deny that Muslims perpetrated 9/11. In an interview with CNN shortly after 9/11, Rauf said, “U.S. policies were an accessory to the crime that happened. We [the U.S.] have been an accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. Osama bin Laden was made in the USA.” Elsewhere, Rauf has stated that terrorism will end only when the West acknowledges the harm it has done to Muslims. And that it was Christians who started mass attacks on civilians.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said that if it’s legal to put a mosque at this site, then it should be allowed.  But “legal” and “right” are not necessarily the same thing.

For years Americans have been lectured to by Islamist leaders and their enablers and supporters about how Americans must be more sensitive to the needs, customs, and sensibilities of Muslims.

But one would be hard-pressed to find something more insensitive than the placement of a mosque, whose imam supports Islamic sharia law, right next to the worst Islamic jihadist attack on American soil in history.

The fact that the imam behind this mosque claims locating the mosque here is intended to heal the wounds of 9/11 reveals either moral obtuseness or disingenuousness.

The Muslim world is all about symbolism.  To the militant Islamist in Saudi Arabia, a mosque at ground zero would represent the ultimate in humiliation of the infidel.

To the families of the victims of 9/11, it is the ultimate slap in the face.

This story might slip right past you. It’s understandable, considering most Americans have no idea of the context or how it happened that the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) is now set for 20 years in Iraq, thanks to a deal just inked between the Iraqi government and Communist China. The Iraqis originally selected America’s Exxon-Mobil. I’ll wager you probably didn’t know that. You’ll want to read on. But brace yourself.

It’s the classic American political tale of self-loathing crafted by the usual suspects. With its government firm and its security at its post-surge best, the Iraqi government needed to quickly bring its oilfields online. It desperately needed the revenues. The summer of 2008 saw oil prices above $100 per barrel and Americans were paying $4 per gallon at the pump.

The best in the business – the best in the world – is Exxon-Mobil. And the government of Iraq turned to America’s Exxon-Mobil to bring undeveloped and underdeveloped fields online to rejuvenate its own revenue sources and ween itself and its people off of American aid.

But three American Senators would have none of it. Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) sent a public letter to the Bush administration’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, imploring her to derail the Iraqi deal. (See: ‘In China We Trust’: Senators Closed Door to US Oil Investment In Iraq.) As the Senate troika stated, “It is our fear that this action by the Iraqi government could further deepen political tensions in Iraq and put our service members in even great danger.”

You see, these three American Senators insisted that Iraq shall have no revenues until it passed an oil revenue sharing law that met their distant standards. Or at least, Iraq should have certainly had no additional revenue. Their letter was dismissed out of hand in Washington. But in Iraq, the desired consequences of the letter took hold. The Iraqi government became spooked as the reportage of the letter turned, as one would expect, into wrangling and infighting by those seeking to leverage it to their advantage in the hotly contested revenue sharing process.

And there was “Big Oil” political gamesmanship afoot amid the 2008 presidential elections. As Fred Kagan noted at the time in The Weekly Standard, Claire McCaskill made no real bones about it. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect these dots–big oil is running Washington and now they’re running Baghdad. There is no reason under the sun not to halt these agreements until we get revenue sharing in place,” McCaskill said. Claire McCaskill knows a thing or two about not being a rocket scientist.

But there were at least two “reasons under the sun” not to halt Iraq’s deal with its preferred American operator. The first “reason under the sun” was the Iraqi government itself, which did not include McCaskill or Kerry or Schumer as part of the “we” who were working on the internal Iraqi revenue sharing agreement. The second “reason under the sun” was China, which would be quite happy to exclude the American senators from their share of the oil and revenue a deal would happily generate.

Remember, Iraq was desperate for income; and oil is, was and will be for some time it’s primary resource. There was no time – nor a need – to wait for a final agreement before beginning to rebuild its oil industry. From the Iraqi perspective, despite the myopic gaming of American politicians, there was no reason under the relentless Iraqi sun not to sign a deal – immediately – with some other willing, unconfined partner.

So what did Iraq do? It governed itself where it could do so without the meddling of the Kerry-Schumer-McCaskill Troika. If these American Senators wanted to make a big stink about its selection of Exxon because it was an American firm, Iraq would turn elsewhere. And who stepped up? China and it’s China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). Name ring a bell? That’s because CNOOC is the Chinese state owned arm that tried to buy America’s Unocal. And Marathon. And Hess.

China told Iraq essentially, “We’ll do it, we’ll do it now, and we’ll do it without griping about what you do with your share of the revenues.” Deal. And who could blame the Iraqis?

And that, from 2008, is how we got here in 2010. In an era where the nations of the world are competing ferociously for resources, the usual suspects lead the American retreat. And that one simple letter from three dangerous senators weakened America’s energy and economic security and strengthened China’s by equal measure for twenty years and probably many more.

China, you see, is now “in” in Iraq. China’s “in” in a lot of places, taking advantage of American weakness borne of an American self-imposed taboo status of oil and the vilification of the American oil industry itself.

In March, Andy Olbermueller explained how China, via CNOOC, is “(Not-So) Secretly Buying Up World’s Oil Reserves.” Olbermueller prefaces his piece as “a brief three-part history and economics primer.” The second part stands, however, as a warfare primer as executed by the Chinese today.

Countries don’t colonize anymore. Today, if the British Empire needs tea, tobacco or beaver pelts, it buys them for cash rather than sending the Royal Navy. If the French need rubber, ivory or timber, they import them rather than functionally enslaving the Congo.

And if Red China needs oil, it doesn’t send Chairman Mao’s army (Proud motto: Every man a private), it sends a state-owned company.

That company is CNOOC (NYSE: CEO). And it is on the march.

Recently, CNOOC — China National Offshore Oil Company — sealed a ten-figure deal to acquire a third of the massive Tullow find in Uganda, a region thought to contain several billion barrels of oil. CNOOC is also developing a 2.5 billion-barrel field in Iraq. And late last year CNOOC inked a deal with Venezuela to gear up production in a field in the eastern part of that country.

Now, after several British firms say they’ve found oil in an area north of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, CNOOC has spent $3.1 billion to buy a stake in nearby Argentina, Bolivia and Chile.

“Unrestricted Warfare” was more than just a passing thought published by two Chinese colonels in the Peoples Liberation Army. It was a strategic response to the American dominance of the Gulf War that has been adopted as grand strategy.

China is the most aggressive energy pursuer on the planet. And they apologize for nothing. They recognize the competition afoot and the limitations of resources. And from where America retreats in the competition from resources, the Chinese happily fill the void. China is bold and, with a new deal with Cuba to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, very close to our own shores.

If there are concerns with the safety, operation and oversight of American and British rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, what level of environmental comfort is to be drawn when the newest rigs drilling there are stamped “Made in China”?

With all of that in mind, be sure to thank Senators Kerry, Schumer, and McCaskill for weakening American economic and energy security while strengthening China’s for the next several decades. For them, the withdrawal from Iraq was about much more than troop levels.

Daniel Pearl was not beheaded because he was a journalist.

Daniel Pearl was beheaded by Islamic extremists because he was an American and a Jew.

“My name is Daniel Pearl, I am a Jewish-American.”

On February 21, 2002, a videotape was released titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl. The text from the video reads in Arabic: “My name is (Daniel Pearl), I am a Jewish-American.”

Yesterday Barack Obama signed the toothless Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act of 2009 named in honor of the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed by terrorists in 2002. The bill promotes press freedom. The president declined to take questions from the media at the signing event.

Jennifer Rubin at Contentions Blog pointed out that Barack Obama forgot to mention that Daniel Pearl was murdered by Islamic extremists.

At a signing ceremony for the Freedom of Press Act, it is ironic and shameful that Obama could not bring himself to identify the killers who beheaded the man who fearlessly reported on the jihadist terrorists. Obama had this to say:

All around the world there are enormously courageous journalists and bloggers who, at great risk to themselves, are trying to shine a light on the critical issues that the people of their country face; who are the frontlines against tyranny and oppression. And obviously the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is, and it reminded us that there are those who would go to any length in order to silence journalists around the world. What this act does is it sends a strong message from the United States government and from the State Department that we are paying attention to how other governments are operating when it comes to the press. It has the State Department each year chronicling how press freedom is operating as one component of our human rights assessment, but it also looks at countries that are — governments that are specifically condoning or facilitating this kind of press repression, singles them out and subjects them to the gaze of world opinion in ways that I think are extraordinarily important.

That’s not all Barack Obama forgot to mention.

Obama also omitted the fact that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the Islamic terrorist who beheaded Daniel Pearl, could have cared less about his press credentials.

Photos of Daniel Pearl were released by Pakistani terrorists, along with a horrific video showing his decapitation.

After the Islamic radicals murdered Daniel Pearl they released a video of his beheading. This text was included:

“My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California USA. I come from, uh, on my father’s side the family is Zionist. My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish. My family follows Judaism. We’ve made numerous family visits to Israel. Back in the town of Bnei Brak there is a street named after my great grandfather Chaim Pearl who is one of the founders of the town.”

Obviously, the terrorists were not as concerned about Pearl’s writing as much as his Jewish blood line. But, when you are incapable of understanding who we are fighting and when you are unwilling to utter the words “Islamic radicalism” then you tend to make these kind of mistakes.

Daniel Pearl was not beheaded because he was a journalist.

Daniel Pearl was beheaded by Islamic extremists because he was an American and a Jew.

“My name is Daniel Pearl, I am a Jewish-American.”

On February 21, 2002, a videotape was released titled The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl. The text from the video reads in Arabic: “My name is (Daniel Pearl), I am a Jewish-American.”

Yesterday Barack Obama signed the toothless Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act of 2009 named in honor of the Wall Street Journal reporter who was killed by terrorists in 2002. The bill promotes press freedom. The president declined to take questions from the media at the signing event.

Jennifer Rubin at Contentions Blog pointed out that Barack Obama forgot to mention that Daniel Pearl was murdered by Islamic extremists.

At a signing ceremony for the Freedom of Press Act, it is ironic and shameful that Obama could not bring himself to identify the killers who beheaded the man who fearlessly reported on the jihadist terrorists. Obama had this to say:

All around the world there are enormously courageous journalists and bloggers who, at great risk to themselves, are trying to shine a light on the critical issues that the people of their country face; who are the frontlines against tyranny and oppression. And obviously the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is, and it reminded us that there are those who would go to any length in order to silence journalists around the world. What this act does is it sends a strong message from the United States government and from the State Department that we are paying attention to how other governments are operating when it comes to the press. It has the State Department each year chronicling how press freedom is operating as one component of our human rights assessment, but it also looks at countries that are — governments that are specifically condoning or facilitating this kind of press repression, singles them out and subjects them to the gaze of world opinion in ways that I think are extraordinarily important.

That’s not all Barack Obama forgot to mention.

Obama also omitted the fact that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the Islamic terrorist who beheaded Daniel Pearl, could have cared less about his press credentials.

Photos of Daniel Pearl were released by Pakistani terrorists, along with a horrific video showing his decapitation.

After the Islamic radicals murdered Daniel Pearl they released a video of his beheading. This text was included:

“My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California USA. I come from, uh, on my father’s side the family is Zionist. My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish. My family follows Judaism. We’ve made numerous family visits to Israel. Back in the town of Bnei Brak there is a street named after my great grandfather Chaim Pearl who is one of the founders of the town.”

Obviously, the terrorists were not as concerned about Pearl’s writing as much as his Jewish blood line. But, when you are incapable of understanding who we are fighting and when you are unwilling to utter the words “Islamic radicalism” then you tend to make these kind of mistakes.

By Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer

A massive fifteen-story mosque and Islamic Center going up in what was once the shadow of the World Trade Center claims to offer “the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11.” The Center organizers, the America Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), have worked hard in the media to portray themselves as Islamic moderates working for peace on the exact spot where their belligerent coreligionists perpetrated murder and mayhem in the name of their religion. But the words and deeds of the leader of the effort, the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, suggests a more ominous reality: Abdul Rauf is a master of deceptive, Orwellian use of language, manifesting a deep contempt for non-Muslims and full accord with the supremacist goals of the 9/11 hijackers.

So anxious were they to secure the location at Ground Zero that a Muslim real estate company paid $4.85 million in cash for the building, with part coming from Abdul Rauf’s other Islamic group, the Cordoba Initiative. It is unnerving – the deliberate speed and anxiousness that the leader of the American Society for Muslim Advancement has demonstrated in working to open a mosque at the gaping wound of Ground Zero. He claims that it will heal that wound. But how will it do that? How will a mosque, the place where jihadis go for spiritual sustenance, at Ground Zero help stop jihad terrorism? Even the name of the initiative – Cordoba – speaks volumes. While Islamic Spain is held up today as a proto-multiculturalist paradise, in reality non-Muslims there suffered under the discrimination prescribed in Islamic law for dhimmis, non-believers who were subjugated as inferiors and denied equality of rights.

ASMA seems to have deliberately sought a connection to Ground Zero for their new mosque site. Muslims are already conducting daily prayers on the site, an old Burlington Coat Factory outlet where, according to Abdul Rauf, “a piece of the wreckage fell.”

The group purports to come in peace, although it declined to send a representative to discuss the initiative with one of us on Mike Huckabee’s show on Fox News Saturday. This was after one of us confronted Islamic apologist Michael Ghouse on Sean Hannity’s radio show on Friday, exposing the insensitivity and unsavory aspects of the 9/11 Mosque project. Abdul Rauf’s group gave this statement to Huckabee:

For over a decade, the Cordoba Initiative and American Society for Muslim Advancement have worked tirelessly to build bridges with other faiths, while condemning violence, extremism, and prejudice of any sort. Our mission is to be a beacon of hope, peace, understanding and harmony to those who join us in condemning hatred and violence of any kind. Too often the question arises of why moderate, peace-loving Muslims do not speak out. We cannot think of a more wonderful expression of our religion than the Cordoba House, where American Muslims stand together with our fellow citizens to condemn extremism and terror. It is a project to honor those who were harmed on September 11th. It is a project to proclaim our patriotism to this country and to stand side-by-side all men and women of peace.

How does building a giant mosque at Ground Zero address the problem of moderate Muslims not speaking out against terrorism? How does this mosque honor those who were “harmed” – i.e., brutally murdered — on September 11? Whom does a mosque at 9/11 really honor: the Americans who lost their lives, or the jihadis who murdered them?

It’s no wonder that many have greeted such words with skepticism, seeing the Ground Zero mosque as a demonstration of supremacism and triumphalism. Debra Burlingame of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America, whose brother died in the Pentagon on 9/11, declared: “This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened.”

There is ample support for the idea that this Islamic Center is an insult to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Throughout Islamic history, wherever they have conquered, Muslims have converted non-Muslim houses of worship into mosques and built mosques on the holy sites of other religions. The Dome of the Rock, built on the site of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus built over the Church of St. John the Baptist, and the Aya Sofya mosque in Istanbul, formerly the grandest church in Christendom, are three notable examples among a great many. While at Ground Zero the mosque is not being built over the site of a synagogue or church, the same pattern of conquest and supremacism is in evidence: the World Trade Center site was a symbol of American economic power; the 9/11 Mosque is a symbol of the conquest of that power.

Abdul Rauf’s own statements, rather than allay such concerns, actually give credence to this view. He has blamed the West, rather than Islamic jihadists, for terrorism on several occasions. He has said, according to Australia’s Sun-Herald, that “the US and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end.” He has also claimed that “Western active involvement in shaping the internal affairs of Islamic societies have contributed to the creation of terrorism done in the name of Islam.”

In other words, stop fighting back. Let the jihadis do as they please.

Abdul Rauf has also called Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ endorsement of the implementation of Sharia courts in Britain “forward thinking” – despite Sharia’s denial of basic freedoms including the freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights of all people before the law. He has called upon Barack Obama to emphasize “the commonality of Western and Islamic values,” claiming that “if the United States lives up to the values in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and if Muslims can live up to the principles of Islamic law, then we will find we have fewer points of conflict and more common ground.” Then all will be well: “Muslims no longer will fear Western domination and the West no longer will fear Islamic expansion.”

Does Abdul Rauf really think that the devaluation of a woman’s testimony and the institutionalized discrimination against non-Muslims, both mandated by Sharia, are really compatible with the Bill of Rights? Does he really think that stoning people to death for adultery or amputating their hands for theft are compatible with the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments?

Whatever he thinks of those elements of the Constitution, he doesn’t appear overly fond of the freedom of speech. Abdul Rauf has compared the West unfavorably to the Islamic world, since the West “protects the right to say anything, no matter how insensitive or scandalous,” while Islamic cultures “balance freedom of expression with respect for elders, traditions and modesty. The idea of respect and honor to elders is deeply ingrained in their psyches.” He has criticized the Swiss ban on minarets as a restriction on religious freedom, without saying a word about the severe restrictions on non-Muslim religious practice in Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, and Sudan.

In many of his public statements, Abdul Rauf is patently dishonest. After the Fort Hood jihad massacre, he claimed that the shootings were “against the laws of Islam” – a claim that looked ridiculous and deceitful after Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan’s writings came to light, explaining (with copious references to the Koran) the Islamic requirement to wage war against infidels. If Hasan was wrong and Abdul Rauf right about Islam, Abdul Rauf, as a leading American “moderate,” could have and should have seized the opportunity to explain exactly how, so as to allay the legitimate concerns of non-Muslims and emphasize to Muslims in America how and why they should be unreservedly patriotic Americans. He did not.

Abdul Rauf also has unsavory associations with pro-Sharia groups. Journalist Alyssa A. Lappen reports that “whenever Feisal first considered building a mosque across from Ground Zero, he had the idea firmly in mind by 2004, when he wrote What’s Right with Islam. The book was translated into many languages. In Indonesia’s Bahasa, its title translates as “The Call from the WTC Rubble.” Rauf promoted the book in December 2007 at a Kuala Lumpur gathering of Hizb ut Tahrir — an organization banned in Germany since 2003, and also outlawed in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia, among other places — and ideologically akin to the MB. Both seek to replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law (sharia), and eventually impose Islam and sharia law worldwide.” The “MB” is the Muslim Brotherhood, an international Islamic organization from which come Al-Qaeda and Hamas. The Brotherhood is dedicated in its own words, according to a captured internal document, to “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.”

Is that Feisal Abdul Rauf’s agenda as he works to build his massive Islamic Center at Ground Zero? It certainly seems so. That’s why our new group, Stop Islamization of America, is holding a rally against the 9/11 Mosque on June 6 in lower Manhattan. 9/11 families and freedom fighters including ex-Muslim human rights crusader Nonie Darwish and ex-slave Simon Deng will be speaking – and stating matters more honestly than Feisal Abdul Rauf ever has.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com; Robert Spencer is the director of JihadWatch.org. They are the coauthors of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War On America (coming July 27 from Simon & Schuster).

Attorney General Eric Holder testified the other day before the House Judiciary Committee.   Republican congressman Lamar Smith asked him what seemed to be a pretty simple question.

Regarding the perpetrators in the last three terror attacks (two, thank God, unsuccessful) on our homeland (Fort Hood, the Christmas day bomber, and the Times Square bomber), Smith asked our Attorney General “Do you feel these individuals…might have been incited to take the actions they did because of radical Islam?”

Holder feigned to not understand.   “ Because of…?”

Smith:  “Because of radical Islam.”

Holder: “There are a variety of reasons people do these things.”

Smith re-worded the same question and re-asked it six times, with Holder refusing to acknowledge what is as obvious as the fact that I am typing these words and you are reading them.  That every major incident of terror of recent years has been performed by Muslims and that all of them associate their particular theology with their acts of terror.

The real question today is who is governing America and what exactly is the agenda of those who sit in the seat of power of our own country?

It is no wonder that most Americans are squirming around with the most profound sense of uneasiness.  When the chief law enforcement officer of the United States refuses to acknowledge what is clear and true – that those perpetrating terror today are uniformly Muslim and motivated by Islamic theology of one form or another – how in the world can we possibly feel safe?

Let’s turn back to the now famous “Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders” signed by Osama bin Ladin and published in an Arabic newspaper in London in 1998.

After a long diatribe about the evil perpetrated by the “Crusader-Jewish alliance” on the Arab world, the declaration concludes:

“By God’s leave, we call on every Muslim who believes in God and hopes for reward to obey God’s command to kill the Americans and plunder their possessions wherever he finds them and whenever he can. Likewise we call on the Muslim ulema and leaders and youth and soldiers to launch attacks against the armies of the American devils and against those who are allied with them from among the helpers of Satan.”

What’s not clear here?

A few years later, 19 Muslims hijacked three American airplanes and used them as suicide weapons which killed thousands of American citizens.

How about the head of our Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano?

Given the grave responsibilities that Ms Napolitano has, you would think she would have been fired after her blatant incompetence associated the Christmas Day bomber.  Who can forget her initial press appearances in which she dismissed the likelihood that the bomber had connection to Islamic terror networks?

Now with the Times Square bomber, she did the same thing.  She initially wrote off Faisal Shahzad as “one-off.”  Just another isolated, marginal nutcase.

A few weeks ago, Senators Lieberman and Collins wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal saying that the “administration continues to withhold crucial information from Congress” about the Fort Hood massacre.   The Senators have been denied their request to interview FBI and Defense Department agents and for interview transcripts with associates of the terrorist Major Hassan.

Meanwhile, as Americans are up in arms about illegals crossing our southern border, the American government is putting unprecedented pressure on Israel to compromise its own border security calculations and to allow a new state to be established as its neighbor by those who have never demonstrated ability to govern themselves and whose only unifying theme is hatred for and wish for the destruction of Israel.

With corruption and abuse running rampant in Washington, D.C. coupled with a historic debt and massive deficit that some believe has the United States following in the footsteps of Greece, one would think the appropriators in Congress would concerns themselves with unnecessary and excessive spending, yet they are doing just the opposite.

The acquisition process related to the defense industry is a place where both Members of Congress and industry lobbyists have made a pretty good living by sending pork home and enriching the underbelly of the nation’s capital in the process.

Exhibit A: C-17

The facts are that the C-5 transport plane is being modernized to supplant the C-17 transport plane at a reduced cost.  The Air Force has repeatedly stated that it does not want any more C-17s, yet Congress continues to fund new ones adding $1.5 billion to this year’s budget for five more, after it added $2.5 billion to last year’s budget for 10 more.

But what’s $4 billion among friends when your country has a long-term deficit over 10 trillion dollars?

Secretary Gates has openly campaigned against any new C-17s, stating emphatically that he will recommend a Presidential veto of any appropriations bill that includes new ones.  Gates has said, “The leadership of the Air Force is clear: they do not need and cannot afford more C-17s.”  Any questions?

And here comes the kicker.  Just the other day, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Inouye was covered in a defense industry publication stating more money would be appropriated for the C-17.  Inouye said, “Asked if he is trying to fund more C-17s in the fiscal year 2011 defense appropriations bill, Inouye replied: ‘I think the House will do so.’  Senators, he added, ‘usually go along with’ such action by the House.”

At a time when the deficit is exploding and we are mortgaging our children’s future, powerful Members of Congress continue to support defense systems that serve as nothing more than pork-barrel projects that even the military brass say we don’t need or want.

At what point do we ask, when is enough enough?

From the noted miliblogging site Free Range International comes this confirmation of Big Government and Big Journalism’s exclusive story by Brad Thor about the capture by Pakistani authorities of Mullah Omar:

Which brings me to my final topic and it is not something Americans should be happy about. I have been hearing for weeks rumors about the detention of this guy:

I have heard about this from both prominent Afghans and from a source from the USG who has impeccable credentials and has never been wrong in the past. The media story is here and that story is that the Pakistan ISI has Mullah Omar under house arrest, that our government knows this but for some reason wants to keep it a secret. I need to stress that not everyone I have contacted about this story has heard these rumors and a few important, well informed milbloggers flat out do not believe them. Regardless this story has legs and if it is true there is a huge huge problem. That problem is very simple – there should be no doubt about what happens when an allied intelligence service gets their hands on Mullah Omar. There is nothing to discuss, nothing to think through, nothing to spin, there only this; give him to us. Immediately. End of negotiation. There should be no question on the part of the USG about what to do with this dirtbag either. He is an unlawful enemy combatant and needs to be detained and held for trial by military tribunal. There is no other conceivable option. If this story proves true, and I think it is, what the hell is going on back in DC? This isn’t a game, dammit, it’s war and needs to be treated as such.

US Attorney General Eric Holder knew about Faisal Shahzad’s extremist background and resume. Holder knew about Faisal’s links to the Pakistani Taliban but refused to admit that Islamic radicals were behind the Times Square bomb plot yesterday during his testimony to the House Judiciary Committee.

This is irresponsible and puts American lives at risk. Eric Holder is incapable of understanding the threats facing this nation. Eric Holder must step down.

Times Square car terrorist Faisal Shahzad worked with an accomplice in Pakistan who provided an “independent stream” of evidence that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the botched plot. This information was provided after the accomplice’s arrest in Pakistan last week.

US Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that the Times Square bomber was linked to the Taliban. Despite this information, the US Attorney General refused to use the term “radical Islam” when discussing the motives behind the Times Square bomber yesterday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

The US Attorney General has information that the Taliban was behind the Times Square attack. Terrorist Faisal Shahzad had substantial connections to the Taliban, reached out to the Taliban, was influenced by Yemeni terror leader Anwar al Awlaki, made at least a dozen return trips to Pakistan since arriving in the United States in 1999, and he bought a one way ticketwith cash to Pakistan. Terrorist Faisal Shahzad was blogging on terror websites about jihad since 2006.

Despite all of this information, Attorney General Eric Holder will not admit to the American public that Faisal Shahzad was a radical Islamist. This is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous.
Eric Holder should resign.

Here’s more information on Faisal Shahzad’s Pakistani connection from The Hindu:

A man believed to be an accomplice of Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad has been arrested in Pakistan and has provided an “independent stream” of evidence that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the botched plot.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, The Washington Post reported on Friday that the arrest of the alleged accomplice of Shahzad in Pakistan had not been previously disclosed.

He provided an “independent stream” of evidence that the Pakistani Taliban were behind the attempt and has admitted to helping Pakistani-American Shahzad travel to the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan for bomb training, the report said.

