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Islamic radicals and neo-Nazis

Live links.  Who woulda thunk it, but it makes complete sense.
_________________________

"The Peculiar Alliance
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross 
The Weekly Standard | September 6, 2005
Source: FrontPageMagazine.com

 

"There have been rumblings of late about the developing alliance between Islamic radicals and neo-Nazis. In late May, Israeli president Moshe Katzav gave a speech before the German parliament in which he warned, "Let's not be surprised if terror organizations use neo-Nazis for carrying out terror attacks." And on August 5, WorldNetDaily reported, "Neo-Nazi skinheads are working with radical Islamists in a growing unholy alliance that has European law enforcement officials concerned about a new front in the war on terrorism."

Such an alliance seems unlikely on its face; after all, neo-Nazis view most Muslims as racially inferior, while Islamic extremists believe that neo-Nazis are just another flavor of infidel. However, a closer examination reveals that many white-supremacist groups have expressed solidarity with Islamic terrorists recently, and in turn some white supremacists and far-right Holocaust deniers have found newfound supporters among the Islamists.

The most prominent recent example of white supremacists' vocal support for Islamic terrorism came from August Kreis, the new head of Aryan Nations. In an interview with CNN earlier this year, Kreis said of al Qaeda, "You say they're terrorists, I say they're freedom fighters. And I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples' heart, in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah." Going a step further, Kreis told CNN that he had a message for Osama bin Laden: "The message is, the cells are out here and they are already in place. They might not be cells of Islamic people, but they are here and they are ready to fight."

The Aryan Nations website reflects Kreis's desire to instill a "jihadic feeling" in his followers. For example, it features an article purporting to show that the idea of jihad can be found not only in Islam but also in the Bible. The article concludes with a battle cry: "All the sons of Abraham, all descendants of his three wives, Sarah, Hagar and Ketourah, the parties of the Islamic and Aryan World, all need to understand their duty to enact Holy Jihad, we need to live this Jihad; total war, death to our enemy, the insidious, poisonous and rabid satanic jEw." [sic]

Aryan Nations also boasts a quote on its main page further reflecting its support for radical Muslims. Attributed to Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, the quote states that "a link is created between Islam and National-Socialism on an open, honest basis. It will be directed in terms of blood and race from the North, and in the ideological-spiritual sphere from the East." The main page also touches on other issues of importance to Muslim radicals. It demands immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East, and under the headline "Ariel Sharon: your typical domineering jew," the website features a picture of the Israeli prime minister with fire coming out of his mouth that ends in a mushroom cloud. Underneath, the website proclaims the photograph to be Sharon's "plan for Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc . . . "

Beyond the Aryan Nations, a surprising number of other white-supremacist websites openly sympathize with Islamic terrorists. The National Alliance, the country's largest neo-Nazi organization, published a 2002 essay by its founder, the late William Pierce, which claimed that the September 11 attacks were a salutary event. Pierce wrote that through the attacks, bin Laden "forced the whole subject of U.S. policy in the Middle East into the open: the subject of American interests versus Jewish interests, of Jewish media control and its influence on governmental policy." Because bin Laden broke the "taboo" about questioning Jewish interests, Pierce claimed, "n the long run that may more than compensate for the 3,000 American lives that were lost."

Neo-Nazi James Wickstrom has a webpage that includes a number of featured articles, the headlines of which provide a good indication of where he stands on the Islamist question. These include "Military Personnel Wounded in Iraq & Afghanistan For The JEW Neo-cons," "U.S. Slaughters People At Prayer At Baghdad Mosque," "U.S. Teachers Targeted By jews If They Teach Contrary to Israeli," and "The President and his jewish handlers LIED about 9/11!"

And the neo-Nazi ADLUSA website (a site designed to oppose the Anti-Defamation League) brands the Anti-Defamation League's call for Hezbollah TV to be designated a foreign terrorist organization as part of a campaign "of smear, corruption, and harassment," and promotes the conspiracy theory that Jewish hands were behind the 7/7 and 9/11 terrorist attacks. In case this doesn't make their position perfectly clear, the ADLUSA features a direct appeal to Muslims: "Moslems, lay down your guns and join our mission to remove Jews from positions of power from which they persecute one people after another; killing Americans misled by Jews only incites endless wars."

This vocal neo-Nazi support for al Qaeda reaches back to shortly after 9/11. The Jewish newspaper Forward reported in November 2001 that the World Church of the Creator displayed a bin Laden quote on its website warning Americans that they needed to tend to their own interests and not those of the Jews.

Around the same time, the website for Florida-based Aryan Action displayed the message: "Support Taliban, Smash ZOG." (ZOG stands for Zionist Occupation Government, a term rooted in the idea that