“What they (Shahzad and the suspect arrested in Pakistan) said has been corroborated by other evidence,” a senior law enforcement source was quoted as saying by the paper.

The suspect in Pakistani custody “is believed to have a connection to the TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan),” a U.S. intelligence official said.

U.S. officials cited by the paper declined to identify the suspect in Pakistan, but said American investigators have had direct access to him, and described him as a facilitator for the Pakistani Taliban…

…U.S. Attorney General Eric H Holder has said there was evidence that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the May 1 plotin which Shahzad allegedly tried to blow up a Nissan Pathfinder packed with explosives in the crowded Times Square, one of the world’s most popular tourist attractions.

How many Americans will have to die before Eric Holder understands the nature of our enemy?
Eric Holder must resign.

Over the past decade or so, there’s been a movement in our schools to make every kid a winner.  In gym class, in sports events, in spelling bees, in tests of every kind, every child was often given an award or citation to cushion their fragile self-esteem.  Competition was eliminated and “winning” was downgraded to a mere technicality.  If you came in second, you still won!  No losers here, kids.  You’re all equally mediocre.

This politically correct virus has now spread dangerously into the U.S. military.  The armed forces exist for this reason: if called upon, to kill the enemy.  The military also exists to deter the enemy so that lethal force is not needed.  But if necessary, our troops are trained and ready to wipe out our enemies before they can wipe us out.

Now, thanks to same Pentagon social engineers who brought us the ideas of gays serving openly in the military and women on submarines, the military is considering a “courageous restraint” award.  What on God’s green earth is THAT, you ask?  Good question.  Apparently, you will now be able to win a medal for “holding your fire” and avoiding civilian casualties.  Implicit in this utter ridiculousness is that our troops do not NOW show “courageous restraint,” do not NOW “hold their fire” until absolutely necessary, and do not NOW avoid civilian casualties.  This is an insult to the fine and selfless men and women in uniform who give up their lives—in some cases,
literally—to prosecute a war and defend the American people.

Military awards are bestowed for uncommon valor in combat.  They should not be given for doing what the good and decent American armed forces are trained to do anyway: use force judiciously.

This is the worst and most dangerous example of political correctness that I’ve seen in a long time.  It could work to get our troops—and ultimately us—killed.  Consider that most of our current enemies ARE civilians: terrorists who do not wear the uniform of any nation.  Holding out an award to our troops for “holding their fire” could get them slaughtered.

Call me old-fashioned, but I’d like our military to stand ready to fight on our behalf, and yes, use lethal force when necessary.  God bless them for doing it so the rest of us can live in freedom and relative security.  But there should only be outrage for the crusaders of political correctness who
have infiltrated our fighting forces with a lollipop award for abiding by the liberal platitude that “violence is never the answer.”

Sometimes the violence comes to you, and you have no choice but to use violence to stop it.

The battleground is a life-and-death, hell-on-earth, kill-or-be-killed, no-room-for-error place.  Leave the playground awards at the playground.

Late this afternoon Lt. Colonel Oliver North confirmed that Taliban leader and Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Mohammed Omar has been captured.  The exclusive news of Omar’s capture was broken by Big Government Monday evening.

According to Colonel North, Omar was picked up in Karachi on March 27th by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) who placed him under house arrest in what they call “community care.”

Per North’s sources, “[Omar] has since been transferred to a secret ISI lock-up under the Pakistani euphemism: “institutional care.”

North goes on to state, “According to several reports, all of this information was confirmed to U.S. officials by a senior Pakistani military officer ‘several weeks ago.’”  A fact also broken in Monday’s Big Government exclusive.

Last weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton created a “diplomatic firestorm” when she indicted Pakistani cooperation with the U.S. in the hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives.  Said Clinton, “I believe somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda is (sic), where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is (sic)…”

North hopes the Secretary was “dissembling,” because intelligence sources here in the U.S. and Afghanistan have informed him that Pakistani officials “know exactly where Mullah Omar is: in the hands of the ISI.”  Driving the point home, North added, “This should not be news to the U.S. Secretary of State.”

So what’s at stake and why did the Pakistanis grab Omar?  As I reported earlier today, and as Colonel North confirms, everything is revolving around the so-called peace jirga between the Karzai government and the Taliban. “The ISI intends to be in the driver’s seat when the ‘Peace Talks’ get underway in Afghanistan later this month,” says North.  “And the ISI officers calling the shots know Mullah Omar is the best bargaining chip they have.”

Of additional note in North’s reporting are the predictions that an immediate, Vietnam-style, “cease fire” may be a pre-requisite for talks, as might a demand that Omar be granted safe haven in Saudi Arabia.  The latter likely being an untenable requirement for the United States.

One thing, though, is certain.  As North puts it, there is a “near-total lack of intelligence on what’s really happening on the ground on either side of the Af-Pak border.”  What little we are getting doesn’t seem to be getting to the appropriate people.

In light of this confirmation of Mullah Omar’s apprehension, a whole new set of questions now arise and have already started being asked around Washington.  In particular, who knew what and when did they know it?

The Omar capture is only the tip of the iceberg.  Expect to hear a lot more in the days and weeks to come.

Common Sense: Obama, Karzai & the Stench

Washington, DC – The two presidents – Karzai and Obama – were on stage together in the East Room of the White House for forty minutes on May 12. They each talked about how they had differed in the past and how committed they are to going forward together. Both leaders expressed great hope in their mutual “quest for peace” and the forthcoming “Peace Jirga” or “reconciliation talks” to be held in Kabul at the end of this month. Neither leader – nor any of the journalists present – mentioned a “cease fire” or the unseen skunk at their picnic: Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, secretive head of Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, is one of the most wanted men on Earth. His sanguinary regime sheltered Osama bin-Laden’s Al Qaeda as it prepared for the 9-11-01 attacks. The U.S. government’s “Rewards for Justice” program has a standing offer of “up to 10 million dollars” for information resulting in his capture or confirmed death because he “represents a continuing threat to America and her allies.” Now, thanks to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Mullah Omar may be a key factor in the upcoming “Peace Talks” trumpeted by Messer’s Obama and Karzai at their joint White House press conference.

Both heads of state avoided reference to the ISI or Mullah Omar as they gushed about the “Consultative Peace Jirga,” that starts in Kabul on May 29. And each president spoke glowingly about “commitment” to an “Afghan-led peace process” that will allegedly produce a negotiated settlement among Afghanistan’s warring parties – and the country’s neighbors – meaning Pakistan and Iran. Mr. Karzai announced he wanted to consult with “thousands of Taliban who are not ideologically oriented, who are not part of Al Qaeda, or other terrorist networks, or controlled from outside in any manner troublesome to us.”

Mr. Obama observed that the peace talks will include those who have “a respect for the Afghan constitution, rule of law, human rights, so long as they are willing to renounce violence and ties to Al Qaeda and other extremist networks.” An awkwardly worded joint communiqué vaguely noted U.S. “support for an inclusive process that includes broad representation from across all of Afghan society – both men and women – and takes into account their concerns and priorities.”

All of this sounds very promising to the so-called “International Community” and the self-declared mainstream media. It makes the striped-pants set all warm and fuzzy to see two leaders who last month appeared to be very much at odds, now standing side-by-side to pledge their troth. And of course, the forthcoming “Peace Talks” mean diplomats, not warriors, are about to have their day. Unfortunately, none of this takes into account ISI plotting about the role they intend to play in Afghanistan’s future, the part being played by the ISI’s long-time ally, Mullah Omar, or the near-total lack of intelligence on what’s really happening on the ground on either side of the Af-Pak border.

This lack of intelligence was evident last week in the aftermath of the failed Times Square bombing on May 1 when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proffered a blunt indictment of Pakistani cooperation with the U.S. Her stunning comment: “I believe somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda is (sic), where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is (sic)…” created a diplomatic firestorm.

Hopefully, Ms. Clinton was dissembling, because intelligence sources here in the U.S. and Afghanistan inform me that Pakistani officials know exactly where Mullah Omar is: in the hands of the ISI.  This should not be news to the U.S. Secretary of State.

Last month, while I was still in Afghanistan, rumors were circulating that the ISI had detained Mullah Omar in Karachi on March 27, and placed him under house arrest in what they call “community care.” American operatives say he has since been transferred to a secret ISI lock-up under the Pakistani euphemism: “institutional care.” According to several reports, all of this information was confirmed to U.S. officials by a senior Pakistani military officer “several weeks ago.”

“Why would the ISI take down ‘one of their own?’” I asked. The answer came in a mixed metaphor but the meaning was clear: “The ISI intends to be in the driver’s seat when the ‘Peace Talks’ get underway in Afghanistan later this month. And the ISI officers calling the shots know Mullah Omar is the best bargaining chip they have.”

None of this bodes well for the “Consultative Peace Jirga,” on which Mr. Obama has now placed his imprimatur. Some of those watching preparations for the “peace talks” predict a call for an immediate, Vietnam-style, “cease fire” as a pre-condition for the conference – and a demand to grant Mullah Omar – Osama bin-Laden’s closest ally – safe haven in Saudi Arabia. If the O-Team agrees to any of this, it will be akin to putting perfume on a skunk.

After decades of fighting the Soviets, the Americans, and the current Karzai Afghan government, Mullah Omar has turned over a new leaf; at least according to this article.  All along he’s just been a misunderstood guy who probably couldn’t pay his mortgage, right?

For those of you not familiar with Mullah Omar, he’s the founder of the Taliban, its spiritual leader, and Osama bin Laden’s BFF. When Afghanistan was ruled by the Taliban, Omar was the country’s titular head who oversaw the beatings of anyone who didn’t adhere to one of the “strictest interpretation[s] of Sharia law ever seen in the Muslim world,” the shooting of women in the head in front of packed soccer stadiums of cheering fans, and the destruction of 1700 year old Buddhist statues.

Suddenly this crafty recluse has abandoned his long, careful use of couriers, and now allows his statements to be put out directly by his former nemesis, the Afghan government.  Maybe Karazi has even installed a red phone on his desk for Omar just like Glenn Beck!  Isn’t that awesome? We don’t even need a “Can’t we all get along” moment. It’s already here!

And what’s even better is that Omar’s latest missive, the one where he’s preaching peace with the same government who put out the statement for him, comes right before President Karzai’s much ballyhooed peace jirga. Wow! What are the odds? The timing on this one couldn’t be better, could it?

Even cooler is that many of the Taliban players Karzai has tapped to attend the jirga will be getting paid! That’s even better than passing out doctor coats at a healthcare presser. After all, you can’t trade lab coats for guns, bullets, and roadside bomb making materials.

Everything is falling into place. To think, that someone would upset the applecart by suggesting that Mullah Omar actually wasn’t enthusiastically participating in this historic, unprecedented event.  It sounds to me as if this is going to be like Woodstock, only with hummus!

Of course, for this narrative to work we’ll have to ignore a few things like those pesky internet reports of Mullah Omar actually being in Pakistani custody, his ditching his courier system for a snazzy new Karzai appointed spokesman, and the fact that the Taliban’s governing body, the Quetta Shura has been in utter disarray since right about the time he “allegedly” disappeared.

Now, some might let the fact that no one in the Quetta Shura has heard from Omar bother them. That same person might have a problem with the fact that a real power struggle has developed between two of Omar’s top made men: Mullha Mansour and Mullah Zakir. In fact, the host of other issues plaguing the Quetta Shura (that would normally be settled by Omar if he were actually around) could bring us down, but we’re not going to let that happen!  Why spoil such a great narrative? After all, everyone loves peace right?

I know I do, especially when it comes tied up with such a nice little ribbon. Time to pass the hummus!

The reported Pakistani capture of Taliban founder and overall leader Mullah Omar is potentially a game changing event in the Afghanistan war, with profound implications for the stabilization of Pakistan.

If the report is correct, and if Omar is persuaded to talk (which is not at all assured) the information he has could reduce the Taliban networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan to a level at which – for a time – they were no longer an existential threat to both governments.  And, equally important, he could expose the details of the Iranian support of the Taliban, naming people in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan who give and receive arms, funding and training.

But let’s not celebrate too quickly.

First and foremost, we need to get the Pakistanis to delay giving him into US custody.  That is contrary to our normal instincts, but this man – taken alive and brought to any US detention facility other than Guantanamo Bay — would be Mirandized and pushed into the civilian criminal justice system where he, and his ilk, manifestly don’t belong. We would be forfeiting months of probable success in interrogating him.

The other reason to keep Omar in Pakistani custody is the Iran question.  The Obama administration still hasn’t formed the so-called “high-value detainee interrogation group” promised as the alternative to the now-banned “enhanced interrogation techniques” which proved so valuable in the Bush era.

If Omar can be persuaded to give up information on Iran, it should be either to CIA or US military intelligence personnel or to the Pakistanis.  US civilian interrogators would be more susceptible to Administration pressure to ignore information about Iran which might put them in the position of having to do something serious in response to the information.  Obama wants no inconvenient truths interrupting his “open-hand” strategy to Iran.

CIA and military US interrogators – perhaps working with the Pakistanis in a Pakistani jail — can better question Omar on matters such as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ involvement with the Taliban, what other sources of funding and support come from other Islamic countries, and what involvement do Russia and China have? (We know from the Pentagon report on Afghanistan released a week ago that the Taliban receive funding from many Islamic countries).

And then there is the question of Usama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Omar is reported to be close to them both, and if anyone could lead us to them, it is probably Mullah Omar.

Omar is, at the very least, a co-conspirator in the 9-11 attacks.  If we have him – or the Pakistanis do – he must not be allowed to escape.  He should face trial in a military commission at Gitmo as soon as the intel folks have bled him dry (figuratively speaking, more or less.)

If Omar has been captured, there is a time window in which he must be questioned and the information he gives up acted upon.  If the Pakistanis – or we — have Omar then the Taliban and al-Qaeda know we do.  And they will change as much of the way they operate, their funds flow, the location of their people and supply trails as they can.

That would disrupt, but not destroy, the Taliban networks. If we can get Omar’s information and turn it into actionable targeting data for everything from B-52s to special operations cadres, we can do more than disrupt: we can, conceivably, put the Taliban on its back for a long time.  If we aren’t willing or able to seize the opportunity, Omar will be just another wasted chance to make huge progress in Afghanistan.

But not permanently.  Remember, please, that this is as much an ideological war as a kinetic one.  And remember that the Taliban are Iran’s surrogate, not the principal enemy. Even if we have Omar and everything works as we’d like it to, the Taliban will be back, again and again, until Iran is forced to stop sponsoring terrorism against us.  Don’t hold your breath.

Through key intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I have just learned that reclusive Taliban leader and top Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Omar has been taken into custody.

According to the State Department’s Rewards for Justice Program there is a bounty of up to $10 million on Omar for sheltering Osama bin-Laden and his al-Qaeda network in the years prior to the September 11 attacks as well as the period during and immediately thereafter.

At the end of March, US Military Intelligence was informed by US operatives working in the Af/Pak theater on behalf of the D.O.D. that Omar had been detained by Pakistani authorities. One would assume that this would be passed up the chain and that the Secretary of Defense would have been alerted immediately.  From what I am hearing, that may not have been the case.

When this explosive information was quietly confirmed to United States Intelligence ten days ago by Pakistani authorities, it appeared to take the Defense Department by surprise. No one, though, is going to be more surprised than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  It seems even with confirmation from the Pakistanis themselves, she was never brought up to speed.

Over the weekend, Clinton accused Pakistani Government officials of “holding back” on bin Laden intelligence.  In an interview Sunday on CBS “60 Minutes,” she said:

“I believe that somewhere in this government are people who know where Usama bin Laden and Al Qaeda is, where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is, and we expect more cooperation to help us bring to justice, capture or kill those who attacked us on 9/11.”

They know all right and so do we, at least when it comes to Mullah Omar.  We have known since the end of March and we had it confirmed ten days ago by the Pakistanis.  So why didn’t the State Department and the CIA know?

Developing.

From the Associated Press:

President Barack Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser said Sunday that authorities believe the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attempted bombing at Times Square.

White House adviser John Brennan said that while the investigation is ongoing, it appears that accused bomber Faisal Shahzad was working for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The militant group is believed to be hiding senior al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden.

Brennan said the finding “underscores the serious threat that we face from a very determined enemy.”

The conclusion seemed to contradict a recent statement by Gen. David Petraeus, who said Shahzad apparently operated as a “lone wolf.” Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said in a statement Friday to The Associated Press that while Shahzad was inspired by militants in Pakistan, he didn’t necessarily have direct contact with them.

Brennan’s comments come after speculation that TTP had orchestrated the attack. Shahzad, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, spent five months in Pakistan before returning to the United States in February and preparing his attack.

Shahzad has told investigators that he trained in the lawless tribal areas of Waziristan, where both al-Qaida and the Pakistani Taliban operate. He was arrested aboard an Emirates Airlines jet in New York just minutes before it was scheduled to take off for Dubai.

The finding could increase U.S. pressure on Pakistan to clamp down on the terrorist network. Brennan said Islamabad was being very cooperative in the investigation but that the U.S. wants to know exactly who may have been helping Shahzad.

Continue reading here.

Earlier this week it was reported that the Obama White House removed confessed terrorist Faisal Shahzad from the Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list sometime after Barack Obama came into office.

Terrorist Faisal Shahzad had substantial connections to the Taliban, reached out to the Taliban, was influenced by Yemeni terror leader Anwar al Awlaki, made at least a dozen return trips to Pakistan since arriving in the United States in 1999, and he bought a one way ticket with cash to Pakistan.

Now we find out that he was “blogging” and asking for jihad as far back as 2006 but that the Obama Administration took him off the terror watch list anyway.

Terror expert Walid Phares weighed in on the confessed Times Square bomber today in an interview on FOX News:

To be clear, Shahzad was actually commenting on terrorist websites and not actually blogging.

Earlier this week it was discovered that Shahzad was posting on terror websites since 2006.

FOX News reported:

FoxNews.com has uncovered several dozens of postings by a man named Faisal Shahzad on radical Islamist Salafist websites devoted to a variety of different jihadist sects.

Experts suspect this is the same Faisal Shahzad whom authorities have charged with plotting to explode a massive car bomb in New York on Saturday. If so, then he has been educating himself on the Internet for years on the legitimacy of holy war.

Shahzad visited numerous websites devoted to ideological discussion of Islamism and Shariah law. His apparent online posts date back to at least 2006 — three years before the Times Square suspect became a naturalized American citizen.

“If the person on these websites is indeed the suspected bomber, the postings show that he was intellectually thinking about engaging in jihadism for a few years,” said Dr. Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “Knowing that, the ideology of jihadism often has inspired violence and terrorism…

“These can be coined as Islamist Salafist websites where lots of material is posted, including theological, ideological and political texts and blogs,” Phares said, noting that he saw discussions about fatwas, jihad and other Islamist causes on these sites.”

As Walid Phares said in an interview on FOX and Friends earlier in the week, Faisal was no lone wolf:

“When a guy makes a phone call, he’s no longer a lone wolf. A lone wolf is somebody who doesn’t tell anybody else about the issue. He doesn’t share that information. He made phone calls… He may be deployed as a lone wolf. It is much easier to send one terrorist as 10 terrorists. But, he is not alone with conducting terror.”

If the Obama Administration removed a guy like Faisal Shahzad from the terror watch list sometime after 2008, just what does a guy have to do to make Team Obama’s list?

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Mark Steyn joins us late and Peter Robinson leaves early in this guest packed episode. Author Drew Klavan joins us for a fascinating discussion of being a conservative and working Hollywood and pop culture in general. Then John Dennis the Republican trying to unseat Nancy Pelosi, followed by Dr. George Savage who discusses some of the amazing technology advances he is helping to bring to the market. Finally, John Yoo gives us his expert insight into the machinations involved in catching and charging the Time Square bomber. Questions? Comments? Write us at podcast@ricochet.com or come join the discussion on our Facebook page.

If you will, imagine Slobodan Milosevic, during the early part of his reign, threatening to wipe Great Britain off the map. Imagine further, that after he made that statement, he announced that he was in the process of obtaining nuclear missiles.  Undeterred by such comments, the UN, appoints Milosevic’s country to its Commission on Human Rights.  Great Britain, understandably angered by such comments and a lack of World action, calls for renewed diplomatic action and increased sanctions.  Shortly thereafter, The Prime Minister of Great Britain visits the United States.

The President of the United States, however, agrees to only meet in private and refuses to take a picture with the Prime Minister.  Thereafter, the President calls for a loosening of the sanctions against Milosevic and says not a word about the appointment to the Commission on Human Rights.

I suggest to you that if that had come to pass, not only would Great Britain be beyond outraged, but US allies around the globe would sink back in their chairs and wonder if the US could be trusted as an ally at all.

As difficult as that scenario was to imagine is not near as difficult as it is for Israel today.

Iran’s leader has point blank called for Israel to “vanish” if not worse.  According to the BBC, Ahmadinejad attends “rallies” where his supporters carry “placards sporting the slogan ‘Israel should be wiped off the map.’” Combined with the lies of Iran’s leaders about their nuclear acquisition program and missiles capable of firing nuclear weapons, those statements are beyond ominous.

After years of failed diplomacy, stunningly, the White House is seeking to loosen sanctions on Iran in the form of exempting “cooperation” nations from the sanctions program, i.e. potentially letting Russia and China off the hook.

Last week, according Fox News, the “United Nations  . . . elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged immodest” – without a word of protest from this President.

Of course, let’s not forget that this President refused a public picture with the Israel Prime Minister after he traveled half way around the globe to visit this Country.

Yes it is true that the US still gives direct aid to Israel and this President has claimed that Israeli is an important ally of the United States.  But just how important given the above? Even Senate Schumer says that Obama’s “counter productive” Israeli policy has to stop.”

If from the comfort of the US Senate, a liberal New York Senator is speaking out on that question – how must Israeli feel?  What do the rest of our allies think? And yes, while it may be an exaggeration to ask whether Israel is still an ally of the US, the true test of any alliance is whether its ally will come to its defense, not just in name, but in battle.  Amidst the continuing terrorist actions within the US – which have garnered remarkably little action from the Obama administration – these questions are all the more worrisome.

More hope and change…

Faisal Shahzad was removed from the national terrorist surveillance list before the Times Square attack.

(CBS News)

Confessed terrorist Faisal Shahzad was removed from the Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list sometime after Barack Obama came into office.

CBS reported:

Sources tell CBS News that would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad appeared on a Department of Homeland Security travel lookout list – Traveler Enforcement Compliance System (TECS) – between 1999 and 2008 because he brought approximately $80,000 cash or cash instruments into the United States.

The New York Times reported that the person who bought Faisal’s apartment back in 2004 was interviewed by federal investigators.

George LaMonica, a 35-year-old computer consultant, said he bought his two-bedroom condominium in Norwalk, Conn., from Mr. Shahzad for $261,000 in May 2004. A few weeks after he moved in, Mr. LaMonica said, investigators from the national Joint Terrorism Task Force [JTTF] interviewed him, asking for details of the transaction and for information about Mr. Shahzad. It struck Mr. LaMonica as unusual, but he said detectives told him they were simply “checking everything out.”

The Strata Sphere is all over this story.

Barack Obama began shutting down Bush-era terrorist investigations last year including the investigation of Faisal Shahzad.

We all know what happened next.

Last week Faisal almost blew a hole in the middle of Times Square.

The only thing that saved the people of New York was Faisal’s incompetence.

UPDATE: Faisal Shahzad had contacts with several other terrorist leaders including the radical American-born Muslim cleric Anwar Awlaki, the Taliban Chief, and the Mumbai Massacre mastermind.

ABC reported:

Shahzad also had a web of jihadist contacts that included big names tied to terror attacks in the U.S. and abroad, including the figure who has emerged as a central figure in many recent domestic terror attempts – radical American-born Muslim cleric Anwar Awlaki.

Besides Awlaki, sources say Shahzad was also linked to a key figure in the Pakistani Taliban, its Emir Beitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a drone missile strike in 2009. The Mehsuds had been family friends of Shahzad, who is the son of a former high-ranking Pakistani military officer.

Remember when you couldn’t turn on nightly newscasts without hearing something about CIA employee Valerie Plame being “outed” by the Bush Administration? Democrat House Chairman held hearings. Grand juries were impaneled. A special prosecutor was appointed and the media pursued every possible angle.

Now consider a similar case, but with different actors. Have you heard of the group of lawyers associated with the American Civil Liberties Union self titled the “John Adams Project”? These folks apparently hired private investigators to take pictures of CIA agents they believe may have interrogated terrorists after September 11th. They then passed these pictures on to the lawyers defending said terrorists in hopes that one of them will accuse the agents of torture. These photos of covert CIA agents were later found in the cells of al-Qaeda members being held at Guantanamo Bay.

The Obama Justice Department is quietly investigating the lawyers associated with the John Adams Project who may have violated a number of laws in place to protect our covert operatives and their families. But so far, with few exceptions, the media and their friends on Capitol Hill haven’t found this case nearly as interesting as Valerie Plame. Could it have anything to do with the ideological bent of the perpetrators?

Reflecting on his life, John Adams called his defense of British soldiers after the Boston massacre “one of the most gallant, generous, manly, and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.” I couldn’t agree more. Sadly, an insidious group of lawyers associated with the ACLU only tarnish Adam’s reputation by seeking to hide their subversive acts behind the reputation of our second President.

This week, I will be sending a letter to President Obama calling for a full and immediate accounting of any individuals currently or formerly employed by the Federal government who may have assisted this project in anyway. I already have a dozen Congressmen on this letter and hope to have many more by the time I send it, to make it clear to the President that we are very concerned about what happened. Our country deserves to know the truth about the John Adams Project.

Islam? Islam? Bueller? Bueller? Anyone? Anyone?

We awake to news that after extraordinary police work, investigators have made an arrest in the attempted car bombing of Times Square in New York.  Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani native-turned-naturalized-U.S.-citizen, was taken into custody late last night. He was naturalized last year, and shortly thereafter, made a trip to Peshawar, Pakistan–a hotbed of Islamic terrorist activity and recruitment.

I have read countless reports about the arrest, in newspapers and websites big and small.  So far, I have not seen a single mention of his faith.  Not a single reference to his being Muslim.  We’re left to deduce that by his Pakistani ethnicity and name.

Political correctness has stripped us of our ability to be brutally honest about the nature of the threat we face.  It’s not from a bunch of maniacal Catholics or Jews or Hindus or Buddhists.  The lethal threat is coming from radical Muslims.  Even after September 11, even after repeated terror attacks and attempts here and abroad, we still cannot be truthful and outspoken about it?  Pathetic.

This suicidal inability to call the enemy what it is comes straight from the top:  the President will not go anywhere near the words “Islam” and “terror” together.  His administration has contorted itself into all kinds of politically correct gymnastics to avoid making the connection, going so far as to term acts of terror as “manmade disasters” and the fight against it as “overseas contingency operations.”

He refused to speak the truth about the motivation of Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 fellow Americans in the name of Islam, and would not make the connection with the Christmas Day bomber, Abdulmutallab.  He refused to “jump to conclusions” about what propelled them to try to kill Americans (although he had no problem “jumping to conclusions” about Sgt. Crowley of the Cambridge Police and the Arizona immigration law.)

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a ridiculous statement before the arrest, suggesting it could be “someone…that doesn’t like the health care bill.”

Bloomberg’s comment was idiotic, but he’s not the Commander-in-Chief.  Obama was notified of the arrest five minutes after midnight.  We’ve gotten a statement from his Attorney General, but as of 8:30am ET, still no statement from the Commander-in-Chief.

Unless and until we can call the enemy and what drives him to kill us what they are—Muslims propelled by their religious belief—we cannot and will not win this war.

In a crowded press-conference at the U.N. on Monday, King Cornelius Pacifus of Unicornia lauded the new Nuclear Posture Review recently published by U.S. President Barack Obama. In New York for the United Nations Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference that begins today, Pacificus gave Obama what amounted to a pre-emptive disarmament shout-out. Unicornia’s stance on nuclear matters is usually considered a bellwether for that of other nations on the thorny issue.

King Pacificus pledged his small peace-loving nation’s support for the American policy shift: “Unicornia herself long ago embraced the efficacy of a Peace through Weakness strategy, and today our nation whole-hornedly applauds and supports the American president for adopting a similar attitude,” Pacifus proclaimed.

Fielding softball questions from a room overflowing with docile MSM reporters, the monoceros monarch made clear his country’s reasons for supporting America’s recent radical shift in nuclear posture: “In the bitter Butterfly Wars of the 17th century, Unicornia learned the hard way that standing up to tyrants and cruel dictators not only doesn’t work—it’s also just not nice.” Scholars allege an estimated 3 million Unicorns and 40 million Lepidopterae perished in that protracted ten-year battle over which portion of the air the other species was entitled to breathe. “War is mean,” Pacifus observed, with his classic gift for understatement. “And nuclear war is really mean. Really really mean.”

His prominent mother-of-pearl horn glistening majestically, Pacifus further defended Unicornia’s long history of appeasement towards its enemies. “President Obama is doing the absolute right thing vis-à-vis Ahmadinejad. It’s better to give the schoolyard bully what he wants—even if you’re bigger than he is—before he kicks you in the stomach. It may be a tired unicorn truism—but the mere fact that you have a horn doesn’t entitle you to use it. Sure, you might wind up with frequent stomach aches, but that’s a small price to pay for holding the moral high ground of not behaving, or even seeming to behave, meanly.” This remark triggered a spontaneous standing ovation from the media, who in excitement dropped their notepads, most of which were filled with idle doodling.

“As you know,” Pacifus reminded them, “Unicornia’s national defense policy was inspired by the great American President Teddy Roosevelt’s slogan ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ With all due respect to Mr. Roosevelt, we’ve improved on his maxim by eliminating its bellicose undertones. Our motto is simple: speak softly and cross your fingers.” Another standing ovation from the press corps, the younger of whom gave each other celebratory fist bumps, the charming if awkward human equivalent of a horn bump.

Once again opting for understatement, “The world is a scary place,” Pacifus continued, “for the horned and the unhorned community alike. But I’m proud to say our approach of appeasement and mollification has kept Unicornia safe throughout my entire twelve years in office. True, our borders have shrunk by a third during that time because of unavoidable land giveaways to belligerent aggressor nations with nuclear and bioterror capabilities. But the two-thirds we have left are relatively safe, at least for the foreseeable next six months or so. And I’m happy to report that all Unicornians displaced by the territorial surrenders have now been comfortably repopulated in fully-furnished, state-subsidized Unicondos in the East Quadrant, each with a view of River Splendor. “

As he always does, Pacifus ended his short confab sounding a characteristic note of optimism: “Therefore, as King of Unicornia, I gently but wholeheartedly pledge my nation’s support to President Obama and his nation’s newly announced policy of nuclear nonproliferation. Weakness is strength. America, take note: the people of Unicornia would rather die with a smile on their face than live with their fists closed.” The ensuing applause was long and thunderous.

That concluded King Pacificus’ impromptu press conference in New York at the United Nations. A light continental dejeuner of pollen wafers and alabaster nectar followed, while members of the press cooed glowingly over the monarch’s remarks.

I finally got out and about – a beautiful Saturday night in New York City — and I had to bolt home. Times Square was evacuated, emptied of tourists, as police officers and firefighters closed the area because of a car bomb – bomb materials found in an SUV.

The SUV was filled with propane tanks, fireworks, filled gas cans, clocks with batteries, and two clocks with batteries, electric wire and more. A police official said: “It looks as if the perp was trying to light it up, and was interrupted by the cops, panicked and took off. It looked like someone tried to detonate it and we got to it in time. This is a big deal. It has the makings of a real car bomb.” A police officer who was on the scene said: “I did a lap around the vehicle. The inside was smoking. I smelled gunpowder and knew it might blow. I thought it might blow any second.”

Despite all that, the feds said at first that it wasn’t a terrorist attack. Then what was it?

That line was so absurd in this case that they had to change their tune, and fast. Now New York Governor Paterson and even DHS Secretary Janet “Nudnik” Napolitano are saying it was a terrorist attack attempt. Said Napolitano: “We’re taking this very seriously. We’re treating it as if it could be a potential terrorist attack.” But everyone was saying that they had no idea who was behind it. Police are now searching for a “white man” – a search the mainstream media is playing up big, hoping that the terrorist will turn out to be a non-Muslim. As if there are no white Muslims! Tell that to the North Carolina jihadis arrested last year.

But for Barack Obama and his gang there are no jihadis at all. Granny at the Tea Party is the real terrorist threat as far as they’re concerned.

The mainstream media also at first dismissed the gravity of the failed Times Square bomb as “amateurish.” Many headlines led with this angle. This, yet again, reflected the nonsensical and lethal “logic” of our news gatherers. It was ridiculous on its face. Saturday night in Times Square is teeming with humanity. Thousands of people could have been hurt, many killed, and now officials are admitting that: New York police commissioner Ray Kelly said, “If this had detonated, it would have caused casualties, a significant fireball, and would have ripped the vehicle in half.”

Bloomberg said there was no evidence that the bomber was affiliated with any terrorist organizations. How does he know that? Let’s assume for a moment that this car bomb was Islamic jihad. Whether the bomber was loosely tied to an organization or was a lone jihadi, what’s the difference if the motivation was the same? How many soldiers of Allah (a moniker on Fort Hood’s jihadist Major Nidal Hasan business card) are playing with bombs in their basements right now, and have nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the Taliban?

Even worse, their motivation is indirectly sanctioned by the Obama administration, by its silence and refusal to address (or even speak of) Islamic jihad. Has Obama apologized for the theater district yet, or has he written another big fat check to Pakistan or the Palestinian Authority or some other jihad-supporting entity?

Also, if this was a jihad attack, watch for another round of mainstream media excusing and denying the role of the Koran’s teachings of violence. Every time there is an Islamic attack on America, Islam advances. America recedes. Whenever Americans are murdered, shot in the back, attacked in any way by jihadists, and CAIR gets a platform on FOX, Ibrahim Hooper or MPAC gets a shout out on O’Reilly, and we bend a little bit more to Islam, while Muslims admonish Americans about a potential backlash.

Whether the car bomb in Times Square was a jihad attack or not, this evasion is setting the stage for rivers of blood. The more you appease, the more horrific the end result will be. If Hitler had been stopped at Czechoslovakia, think of all the incomprehensible bloodshed and loss of life that would have been avoided. The more you give in to evil, the greater the consequences will ultimately be. Evil has no depth, no bottom.

Yet we can be sure that if a jihad connection is found, the mainstream media will mention it only long enough to explain it away. It’s inexcusable.

“Since you, Mr. President and you, the members of the American administration, believe in this (a two-state solution), it is your duty to call for the steps in order to reach the solution and impose the solution (emphasis added) — impose it!“ demanded Fatah and PA Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a speech to leaders of Fatah just last week. “But don’t tell me it’s a vital national strategic American interest … and then not do anything,” he continued.

And so there you have it. Washington’s tongue lashing of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Administration’s breath-taking statements that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is endangering the lives of American troops seems to represent a fundamental shift in America’s strategic thinking.  Abbas’s demand will undoubtedly be remembered as the first of what will most assuredly be a chorus of international support for President Obama’s newly emerging, Mideast policy…a conference at which the terms of peace will be crafted by the United States and imposed on Israel and a new state of Palestine. Over sixty years of Arab intransigence are finally paying off.

And so, we see another ill-fated peace conference on the horizon. Certainly, there have been many American-sponsored peace conferences (both direct and indirect) before.  There was the shuttle diplomacy of the Nixon Administration during which Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shuttled back and forth between Israeli leaders and Arab leaders.  The very dedicated and hard-working Dennis Ross found himself on the same merry-go-round during the Clinton years. Those were known as proximity talks (sound familiar?).  No Arab official or Palestinian leader would sit at the same table with an Israeli representative. The idea was to secure enough concessions from Israel to coax an actual face-to-face meeting into reality.

Then, of course, there was the first Camp David conference, which was made possible by Anwar Sadat’s readiness to permanently end Egypt’s long- standing, state-of-war with Israel in return for Israel returning to Egypt the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured in the 1967 six-day war and retained following the so-called Yom Kippur War of 1973.  Sadat, a courageous and honorable soldier and statesman, was assassinated for his bravery …for his willingness to bring to an end the long-standing, state- of-war between Egypt and Israel.  No Arab or Palestinian leader has since been willing to enter into any agreement with Israel if such an agreement required a clear statement that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would then be resolved and that no further demands were to be made by either party against the other. The Madrid conference brokered by President George H.W. Bush, the Wye River conferences brokered by President Clinton, the second Camp David conference and the failed Annapolis peace conference sponsored by President George W. Bush, all failures because peace, permanent peace, was never on the Arab agenda…not then, and not now.

At first we hoped the Jerusalem outbursts during Vice President Biden’s visit and those outbursts that followed might just be a matter of amateur ineptitude and bungling by the Obama Administration and an overreaction to the clumsy leak by a minority member of the Israeli government about an East Jerusalem building project in an old Jewish neighborhood moving through some zoning process.   Ineptitude and bungling, however, would suggest a misstep here and there, but not premeditation or deliberation.  Now, we know better.  The doubters among us have been, of course, disquieted by the coterie of left wing, anti-Israel ideologues that seemed ever present in Obama’s life, especially during the last twenty years or so.   From the rantings of Reverend Jeremiah Wright to the resurrection of Zbigniew Brezinski, the writing has been on the proverbial wall for all to see, if only we were willing to look.

During the run-up to the presidential election, candidate Obama, speaking to a Jewish audience in Cleveland referred to “a strain within the pro-Israel community that says: unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud (hard-line) approach to Israel (presumably against the Palestinians) that you are anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.” We don’t doubt that there is such a strain within the “pro-Israel community” just as there is also a very strong Peace Now strain and many strains in between within that same “community”.  Such “strains” are, however, irrelevant.  Both America and Israel either are, or are not, strategic allies in that very unstable region of the world.

The so-called special relationship between the United States and Israel is more than an emotional tie, or of importance only to Jewish Americans.  It has enormous strategic importance to America.  Israel is the only stable democracy in the region.  The Reagan Administration considered Israel a “strategic asset” because of the need to have an ally in the Mideast to oppose the Soviet Union.  Israel’s Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on November 30, 1981, establishing a framework for consultation and cooperation to enhance the national security of both countries.  In November 1983, Israel and the United States formed a joint political-military committee to implement most of the 1981 MOU provisions.  Joint air and sea military exercises began in June 1984, and thereafter the United States built facilities to stockpile military equipment in Israel.  On May 6, 1986, Israel and the United States signed an agreement for Israeli participation in Strategic Defense Initiative research.  Under SDI, Israel developed the “Arrow” anti-ballistic missile with a substantial U.S. contribution.  Israeli sources continue to provide intelligence to confront the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

Even Richard Nixon, no matter how reluctantly, understood the strategic importance of America’s relationship with Israel. When Israel was, quite literally, on the ropes following Egypt and Syria’s invasion in 1973, Nixon ordered the greatest airlift of ordnance in history to the embattled Israelis. When our erstwhile European allies, by then totally dependent on Arab oil, refused to grant American planes landing rights to refuel, Nixon ordered mid-air refueling of our transports.  When asked where we would get the aircraft for such an operation, he reportedly responded, “Send everything that flies.” He knew our intervention on Israel’s behalf would enrage the proverbial Arab street.  But he came to the aid of an important ally.

Can anyone seriously imagine President Obama taking action on Israel’s behalf that might enrage the Arab street?  Can one imagine President Obama ordering the military to “send everything that flies?” Frankly, we can’t. Which is our way of saying that whatever the Obama Administration’s relationship is with Israel, it is no longer that of a strategic ally.  Within hours of Vice President’s Biden’s ill-fated meeting with Netanyahu, Biden, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General Petraeus all weighed in with statements implying that our relationship with Israel is endangering the lives of American troops.

That implication is disturbing on two counts.  First, it signals a very substantial change in America’s relationship with Israel, and, second, it simply isn’t true.  We are in Iraq because of a now deposed and deceased dangerous megalomaniac, Saddam Hussein, not because of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and we are in Afghanistan because of Al Qaeda and the Taliban’s collusion to murder thousands of Americans on 9/11, not because of Israel and the Palestinians.  Rather, it seems to us that President Obama seems to have concluded that his desire to “reset “America’s relationship with the Muslim world is seriously inconvenienced by our long-standing support of the only democracy in the Middle East.

President Obama may, indeed, “reset” America’s relationship with the Muslim world even if that means “resetting” America’s relationship with Israel to accomplish his inaugural-speech goal.  If that is the course we are on it will represent the most historic development vis-à-vis Israel since America joined with thirty-two other nations at the UN in establishing the state on November 29, 1947.

Any attempt to “reset” relations with Israel should be seen in the context of other “resets.”  Since taking office the Obama Administration has attempted, in their words, to reach out to our adversaries to eliminate their hostility to the U.S.  Let’s examine his efforts:

Iran — need we say more?

Syria — numerous envoys have been sent to meet with President Bashir Assad.  The president has nominated an ambassador to that country.  Results so far:  increasing support by Syria of Hezbollah in violation of its pledge to stop sending them weapons and a recent report that scud missiles capable of reaching every city in Israel are also being transferred.

Russia — despite the nuclear arms reduction treaty (which was largely negotiated by the prior administration) they continue their efforts to thwart Iranian sanctions and sell armaments and aircraft to the Chavez regime in Venezuela.

China — there we see a similar thwarting of serious sanctions on Iran, and no progress in convincing China that tying their currency to the dollar distorts trade in their favor.

At the same time, the Administration’s policy in Honduras almost cost us a vital ally against the dangerous anti-American Bolivarian axis which Hugo Chavez has created and which now includes Ecuador, Bolivia and, if Daniel Ortega gets his way, the restoration of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

The message to friendly nations who have relied on us as a bulwark against tyranny (e.g., Ukraine and Georgia to name a couple) is that the United States is an unreliable friend.  And the message to the Palestinians and the rest of the Muslim world is that if you stonewall long enough America can be had.

However, the president’s efforts may be providing for him unwelcome plaudits he doesn’t want from sources he never expected which are likely to complicate his efforts.  On April 26, while Mr. Obama was welcoming the World Champion New York Yankees to the White House, just two blocks away, His Excellency Brother Leader Muammar Gaddify, in a live video address from Tripoli beamed to the National Press Club professed his love of President Obama who he referred to as “our son” and offered support for his policies.  The Brother Leader noted that the Muslim world “welcomed very much the arrival of Mr. Obama to the presidency, because the ordinary citizen knows that “… he comes from a Muslim family maybe even of an Arab origin.”

This statement shows that the intemperate public flogging of Israel by the White House has already caused leaders of Islamic states to conclude that the US has shifted to their side and that if they continue to stonewall, America will do their bidding for them and extract concessions from Israel. A better demonstration of the law of unintended consequences in the delicate art of diplomacy could hardly be found.

Henry Kissinger in his 2001 book “Does America Need a Foreign Policy,” warns of the danger of future leaders who would come to power with no historical memory of the circumstances and events that fueled the issues with which they would be dealing.  Enter President Obama who apparently now sees Israel as the hindrance to peace.

Israel, the only nation among its neighbors to have been legally established by a majority of the nations then comprising the United Nations…Israel, the nation that was invaded by the armies of five neighbors at the moment of its birth…Israel, the nation whose civilians were regularly subjected to unrelenting and deadly so-called Fedayeen attacks from Gaza in the early years of its existence. Israel, the nation that was, and is, subject to a unified boycott by most of the Arab block…Israel, the nation attacked more than any other nation during the past half century…Israel, whose athletes are harassed and even murdered at international competitions… Israel, whose civilian population centers were the targets of literally thousands of missile attacks, day in and day out. Israel, the nation that offered every concession and acceded to most every demand at the Clinton-sponsored Camp David Conference…Israel, is now seen as the hindrance to peace.

Our president now calls upon Israel to take bold steps to meet the demands of a hostile regime that won’t sit at the same table unless yet more concessions are agreed to in advance and which couldn’t bring Hamas, which controls Gaza, to a peace conclave even if one were convened.

Israel is a remarkable success story, unprecedented in the annals of time.  In barely a single generation Israel now ranks among those at the forefront in science, mathematics, physics, medicine, education, space exploration, high-tech innovation, literature, agriculture, standard of living, emergency response and venture capital.  Moreover, it has absorbed more immigrants relative to its size than any nation in the world while the 27 Muslim nations have failed for over 60 years even to absorb a few thousand Palestinians living in refugee camps in the West Bank and in Lebanon.

The point we are making is to recognize that the nature of America’s long-standing and evolving relationship with Israel seems, under President Obama, to have run its course.  We seem now to be determined to be an even-handed mediator and no longer a strategic ally. Perhaps it was inevitable.  Perhaps the peace vision was a farce all along.  In many respects the infamous “Three No’s” of Khartoum i.e. No Peace, No Recognition and No Negotiation is still, when all is said and done, the driving force that informs those Palestinians and other belligerents who may ultimately determine the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum.  There is no peace. There is no recognition and, practically speaking, there really is no meaningful negotiation nor, perhaps, has there ever been.  A negotiation that does not have as its agreed upon goal a final resolution of a conflict is not a negotiation at all.  It is but a tactic in a continuing conflict and the continuation of a Palestinian charade.  For this the president is abandoning our only friend in the region.  Not only have the chickens come home to roost, but several flocks are likely to follow.

“Since you, Mr. President and you, the members of the American administration, believe in this (a two-state solution), it is your duty to call for the steps in order to reach the solution and impose the solution (emphasis added) — impose it!“ demanded Fatah and PA Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a speech to leaders of Fatah just last week. “But don’t tell me it’s a vital national strategic American interest … and then not do anything,” he continued.

And so there you have it. Washington’s tongue lashing of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Administration’s breath-taking statements that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is endangering the lives of American troops seems to represent a fundamental shift in America’s strategic thinking.  Abbas’s demand will undoubtedly be remembered as the first of what will most assuredly be a chorus of international support for President Obama’s newly emerging, Mideast policy…a conference at which the terms of peace will be crafted by the United States and imposed on Israel and a new state of Palestine. Over sixty years of Arab intransigence are finally paying off.

And so, we see another ill-fated peace conference on the horizon. Certainly, there have been many American-sponsored peace conferences (both direct and indirect) before.  There was the shuttle diplomacy of the Nixon Administration during which Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shuttled back and forth between Israeli leaders and Arab leaders.  The very dedicated and hard-working Dennis Ross found himself on the same merry-go-round during the Clinton years. Those were known as proximity talks (sound familiar?).  No Arab official or Palestinian leader would sit at the same table with an Israeli representative. The idea was to secure enough concessions from Israel to coax an actual face-to-face meeting into reality.

Then, of course, there was the first Camp David conference, which was made possible by Anwar Sadat’s readiness to permanently end Egypt’s long- standing, state-of-war with Israel in return for Israel returning to Egypt the Sinai Peninsula, which Israel had captured in the 1967 six-day war and retained following the so-called Yom Kippur War of 1973.  Sadat, a courageous and honorable soldier and statesman, was assassinated for his bravery …for his willingness to bring to an end the long-standing, state- of-war between Egypt and Israel.  No Arab or Palestinian leader has since been willing to enter into any agreement with Israel if such an agreement required a clear statement that the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would then be resolved and that no further demands were to be made by either party against the other. The Madrid conference brokered by President George H.W. Bush, the Wye River conferences brokered by President Clinton, the second Camp David conference and the failed Annapolis peace conference sponsored by President George W. Bush, all failures because peace, permanent peace, was never on the Arab agenda…not then, and not now.

At first we hoped the Jerusalem outbursts during Vice President Biden’s visit and those outbursts that followed might just be a matter of amateur ineptitude and bungling by the Obama Administration and an overreaction to the clumsy leak by a minority member of the Israeli government about an East Jerusalem building project in an old Jewish neighborhood moving through some zoning process.   Ineptitude and bungling, however, would suggest a misstep here and there, but not premeditation or deliberation.  Now, we know better.  The doubters among us have been, of course, disquieted by the coterie of left wing, anti-Israel ideologues that seemed ever present in Obama’s life, especially during the last twenty years or so.   From the rantings of Reverend Jeremiah Wright to the resurrection of Zbigniew Brezinski, the writing has been on the proverbial wall for all to see, if only we were willing to look.

During the run-up to the presidential election, candidate Obama, speaking to a Jewish audience in Cleveland referred to “a strain within the pro-Israel community that says: unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud (hard-line) approach to Israel (presumably against the Palestinians) that you are anti-Israel and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.” We don’t doubt that there is such a strain within the “pro-Israel community” just as there is also a very strong Peace Now strain and many strains in between within that same “community”.  Such “strains” are, however, irrelevant.  Both America and Israel either are, or are not, strategic allies in that very unstable region of the world.

The so-called special relationship between the United States and Israel is more than an emotional tie, or of importance only to Jewish Americans.  It has enormous strategic importance to America.  Israel is the only stable democracy in the region.  The Reagan Administration considered Israel a “strategic asset” because of the need to have an ally in the Mideast to oppose the Soviet Union.  Israel’s Defense Minister Ariel Sharon and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on November 30, 1981, establishing a framework for consultation and cooperation to enhance the national security of both countries.  In November 1983, Israel and the United States formed a joint political-military committee to implement most of the 1981 MOU provisions.  Joint air and sea military exercises began in June 1984, and thereafter the United States built facilities to stockpile military equipment in Israel.  On May 6, 1986, Israel and the United States signed an agreement for Israeli participation in Strategic Defense Initiative research.  Under SDI, Israel developed the “Arrow” anti-ballistic missile with a substantial U.S. contribution.  Israeli sources continue to provide intelligence to confront the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

Even Richard Nixon, no matter how reluctantly, understood the strategic importance of America’s relationship with Israel. When Israel was, quite literally, on the ropes following Egypt and Syria’s invasion in 1973, Nixon ordered the greatest airlift of ordnance in history to the embattled Israelis. When our erstwhile European allies, by then totally dependent on Arab oil, refused to grant American planes landing rights to refuel, Nixon ordered mid-air refueling of our transports.  When asked where we would get the aircraft for such an operation, he reportedly responded, “Send everything that flies.” He knew our intervention on Israel’s behalf would enrage the proverbial Arab street.  But he came to the aid of an important ally.

Can anyone seriously imagine President Obama taking action on Israel’s behalf that might enrage the Arab street?  Can one imagine President Obama ordering the military to “send everything that flies?” Frankly, we can’t. Which is our way of saying that whatever the Obama Administration’s relationship is with Israel, it is no longer that of a strategic ally.  Within hours of Vice President’s Biden’s ill-fated meeting with Netanyahu, Biden, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and General Petraeus all weighed in with statements implying that our relationship with Israel is endangering the lives of American troops.

That implication is disturbing on two counts.  First, it signals a very substantial change in America’s relationship with Israel, and, second, it simply isn’t true.  We are in Iraq because of a now deposed and deceased dangerous megalomaniac, Saddam Hussein, not because of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and we are in Afghanistan because of Al Qaeda and the Taliban’s collusion to murder thousands of Americans on 9/11, not because of Israel and the Palestinians.  Rather, it seems to us that President Obama seems to have concluded that his desire to “reset “America’s relationship with the Muslim world is seriously inconvenienced by our long-standing support of the only democracy in the Middle East.

President Obama may, indeed, “reset” America’s relationship with the Muslim world even if that means “resetting” America’s relationship with Israel to accomplish his inaugural-speech goal.  If that is the course we are on it will represent the most historic development vis-à-vis Israel since America joined with thirty-two other nations at the UN in establishing the state on November 29, 1947.

Any attempt to “reset” relations with Israel should be seen in the context of other “resets.”  Since taking office the Obama Administration has attempted, in their words, to reach out to our adversaries to eliminate their hostility to the U.S.  Let’s examine his efforts:

Iran — need we say more?

Syria — numerous envoys have been sent to meet with President Bashir Assad.  The president has nominated an ambassador to that country.  Results so far:  increasing support by Syria of Hezbollah in violation of its pledge to stop sending them weapons and a recent report that scud missiles capable of reaching every city in Israel are also being transferred.

Russia — despite the nuclear arms reduction treaty (which was largely negotiated by the prior administration) they continue their efforts to thwart Iranian sanctions and sell armaments and aircraft to the Chavez regime in Venezuela.

China — there we see a similar thwarting of serious sanctions on Iran, and no progress in convincing China that tying their currency to the dollar distorts trade in their favor.

At the same time, the Administration’s policy in Honduras almost cost us a vital ally against the dangerous anti-American Bolivarian axis which Hugo Chavez has created and which now includes Ecuador, Bolivia and, if Daniel Ortega gets his way, the restoration of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

The message to friendly nations who have relied on us as a bulwark against tyranny (e.g., Ukraine and Georgia to name a couple) is that the United States is an unreliable friend.  And the message to the Palestinians and the rest of the Muslim world is that if you stonewall long enough America can be had.

However, the president’s efforts may be providing for him unwelcome plaudits he doesn’t want from sources he never expected which are likely to complicate his efforts.  On April 26, while Mr. Obama was welcoming the World Champion New York Yankees to the White House, just two blocks away, His Excellency Brother Leader Muammar Gaddify, in a live video address from Tripoli beamed to the National Press Club professed his love of President Obama who he referred to as “our son” and offered support for his policies.  The Brother Leader noted that the Muslim world “welcomed very much the arrival of Mr. Obama to the presidency, because the ordinary citizen knows that “… he comes from a Muslim family maybe even of an Arab origin.”

This statement shows that the intemperate public flogging of Israel by the White House has already caused leaders of Islamic states to conclude that the US has shifted to their side and that if they continue to stonewall, America will do their bidding for them and extract concessions from Israel. A better demonstration of the law of unintended consequences in the delicate art of diplomacy could hardly be found.

Henry Kissinger in his 2001 book “Does America Need a Foreign Policy,” warns of the danger of future leaders who would come to power with no historical memory of the circumstances and events that fueled the issues with which they would be dealing.  Enter President Obama who apparently now sees Israel as the hindrance to peace.

Israel, the only nation among its neighbors to have been legally established by a majority of the nations then comprising the United Nations…Israel, the nation that was invaded by the armies of five neighbors at the moment of its birth…Israel, the nation whose civilians were regularly subjected to unrelenting and deadly so-called Fedayeen attacks from Gaza in the early years of its existence. Israel, the nation that was, and is, subject to a unified boycott by most of the Arab block…Israel, the nation attacked more than any other nation during the past half century…Israel, whose athletes are harassed and even murdered at international competitions… Israel, whose civilian population centers were the targets of literally thousands of missile attacks, day in and day out. Israel, the nation that offered every concession and acceded to most every demand at the Clinton-sponsored Camp David Conference…Israel, is now seen as the hindrance to peace.

Our president now calls upon Israel to take bold steps to meet the demands of a hostile regime that won’t sit at the same table unless yet more concessions are agreed to in advance and which couldn’t bring Hamas, which controls Gaza, to a peace conclave even if one were convened.

Israel is a remarkable success story, unprecedented in the annals of time.  In barely a single generation Israel now ranks among those at the forefront in science, mathematics, physics, medicine, education, space exploration, high-tech innovation, literature, agriculture, standard of living, emergency response and venture capital.  Moreover, it has absorbed more immigrants relative to its size than any nation in the world while the 27 Muslim nations have failed for over 60 years even to absorb a few thousand Palestinians living in refugee camps in the West Bank and in Lebanon.

The point we are making is to recognize that the nature of America’s long-standing and evolving relationship with Israel seems, under President Obama, to have run its course.  We seem now to be determined to be an even-handed mediator and no longer a strategic ally. Perhaps it was inevitable.  Perhaps the peace vision was a farce all along.  In many respects the infamous “Three No’s” of Khartoum i.e. No Peace, No Recognition and No Negotiation is still, when all is said and done, the driving force that informs those Palestinians and other belligerents who may ultimately determine the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum.  There is no peace. There is no recognition and, practically speaking, there really is no meaningful negotiation nor, perhaps, has there ever been.  A negotiation that does not have as its agreed upon goal a final resolution of a conflict is not a negotiation at all.  It is but a tactic in a continuing conflict and the continuation of a Palestinian charade.  For this the president is abandoning our only friend in the region.  Not only have the chickens come home to roost, but several flocks are likely to follow.

From the Associated Press:

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility in a video posted on the Internet Sunday for the attempted car bomb attack in New York City’s Times Square.

In the 1 minute, 11 second video allegedly released by the Pakistani Taliban, the group says the attack is revenge for the death of its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, and the recent slaying of al-Qaida in Iraq leaders Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who were killed by U.S. and Iraqi troops last month north of Baghdad.

The U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which uncovered the video on YouTube, said the militants claim responsibility in the tape for Saturday’s failed car bombing in New York. The video later appeared to have been removed from the website.

New York City’s police commissioner said there’s no evidence of a Taliban link to the failed car bomb.

In a copy of the tape provided by SITE, an unidentified voice speaking in Urdu, the primary language in Pakistan, says the group takes “full responsibility for the RECENT ATTACK IN THE USA.” The speaker says it comes in response to American “interference and terrorism in Muslim Countries, especially in Pakistan for (the) Lalmasjid operation,” a reference to the Pakistani army’s 2007 storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad where militants were holed up inside.

The video makes no specific reference to the attack in New York, does not mention the location or that it was a car bomb.

The claim could not be immediately verified. But if it turns out to be genuine, it would be the first time the Pakistani Taliban has struck outside of South Asia. It has no known global infrastructure like al-Qaida. In at least one past instance, the Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for an attack it played no role in.

Continue reading here.

From the Associated Press:

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility in a video posted on the Internet Sunday for the attempted car bomb attack in New York City’s Times Square.

In the 1 minute, 11 second video allegedly released by the Pakistani Taliban, the group says the attack is revenge for the death of its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, and the recent slaying of al-Qaida in Iraq leaders Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who were killed by U.S. and Iraqi troops last month north of Baghdad.

The U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which uncovered the video on YouTube, said the militants claim responsibility in the tape for Saturday’s failed car bombing in New York. The video later appeared to have been removed from the website.

New York City’s police commissioner said there’s no evidence of a Taliban link to the failed car bomb.

In a copy of the tape provided by SITE, an unidentified voice speaking in Urdu, the primary language in Pakistan, says the group takes “full responsibility for the RECENT ATTACK IN THE USA.” The speaker says it comes in response to American “interference and terrorism in Muslim Countries, especially in Pakistan for (the) Lalmasjid operation,” a reference to the Pakistani army’s 2007 storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad where militants were holed up inside.

The video makes no specific reference to the attack in New York, does not mention the location or that it was a car bomb.

The claim could not be immediately verified. But if it turns out to be genuine, it would be the first time the Pakistani Taliban has struck outside of South Asia. It has no known global infrastructure like al-Qaida. In at least one past instance, the Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for an attack it played no role in.

Continue reading here.

One pen stroke from Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has given her state a no-nonsense immigration policy and given America yet another opportunity to see the full face of leftist hypocrisy.

First some key points of the policy-

As shown in the picture above (featuring MSNBC’s poster child of intelligence, Contessa Brewer) this bill essentially says illegal means illegal.  If you are in the state of Arizona illegally you are guilty of trespassing (page 2 line 44), and if you are caught trespassing you will be transferred immediately to the custody of the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).  I will address the profiling allegations later.

This bill has teeth, and it puts the screws to employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants (page 6 line 7).  The burden of proof of work eligibility is now on the employer since this bill officially makes it illegal for an undocumented alien to “apply for work, solicit work in a public place, or perform work as an employee or independent contractor in this state.”

Complaints can now be filed with the Attorney General of Arizona or with a county attorney when a business is suspected of employing illegal aliens.  After an investigation, if a business is found to be employing illegal workers charges are brought upon the business, and expedited court status is given to the case.

1^st Violation:

• 3 year probationary period for the specific business location (5 years if the employer intentionally hired illegal employees)
• Employer must file a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney within 3 business days stating that all illegal employees have been terminated and that the hiring of unauthorized aliens will never happen again. If this is not filed in 3 business days all licenses for that business location are suspended until filed
• Quarterly reports must be submitted documenting each new employee hired for 3 years

2^nd Violation:

• Permanent revocation of all licenses held by the specific business location which hired the employee

With a system like e-verify available to employers there is no reason that the 2^nd offense shouldn’t mean jail time, assuming the empl. Maybe next session…

Next the hypocrisy-

As expected and as usual, the left is crying foul at the top of their lungs and accusations of racism are flying aimlessly.  What is being largely – if not completely – ignored by leftist media outlets and especially by President Clinton is the nearly immediate turn to violence by those protesting the legislation.

Unlike the reason based protests by tea partiers, the Arizona protesters are acting solely on emotions stirred by a constant barrage of leftist demagoguery.  No civil rights have been violated, no racial profiling has taken place, and the motivation for this law was not racism. The motivation is completely founded in reason which is backed by facts and by a definitive understanding of the word ‘illegal’.

For example: A recent study by the Pew Research center shows that in 2008, 10% of the Arizona labor force was made up by unauthorized aliens.  At that very time the unemployment rate in the state of Arizona was approaching the same 10% mark.

Couple those statistics with an increase in innocent lives being lost due to drug cartel violence and a federal government who refuses to adhere to the constitution and you have a  $1 billion crisis.  The Arizona people knew something had to be done which is why a recent Rasmussen poll shows that 70% of Arizona citizens approve of the new law.

As for the unfounded accusations of racial profiling, the sponsor of the bill Rep. John Kavanagh sums it up best:

“This provision merely extends to immigration offenses a half-century-old tool called “stop and question,” created by the U.S. Supreme Court. To prevent racial profiling, the law states that in constructing “reasonable suspicion,” police officers “may not solely consider race, color or national origin.””

To understand the full extent of hypocrisy you must to understand that liberals are not subject to reality.

For example: think back to the liberal argument for Affirmative Action.  Liberals argued that the American people were inherently racist, bigoted, and oppressive towards minorities, and due to that fact, laws must be passed to give certain ethnic groups preferential treatment over others.  In their ‘reality’ this was ‘righting a wrong’. In actual reality this was and is a flagrant abuse of the law which encourages racial profiling and discrimination.

In fact, the very tenants which serve as the enforcement mechanisms for Affirmative Action: racial profiling, discrimination, and one big equal protection violation, are the sole misnomers driving the left’s demonization of the Arizona Immigration bill – which contains none of these mechanisms.  Without the slightest clue, the left is demonizing Affirmative Action.

So before you think the immigration rallies scheduled for May 1st are a bad thing, remember – protesters will literally be screaming their admission of the unconstitutionality and purposeful racism which has been brought upon the American people through Affirmative Action.

This is definitely a net-positive since admission is always the first step.

It’s highly unusual for The Wall Street Journal to be gulled into ignoring the most important part of an issue in favor of chasing a rabbit down a random trail. But it has apparently fallen prey to what is at stake in the Air Force’s acquisition of a tanker aircraft to replace the Eisenhower-era KC-135s, which have flown far past their useful life.   The Journal, like too many others, apparently believes it’s a question of protectionism versus open competition.

A Thursday Wall Street Journal editorial rightly bashes Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wa) for his attempt to bully US defense contractors out of partnering with EADS, the European Aerospace and Defense Systems company which is still trying to sell its Airbus 330 to the US Air Force as a replacement for the KC-135s.

There is no more urgently-needed new aircraft for all our armed services.  As then Air Force Chief of Staff John Jumper told me in a 2005 interview, “We are a global air and space power because of these tankers.  He added, “The first thing that happened in any contingency is that you put the ‘tanker bridge’ up there. We deploy tankers to places such as Spain, Hawaii, Guam and their sole purpose is to get large numbers halfway across the world without stopping.”

In short, no tankers, no superpower.  And the aged KC-135s are no longer capable of meeting the mission requirements imposed by Iraq, Afghanistan and our other international defense needs.

As much as the Journal is right in bashing Dicks, it would be just as right in condemning Sen. John McCain’s (R-Az) effort to pressure the Defense Department into buying the Airbus.  McCain’s campaign in favor of the Airbus goes back to at least 2003. In 2006, before EADS won the last round of competition, McCain bullied the Defense Department out of counting the illegal “launch” subsidies paid to Airbus which artificially – and substantially – reduces the price EADS offers.  (The WTO, in a still-confidential decision, ruled those subsidies illegal last year.)

In a September 8, 2006 letter to then Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, McCain posed 13 questions to England and objected to any consideration of the subsidies Airbus received: “I respectfully suggest that Air Force follow an acquisition process based on extant legal and regulatory guidelines and remove any WTO element from its procurement evaluation supporting its tanker recapitalization program.” The Air Force didn’t count the subsidies in evaluating the EADS price just as McCain demanded, which put Boeing at a big disadvantage in the price evaluation.

McCain’s pro-EADS campaign continued through the transition to the Obama administration and, last fall, he was writing to Defense Secretary Gates insisting, again, that the competition was skewed toward Boeing because the cost evaluation considered fuel consumption and the requirement for additional construction at military bases to house aircraft that couldn’t fit into the current facilities.  (The A-330 is a massive aircraft, its wingspread so large that other aircraft would have to be moved from their current European bases to make room for it. So counting the cost of rebuilding airfields to accept the A-330 is entirely rational.)

The Air Force’s decision between the Boeing and Airbus aircraft hinges on one important question, and it has nothing to do with protectionism, subsidies or any financial issue. It’s a matter of which aircraft best meets the Air Force’s – the warfighters’ – needs.  In this, the Airbus categorically fails.

As I’ve written many times before, there are mission-critical maneuvers – called “breakaways” and “overruns” – which any tanker has to perform in order to safely refuel all the aircraft in the Air Force’s inventory, including some – such as F-15 and F-16 fighters – that have to be refueled at higher speeds than slower-moving aircraft such as the C-17 and C-130.

The primary reason that the Government Accountability office overturned the Air Force award of the contract to EADS in the last go round had nothing to do with protectionism.  The GAO found, correctly, that the A-330 lacks the ability to accelerate quickly enough – and to achieve a sufficiently high top speed – to perform these maneuvers safely and in accordance with Air Force standards which it has developed in over a half-century of airborn refueling.

Since the GAO decision, more information has come out showing that the “laws” – the internal computer programming – that govern the Airbus’ flight controls make it unsuitable and probably dangerous to fly in a combat environment.

Obviously, there is a lot more to the choice between the Boeing KC-767 and the Airbus KCX than just who gets the jobs to build it.

All the quibbling about McCain and Dicks would be relevant if the Air Force were choosing between two aircraft that could perform the tanker mission equally well.  But it’s not.

The Boeing aircraft can perform the mission.  The A-330 would have to break the laws of physics to do it.  The warfighters need the tanker that can reliably – and safely – do everything the mission profile requires. The A-330 just can’t.

Instead of trying to backdoor the Airbus into the competition again, the Air Force should be holding Boeing’s feet to the fire in a tough negotiation to get the best price on the tanker our warfighters desperately need.

Saturday’s New York Times reported the leak of a secret January memo from Defense Secretary Gates to “top White House officials” warning that “the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability…”

The article quoted an unnamed senior official who called the memo “…a wake-up call.”  But the day after the initial report, Gates told the Times, “The memo was not intended as a ‘wake-up call’ or received as such by the president’s national security team.” He added, “Rather, it presented a number of questions and proposals intended to contribute to an orderly and timely decision-making process.”

Was it that, or something else? All evidence leads to the latter.

This is an example of one Washington game played by “senior administration officials” from time beyond memory.  The clues to who and why are not well-hidden.

Who leaked Gates’s memo?

The first Times article differentiates the anonymous “senior official” who described the memo from White House officials who “disputed” his view.  That means the most probable leaker was Gates himself or someone on Gates’s staff acting with his knowledge.

Obama’s National Security Advisor, Gen. James Jones, chafed at the Gates memo.  The first NYT article quoted him as saying, “On Iran, we are doing what we said we were going to do. The fact that we don’t announce publicly our entire strategy for the world to see doesn’t’ mean we don’t have a strategy that anticipates the full range of contingencies – we do.”

But that’s no answer.  Gates said Obama’s policy was inadequate, not that he didn’t have one.  But the fact that Gates so quickly downplayed the meaning of the memo indicates two things. First, that he doesn’t view the Iran policy disagreement to be a serious dispute with Obama, at least yet.  Second, that he stands by the memo in a clear vote of no confidence in Obama’s closest advisors.

Gates is too old a Washington hand to believe that the leak of the memo would result in Obama revising his policy toward Iran.  So what’s the point?  Is it to contribute to the decision-making process, or to the history books?

Gates is writing for the record.  And when Obama’s Iran policy is publicly recognized a failure, Gates – in his memoir – will go back to the memo he wrote and claim absolution.

During the early years of the Clinton presidency, CIA Director James Woolsey was routinely unable to get Clinton into a private meeting to discuss intelligence matters.  Woolsey resigned in frustration. There is no reason to believe Gates has been that unwelcome in Obama’s councils.   That may change as a result of this memo when those closest to Obama retaliate for what they will see as Gates’s disloyalty to them.

And before the end of the year, Gates may resign.

Short answer: no… but then again, we seriously doubt that we’re in any greater danger either.  The new policy is both revocable and subject to review and modification if circumstances so warrant.  The questions we want to explore are the rationale for announcing a new policy in the first place and whether the recent summit of 47 nations to deal with nuclear risks accomplished any positive good.

The argument which is made by the right against the president’s newly announced policy, namely that enemy nations that are in compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPR) can attack us with non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction with complete impunity from nuclear retaliation seems a bit hysterical. One way or another, any nation that attacks us with biological or chemical weapons should count on a rendezvous with their stone-age ancestors.   On the other hand, the argument from the left, that we have moved the hands of the doomsday clock back several minutes, seems like wishful thinking.  America and the world is not safer… not yet, anyway.

Some of those who have been the biggest critics of our Iraq, Afghanistan and anti-terror policies, and whose main motivation in life seems to be to prove George Bush’s policies were wrong contend that Iran or North Korea may, as a result of the new policy, be incentivized to abandon their plans to build nuclear arsenals and now comply with the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.  This seems more the stuff of Saturday Night Live than serious foreign-policy thinking.

We do not expect that the President will ever answer the phone in the oval office to,.. “Hello, Barack, this is Mahmoud Admadinejad.  Sorry I haven’t responded earlier to your outstretched hand, but your new nuclear policy made me realize that I owe you an apology.”  Or “Hi there Mr. President, Kim Jong-Il calling to let you know that your new policy is so impressive that I, today, personally ordered the dismantling of all our nuclear forces.”

And in the real world, Syria, which not too many months ago had their North Korean supplied nuclear program blown away by Israel, is at it again and has blown a loud new raspberry our way with news that they have started shipping longer-range scud missiles to their proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon.  These nations have demonstrated repeatedly that their goal is not to reduce world terrorism but to expand their influence vis-à-vis their regions and the world.  A nation like Iran that has frequently made clear that it believes  “Israel should be wiped off the map” won’t abandon its evil intentions because it is less, rather than more, fearful of U.S. retaliation.

The forty-seven-nation nuclear summit meeting that convened last week in Washington, D.C. really hasn’t changed the calculus either.  Even though Iran is the biggest destabilizing threat in areas which are already a tinder box, the Chinese continue to take the position that they are against sanctions that are too punitive and that they would be opposed to any sanctions that inconvenienced (they said harmed) other nations that were doing legitimate business with Iran.  This is not exactly an example of the world getting tough with rogue nations.

As to the 47-nation nuclear-risk-reduction summit, as with all summits, the devil is in the details and this summit produced little in the way of details.  It was, in our view, important that the president reestablished American leadership on this vital issue.  It also accomplished what seems to be a serious commitment to continue the Reagan, Bush (41), Clinton, Bush (43) policies to reign in inventories of highly enriched nuclear material, and that is good.  But Pakistan continues to produce plutonium and it not only lives in a neighborhood influenced by Al Qaeda, but also has members of its own government sympathetic to that lethal terrorist organization.  And, as Charles Krauthammer pointed out in the April 17 edition of the Washington Post, the hoopla about the transfer of loose nuclear materials to the U.S. by Ukraine and Canada is old news.  It had been agreed to, but not announced, quite some time ago.

It would also do us well to recognize that pledges and agreements are no better than the resolve or the intentions of the signatories.  In the last century Germany and Japan both were signatories to treaties and protocols that should have made it highly unlikely that either country would, just a few years later, be responsible for unleashing world war.

A few earlier treaties are also worth considering.  At the beginning of the twentieth century battleships were the ultimate weapons.  The nations with the biggest and best fleets quite literally ruled the seas. Japan devastated Russia in 1904 by sinking its entire navy in the short-lived Russo-Japanese war.  In an effort to reign in the growing Japanese threat the Washington Conference of 1921 was convened and Japan and the United States ultimately agreed to reduce their respective fleets of battleships…an earlier version of a non-proliferation treaty.

As with all such conferences, each participating nation came with its own agenda and special interests. America’s interest was simply to slow or halt the expansion of Japan into the western Pacific.  The United States believed the best way to protect its interests was to secure an agreement that would establish an agreed upon ratio of naval tonnage between Japan and The United States.

Great Britain saw the 1921 conference primarily as an opportunity to protect its interests in Singapore, Hong Kong and other colonial areas.  Japan, on the other hand, wanted British and American recognition of their interests in Mongolia and Manchuria and a treaty that might limit America’s growing naval presence in the Pacific.

And so, America and Japan actually sank their own ships reducing their fleets to agreed-upon tonnages. There was no other example in history of nations intentionally sinking their own ships. But, as we observed earlier, it is the intentions of the signatories that really count, not the words on the document.  Battleships were, indeed, sunk as a result of the Washington Conference, so Japan shifted gears and began building aircraft carriers, which were not covered by the treaty.  Those aircraft carriers were to sink most of what was left of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor less than two decades later.

Of course there is probably no better example of an all-inclusive pact to end war than the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Treaty. Its formal name was the General Treaty for the Renunciation of War. It was the ultimate arms limitation treaty.

Great Britain was there, France was there, America was there and even Germany was there.  Talk about non-proliferation.  Representatives of virtually all of the nations that would soon be combatants in World-War Two scratched their signatures onto a document that committed their nations to eschew war as an instrument of national policy. Following the initial signing of the treaty on August 27, 1928 in Paris by the representatives from: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, India, the Irish Free State, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States, many other nations, including the Soviet Union joined the pact.  Within five years Germany was preparing for war and by 1938  World War Two was raging throughout Europe, North Africa and Asia.

We are not suggesting that treaties and disarmament conferences are a waste of time.  Quite the contrary. In fact, when the time is right, such efforts must be vigorously pursued.  And, in many respects, the time may very well be right.  The United States and Russia have, in fact, been reducing their nuclear arsenals for several years.  Twenty years ago the United States is reported to have had ten thousand nuclear warheads deployed and aimed at Soviet targets. Under the terms of the Moscow Treaty signed by President Bush (43) during his second year in office, we had cut that number down to only two thousand warheads by the time President Obama assumed office. The treaty the President just signed with Russia’s President Medvedev actually only reduces the allowable number of warheads agreed to in the Moscow Treaty by another 150 warheads.

We have reservations about the details of any commitments made in side protocols regarding the defensive missile shield which the U.S. planned to deploy in Poland and the Czech Republic , and we would like to know whether the Administration plans to upgrade our remaining nuclear forces as the Russians have been doing  for years. The treaty, however, is an additional right step in the direction set by President Obama’s predecessors.

The newly announced strategic nuclear policy is, to us, troublesome on two counts.  First, it eliminates ambiguity.  Keeping our adversaries from knowing what any U.S. response to an attack on our allies or on us should be an important element in our overall security.  Our response to the attacks on the World Trade Center that took three thousand innocent lives was to chase from power the Taliban who had given Al Qaeda refuge in Afghanistan.  What if an enemy that was otherwise in compliance with NPR, or a force harbored within their borders, was to attack New York again, this time with anthrax or an equally deadly agent that took three million lives instead of three thousand.  Are we wise to declare what we won’t do in such a circumstance, or is it better to keep such an adversary guessing?

Second, we question whether it is wise to reduce or eliminate the nuclear option without simultaneously beefing up our conventional capability.  By all accounts we are stretched pretty thin right now.   By taking the nuclear option off the table, or by making it less accessible, we increase the risk that potential adversaries might become more adventuresome, especially if they calculate that we don’t have the resources to adequately respond.

It is hard to imagine any nation militarily challenging the United States one-on-one anytime soon.  Russia lacks both the resources and the reason to engage in hostilities with the United States and too much of China’s bread is buttered with American dollars for war with America to make any sense. In other words, neither country’s interests would be served by inordinate tension with America.  Iran, Syria, North Korea or Hugo Chavez’s increasingly troublesome Venezuela are not likely directly to attack America either.  However, they all represent a potential direct threat to nations with which we have close ties or with which we share vital interests.  Each of these nations is also a potential haven for terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and it is within this sphere of thugacracies that the nearest dangers probably lay.

We believe that any nation that provides aid or comfort to any terrorist organization that threatens US interests should live in dread of what we might do if such a rogue group launched an attack against us.  No new American policy should lessen that sense of dread.

On April 5 the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a press release urging GOP leaders to “insist” that Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-NC) withdraw support from the non-profit grassroots advocacy organization ACT! for America. CAIR referred to ACT! for America, one of the largest national security (and pro-American and pro-Israel) citizens organizations in the United States, as an “anti-Islam hate group.”

As we at the Center for Security Policy have reported previously at Big Government, we believe – with the backup evidence to prove it at CAIRObservatory.org – that CAIR has been operating as an unregistered foreign agent, as defined by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).  FARA § 611 (o) states that foreign agents who engage in any activity to “influence any agency or official of the Government of the United States or any section of the public within the United States” must register as a foreign agent and report such activity to the Department of Justice.  Therefore as Rep. Myrick and GOP leaders are “officials of the government of the United States,” CAIR’s attempt to influence their conduct and associations in this way is a clear violation of the FARA statute.

On April 13 CAIR-Tampa echoed the CAIR national office message  with this action alert and directed readers to a petition calling for 5,000 signatures condemning the GOP and Myrick for associating with ACT! for America.  CAIR could only find a single spokesperson to prop up their attack on ACT! For America, a certain Reverend Wilifred Allen-Faiella of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Coconut Grove, FL.  The CAIR action alert quotes from her letter which echoes, word for word, CAIR’s talking points from their smear campaign:

“As a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ who preached love for all I am appalled that a Congresswoman can support a hate-filled group such as “Act for America”.  Their statements about Muslims constitute hate speech and no responsible leader of this country founded on the principles that all are created equal should associate herself with such an anti-American group.”

Big mistake in spokepersons, CAIR.

The question is open as to whether CAIR bothered to investigate Allen-Faiella’s questionable background before they chose her to be their sole spokeperson, since she is best known for her starring role in a well-publicized 2004 Miami scandal when she allowed a convicted pedophile to volunteer at the thrift shop next to her church’s K-6 elementary school.  On November 4, 2004 the Miami New Times reported that the volunteer, church member Steven Sypnieski, told the pastor in a “confidential pastoral setting” that he “had some problems in his past.”  Apparently Allen-Faiella didn’t bother to check Sypnieski’s criminal record, easily accessible online.  In 1992 Sypnieski was arrested by police for sexual battery on an 8-year-old boy he was babysitting, according to the arrest affidavit. He gave a confession and pleaded guilty to ‘custodial sexual battery.’ Astoundingly, he was sentenced only to ten years probation.

In October, 2003 – 11 years after the confession, just after his probation sentence ended – Sypnieski was brought into the Church School’s thrift shop as a volunteer by Allen-Faiella.  Allen-Faiella admitted “I was made aware of his record on the sixteenth of December [a Tuesday in 2003],” but because the Christmas break was to begin Friday, she stated that “I intended to take care of the situation as soon as we got back. In fact I put it on the calendar for January 7 to talk with my priest assistant how we were going to handle the matter.”  According to the Miami New Times, “When parents discovered the man’s criminal record, Allen-Faiella failed to take immediate action, so the school’s principal, Carol Shabe, forcefully confronted the pastor, demanding that the man’s school access be revoked at once….”  According to the report, the school principal had to ask Allen-Faiella two more times to take Sypnieski’s keys away from him before Allen-Faiella would take action.   Parents and donors withdrew support for the school in reaction to the pastor’s behavior; and Pastor Allen-Faiella fired the school principal Carol Shabe later that year for “divisiveness.”

Angry parents described Allen-Faiella as “intransigent and unresponsive.” Indeed, the pastor told the Miami newspaper “I think it’s being blown totally out of proportion… The appropriate people knew about it. No big deal was made about it. And suddenly it became a big issue.”   According to the Miami New Times:

“Allen-Faiella also says that following Sypnieski’s dismissal, she’s learned his probation had ended prior to him volunteering, and that she’d read something indicating ‘he was not considered a criminal threat to the community.’ (She can’t recall where she saw the information.) Had she known these things earlier, would she have allowed Sypnieski to work at the parish? ‘That’s a moot point now,’ she responds.”

So let’s sum up.  We assert that CAIR is an unregistered foreign agent under the Foreign Agent Registration Act (see our report here at CAIRObservatory.org).  This particular influence operation by CAIR targeted Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-NC), using a related influence operation to smear a national grassroots organization – ACT! For America, with nearly 80,000 members and 380 chapters – as “hate-filled…anti-American.”  And the sole spokesperson that CAIR-Tampa could find to support their smear campaign is best known for her earlier tolerance for a convicted pedophile, for whom she permitted potential access to children in her care, according to news reports in the mainstream newspaper Miami New Times.  We’ve sent the Reverend Wilifred Allen-Faiella a letter, posted below, to alert her that when CAIR chose her as a spokesperson, she was being targeted in a possible unreported political influence operation.  We urge her in the letter to report the details to FARA.

And who are the foreign principals – individuals, companies, organizations, government offices – bankrolling CAIR’s smear campaign using that most tolerant (of pedophiles at least) Reverend Allen-Faiella?  A major one is the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), who gave CAIR $325,000 in 2007 – just part of the $6.6 million in cash and loans given to CAIR by foreign principals based in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Iran.  The OIC’s Ten Year Plan demands “deterrent punishments” for any alleged acts of so-called “Islamophobia” in non-Muslim countries.

These CAIR smear campaigns – against Congresswoman Myrick, and against ACT! For America – are only two of CAIR’s many political influence operations, targeting critics of CAIR’s Muslim Brotherhood links and critics of CAIR’s attempted enforcement of Shariah Law to silence free speech.  Neither of these influence operations has been reported to the FARA office by CAIR as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

And we think that’s against the law.

CSP Letter to Rev. Wilifred Allen-Faiella on CAIR violations of Foreign Agent Registration Act

In a follow-up to my story this morning and my ongoing series about the CIA’s viscous war on the Department of Defense, the Washington Post is reporting that the CIA’s Deputy Director, Steven Kappes will “retire.”

While I have been adverse to mentioning Kappes by name, when I was informed last night that the CIA had leaked to the New York Times the names of Americans covertly providing Force Protection to our troops in Afghanistan and that the Times was going to run with those names, I couldn’t hold back any longer.

As the Agency has blindly followed what has become known as the “Kappes Doctrine” it has made mistake after mistake after mistake; all underscored by the horrible F.O.B. Chapman attack, one of its most deadly.  Something tells me that there won’t be anyone baking any cakes for Mr. Kappes’ sendoff.

There are lots and lots of problems at the Central Intelligence Agency and Kappes’ fingerprints are all over them.  He had become toxic not only for the CIA, but for the Obama Administration, which explains why, after my piece ran this morning, the bus was warmed up and Kappes was told to lay down in front of it.  Ask anyone in the intelligence world – there are no such things as coincidences.

Things at Langley need to change.  Getting rid of Kappes is a good start, but there’s A LOT more people in the Agency’s dysfunctional leadership and its cover-your-ass management who need to make up their minds about whether they are going to be defined by getting promoted or by doing their jobs and keeping America safe.

Let’s hope the pending Kappes’ vacancy makes room for one of the latter.

I have just received word that the New York Times is preparing to go public with a list of names of Americans covertly working in Afghanistan providing force protection for our troops, as well as the rest of our Coalition Forces.  If the Times actually see this through, the red ink they are drowning in will be nothing compared to the blood their entire organization will be covered with.  Make no mistake, the Times is about to cause casualty rates in Afghanistan to skyrocket.  Each and every American should be outraged.

As chronicled here, here, here, and here the Central Intelligence Agency via the New York Times has been waging a nasty proxy war against the Department of Defense over its use of former military and intelligence personnel to do what the CIA is both incapable and unwilling to do: gather the much needed intelligence that keeps our troops safe.

According to Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius, “[T]he U.S. military has long been unhappy about the quality of CIA intelligence in Afghanistan,” and the senior military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, Maj Gen Michael T. Flynn went so far as to publish a stunning report calling for, “sweeping changes to the way the intelligence community thinks about itself.”

The report goes on to quote General Stanley McChrystal who stated that, “Our senior leaders – the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, Congress, the President of the United States – are not getting the right information to make decisions with … The media is driving the issues.”

Through its use of the New York Times, the Central Intelligence Agency has tried to embarrass the Defense Department into shutting down what, by all accounts, has been an amazingly successful program which has dramatically saved American and Coalition lives and continues to do so on a daily basis.

But thanks to the beating the folks on the 7^th floor at Langley and the New York Times have taken in the blogosphere, they are about to go for broke and to do so in a fashion so grotesque that every American should be moved to action.

These morbidly conjoined twins have entered dangerous territory.  They are not only putting at risk the lives of the brave men and women working day and night to keep our troops safe (who, along with their families, will surely be targeted for retribution by al Qaeda and the Taliban), but they are also calling down a host of legal woes via the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (made famous in the Valerie Plame affair under the George W. Bush Administration) as the intelligence gathered and reported on by the Defense Department operatives in question is most definitely classified.

So while the New York Times stands ready to once again put American lives at grave risk in order to sell a few more papers, the Central Intelligence Agency appears committed to its misguided “Kappes Doctrine”, (so named for Leon Panetta’s number two man who many in the intel game blame for being the “hidden hand in many of the nation’s intelligence failures.”).  Per the Kappes Doctrine, which was so disastrously tied to the F.O.B. Chapman attack, the Agency is happy to pay foreign intel services to take the risks as long as the CIA can take the credit (and in this case, continue to claim that what the Department of Defense is doing every day on the ground in Afghanistan can’t be done).

But fortunately for our troops, it is being done, it has saved countless lives, and it will continue to do so, unless the Times publishes its list.

To prevent its publication, I am calling on all Americans: Democrats, Republicans and Independents to bombard the New York Times and insist that they refrain from outing these brave Americans who are risking everything for the safety of our troops.

What the Central Intelligence Agency and the New York Times has cooked up is a recipe for unmitigated disaster and we used to have a word for it in our lexicon.  We called it treason.  But unlike the treason committed by the Times in the past, we have been granted a heads up and this time each one of us can do something about it.

I have just received word that the New York Times is preparing to go public with a list of names of Americans covertly working in Afghanistan providing force protection for our troops, as well as the rest of our Coalition Forces.  If the Times actually sees this through, the red ink they are drowning in will be nothing compared to the blood their entire organization will be covered with.  Make no mistake, the Times is about to cause casualty rates in Afghanistan to skyrocket.  Each and every American should be outraged.

As chronicled here, here, here, and here the Central Intelligence Agency via the New York Times has been waging a nasty proxy war against the Department of Defense over its use of former military and intelligence personnel to do what the CIA is both incapable and unwilling to do: gather the much needed intelligence that keeps our troops safe.

According to Washington Post columnist, David Ignatius, “[T]he U.S. military has long been unhappy about the quality of CIA intelligence in Afghanistan,” and the senior military intelligence officer in Afghanistan, Maj Gen Michael T. Flynn went so far as to publish a stunning report calling for, “sweeping changes to the way the intelligence community thinks about itself.”

The report goes on to quote General Stanley McChrystal who stated that, “Our senior leaders – the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, Congress, the President of the United States – are not getting the right information to make decisions with … The media is driving the issues.”

Through its use of the New York Times, the Central Intelligence Agency has tried to embarrass the Defense Department into shutting down what, by all accounts, has been an amazingly successful program which has dramatically saved American and Coalition lives and continues to do so on a daily basis.

But thanks to the beating the folks on the 7^th floor at Langley and the New York Times have taken in the blogosphere, they are about to go for broke and to do so in a fashion so grotesque that every American should be moved to action.

These morbidly conjoined twins have entered dangerous territory.  They are not only putting at risk the lives of the brave men and women working day and night to keep our troops safe (who, along with their families, will surely be targeted for retribution by al Qaeda and the Taliban), but they are also calling down a host of legal woes via the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (made famous in the Valerie Plame affair under the George W. Bush Administration) as the intelligence gathered and reported on by the Defense Department operatives in question is most definitely classified.

So while the New York Times stands ready to once again put American lives at grave risk in order to sell a few more papers, the Central Intelligence Agency appears committed to its misguided “Kappes Doctrine”, (so named for Leon Panetta’s number two man who many in the intel game blame for being the “hidden hand in many of the nation’s intelligence failures.”).  Per the Kappes Doctrine, which was so disastrously tied to the F.O.B. Chapman attack, the Agency is happy to pay foreign intel services to take the risks as long as the CIA can take the credit (and in this case, continue to claim that what the Department of Defense is doing every day on the ground in Afghanistan can’t be done).

But fortunately for our troops, it is being done, it has saved countless lives, and it will continue to do so, unless the Times publishes its list.

To prevent its publication, I am calling on all Americans: Democrats, Republicans and Independents to bombard the New York Times and insist that they refrain from outing these brave Americans who are risking everything for the safety of our troops.

What the Central Intelligence Agency and the New York Times has cooked up is a recipe for unmitigated disaster and we used to have a word for it in our lexicon.  We called it treason.  But unlike the treason committed by the Times in the past, we have been granted a heads up and this time each one of us can do something about it.

The first foreboding came during President Obama’s inaugural address when he announced to the Muslim world, “…we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect…we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”  Who can quarrel with such a goal? But with the benefit of 15 months of hindsight, those words were an early warning signal to Israel the sole steadfast American ally in the region surrounded by Muslim nations essentially sworn to its destruction.

There was also, of course, the much heralded Cairo speech which was loaded with good-sounding, even pseudo-historic, platitudinous remarks but which lacked the one statement that mattered…that both sides agree to enter peace talks, the publically avowed purpose of which would be to reach a settlement that would end the Israel-Palestinian dispute once and for all, a settlement that would mean no new demands directed by one party against the other.

Israel has been paraded, often reluctantly, to center stage by a succession of American Administrations to perform much like a dancing bear for a variety of Presidents who wanted to add “peacemaker” to their legacy and who demanded of Israel a succession of concessions each of which was called a “confidence building measure” to show the Arab nations Israel’s good faith intentions.

Since its inception as a Jewish state in 1948, the only one by the way, effectively created by the United Nations (many of the remainder of which being creations of British map drawing after World War I), Israel has been the only true democracy and a steadfast ally of the United States.  It has enjoyed the support, in varying degrees, of American governments from Truman through Bush, including even Jimmy Carter while he was president.

Barack Obama is different.  Notwithstanding his campaign rhetoric about America’s unshakeable friendship with Israel when he speaks at public forums or before Jewish audiences at his or fellow Democratic fundraising events, his actions once taking office have been ambiguous at best and downright hostile at worst.

He has visited the Mideast with visits to Egypt and Jordan, notably snubbing Israel.  Even before the recent trip by Vice President Biden to Israel, during which Israeli municipal authorities made a clumsy and poorly timed announcement of procedural progress in a long process toward further construction in Jerusalem, he has treated Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu like a pariah, a treatment he reinforced by his actions during Netanyahu’s recent visit to Washington.  It also appears clear in the aftermath of the Jerusalem construction imbroglio that Washington knew the ill-timed announcement was not of Netanyahu’s making and that it was, in fact, a calculated move by one of Israel’s 38 political parties to embarrass the Prime Minister. Nonetheless it provided an opportunity for the Administration to fire a gratuitous broadside salvo at a worthy ally.

A careful look at what passes for Obama policy reveals a desire to curry favor with the Islamic world, and if that means distancing America from Israel then so be it and damn the consequences.

The president seems to have adopted the view that the borders that emerged following the 1967 six-day war, and the so-called “settlements” in Jerusalem are the reason for the historic enmity the 22 Islamic countries of the Mideast have toward Israel.  If that were so, this dispute would have been settled long ago.  At both the middle-east summits hosted by President Clinton in 2000 and later by President Bush in 2007, Israeli prime ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, respectively, offered to return to essentially the 1967 borders (with some land swaps) and to share Jerusalem as the capital of two states.  On both occasions PLO Chairman Arafat in 2000 (to the amazement of Clinton’s principal Mideast advisor, Dennis Ross) and Palestinian Authority President Abbas in 2007 rejected the offers.

Arafat, who was offered these terms with the proviso that the Arab states would recognize Israel’s right to exist as a nation and that there would be no further future demands, was quoted as saying “if I agree to that, I will be signing my own death warrant.”  In contrast, not once since 1948 have the Arabs offered their outline of the terms of a permanent peace with Israel except upon conditions such as those in the so-called Saudi Plan that demanded the right of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to the homes they fled, which would amount to the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.

The position taken by almost all the Islamic nations regarding Israel, which is held to this day by Hezbollah, Hamas and even Fatah (the so-called moderate wing of the Palestinian Authority) is that Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Safed, Haifa, etc. are also occupied territory.  Even in the face of that uncompromising position, the United States and the European nations have persisted in pursuing, since the date of the Oslo accords in 1993, a so-called roadmap to peace also referred to as the “peace process.”  We know the results.

When Barack Obama became president, he tipped his hand in his Cairo address regarding his approach to this seemingly intractable dispute.  There, a careful reading made it clear that the United States would, in effect, stand on its head to placate world Islam.  And since then his outstretched hand to Islam has been spurned, and in the case of Iran, spat upon.  But, the president in his effort to restart peace negotiations imposed a condition only on Israel demanding that it stop building settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the eastern portion of which was conquered by Jordan in 1948 but annexed to Israel after the 1967 war.  Leave aside that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel (Obama said so himself many times) and building in one’s capital is hardly the building of settlements, the president has asked Israel to concede a principal point of contention in advance of negotiations even being restarted.  No preconditions have been imposed on the Palestinians.

Not surprisingly, every Arab nation jumped on this condition giving PA President Abbas an excuse not to negotiate until he “pockets” an Israeli concession.  This has never before been a precondition of the PA to negotiations, which, by the way, doesn’t even control Gaza, so it isn’t clear Abbas can even speak for the Palestinians in peace talks.  Hamas, which does control Gaza, has made clear time and again, that they will never come to a peace table or recognize Israel.  Why don’t we believe them?  Why wouldn’t the president ask Abbas, Hamas, and their Arab allies, as a precondition to full negotiations, to agree that upon resolution of border issues, they will recognize Israel as a Jewish nation living side by side with its neighbors?

Instead the President has laid down a requirement that asks only the Israelis for a gesture of good faith.  Never mind that Israel has released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom engaged in violent acts of terrorism against it, eased West Bank roadblocks, and, in the greatest concession of all, dismantled settlements and withdrew unconditionally from Gaza (and southern Lebanon a few years earlier).  In return they were met with daily rocket bombardments from Gaza, war from Lebanon, and the continuous importation into those areas of weaponry to resume attacks.  Israel’s military invasion into Gaza in 2008 to eliminate this threat ended with condemnation by our craven European allies who were strangely silent during the daily rocket attacks.

As Charles Krauthammer noted in a recent column in the Washington Post:

“Under Obama, Netanyahu agreed to commit his center-right coalition to acceptance of a Palestinian state; took down dozens of anti-terror roadblocks and checkpoints to ease life for the Palestinians; assisted West Bank economic development to the point where its gross domestic product is growing at an astounding 7 percent a year; and agreed to the West Bank construction moratorium, a concession that Secretary Clinton herself called “’unprecedented.’”

What reciprocal gesture, let alone concession, has Abbas made during the Obama presidency?  Not one.

Indeed, long before the Biden incident, Abbas refused even to resume direct negotiations with Israel.  That’s why the Obama administration has to resort to “proximity talks” — a procedure that sets us back 35 years to before Anwar Sadat’s groundbreaking visit to Jerusalem.

And Clinton demands that Israel show its seriousness about peace?  Now that is an insult.

This brings us to another unyielding demand that Arab states have made of Israel — the so-called “right of return.”  In 1948 after the UN approved the partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel, Arab armies from all surrounding countries attacked the new nation.  Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled their homes, hoping to return once the Israelis had been swept into the sea, as promised by the invading Arab nations. This, as we know, did not come to pass and since then these Palestinians have been kept in refugee camps in the West Bank and Lebanon but not absorbed in any of the 22 Arab countries with 800 times the landmass of Israel.  Contrast this with the millions of displaced people all over Europe after World War II who were absorbed and resettled within three years.

The nations of the world, while crying crocodile tears for Palestinian refugees (keep in mind there has never been in recorded history a nation called Palestine) an estimated 800,000 to one million Jews were forced out of Arab countries after 1948 most of whom were absorbed by Israel.  But in every peace conference the Arabs have demanded the right of Palestinians to return to the land they abandoned in 1948 and a cash payment of compensation to boot.  The “World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries” estimates that the aggregate size of the real estate left by fleeing Jews was over 100,000 square kilometers (four times the size of Israel) and that the value of Jewish property then taken by the Arabs would be worth $300 billion today.  This fact is never mentioned in the mainstream press.  All we hear about is the plight of Palestinians still living in refugee camps.

And what about Jordan?  After the UN’s 1947 partition, the West Bank was captured by Jordan, which claimed sovereignty there in 1950 and extended citizenship to all its residents.

Jordan, however, severed its administrative ties to the West Bank and abandoned its claim of sovereignty in 1988.  Since that time, without a peep from the world press, Jordan has been systematically stripping citizenship from Palestinians rather than providing them shelter within its borders (land much larger than Israel) even though last year King Abdullah launched a housing initiative to build 120,000 housing units for low income Jordanians.

And while the Administration condemned Israel for its poorly timed announcement of building plans in Jerusalem during Vice President Biden’s visit (which the president knew was leaked by one of 38 parties comprising Israel’s Knesset legislature to try and embarrass Netanyahu) neither he nor the State Department has raised a word of protest over the ceremonies in which Mr. Abbas took part following the Biden visit to the West Bank honoring and glorifying Datal Mughrabi who was responsible for the 1978 massacre of 37 Israelis.

The Jerusalem Post said it well in its March 16, 2010 edition:

[President Obama’s] strategy of “engaging” Islamic rogue states has been disastrous.  The effort to prevent the nuclearization of Iran by appeasing the Iranian tyrants backfired with the ayatollahs literally mocking the US.  The response of Syrian President Bashar Assad to US groveling and the appointment of an ambassador to Damascus was to host a summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah and ridicule the US demand that he curtail his relationship with Iran.  President Obama did not consider this “insulting,” prompting the editor of the Lebanese The Daily Star to write that “the Obama administration these days provokes little confidence in its allies and even less fear in its adversaries.”

President Obama is traveling the road of appeasement to the Arabs.  He seems to believe that every grievance of Islam is attributable to the Arab-Israeli conflict.  This theory has been demonstrated to be wrong time and again.  Its adherents over the years have attributed everything from Soviet influence in the Mideast, the first Gulf War, the attacks on 9/11, the Ft. Hood attack, Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons … everything except Islam’s inability to build viable democratic nations which respect pluralism and human rights … to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  They believed, and continue to believe, that all Islamic grievances would vanish and Islam would truly be a religion of peace if only Israel would make one further concession after another.  This is a dangerous theory, for it only emboldens Arab states to demand more and more without giving anything in return.  How absurd this all is, as if peace would reign if only Israel stopped building apartments in its capital.

In short, Mr. Obama’s policy, previewed in the Cairo speech, amounts to nothing less than an effort to rehabilitate Islam’s image in the world.

Bret Stephens in a recent op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal summarized the absurdity of this thinking:

“There may well be good reasons for Israel to dismantle … [settlements] assuming that such an act is met with reciprocal and credible Palestinian commitments to suppress terrorism and religious incitement, and accept Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state.  But to imagine that the settlements account for even a fraction of the rage that has inhabited the radical Muslim mind … is fantasy.  The settlements are merely the latest politically convenient cover behind which lies a universe of hatred.”

The president’s approach to the Arab-Israeli question is consistent with his entire foreign policy, which can be summarized as follows:

* He makes nice to our sworn enemies.

* He dithers and delays taking any firm action against Iran, allowing their demented leaders further time to build nuclear weapons and a delivery system to threaten its neighbors and make good on its threat to wipe Israel off the map.  Nuclear weapons in Iran’s hands, said candidate Obama “would be a game changer.”  The momentum in this game has changed and not in our favor.

* He apologizes for our outrageous arrogance to the nations of Europe who owe their very existence to America.  Our allies like England, Poland, the Czech Republic, Columbia, Honduras and now Israel get slapped in the face.

* He claims America was embarrassed by Israel during Biden’s visit there.

If America was indeed embarrassed, it is nothing compared to what an embarrassment the policies of our president are to those who have been steadfast in their support of us.  They, and others are surely watching and wondering whether, if we treat our friends this way, what kind of a trusted ally will we be when push comes to shove.

[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans. Click here to read earlier articles.]

2008 campaign flier about then candidate Alan Grayson’s ties to Code Pink

Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood and Obama ally Jodie Evans with President Barack Obama, October 15, 2009.

Top Obama funder, terrorist supporter and Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans said in a radio interview last Friday night that Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) spoke with her earlier that day to express his support for Code Pink’s efforts to kidnap former adviser to President George W. Bush, Karl Rove.

Jodie Evans had made an attempt to handcuff and detain Rove that afternoon at a Las Vegas book signing appearance where Rove was promoting his recently released memoir, “Courage and Consequence: My Life As a Conservative in the Fight.”

This was the second attempt in recent weeks by Jodie Evans to kidnap Rove and hold him under the pretext of making a citizens arrest for what Code Pink calls war crimes (aka defending America in the war on terror.)

Though the previous attempt in Beverly Hills made national headlines, no mainstream media outlet reported about Jodie Evans’ deep ties to President Barack Obama, the Democrat party, terrorist groups and state sponsors of terrorism.

As Big Government reported months ago, Jodie Evans and Code Pink have enlisted the father of Islamic terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their jihadi allies in supporting their efforts to kidnap former President Bush, his wife Laura, Rove and other former Bush administration officials.

Jodie Evans spoke with guest host Brad Friedman on the Mike Malloy Show last Friday night from Las Vegas outside another Rove appearance. She said that after her attempt to handcuff Rove that afternoon, she got a call from Rep. Grayson. (Grayson is no stranger to Code Pink, his alliance with them was an issue in his 2008 campaign.)

“The funny thing is as soon as I finished doing that action I got a call from Congressman Alan Grayson from Florida. And I told him what I had just done (attempted to kidnap Karl Rove).

He is just horrified by the fact that we can’t hold them accountable. That if we don’t hold these guys accountable it will get repeated again. And not only that, if they’re not held accountable then why does somebody else think they need to follow the law because nobody gets held accountable.

“I said, “So why don’t you call for him to be subpoenaed and come talk about his lies in Congress?”

“He said, “Well, Pelosi won’t let me do it. She says, she won’t put anything out that has anything to do with accountability.”

“And I said, “Isn’t that horrible?”

“And he said, “Yes. That’s why we appreciate Code Pink for constantly saying the emperor has no clothes.”

Jodie Evans told Friedman that her plan is to handcuff Rove and then have other Code Pink supporters and audience members hold Rove until a police officer arrives to formally take Rove into custody. Jodie Evans claims she is operating under state laws, however the FBI should be arresting Jodie Evans for attempted kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap, as well as aiding terrorists.

Last month, Big Government reported on the ties between Jodie Evans, Code Pink and the Democrat party. Jodie Evans has been a Democrat activist for decades. She managed former California Governor Jerry Brown’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Jodie Evans spoke to the Democrats’ national convention in 1992. Her speech can be seen here on YouTube.

Rep. Grayson made headlines last week for crashing a meeting of Orange County, Florida, Republicans to complain that opposition activists were attending Democrat meetings to stay informed of their plans.

[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans. Click here to read earlier articles.]

2008 campaign flier about then candidate Alan Grayson’s ties to Code Pink

Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood and Obama ally Jodie Evans with President Barack Obama, October 15, 2009.

Top Obama funder, terrorist supporter and Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans said in a radio interview last Friday night that Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) spoke with her earlier that day to express his support for Code Pink’s efforts to kidnap former adviser to President George W. Bush, Karl Rove.

Jodie Evans had made an attempt to handcuff and detain Rove that afternoon at a Las Vegas book signing appearance where Rove was promoting his recently released memoir, “Courage and Consequence: My Life As a Conservative in the Fight.”

This was the second attempt in recent weeks by Jodie Evans to kidnap Rove and hold him under the pretext of making a citizens arrest for what Code Pink calls war crimes (aka defending America in the war on terror.)

Though the previous attempt in Beverly Hills made national headlines, no mainstream media outlet reported about Jodie Evans’ deep ties to President Barack Obama, the Democrat party, terrorist groups and state sponsors of terrorism.

As Big Government reported months ago, Jodie Evans and Code Pink have enlisted the father of Islamic terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood, and their jihadi allies in supporting their efforts to kidnap former President Bush, his wife Laura, Rove and other former Bush administration officials.

Jodie Evans spoke with guest host Brad Friedman on the Mike Malloy Show last Friday night from Las Vegas outside another Rove appearance. She said that after her attempt to handcuff Rove that afternoon, she got a call from Rep. Grayson. (Grayson is no stranger to Code Pink, his alliance with them was an issue in his 2008 campaign.)

“The funny thing is as soon as I finished doing that action I got a call from Congressman Alan Grayson from Florida. And I told him what I had just done (attempted to kidnap Karl Rove).

He is just horrified by the fact that we can’t hold them accountable. That if we don’t hold these guys accountable it will get repeated again. And not only that, if they’re not held accountable then why does somebody else think they need to follow the law because nobody gets held accountable.

“I said, “So why don’t you call for him to be subpoenaed and come talk about his lies in Congress?”

“He said, “Well, Pelosi won’t let me do it. She says, she won’t put anything out that has anything to do with accountability.”

“And I said, “Isn’t that horrible?”

“And he said, “Yes. That’s why we appreciate Code Pink for constantly saying the emperor has no clothes.”

Jodie Evans told Friedman that her plan is to handcuff Rove and then have other Code Pink supporters and audience members hold Rove until a police officer arrives to formally take Rove into custody. Jodie Evans claims she is operating under state laws, however the FBI should be arresting Jodie Evans for attempted kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap, as well as aiding terrorists.

Last month, Big Government reported on the ties between Jodie Evans, Code Pink and the Democrat party. Jodie Evans has been a Democrat activist for decades. She managed former California Governor Jerry Brown’s 1992 presidential campaign.

Jodie Evans spoke to the Democrats’ national convention in 1992. Her speech can be seen here on YouTube.

Rep. Grayson made headlines last week for crashing a meeting of Orange County, Florida, Republicans to complain that opposition activists were attending Democrat meetings to stay informed of their plans.

President Obama is convening a Global Nuclear Security Summit in Washington beginning on Monday. “The purpose… would be to achieve the highest levels of nuclear security, which the president believes is essential for enhanced international security and for the peaceful development and the global expansion of nuclear energy…” (italics mine)

How would the peaceful development and the global expansion of nuclear energy be accomplished? By Americans supplying enriched uranium to other countries.

Sound far-fetched? Not if President Obama intends for American to bankroll an international nuclear fuel bank to dissuade countries from building their own uranium enrichment facilities.

We know that the creation of an “international nuclear fuel bank” is a distinct possibility on President Obama’s agenda by reviewing legislation he sponsored and introduced in the Senate during his tenure as a U.S. Senator. According to S. 1977, The Nuclear Weapons Threat Reduction Act of 2007, Obama’s policy would “provide for sustained United States leadership in a cooperative global effort to prevent nuclear terrorism, reduce global nuclear arsenals, stop the spread of nuclear weapons and related material and technology, and support the responsible and peaceful use of nuclear technology.” (Italics mine) Sound familiar?

According to Obama’s S. 1977, the “responsible and peaceful use of nuclear technology” is accomplished by creating an “international fuel bank” at an opening cost of “$50 million to American taxpayers to “support the creation of a low enriched uranium reserve… that would help guarantee the availability of fuel for commercial nuclear reactors.” The reason why Americans would fund enriched uranium handouts to other countries is because Obama presumes his “international fuel bank can play an important role in dissuading countries from building their own uranium enrichment facilities.” This policy, the President evidentially believes in, would serve as an important deterrent.

Who would administer this international nuclear fuel bank? It would not be the United States but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which is part of the United Nations that “works to promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies.”

According to published reports some of the countries that have overtly or inadvertently expressed interest in developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes includes: Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Saudi Arabia has denied having any nuclear energy intentions. Global expansion of nuclear energy would ostensibly be used for powering water desalination plants, or to satisfy growing energy demands, but quietly and significantly, with the growing threat of a nuclear Iran in the region, the reasons may ultimately be for defense purposes.

Critics of what has been described as “enriched uranium diplomacy” argue that the expansion of the nuclear energy industry could inadvertently lead to state proliferation. Others contend that it is too risky to engage in with some countries; especially those with minimal regulatory capabilities or histories that point to nuclear materials and technology smuggling.

To ostensibly safeguard against those dangerous risks, Obama would authorize additional funding for the “IAEA’s Department of Safeguards to improve its ability to conduct effective inspections.” The world has witnessed the IAEA’s effectiveness in dealing with Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs.

Obama would also authorize “to be appropriated to the Secretary of Energy $15,000,000 for fiscal year 2008 and $10,000,000 for fiscal years 2009 through 2012, in addition… establish a national technical forensics program to develop the best practicable technologies and procedures for determining the origin of nuclear materials, whether seized while still intact or collected after the detonation of a nuclear bomb (emphasis mine).

Read Obama’s Nuclear Weapons Threat Reduction Act here.

Last week President Obama signed a new START agreement with Russia’s President Dmitri Medvedev that shook up America’s nuclear disarmament policy. Under this new treaty, the United States and Russia have mutually agreed to reduce the number of warheads in their respective arsenals. However, only the United States has promised to freeze its technology. In doing so, the Obama Administration has opened the door for Russia to modernize its way to nuclear dominance. This week it looks like President Obama will shake up America’s nuclear disarmament policy again.

Cross-posted at marinkapeschmann.com.

The Washington think tank New America Foundation has been reporting on drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq for quite some time and its tally of kills by U.S. drones reveals an interesting thing. It shows that drone kills under President Obama are far and away higher than those under Bush.

Reliable numbers of those killed by U.S. drones are obviously hard to come by. Strikes are deep in unfriendly territory and subject to obfuscation by both a U.S. government that isn’t too keen on reporting kills as well as its enemies that try to downplay the strikes in order to discredit their effectiveness. Because of this the NAF reports a range between which the truth may lie.

For instance, in these first few months of 2010 NAF reports that so far between 141 and 240 people have been killed by U.S. predator drones. This includes “collateral damage” as well as the deaths of actual terrorists.

That is a pretty wide span, to be sure. But if we choose some middle point between the NAF’s estimates of predator drone kills we can see that during Obama’s year in office drone kills have gone up precipitously.

Between 2009 and today a middling estimate of drone kills clocks in at 692. However, according to the NAF the kills tallied by U.S. drones during the Bush years — all of the Bush years — is about 392.

The kills during this one year of Obama’s term in office seem to have doubled compared to the number during the Bush years. I’ll say that again: in just one year Obama has doubled Bush’s drone kill rate.

This comes at the same time that the Obama administration has taken the steps to justify its use of drones by laying out its legal rationale for the world to see.

Certainly the use of predator drones has really done some major damage to the Taliban and its al Qaeda pals in Pakistan and Afghanistan so Obama deserves a lot of credit for ramping up the predator program.

But the big question I have here is where is the anti-war rabble on this? With drone kills doubling and with the number of “collateral damage” in civilian deaths increasing at a commensurate rate the anti-war crowd is mysteriously silent on Obama’s great increase in drone missions.

There was so much heat on Bush over his drone usage that in 2006 his administration declined to use them during a large Taliban funereal at which dozens of high value targets were in attendance. Obama, on the other hand, showed no such qualms by attacking a Taliban funeral in 2009 during which some 65 or so were killed, terrorist and innocents alike.

Interestingly, even as Obama wildly increases his use of the predator drones the American left is bandying about footage from an Apache helicopter attack from July 2007 12th in an Iraqi suburb of Baghdad. The footage supposedly shows the killing of a about a dozen insurgents and others.

The left is working itself up into a frenzy over this so-called “collateral murder.” But tellingly their ire is raised by an action from 2007, obviously authorized during bush’s term. But we see no such exposes from 2009 or 2010 when such incidents have doubled under Obama.

So, where is the left to excoriate Obama over his increased drone attacks? Do people killed by Obama somehow not count? Or, perhaps these targets are happy for such “change”? Or more likely, isn’t it that the anti-war left is hypocritical?

Is it time to eliminate America’s large naval fleet?

Did Donald Rumsfeld get it right with an emphasis on small, fast, and flexible?

Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla joins Victor Davis Hanson to discuss these questions and more in the latest episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson.

They explore the importance of networks in war-making and how they make enemies elusive, the prolonged failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Pentagon’s refusal to continue Rumsfeld’s military strategy and finally the current military landscape and what it means for policy regarding Iran.

Here is the full episode:

Or if you’re in a hurry, check out this segment on Iran.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), claims to be “America’s largest Islamic civil liberties group.”  But that’s a myth.  As we reported here on BigGovernment.com last fall, only 1% of CAIR’s latest reported revenues actually came from Muslim American members.

Meanwhile foreign donors have given CAIR over $6,000,000 in cash and loans, and over $50,000,000 in pledges.  That’s 1% from American members; tens of millions from Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.  Shouldn’t there be a law to let the American public know the truth about CAIR and their foreign donors? Of course, and there is one.  CAIR just doesn’t follow it.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), enacted just before World War Two, still requires foreign agents spreading propaganda to register so Americans can know what they are up to.  Back then the problem was foreign agents working for the Nazis.  Today the problem is foreign agents like CAIR, defending Jihadists in the media and pushing Muslim Brotherhood values in America.

The Center for Security Policy recently unveiled a unique new tool to expose CAIR as a foreign agent of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and several of its member states.  The CAIR Observatory website (http://www.cairobservatory.org) presents comprehensive open-source evidence and analysis alleging that CAIR has acted as a foreign agent on behalf of Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait.

The centerpiece of the website is the report “CAIR and the Foreign Agents Registration Act,” which details the foreign funding, foreign direction and domestic political influence operations of CAIR in the United States.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) requires any agent of a foreign principal — not just foreign governments but foreign political parties, corporations, non-governmental organizations and even individuals — to register with the U.S. Department of Justice as a foreign agent.

The report documents these CAIR activities as a foreign agent:

• CAIR received at least $2,192,203 in Contributions, Income and Money from foreign principals in the form of 10 distinct transactions
• CAIR received a $2,106,251 mortgage loan from a foreign principal for their Washington, D.C. headquarters
• CAIR secured the promise of at least $54,500,000 in pledges from foreign principals
• CAIR met and coordinated with foreign principals on at least 30 occasions
• CAIR engaged in at least 50 political influence operations on behalf of foreign principals in the United States

And the Center for Security Policy has additional evidence that cannot be made public at this time documenting another $2.4 million in foreign donations and loans given to CAIR since 2000.

The goal of the CAIR Observatory website (http://www.cairobservatory.org/) is to build a model for researching and compiling evidence of illegal behavior by Muslim Brotherhood front organizations, with a focus on organizations operating in the United States as unregistered foreign agents for the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and its member states.  The website’s name — “CAIR Observatory” — is a direct counter to the so-called “Islamophobia Observatory” maintained by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The Jeddah, Saudi Arabia-based OIC has been a contributor to CAIR, and the two have a history of coordinated meetings, tactics and goals.

CAIRObservatory.org will regularly feature new reports and short documentaries spotlighting specific examples of CAIR’s FARA violations, and will be frequently updated with new evidence on CAIR’s ongoing activities as a currently unregistered foreign agent.

Starting next week we’ll begin to expose specific CAIR political operations targeting the U.S. Congress.

For more information contact CAIRObservatory.org Editor Adam Savit (savit@securefreedom.org).

On the campaign trail, now President Obama regularly excoriated lobbyists. He said he’d make the government “open and transparent” and said he’d make it hard for lobbyists to “curry favor” with his administration “based on how much they can spend on a fancy dinner.” Once elected, John Podesta, a member of his transition team, said that Obama would be implementing the “strictest ethics rules ever applied” to those scoundrel lobbyists. In his 2009 State of the Union address Obama puffed up his chest, proud of himself that he “excluded lobbyists” from important jobs in his administration.

With all that bombast and populist wind from Obama and his cohorts, then, one would expect to see a dearth of lobbyists in important positions in Obama’s Washington. One’s expectation, however, would easily be dashed by the truth.

Remember the rarefied air of Obama’s campaign for president? Wanna see some, shall we say, “broken promises”?

Transcript of Obama campaign appearance: (My bold for emphasis)

I’ll also institute an absolute gift ban so that no registered lobbyist can curry favor with members of my administration based on how much they can spend on a fancy dinner. I’ll make our government open and transparent so that anyone can ensure that our business is the people’s business. Justice Louis Brandeis once said “Sunlight is the greatest disinfectant,” and as president I am going to make it impossible for congressmen or lobbyists to slip pork barrel projects or corporate welfare into laws when no one’s looking because when I’m president meetings where laws are written will be more open to the public… no more secrecy, that’s a commitment I make to you as president. No more secrecy!

And, when there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look on-line and find out what’s in it before I sign it so that you know what your government’s doing. When there are meetings between lobbyists and a government agency we’ll put as many as pos… as many of those meetings as possible on-line for every American to watch. When there’s a tax bill being debated in Congress you will now the names of the corporations that would benefit and how much money they would get. And we will put every corporate tax break and every pork barrel project on-line for every American to see, you will know who asked for them and you can decide whether your representative is actually representing you!

Oh, the dreamy dream of hope-n-change. It’s what you voted for, America. So did we get it?

Not even close.

In fact, at least 50 some lobbyists have won the Obama lottery and found themselves landing plumb jobs in the Obama administration. All sorts of Obama’s favorite special interests have found their lobbyists suddenly riding the gravy train. From Big Agriculture, to Big Financial and Big Banking, to Trial Lawyers, to Military, Communications, and Big Bio, Obama’s buddies have lined up around the block to get his favor and found the honey pot well supplied.

Alarmingly, though, the biggest winners seem to be lobbyists from ideologically left-wing think tanks and issue advocacy groups.

Here are some of the known lobbyists that have hit the Obama jackpot:

Left-Wing Organizations

Barnes, Melody: ACLU; Center for Reproductive Rights
Jacquelin: NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Butts, Cassandra: Center for American Progress
Coven, Martha: Center on Budget & Policy Priorities
Crowley, Phillip J: Center for American Progress
Frye, Jocelyn: Nat’l Partnership for Women & Families
Corr, William: Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
McDonough, Dennis: Center for American Progress
Munoz, Cecilia: National Council of La Raza
Perciasepe, Robert: National Audubon Society
Rundlet, Peter: Center for American Progress
Stoner, Nancy: Natural Resources Defense Council
Trasvina, John: Mexican American Legal Defense Fund
Stein, Eric: Center for Responsible Lending
Douglas, Derek: Center for American Progress

Banking/Insurance/Financial
Beliveau, Emmett: PriceWaterhouseCoopers; Worldwide Medical Technologies; Shaw Group
Donilon, Thomas: Fannie Mae
Klain, Ron: Time Warner; Fannie Mae
Patterson, Mark: Goldman Sachs
Turton, Dan: Freddie Mac; Visa
Singiser, Dana: Insurance
Wilkins, William J.: Swiss Bankers Association
Sutphen, Mona: Angliss Int’l

Biotech/Military/Energy
Hayes, David: Sempra Energy; San Diego Gas & Electric; General Cigar Holdings
Eric L. Hirschhorn: Lockheed Martin; Sun Chemicals
Hoffman, Alan: RAND Corporation, Unocal
Holder, Eric: Global Crossing; Large Scale Biology Corporation
Lynn, William J.: Raytheon
Strickland, Thomas: Amgen

Technology/Internet/ Communications
Harris, Scott: Microsoft; Cisco; Dell; Sprint
Kennedy, Sean: AT&T
Marantis, Demetrios J.: Lucent Technologies
Punke, Michael: Time Warner
Sapiro, Miriam: VeriSign

Union Lobbyists
Gaspard, Patrick: American Federation of Teachers
Liebowitz, Jon: Motion Picture Association of America
Vilsack, Thomas: National Education Association

Big Agriculture
Harden, Krysta: Gordley Associates
Isi Siddiqui: CropLife America
Taylor, Michael: Monsanto

Medicine/Hospitals/Big Pharma
Sher, Susan: University of Chicago Hospitals
Sussman, Robert M.: Amphastar Pharmaceuticals, Navistar, Business Roundtable

Trial Lawyers
Sebelius, Kathleen: Kansas Trial Lawyers Association
Strautmanis, Michael: Association of Trial Lawyers of America

Hollywood/Entertainment
Litt, Robert: Recording Industry Association of America

Car Makers
Varney, Christine: Hogan & Hartson

Others
Panetta, Leon: Seismic Safety Coalition
Perrelli, Thomas J.: American Survivors of 8/7/98 Bombings of Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania
Poneman, Daniel: Payless Shoe Source
Verma, Richard: Cigna; National Association of Convenience Stores; U.S.-India Business Council

Timothy P. Carney of the Washington Examiner has been Keeping a list of the lobbyists that have won the Obama Lottery and he has some rich details of from which firms they’ve come and what clients were represented.

So much for being post partisan, non-ideological, transparent…. all those bight and shiny hope-n-changie sort of things Obama told us all he’d force Washington to observe.

Looks to me like it is business as usual with Obama’s Washington.

Nothing in this world is certain, except death and taxes.  And war.  At least according to Victor Davis Hanson.

In VDH’s first 2010 appearance on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, he shares the thesis of his latest book with us, which is that war is the father of us all.

The issues discussed are varied.  Everything from the American style of war and its ineffectiveness in Iraq, George W. Bush’s missed opportunity to gain leftist support, and why Obama gets away with continuing Bush’s military strategy.

Check out this video below for highlights, or watch the full episode here.

[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans. Click here to read earlier articles.]

Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood and Obama ally Jodie Evans with President Barack Obama, October 15, 2009.

Top Obama funder, terrorist supporter and Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans assaulted former President George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove Monday evening at a Beverly Hills appearance by Rove to promote his new book, “Courage and Consequence: My Life As a Conservative in the Fight.”

Jodie Evans approached Rove while he was speaking to an audience at the Saban Theater and announced she was making a “citizen’s arrest” as she attempted to place metal handcuffs on him.

Video by KCAL-TV shows Rove pushing Jodie Evans away as she tries to cuff him. The audio picks up Rove saying to Jodie Evans, “No, no, no I didn’t say go ahead. I looked at…You get away!

Two men intervened and pulled Jodie Evans away from Rove.

Jodie Evans can be heard yelling at Rove, “Look what you did! You outed a CIA officer! You lied to take us to war! You ruined a country! Totally ruined a country!”

Other Code Pink members continued to harass Rove througout his presentation, forcing him to cut short his talk and cancel a booksigning for the guests who paid $25 or $40 (with or without Rove’s book) to hear him speak at the Saban Theater.

Jodie Evans was a bundler, donor and an early fundraiser host for Barack Obama. She has maintained ties to Obama and his administration since taking power in January 2009 with high level briefings, meetings at the White House and at fundraisers.

Jodie Evans also maintains ties to terrorist groups and state sponsors of terrorism, even going so far as soliciting the Muslim Brotherhood and their jihadi supporters to “join us in cleansing our country” by helping Code Pink kidnap former President Bush and other Bush administration officials, including Rove.

Jodie Evans worked with Saddam Hussein before Iraq’s liberation and has said in recent years that she wishes Saddam were still in power. Jodie Evans also works with Hamas and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to name just a few of her terrorist allies.

You think Obama has been a nightmare? You ain’t seen nothing yet. That was just the preview.

American business, the motor of the global economy, was dealt a deathblow by the Marxist putsch that the Democrat Party delivered in the form of the healthcare bill. Why wasn’t this made public before the vote? The numbers are staggering. It was revealed Friday that AT&T, the largest telephone company in the country, will take a one-billion-dollar hit in the current quarter as a result of this economic attack on America. The farm-equipment company Deere is looking at $150 million in new healthcare-related charges this quarter, and Caterpillar is facing  $100 million.

Who do you think will pay for this? We will pay. According to Reuters, “Verizon Communications, the second biggest U.S. phone company, told employees that tax burdens under the new law would likely filter down to employees.” Business is not something in the abstract, or the evil force the leftists and the communists deceptively smear it to be — business is work, business is people, it is jobs, it is production. When business pays, we pay. Jobs pay. Consumers pay.

And we will pay for more than that as well. Have you seen the commercials yet for people who have maxed out their credit cards, and have loans over ten thousand that they can’t pay back, urging them to apply for stimulus dollars? Are you one of those who played by the rules, worked hard, did the right thing? If so, you’re screwed. The man has you and your wallet and your kids’ wallet by the throat. Welcome to the era of the degenerate: they will be sucking your blood and your children’s blood and your children’s children’s blood for decades to come, or however long America lasts.

Notice how Obama bad news always drops on Friday nights. But the Democrats will not forever be able to keep quiet the reality and the consequences of Obama rule.

Meanwhile, as the health care putsch continues, the world goes to hell in handbasket. The sinking of the South Korean warship near the North Korean border Friday was almost certainly an act of war, even as South Korean officials played down that possibility. Nonetheless, it reeks of the North Koreans. North Korea never would have pulled something like this under Bush. Never. But they know Obama will do nothing and that South Korea is on her own. Barack Hussein Obama ain’t Harry S Truman.

With Obama at the helm, expect hell to break loose. Iranian nukes? Yawn. Pakistan jihadis with nukes? Crickets chirping. Abandonment of Israel? Check! Socializing healthcare? Job 1!

And as they take over seventeen percent of the American economy, how cocky the Democrats are — full of contempt for the hard-working American. In order to fund Obama’s counter-insurgency in America, the enemy must be cut off of supplies, succor and support. And who is the enemy? He is us. The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has ordered the closing of numerous fast-food outlets on bases. Command Sgt. Maj. Michael T. Hall explained that “some of the morale, welfare and recreation facilities throughout Afghanistan” for troops would be cut: “In the coming weeks and months, concessions such as Orange Julius, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Dairy Queen and Military Car Sales will close their doors.”

Trillions on the backs of our kids, but no cheezboigers for the troops. But there is plenty of money for Kobe steaks for King O. Date nights in Manhattan with Michelle for a million. $600 sneakers for her as well. And remember that taxpayers footed the $101,000 bill for in-flight parties on Air Force jets arranged by Nancy Pelosi: according to journalist Bob Unruh at WorldNetDaily, “it reads like a dream order for some wild frat party: Maker’s Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Crème, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey … and Corona beer.”

This is so off the charts. There is no decency on the left. They are hypocrites who are destroying American businesses and stealing from hard-working, struggling Americans.

Could the parties be more different, the differences more stark? Say what you will about the Republicans, but they were disciplined. The Democrats are increasingly fascist in their tactics, statist in their policy, anti-Israel, anti-America, and anti-military. The Republicans are pro-small government, pro-Israel, pro-individual rights, pro-business, pro-America.

I don’t know how any clear-thinking, rational, decent human being could vote in November 2010 for the corrupt statist collectivists.

When the dust has settled, partisan rancor has gone the way of all flesh, and the history of our times gets written sine ira et studio, what will observers say about developments in February and March, 2010. No one really knows, but I will hazard the following guess:

In those days, there was a clock ticking in the background, but no one in Washington seemed to pay it any heed. Nancy Pelosi was in her counting house counting all the votes. Steny Hoyer was exploring whether one could somehow bend the rules so that his colleagues could pass a controversial bill while telling their constituents that they had nothing to do with it. Bart Stupak, caught between the dictates of religious faith and political allegiance, was pondering when and how to sacrifice the former to the latter. And President Barack Obama issued threats to members of his own party in the House of Representatives. All of this was done in pursuit of passing into law a profoundly unpopular bill that promised to bankrupt the country, drive prospective physicians out of the profession, deprive the elderly of Medicare benefits they had paid for long ago, and reduce the quality of medical care for all but those comfortably ensconced within what came to be called the American nomenklatura. There was also material for burlesque. After being accused of sexually harassing the fellows on his staff, one Democratic Congressman attacked the White House Chief of Staff, calling him a “son of the devil’s spawn” and describing in arresting terms the manner in which the man practiced in the shower the ballet steps learned in his days as a bagman for the Daley machine in Chicago. It would have all been quite comic had there not been that clock in the background steadily ticking . . . in a country far away of which the Americans knew little or nothing.

There were, to be sure, other events. In a coordinated effort directed by the President, Joe Biden picked a quarrel with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Hillary Clinton vented her spleen against the Israeli government for announcing that it intended in a modest manner to increase the size of a long-established, already sizable, strategically located settlement on the outskirts of Jerusalem; Robert Gibbs snarled and sneered and ran his mouth on a subject about which he knew little or nothing and cared even less; and the President met with the Israeli Prime Minister in circumstances designed to broadcast his disdain to the Arab world. All of this was done with an eye to bringing down a democratically-elected Israeli government and setting the stage for a Middle East settlement between Israel and a Palestinian leader who lacked firm Palestinian support, who would have fallen from power when Hamas seized the Gaza strip had the Israelis not used their checkpoints on the West Bank to thwart Hamas’ operations there, and who was in no position to negotiate any sort of lasting agreement with anyone about anything at all. This, too, would have been a matter of comic relief had that infernal clock not gone on ticking . . . in distant Teheran.

Barack Obama appeared to think that he would be remembered and celebrated as the architect of an historic healthcare reform, and he seemed to have persuaded nearly everyone in his party that this was so. He seemed also to have entertained an expectation that it would fall to him to preside over a comprehensive Middle East settlement. Neither was destined to happen. By hook or by crook, the Democrats managed to shove the healthcare bill through the House, but it turned out to be nothing more than a last-ditch, suicide mission on the part of a Progressive coalition on its last legs. And the Obama administration’s inept maneuvers made the Middle East settlement that the Americans had long sought all the more elusive.

Most of what went on in those years in Washington – apart from the buffoonery – was unremarkable. If President Obama is remembered at all, it is because it was on his watch that the fascist dictatorship in Iran got nuclear weapons. In comparative perspective, nothing else that he did or did not do really mattered at all.

Such is the verdict that, I think, will be rendered – for our time resembles an earlier epoch about which a similar verdict has already been reached. Who remembers the social programs adopted in England and France between 1933 and 1936? It was with them, however, that Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin, Pierre Laval, Leon Blum, and the like were largely preoccupied. It was as if, when the ship of state came within sight of a political iceberg, its officers and crew turned to rearranging the deck chairs on what was for them a functional equivalent of the Titanic.

In that earlier period, Europe was deep in the Great Depression; class strife loomed large; and the French, in particular, suffered from a stalemate between the right and the left. Almost no one had the stomach to contemplate a renewal of war. Their experience in the trenches during the First World War had encouraged the English and the French to embrace pacifism, and Ramsay MacDonald, prime minister of Britain in 1933, was not alone in hoping that Nazi Germany could be appeased.

Of course, attempts were made to contain Germany. Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Rumania negotiated the Little Entente Pact of Consolidation. Austria, Hungary, and Italy signed the Rome Protocols. The Soviet Union appointed a Jew as foreign minister, joined the League of Nations, and signed mutual assistance treaties with Czechoslovakia and France. The British, the French, and the Italians formed the Stresa Front.

These gestures were, however, all half-hearted. At no time did anyone make serious military preparations, and Adolf Hitler found it easy to pick apart these nascent alliances. Poland signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in January 1934; Britain signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in June, 1935, shortly after joining the Stresa Front; and Benito Mussolini, who had massed troops at the Brenner Pass after Hitler had engineered the assassination of the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss on 25 July 1934, opted in the end to attempt to play the two sides against one another; and, when it became clear which was the stronger and the more resolute, he jettisoned the Rome Protocols and lined up with his fellow fascists. It was not hard for Il Duce, as he called himself, to read the handwriting on the wall – for when Germany’s like-named Fűhrer remilitarized the Rhineland in early March, 1936, the British and the French did nothing more than register pro-forma diplomatic protests.

The British and the French at that time had more excuse then than we can claim today. They felt only revulsion when they contemplated the carnage of World War I, and the former had long since become persuaded that Germany’s treatment in the Versailles Treaty was unjust. The combination of a sense of guilt with terror can all too easily paralyze a people. None of this, however, can justify their resolutely looking the other way when Hitler repudiated the central terms of the Locarno Pact, remilitarized the Rhineland, and laid the groundwork for a decisive shift in the balance of power on the continent of Europe. To anticipate what was to come, one had only to read Mein Kampf.

But, of course, no one at the time wanted to read Hitler’s magnum opus and think about the unthinkable. It was far less distressing to suppose that the German leader could not have really meant what he had written ten years before. In any case, we are in no position to level criticism today. We have not suffered carnage on the scale that the British and the French did in World War I. In the course of the Cold War, we hardly suffered at all. And there is no reason whatsoever for us to feel any guilt with regard to our conduct during or in the aftermath of that struggle. The Cold War was America’s finest hour. In human history, there has never been a sustained confrontation between two great hegemonic powers lasting half a century in which, relative to the size of the existing populations, there was less collateral damage inflicted by the victorious power.

Of course, when in a tizzy, one can always punt. That is what the Europeans did in the early 1930s, and that is what we with less justification have repeatedly done in the last few years. What other purpose does the United Nations these days serve? It is the perfect place in which to bury troublesome questions that one does not want to face. By referring matters of moment to it, as our European allies have so frequently shown, one can stake out the moral high ground and leave everyone with a comforting sense that something is being done without having to do anything substantive oneself. On the Iranian nuclear program, we have had report after report, and the Security Council has passed resolution after resolution. All that happens is that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plays for time, alternately pretending to negotiate and then threatening his Arab neighbors, the state of Israel, Europe, and the United States – all the while thumbing his nose with aplomb at everyone concerned.

Some will say that Iran is not Germany, that it is in no way as formidable as German once was – and, of course, they are right. But this only makes our inaction less excusable – for if an Iran lacking nuclear weapons is not especially formidable, one cannot say the same about an Iran equipped with long-range missiles and brandishing nuclear weapons. One could, of course, point to the Iranian capacity to interfere with the transport of oil in the Persian Gulf; one could allude to the damage that Hezbollah could do; and one could refer to the capacity of the Iranian regime to unleash terrorist cells throughout the world. But if one were to lay emphasis on the Iranian capacity to project power and disrupt the world economy in the present circumstances, what would one be saying about Ahmadinejad’s ability to do both once his compatriots have equipped themselves with nuclear weapons and the systems necessary for their delivery?

There are two brute facts that are pertinent. First, like Hitler’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, Ahmadinejad’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles would profoundly alter the balance of power. Is there anyone who seriously thinks that, when it had a relatively free hand, the Islamic Republic of Iran would conduct its affairs in the manner of a saturated power? In assessing the significance of what is about to take place, one must keep in mind the strategic importance of the Persian Gulf and just how large a percentage of the oil that fuels the world economy is exported through that narrow body of water.

The second brute fact is no less easy to discern: In matters such as the one that concerns us here, diplomacy is bound to be ineffectual if it is not backed by a credible threat that, if one’s requests are refused, one will resort to force.

Think about what it means that, in circumstances as dire as those we now face, our leaders are devoting their energy to ramming a highly unpopular healthcare bill down our throats and to attacking a democratically elected government for announcing a modest increase in the size of a strategically located settlement. As Obama, Pelosi, Hoyer, Emanuel, Clinton, and Gibbs waste their energy on comparatively inconsequential matters, the clock in Teheran merrily ticks on – and for us time will soon, by all reports, be running out.

The United States Air Force was handed good news on March 23^rd when the World Trade Organization made its final ruling on a complaint brought by the United States Government.  It found that $178B in launch aid given to France-based EADS/Airbus for its family of jetliners was improper and illegal.

Further, the WTO determined that $5B given specifically to provide EADS with an unfair advantage over America’s Boeing to build new U.S. aerial refueling tankers broke trade laws – and the spirit of legal and fair international competition.

That the subsidies were illegal or that EADS/Airbus cheats to win contracts comes as no surprise to trade watchers.  The ruling that they broke laws and put an American company at an unfair disadvantage should remove any obstacles for the Pentagon to move forward immediately with a contract for these much-needed flying gas stations.

Emphasis, “should.”

In a House Budget Committee meeting on March 24^th, Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated,  “My lawyers tell me that the WTO case gives us no basis on which to make a judgment.”

His lawyers?  What about his Airmen?  Their lives depend on an aging tanker fleet, remarkably reliable since Eisenhower was President, but now deserving of retirement and a gold watch to commemorate its extraordinary service.

For the Secretary of Defense to make such a statement is astounding.  If this case does not provide him with a basis for judgment, what would?

At a time when American manufacturing employment is low and the downline transfer of sensitive technology is high, the ruling is a welcome vindication for the U.S.

Nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed and 5.5 manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000.  As line workers go, so do managers, engineers and computer technology experts.  Our domestic commercial airline business has not escaped unscathed from the current economic downturn and our military supply chain is suffering due to domestic sourcing challenges.

Countries like Venezuela and Iran – who have relationships with EADS/Airbus – should not be de facto recipients of emerging U.S. technology.  EADS/Airbus has been mired in bribery, corruption and espionage investigations for years.  That it has taken part in Iranian air shows should give anyone pause.

The tanker bidding wars have lasted too long. Most recently, EADS/Airbus submitted a version of its A330 to replace the trusty Boeing KC-135s.  Critics panned the French plane for being too large and cumbersome to operate efficiently in the air and on the ground in military operations.

But after political interference from EADS supporters in Congress, its bid was accepted — then overturned amid accusations of improprieties.   The WTO ruling has crystallized the illegal reality of EADS’ bid.

In March, EADS minority American partner, Northrop Grumman, did the smart thing and withdrew from the partnership.  In response, EADS issued the statement, “We acknowledge support from France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain in promoting transatlantic defense cooperation…”

Publicly thanking the countries whose illegal subsidies were likely the underpinning of the pullout of your minority American partner seemed an arrogant, yet oddly French approach.

EADS is now considering bidding for the tanker on its own. It requested an extension from the Pentagon, which Mr. Gates has not ruled out.

Why Mr. Gates does not believe a case brought to the world body – and won  - by one branch of the U.S. Government does not bind his branch of the U.S. Government is incomprehensible and shows little regard for the danger that further political dilly-dallying will pose to our warfighters.

There is no value in further delaying production to accommodate a foreign company that poses a security risk, has no remorse for cheating on trade agreements, and is peddling an illegally subsidized plane that does not add jobs to the U.S. economy.  American airmen, U.S. manufacturers and taxpayers deserve far better.

Soon, my USAF ROTC son will be somewhere in the world proudly wearing the blue uniform and protecting the security of our nation.  His survivability could depend on a refueling tanker.  Americans will always demand the best for him, and for every other mother’s child who volunteers for harm’s way.

Every day of delay puts patriots in the Air Force and Air National Guard at risk.   Mr. Gates may find this acceptable, but the rest of us should not.

A member of the terrorist support group Code Pink assaults then Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice at a Congressional hearing, Oct. 24, 2007. AP Photo by Charles Dharapak

Code Pink co-founder and Democrat activist Jodie Evans and President Barack Obama, Oct. 15, 2009.

[Note: This is the latest segment in an ongoing series about Code Pink and its co-founder Jodie Evans. Click here to read earlier articles.]

House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn (SC)  recently accused Republicans of “aiding and abetting terrorism” because of their support for the Tea Party movement. With all due respect, Rep. Clyburn needs to clean out his own party first before he has standing to say anything on the subject.

Top Democrat Party activists Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin, through their group Code Pink, have spent the past eight years terrorizing soldiers, their families and public officials on the homefront while working with terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism abroad. Rather than being condemned and disowned, Code Pink is embraced by President Barack Obama and leading Democrats while being celebrated by the media.

The Code Pink Democrats have harassed wounded soldiers and their families at military hospitals in Washington, D.C. and San Diego; they have repeatedly targeted military recruiting centers for abuse; they cruelly taunted the children of military families at a White House Halloween party; they have terrorized government officials at Muslim Brotherhood).

Abroad, the Code Pink Democrats have worked with state sponsors of terrorism including the governments of Saddam Hussein, Cuba’s Castro brothers, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syria’s Bashar Assad as well as the anti-American governments of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s Evo Morales.

In December 2008, the Code Pink Democrats led a shoe throwing protest in front of the White House to celebrate an incident in Baghdad when an Iraqi “journalist” threw his shoes at President George W. Bush. This encouragement of violence against Bush was a propaganda bouquet by the Code Pink Democrats to their terrorist allies aroud the world.

These Code Pink Democrats have also worked with terrorists including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, Sunni terrorists in Iraq and the father of Islamic terrorism: the Muslim Brotherhood. The Code Pink Democrats have bragged about giving cash and humanitarian aid to terrorists who target Americans, Israelis and free Iraqis.

The Code Pink Democrats publicly endorsed the terrorists in Iraq in 2005 at the World Tribunal on Iraq.

“There is widespread opposition to the occupation. Political, social, and civil resistance through peaceful means is subjected to repression by the occupying forces. It is the occupation and its brutality that has provoked a strong armed resistance and certain acts of desperation. By the principles embodied in the UN Charter and in international law, the popular national resistance to the occupation is legitimate and justified. It deserves the support of people everywhere who care for justice and freedom.”

Jodie Evans also gave her personal endorsement of the terrorists killing our soldiers:

”We must begin by really standing with the Iraqi people and defending their right to resist. I can remain myself against all forms of violence, and yet I cannot judge what someone has to do when pushed to the wall to protect all they love. The Iraqi people are fighting for their country, to protect their families and to preserve all they love. They are fighting for their lives, and we are fighting for lies.” (AlterNet, June 26, 2005)

While the Democrat Party complains about Republicans saying things like “You lie!” and “Baby killer!” on the House floor, at least the Republicans have the courage to speak for themselves. Democrats have given special Congressional access to members of the Code Pink Democrats so they could disrupt President Bush’s second inaugural address, a speech to Congress by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki and assault Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In December 2008, the Code Pink Democrats led a shoe throwing protest in front of the White House to celebrate an incident in Baghdad when an Iraqi “journalist” threw his shoes at President George W. Bush. This encouragement of violence against Bush was a propaganda bouquet by the Code Pink Democrats to their terrorist allies around the world.

Code Pink Democrat co-founder Jodie Evans was tapped by Barack Obama at the beginning of his presidential campaign in February 2007 to co-host his breakthrough Hollywood fundraiser. Just weeks before, Evans and the Code Pink Democrats were in Cuba working with the Castro government to put pressure on the United States to free the al Qaeda detainees held at Guantanamo.

Jodie Evans served as a fundraising bundler for Obama’s presidential campaign. She donated the maximum money to Obama’s primary and general election campaigns. She also donated thousands of dollars to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint vehicle by Obama and the Democrat party.

Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin serve on the board of the Progressive Democrats of America. Serving alongside Evans and Benjamin on PDA’s board are elected Democrats: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. John Conyers (MI); Rep. Donna Edwards (MD); Rep. Raul Grijalva (AZ); Rep. Barbara Lee (CA); Rep. Jim McGovern (MA) and Rep. Lynn Woolsey (CA). Rep. Maxine Waters (CA) is listed as part of the PDA Emeritus Board for having served on the board between 2005-2009.

When the Code Pink Democrats delivered $650,000 in cash and humanitarian aid to what Benjamin called “the other side” in Fallujah in late December 2004 as the Marines were clearing al Qaeda out of the Iraqi city, they carried with them letters of support from Democrats Sen. Barbara Boxer (CA); Rep. Henry Waxman (CA) Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH) and Rep. Raul Grijalva (AZ).

Five years later, in December 2009, the Code Pink Democrats delivered thousands of dollars in “humanitarian aid” to Hamas-controlled Gaza supported by letters from Democrats Sen. John Kerry (MA) and Rep. Andre Carson. Hamas guaranteed the Code Pink Democrat’s safety during their trip to Gaza.

The Code Pink Democrats also worked with the late Democrat Rep. John Murtha (PA), awarding him their “Pink Badge of Courage.” Murtha, in turn, shielded the Code Pink Democrats from arrest by Capitol Police.

Barack Obama has ignored several appeals by veterans and military families to disavow Jodie Evans and the Code Pink Democrats. Instead, he gave Jodie Evans a photo-op for her to be seen delivering anti-American propaganda about Afghanistan after she met with the Taliban. He has also given Jodie Evans special access to his Deputy Chief of Staff and the Office of Public Engagement.

The Code Pink Democrats have been given carte blanche by Obama and the Democrats to consort with terrorists abroad and terrorize opponents at home. When will the mainstream media, including Fox, take notice?

Former Bush Senior Aide Karl Rove deserves credit for vindicating President Bush in his new auto-biography, “Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight.”

As one of the few liberals in America who has supported the war in Iraq (See www.honorfreedom.com) I found deep historical value in Rove’s account of what actually happened in the White House during the months leading up to the war, and I was inspired by his willingness to call out those Democratic senators who voted for the war, but later abandoned the president once it became unpopular.

On January 5, 2007 ABC News reported that 28 of the 77 senators who originally voted for the war said they would have voted differently. Not surprisingly, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, John Edwards, John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, all of whom challenged Bush for the presidency eventually turned against the war.

Of course, Bush’s post-9/11 popularity was 90 percent, the highest of any president in American history, and Democrats knew the only hope they had of winning was to undermine the morality of the war. Undermining the morality of the war meant that it didn’t matter if America achieved victory in Iraq.

The Democratic Party knew that if they could create a myth that Bush started the war under false pretenses, they could not only call him a failure; they could call him a liar. If that were true, they could discredit all of Bush’s successes.

Chapter 21 of Rove’s book – “Bush Was Right on Iraq” – sets the record straight. It is a thorough account of what really happened in the months leading up to the war. Rove starts with the history of Saddam Hussein’s attempt to compile weapons of mass destruction and sites specific examples of Democratic leaders who argue that point to the nation, including former President Bill Clinton, Vice-President Al Gore and current U.S. Senator majority leader Harry Reid.

Rove also mentions that on February 5, 2003, only a few weeks before the war, Democratic U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller publicly tied Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden in an interview with Wolf Blitzer. The media however, only criticized Bush and Cheney for making the same connection, and falsely accused the administration of tying Iraq to 9/11, which was something the administration never did.

What Bush and Cheney actually asserted was that there were contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda brokered by Sudanese Islamist leaders, which was also reported by the 9/11 Commission (See page 61 of the paperback version which outlines the non-aggression pact brokered between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda by Turabi. Upon release of the report, the New York Times incorrectly reported on the front page that the 9/11 Commission found no tie between the two.)

Although there were conflicting reports that Iraqi intelligence had suspected involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (bomb-maker Abdul Rahman Yasin fled to Iraq after the 1993 WTC bombing and was essentially given asylum) the FBI did conclude that Iraqi intelligence was behind attempted assassination of President Bush 41 during his 1993 post-presidential visit to Kuwait (see “U.S. Strikes Iraq for Plot to Kill Bush, The Washington Post, June 27, 1993 which outlines how President Clinton fired 23 tomahawk cruise missiles into Iraq’s intelligence headquarters in retaliation).

All of these issues probably created additional concerns about Saddam Hussein’s determination to harm U.S. interests, but Bush’s actual justification for using military force against Saddam Hussein was simple; 9/11 was a wake up call that made government officials realize how vulnerable our nation was, and our national security strategy had to become more pro-active to prevent any other future possible attacks.

Since Iraq was still refusing to give U.N. weapons inspectors unfettered access to search for weapons of mass destruction as required by U.N. Resolution 687, both Congress and the White House decided we needed to finally enforce those resolutions, which is what the international legislation actually mandated.

Using the same intelligence as the White House, the House of Representatives voted 296-133 and the Senate voted 77-23 in support of the 2002 resolution that authorized President Bush to use all necessary force to enforce any U.N. resolutions pertaining to Iraq. Rove also points out that despite the myth that the White House misled Congress about Iraq harboring weapons of mass destruction, Congress had access to the same intelligence reports the White House did.

Perhaps the most valuable mention in Rove’s book is his historical review of American foreign policy. Rove points out that the removal of Saddam Hussein did not start out as a policy under George W. Bush, but was actually an extension of President Clinton’s.

In 1998, President Clinton enacted the “Iraq Liberation Act,” (ILA) which made it official American foreign policy to support the removal of Saddam Hussein. Shortly after passing the Iraq Liberation Act, Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, a massive bombing campaign designed to rid Iraq of weapons of mass destruction.

The liberation of Iraq was not a Republican or neo-conservative policy decision. It was an extension of the policy created by President Clinton who also had the insight to see the danger that Saddam Hussein presented to his own people and nations abroad.

Rove does not disappoint his readers. He takes personal responsibility for the Bush administration’s failure to respond to the Far Left attacks on the president.

“So who was responsible for the failure to respond? I was. I should have stepped forward, rung the warning bell, and pressed for full-scale response. I didn’t . . . the hope was that the charges would evaporate. The opposite happened. Our critics pounded us relentlessly. And the public saw our silence as a plea of nolo contendere . . . (but) the charge that Bush lied was itself a lie.”

Rove’s book is hopefully only the first account of many that will set the record straight about President Bush and the liberation of Iraq. Irrespective of one’s partisan loyalty, “Courage and Consequences” is an important historical perspective that should be read for consideration.

Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is the National Organizer of HONOR FREEDOM (www.honorfreedom.com) an organization dedicated correcting historical record President Bush and the war in Iraq. He previously interned for President Clinton in the White House and served on U.S. Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential election legal team.

As America’s largest grassroots pro-troop organization, Move America Forward has been privileged to support our troops and their mission against Islamic terrorism. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin , Dr. Laura and so many other talk show hosts have given unselfishly to this noble cause.

From time to time they are attacked, usually by leftist anti-war extremists, but sometimes even conservatives make the mistake of joining the circular firing squad against one of their own. There have recently been unfair attacks against Sean Hannity, but we know he has been a total champion in supporting our troops and we are honored to stand with him.

Since the beginning of our organization in 2004, Move America Forward has been a pro-troop grassroots organization that has worked tirelessly to give our troops a voice and serve them as best we can. It is a difficult and often frustrating endeavor, and there is never enough money to help the many brave men and women in America’s armed forces who need and deserve our assistance. Sean Hannity has been a friend to our organization and has helped us greatly in serving our troops and their families.

His generosity in supporting our troops is legendary. He personally gave $100,000 to the Wounded Warriors Foundation and over $200,000 to the Freedom Alliance. When we had a group of Gold Star Parents who had lost a son in Iraq, Sean provided the funding so we could take them to Iraq and see where their children died in the cause of protecting American freedom. They could see with their own eyes the progress that had been made in turning Iraq into a democratic country that would no longer harbor terrorists or threaten peace.

Again in 2007, Sean donated over $15,000 to our care package program, quietly, with no expectation for anything in return.

The attacks against Sean have been leveled by Ms. Debbie Schlussel, who has been a tireless fighter against Islamic terrorism. But, Debbie has missed the mark in her attacks. She assaults Sean Hannity as well as the organization Freedom Alliance for paying transportation costs and hotel stays related to Hannity’s blockbuster “Freedom Concerts”. But that simply isn’t true. Sean pays for his own transportation and hotel rooms.

She doesn’t understand that in addition to his generous financial support for pro-troop causes, Sean gives the most valuable thing he has to the pro-troop movement: his time and reputation. Hardly an hour of his syndicated radio and TV show goes by without Sean saying something supportive of our troops. You cannot find anywhere a better friend or ally to the men and women of the United States military.

Many of your have probably been to his Freedom Concerts, which provide a huge morale boost to our troops and patriotic Americans back home. They do cost a lot of money to produce, but they also produce so much good. The time he spends personally with the troops and their families is of immeasurable in value. Just ask any of them who have attended.

Much like Ronald and Nancy Reagan when our POW’s were released from Viet Nam, Sean has quietly reached out to our troops in ways that the public will never know. In addition to these acts of kindness, they don’t even know about his various acts of generosity. Among his many gifts, he personally contributed thousands of dollars to the Move America Forward Troopathon – the 8 hour telethon broadcast on the internet so that we could send care packages to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Move America Forward has shipped over 168 tons of care packages to troops overseas, and yet we continually feel as though we haven’t done enough. There are so many more troops who deserve our thanks and gratitude. With the help of celebrities like Sean Hannity, we are closer to reaching out and touching all of our deserving troops overseas.

For the record, Sean Hannity, we know to be a tireless worker, and a selfless supporter of our troops. Sean has visited wounded troops at military hospitals, he has organized several trips to Iraq, and most importantly he has consistently honored our troops and their missions in the War on Terror and defended their honor whenever those on the fringe left trash our brave men and women.

It is easy for people to criticize. Ironically, the harshest critics are the ones that have little to show in support for our troops. The pro-troop community knows who our friends are. Sean Hannity is our friend, and Americans are grateful for his continual dedication and generosity towards our troops.

Dear Friends of Freedom Alliance:

This week, false and malicious allegations about Freedom Alliance were posted on the Internet and we want to address them with you. We don’t know the motivation for these vicious smears, but we will not allow them to go unanswered.

First, we want to thank you for your support and assure you that Freedom Alliance’s record of financial stewardship and programmatic achievements not only meets, but exceeds standards of program efficiency set by most charity evaluators. We are extraordinarily proud of our work at Freedom Alliance and stand by our efforts 100 percent.

False Accusations

1. The blog posting accuses our friend Sean Hannity of personally benefiting from Freedom Alliance. This is FALSE. Freedom Alliance has never provided planes, hotels, cars, limos, or anything else to Sean. Sean gets nothing from Freedom Alliance except our gratitude for his personal generosity and for all he has done to help the troops and our organization. We have never had to ask Sean for anything, he always generously offers his help before we have a chance to ask him. But to be clear Sean pays for all his own transportation, hotels, and all related expenses for himself and his family and friends and staff, which over the years has added up to tens of thousands of dollars. He does not use any Freedom Alliance Funds or Concert funds in any way, period.

2. Sean Hannity has contributed $100,000 to the Wounded Warriors Foundation, over $200,000 to the Freedom Alliance, and over tens of thousands of dollars to other military charities and individuals. We only make this information public because of the outrageous slander against him. Sean has no management or operational involvement in, or control over, Freedom Alliance. He has been a selfless patriot in his efforts to raise funds for the education of children of armed services personnel.

3. The blog posting accuses Freedom Alliance of spending less than 20% of money raised on program activities. This is FALSE. Listed below are the amounts that Freedom Alliance spent for each of the past three years and the categories on which they were spent. The figures are taken from our Federal Form 990 which is filed with the Internal Revenue Service and posted on our web site and audited by an independent auditor using Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. This financial record not only meets, but exceeds standards of program efficiency set by most charity evaluators.

4. In 2008, Freedom Alliance spent a total of $6,745,717. Of that:

• • •

79 percent ($5,317,970) was spent on Program Activities 14 percent ($945,950) was spent on Fundraising 7 percent ($481,797) was spent on Management

In 2007, Freedom Alliance spent a total of $7,461,350. Of that:

• 81.5 percent ($6,084,474) was spent on Program Activities • 13.5 percent ($1,011,501) was spent on Fundraising • 5 percent ($365,375) was spent on Management

In 2006, Freedom Alliance spent a total of $7,064,839. Of that:

• 77 percent ($5,434,538) was spent on Program Activities • 18.5 percent ($1,308,414) was spent on Fundraising • 4.5 percent ($321,887) was spent on Management

5. The blog posting accuses Freedom Alliance of spending money intended for student scholarships on other expenses. This is FALSE. Freedom Alliance has distributed $3.4 million in Scholarships and created a Scholarship Trust Fund with the additional money that we have raised for that program. That fund now contains $15 million, over $10 million of which has been raised by Hannity and the concerts. Our scholarship program is managed with the understanding that it will be needed for at least the next 20 years as there are children who will ultimately receive a scholarship who are now only a few years old. As indicated on our Federal Form 990, these funds are restricted and used only for future scholarships.

6. Our Scholarship Fund is one of four programs operated by Freedom Alliance. Supporters may donate to a specific program or for general operating purposes. In 2008, Freedom Alliance received $2.1 million in scholarship donations. The same year, we awarded $802,250 in scholarships and applied $1.3 million to our Scholarship Trust Fund. The funds donated by Sean Hannity directly — or through the proceeds of the Freedom Concerts — and the support of thousands of Americans are used for these purposes:

• Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund: Providing scholarships to those whose parents have been killed or severely injured in their service to our Country. There is now over $15 million in the scholarship fund for the students as they come of age.

• Support our Troops: Many events each year are planned and executed by our staff to show appreciation and provide special opportunities for those actively serving in the military.

• Leadership Academy: A program for high school students in which they are encouraged and trained to serve their country.

These programs would not be possible without the support of Mr. Hannity and many others.

We are proud of our work and numerous accomplishments. We are grateful to our supporters whose voluntary contributions make it possible and we thank you. While it is discouraging to have our record misrepresented in such a malicious way, our work is important and, with your support, it will continue.

Respectfully,

Thomas P. Kilgannon, President

Oliver L. North, Founder & Honorary Chairman

We should all know by now that the Obama administration’s plan to spend up to $200 million on civilian trials for terrorists is dangerous. It’s also wasteful. Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is a site perfectly suited to such trials—and detentions. If not there, then Adak, in the middle of the Aleutians would do just fine.

The Washington Post shows us why that $200 million is also a waste of money. The U.S. Coast Guard should play an important role in our homeland security. After all, that was the stated reason for moving the Coast Guard out of the U.S. Transportation Department and into the newly created Department of Homeland Security.

Liberals are forever going on about “first responders.” Well, the Coast Guard should certainly be considered first among the first responders. Yet, the Coast Guard has come on hard times. The Post recently reported that of 12 major cutters assigned to Haitian relief earlier this year, ten of them broke down. Three were forced to limp back into port.

The Obama administration plans to cut 1,100 active duty personnel from the Coast Guard, the smallest of our military services. Funds for port security—our first line of defense—will be cut by $100 million.

Even Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) calls the cuts in the Coast Guard’s budget “penny-wise and pound foolish.”

Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) is the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee. Because of the administration’s cuts to the Coast Guard budget, their cutters will not be able to keep pace with the Navy in important combined missions. The average age of a Navy warship is 14 years, while that of a Coast Guard vessel is 41 years. New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans will now be less secure, Rogers charged.

Meanwhile, the Mexican drug war is heating up. Last weekend, two U.S. consular officials were murdered. Congressman Rogers noted that it was foolish to spend money on unnecessary civilian trials for terrorists and for increasing the DHS bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.

The incoming Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Robert Papp, has said he would have to consider cutting homeland security training and operations. This is tantamount to announcing to the terrorists “the coast is clear.”

We have an administration that is grossly wasting money. They have doled out hundreds of millions in failed “stimulus” funds. Many of these projects have been shown to be going to ZIP codes and congressional districts that do not exist.

This administration is even spending $900 million on the Palestinians, people who name public squares and schools after suicide bombers. But when it comes to basic homeland security, they are cutting.

Hearing stories about cutting cutters, and ships breaking down for lack of funds for proper maintenance, we cannot help but think of the infamous “hollowed out” military of the days of Jimmy Carter. But why is President Obama still following in Carter’s footsteps? He already has his Nobel Peace Prize!

“Midnight Blue”

It’s the debut of a new Ricochet Podcast feature: The Ricochet Smack Down. This week, John Yoo and Richard Epstein enter The Octogon to argue whether the names of the so-called “Al-Qaeda 7″ ought to be made public, the legality and morality of torture, and other associated issues (see NYT article here). It’s reality TV, Ricochet style. Questions? Comments? Write us at podcast@ricochet.com.

Podcast may be heard at ricochet.com or on iTunes.

It’s bad enough that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is giving short shrift to American manufacturers and our economy by ordering extravagant new crystal stemware from Sweden to make the crystal cabinets in America’s embassies sparkle impressively, but now we learn that Barack Obama has told the U.S. relief forces in Haiti not to fly the U.S. flag over its own military compounds. He says that it will “send the wrong message.”

Never mind that all the other nations have their flags proudly flying above their military relief installations in Haiti. Even Croatia has its coat of arms flying outside its base. Yet not the U.S. Army. No U.S. flag flies anywhere despite the fact that we are far and away the largest force and have supplied the most relief supplies and money to the earthquake recovery effort.

According to USAID, as of January 19, 2010 the U.S. had spent $130,864,571 on aid to the Haitian people to help them recover from the devastating earthquake. By Jan. 25 that number had already increased to $179,883,065. It is only going up from there.

So why did the Obama administration forbid flying our own flag in Haiti?

“We are not here as an occupation force, but as an international partner committed to supporting the government of Haiti on the road to recovery,” the U.S. government’s Haiti Joint Information Center said in response to a query about the flag.

If it is so important to be seen as just another member of that international force, then why are all the other nations still flying their flags? Oh, I remember now… unlike the U.S. they don’t have a president that is more comfortable apologizing for his country than being proud of it, even when it is engaged in saving lives through relief work.

As far as Obama is concerned, we should be ashamed of our nation even when we are digging children and the aged out of mounds of crumbled ruins, even when we are feeding the hungry, and administering life saving medicines — all for free mind you. Even those efforts aren’t good enough for us to be proud to fly our flag above them, apparently.

The NavyTimes.com report reveals a craven attempt by the Obama Administration to pin this no-flag decision on our troops, too. Obama’s Army flak, Colonel Billy Buckner, spokesman for Joint Task Force-Haiti — “a group representing various Obama administration agency heads” the NavyTimes.com report tells us — says that our commanders are “smart” not to fly the flag.

“Our commanders are smart and intuitively understand their mission here in Haiti, and clearly the sensitivities that come with supporting the mission,” Buckner said.A U.S. flag went up at a temporary consular station set up in the first few days on the airport tarmac, according to Charles Luoma-Overstreet, a State Department spokesman in Haiti.

“Apparently, the prime minister (Jean-Max Bellerive) saw this” and thought it appeared as if the United States were taking over the airport, Luoma-Overstreet said.

He said Bellerive said something to U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Merten, who agreed that flying the flag wasn’t a good idea and told the consular officials to take it down.

Notice how it went from “the commanders” being “smart” enough to understand the situation to Obama’s Ambassador to Haiti ordering the flag be removed? In other words, despite the Colonel trying to make it seem as if the commanders on the ground are all for this dearth of Old Glory, it really ends up being a political decision by Obama and his cohorts who are ashamed of America and willing to let anyone denigrate her.

Does anyone really think that PM Bellerive would have persisted in his loose observation that the U.S. was an “occupying force” amidst all the aid flowing into his country? And even if he did, so what? The aid we were supplying is obviously far more important than a cheap political maneuver by Bellerive.

Still, this shows the lack of spine Obama has when standing up to foreign criticism. Even this offhanded comment from Bellerive was enough for Obama to slight his own army and his own countrymen by removing Old Glory from sight in Haiti.

If Obama is this much of a linguini-spined sort of a leader, what will happen to us if he faces a real foreign crisis?

Last Thursday President Obama, whose commitment to comprehensive immigration reform is “unwavering,” met with Sen. Chuck Schumer D-N.Y. and Sen. Lindsey Graham R- S.C. to discuss a proposed bill to fix the broken immigration system. While the details remain somewhat elusive, according to the Los Angles Times:

“The basis of a bill would include a path toward citizenship for the 10.8 million people living in the U.S. illegally. Citizenship would not be granted lightly, the White House said. Undocumented workers would need to register, pay taxes and pay a penalty for violating the law. Failure to comply might result in deportation.”

With the recent failures of the government agencies on full display during the failed Christmas Day bombing of flight 253, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency that would be responsible for processing millions of illegal aliens should a path to citizenship become law, deserves national security scrutiny. Like the State Department, the USCIS is on the front lines of America’s defence. As we now know, Hillary Clinton’s State Department revoked known al-Qaida member Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab’s, visa after he allegedly attempted to blow up an airliner with explosives in his underwear. The credit for thwarting the Christmas Day terrorist attack goes to the passengers and the crew of flight 253—not to government agencies. Under the Department of Homeland Security, the USCIS’ mission includes keeping nefarious people off U.S. soil while preserving America’s tradition as a nation of immigrants by processing lawful foreigners’ applications for visas, residency and citizenship.

According to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report,  Immigration Benefits: Actions Needed to Address Vulnerabilities in Process for Granting Permanent Residency,  “Terrorists and other individuals posing a threat to national security have applied for lawful permanent residency–” the Green Card. The “available data” provided to the GAO found that the “USCIS background checks identified individuals who were (1) KSTs [Known or suspected terrorist], (2) associates of terrorists, (3) involved in providing material support to terrorists or terrorist organizations, and (4) agents of a foreign government involved in espionage. From March 2003 through December 1, 2007, FDNS [Office of Fraud Detection and National Security] received about 14,500 national security referrals for all application types. According to FDNS officials, about 10 percent involved individuals on TSC’s [Terrorist Screening Center ] watch list and the balance of these cases involved individuals who were not on the terrorist watch list, but whose background checks indicated other possible national security concerns, such as those having associations with known or suspected terrorists.” The same applies for the Federal Bureau of Investigations. As the GAO report documents: “In addition to identifying potential national security concerns from checking an alien’s name against watch lists in TECS [Treasury Enforcement Communications System], name checks against the FBI’s investigative files have uncovered individuals who raised national security concerns. We reviewed a random sample created by FDNS of FBI name check results provided to USCIS to ascertain the types of national security concerns identified during the name check process. We found that the FBI provided information to USCIS that these individuals:

• had associated with terrorist organizations, • were agents of foreign governments, • were involved in criminal activities, or • had engaged in espionage against the United Sates… While USCIS has some data on applicants with national security concerns, the data are limited because USCIS’s CLAIMS [Computer Linked Application Information Management System] was not designed to capture and routinely generate reports on the extent, type, and nature of national security threats posed by applicants. For example, this system does not routinely provide statistics on the visa categories used (e.g., family- or employment-based applications) and whether the immigration benefits were granted or denied. Such information could be useful to help identify the characteristics of applicants who could pose national security and terrorism-related concerns, and the avenues they may use to stay in the United States (emphasis mine).”

That said, to be fair, the GAO report noted that some action has been taken to improve the agencies performance, such as increasing staffing, but the report clearly states that the “USCIS has not completed actions necessary to address identified vulnerabilities.” A search of the GAO website shows this report, dated December 2008, is the most recent on this subject. In a side note, it is worth recalling that it was the Immigration Naturalization Services (now USCIS) that six months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, approved two of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohamed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi for student visas. So while the Obama Administration and other lawmakers continue to push for a path to citizenship for millions of illegal aliens, they might want to check on the USCIS’ progress on addressing those GAO identified national security vulnerabilities before proceeding with any type of amnesty. The nation’s security may depend on it.

The next major immigration rally is set in Washington for March 21.

Northrop Grumman has announced it will not compete for the contract to build the U.S. Air Force’s new refueling tanker, stating that the specifications of the RFP were unfair. Northrop’s partners in Europe are lashing out at the United States. One French official said this week, “I can assure you that there will be consequences” for the United States. The Euros were planning on using Northrop as the American face of their plane, but the fact remained that most of it would have been built in France and to many observers that seemed like a bad deal for out of work Americans. In fact, EADS/Airbus, who would have actually built the plane Northrop was proposing, was counting on the American taxpayer-funded refueling tanker to help its financial situation.

Meanwhile, an advocacy organization called Build Them Both is urging President Obama to step in “fix” it all. “Build Them Both urges President Obama to step in and – with the stroke of a pen – hire each company to build its proposed new tanker. This will put 100,000 Americans to work, provide the Air Force more tankers more quickly and offer massive taxpayer savings over building only one,” says the group’s spokesperson Carrie Giddins, who is also a Democratic political operative.

Build Them Both, which does not disclose its funders, further argues that the United States should yield to French threats and “European outrage.”

But the “build them both” solution would actually be the worst of all possible ideas. It would, in fact, be a terrible deal for taxpayers. The costs of building two tankers would be astronomical, costing taxpayers more upfront and long term. Designing and building two separate refueling tankers would require two separate sets of specifications. It would also require training two separate groups of pilots and maintenance crews and developing and maintaining distinct resupply networks. Its important to note that Northrop’s partner EADS/Airbus was proposing to build a completely different plane; which would require its own hangars, air base taxiways and landing strips. All of these considerations carry enormous costs.

And of course one cannot forget the principal reason Northrop decided its bid would ultimately be unsuccessful: The jobs it was proposing to create would for the most part have been European – mainly French – jobs. This was confirmed on Wednesday with the release of a new study.

Protectionism is a serious threat to our economic health. But this is not a case of protectionism. Northrop backed our of its deal with EADS/Airbus because they partnership was offering a bad deal, one that would have cost an extraordinary amount or money for little value to U.S. taxpayers.

I have to say, I did not agree with Sen. McCain during the 2008 campaign when he took the Guantánamo issue off the table by endorsing candidate Obama’s call to close it. The U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is an ideal place to hold military tribunals for jihadists captured on the battlefield. And it would still be the ideal place to hold Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year old Nigerian jihadist, who tried to blow up his inbound jet in Detroit on Christmas Day.

Claims that detainees were being mistreated there were false. Capt. Pete Hegseth of Veterans for Freedom served at Guantánamo during the time that Newsweek and other liberal sources were spreading false claims that U.S. guards had “defiled” copies of the Koran. These false reports circulated throughout the world and sparked riots among Muslims.

Capt. Hegseth served a year at “Gitmo” with the New Jersey National Guard. He supervised guards at the detention facilities. He set the record straight. The only time their Korans were besmirched was when the detainees themselves threw human waste on their guards. Gitmo was never Abu Ghraib. No photos of abuse by guards ever came out of Gitmo, because there was none.

But if, after all is said and done, sensible voices in Congress do not prevail, then I have a recommendation for where the detainees should be held and tried. Adak was an important naval installation throughout the Cold War. It’s an island in the central Aleutians, that thousand-mile chain off Alaska.

Adak has many facilities that were in use by the Navy that could be retrofitted now for detainee trials and long-term detention. Adak’s climate is severe. It’s cold. It’s overcast much of the time. During some snowstorms, “whiteout” conditions prevail. Then, it’s dangerous for any personnel to venture outside of buildings unescorted.

A number of U.S. Senators are pressing the administration for the names of political appointees to the U.S. Justice Department who previously served as counsel to the Guantánamo detainees. We deserve to know who those public officials are. We deserve to be assured that none of these lawyers are involved in the decision to close Gitmo or to give civilian trials to jihadists.

This is not suggested in spite. As Lincoln said, “I shall do nothing in malice.” The business he was in was too weighty for that. That should be our watchword, too.

For our military guards and their families, there is this consolation. Many of the Navy families who spent two-year tours on Adak recall their time there with fondness. The severe weather conditions and the remoteness of the island station bred a real fellowship among the hardy folk who called Adak home. We owe these self-sacrificing Americans our respect and our gratitude. Adak would not be a punishment assignment for them.

Adak’s primary virtue is its remoteness. As with Gitmo, the American people would not have to worry about any escapes. It’s five hours behind Washington. One of the most pressing concerns is that jihadists whom we are holding should not be permitted to inflame other prisoners among our U.S. prisoner population.

Finally, we do not want any jihadists to attack U.S. prisons, even on a suicide mission, because this administration unwisely brought them to the mainland. Adak, like Gitmo, could be secured from such attacks.

Once again, we should not close Gitmo. But, if the Obama administration takes this unnecessary and expensive step, Adak, would be a good alternative.

As Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) are working on a Senate version of comprehensive immigration reform and it includes a very controversial idea.  There is a provision in the draft bill to force all Americans to possess a biometric ID card.  Sources on Capitol Hill confirm to Big Government that the idea of a national ID card is part of the comprehensive immigration reform bill being negotiated between Graham and Schumer.

Laura Meckler of the Wall Street Journal reports:

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the pre-text of halting illegal immigration, Congress may consider forcing citizens to carry an ID card as a condition of citizenship.  For those who mistrust big government and treasure freedom, this idea should be revolting and a shocking example of a bad idea run wild.  American citizens’ freedoms have been eroding over the past few years, yet this idea is much more than an erosion of rights.  It is an all out assault on the idea that Americans have a natural right to be free of government monitoring.

The Wall Street Journal further reports:

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.  The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

Adding the national ID cared idea to the mix will cause both the right and the left to band together against this provision forcing all Americans to carry an identification card containing fingerprints and other biometric information.  To say this is an invasion of privacy is an understatement.  There is no provision in the Constitution that grants the federal government the power nor the right to force Americans to be fingerprinted and to carry an identification card against their will.  This is not a new idea

Senator Schumer stated at a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Immigration, on July 21, 2009 that any employer identification system needs to include a means to “authenticate the employee’s identity by using a specific and unique biometric identifier. This identifier could be a fingerprint, an enhanced biometric picture or other mechanism.”  Schumer went on to say that “any new biometric-based employment system must have extensive checks at the beginning of the system to prevent illegal aliens from creating a false identity to enter into the new database. And, as I mentioned before this, we need to do this with the entity administering the new employment-verification system — will have access to public records, government databases, to ensure that the person seeking to enter the new employment-verification system is, in fact, the person they claim to be, and the person has legal status.”  Schumer supports the creation of a new government bureaucracy to monitor your work status and to audit you if a government bureaucrat decides that your status is suspect.  In essence, you are guilty of being an illegal immigrant, until you can prove otherwise.

This is the same federal government that has a hard time maintaining an accurate No-Fly list. The No-Fly list has prevented members of Congress from flying and is known to be riddled with errors, yet we are readying a database containing all American citizens.  CBS News reports today

Current and former intelligence, counterterrorismand U.S. government officials provided The Associated Press a behind-the-scenes look at how the no-fly list is created. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.  Despite changes over time, the list remains an imperfect tool, dependent on the work of hundreds of government terrorism analysts who sift through massive flows of information. The list ballooned after Sept. 11 and has fluctuated in size over the past decade. In 2004, it included about 20,000 people. The standards for getting on the list have been refined over the years, and technology has improved to make the matching process more reliable.

The immigration bill is proving to be a heavy lift for Schumer and Graham, why they would add a national ID card to the mix defies logic.  More from the WSJ:

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

Clearly the Obama Administration recognize that this is a controversial issue that is incidental to the debate on immigration reform.  Forcing all Americans to carry ID cards will cause may libertarian leaning liberals, who would usually support a reform effort, to have second thoughts about an immigration reform effort.  No matter what you think of comprehensive immigration reform, this issue may prove to be an issue that could take down the bill.

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

I would contest that assertion in the WSJ report and say that the biggest objections come from average everyday citizens who don’t want any further freedoms taken away in the name of stopping illegal immigrants from working in the United States.  Both conservative and liberal groups will line up against this idea, because it is a frontal assault on basic freedom.

“It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people’s privacy,” said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. “We’re not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We’re also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification.”  Mr. Graham says he respects those concerns but disagrees. “We’ve all got Social Security cards,” he said. “They’re just easily tampered with. Make them tamper-proof. That’s all I’m saying.”

The American Civil Liberties Union will line up with conservative groups against this idea.  Groups like Gun Owners of America will rightly see this as a first step toward national gun registration and privacy groups will see this as a first step toward the national ID card being used for more than merely proving to an employer that you are a citizen.  Right and left have been on record in the past as being against the idea that all Americans have to carry identification cards as a condition of citizenship.

U.S. employers now have the option of using an online system called E-Verify to check whether potential employees are in the U.S. legally. Many Republicans have pressed to make the system mandatory. But others, including Mr. Schumer, complain that the existing system is ineffective.

E-Verify seems like a reasonable alternative to forcing all Americans to carry an ID card, yet business groups and immigrant advocacy groups resist the system’s universal implementation.  E-Verify is a government run Internet based system where an employer to electronically verify the eligibility of an employee.  This seems like a much less invasive way to take care of the problem than a national ID card.

Most European countries require citizens and foreigners to carry ID cards. The U.K. had been a holdout, but in the early 2000s it considered national cards as a way to stop identify fraud, protect against terrorism and help stop illegal foreign workers. Amid worries about the cost and complaints that the cards infringe on personal privacy, the government said it would make them voluntary for British citizens. They are required for foreign workers and students, and so far about 130,000 cards have been issued.

The Brits seem to have it right.  If you are a foreign worker or student, a biometric card makes sense, but the federal government does not have the right to force citizens to carry ID cards.  The federal government derives power from the consent of the governed and any strong arm attempt by the federal government to impose a card on citizens ignores the nature of our constitutional democratic republic.

A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said.

Does this sound like the way citizens should be treated in a free nation?  Mandatory fingerprinting or scanning the hands of all Americans is a scary idea.

Mr. Schumer said employers would be able to buy a scanner to check the IDs for as much as $800. Small employers, he said, could take their applicants to a government office to like the Department of Motor Vehicles and have their hands scanned there.

This idea by Senator Schumer would allow the federal government to have your biometric data.  Furthermore, if you have to go to a state Department of Motor Vehicles, then the state you work in will have your fingerprint and other mandatory biometric data.  This is a crazy idea and hopefully it does not get past the idea stage.  The fact that his is a bipartisan idea should strike fear in the hearts of all those who mistrust big government.  Our elected officials in Washington, D.C. seem to more and more out of touch with the average American citizen every day.

Some Defense Department lawyers are worried. Actually, quite a few of them are. They see a train wreck coming with the Obama administration’s evolving Guantanamo Bay detainee policies. Since it is DOD lawyers tasked with much of the footwork for administration decisions, they see firsthand how disorganized, inept, and ideologically extreme the handling of the issue has been. The DOJ, now thoroughly politicized and partisan under Eric Holder, is lock step with Obama’s White House on the issue, and is thoroughly at odds with its legal counterparts in the DOD. At a time when former Guantanamo Bay detainees are battling US forces in Afghanistan, and Jihadists are resurgent worldwide, the country can ill afford the administration’s criminalizing of admitted terrorists or of enemy combatants captured in battle against US forces.

What DOD lawyers are worried about are second-order effects. Namely, the unanticipated consequences of decisions made without due consideration or examination of facts. They are deeply concerned that the administration’s political appointees making decisions on the issue are as likely to be chosen for ideological purity as they are for their acumen on applicable laws. The political appointees are perceived by many in the DOD as caring more for their political ideological creed than for the safety of US citizens, or for the responsible stewardship of tax dollars. It is Leftist canon that Guantanamo Bay be closed, the risks and consequences be damned. Every policy decision pursuing that goal equates to thousands of man hours for DOD lawyers and millions of dollars.

DOD attorneys, including prosecutors and defense attorneys of all political stripes, are of the opinion that closing Guantanamo Bay is an illogical and irresponsible political move made without the facts, and one that will cost billions. No stateside facility has the resources Guantanamo Bay does. As for which stateside facility should replace Guantanamo, the administration cannot make up its mind. As Obama’s minions position for optimum political influence, they have flitted from military sites in Leavenworth, Kansas and Charleston AFB, South Carolina, to civilian facilities in Standish, Michigan and Thomson, Illinois.

The MSM has been telling Americans less that the truth on the detainee issue. Americans have not been told how well thought out was the construction of Guantanamo Bay. Its courtroom was designed by the William and Mary Law School – it is state of the art, capable of handling testimony involving top secret evidence. It has a media center. As for the detainees, forget the horror stories that represent the disinformation tactics of terrorist sympathizers who aim to sway public opinion. Detainees receive the best in medical and dental care. They have daily access to soccer fields. They have exercise areas that overlook the Caribbean, books and movies, as well as a menu where they can choose from several entrée’s cooked to Islamic Halal standards.

They are not tortured and they never were.

Lawyers, sympathic to the detainees, want you to forget that the murderers, terrorists and assassins held in Guantanamo Bay are dedicated to destroying the US. They want you to forget that they have no moral compunction against slaughtering innocents. They want you to think they were all peaceful farmers caught up in an overzealous imperialist military action. Even the Uyghur’s, members of the oppressed Chinese ethnic minority, were training to be terrorists – albeit terrorists against the Chinese, not the US. Their lawyers want them released in the US. The US has so far advocated sending them to other countries willing to accept them. They may well end up here.

Obama and Eric Holder will make a final decision only when forced to, draining time and money when justice would be served at Guantanamo Bay without endangering US citizens or allowing terrorists to exploit the US justice system. And exploit it they are, and will. Lawyers for detainees have been busily petitioning the Supreme Court and searching for sympathetic federal judges. Should trials be held in the US it is a distinct possibility that procedural tactics will allow some of the terrorists held at Guantanamo to go free. And that is exactly what many of the leftist lawyers that flocked to Guantanamo from the very beginning hope for.

What DOD lawyers understand is that the defense of the nation must be decisive, just as must the justice meted out to its enemies. They take their oath to defend the nation seriously. Their very real fear is that justice will not be served by those whose sympathies lay in part with the terrorists, believing their own country responsible for all the miseries delivered on it on 9-11-2001, and after. They perceive that the proposal to transfer detainees to the US is not about justice, but about exploiting a crisis and engaging in political manipulation. All in the quest for the opiate of power.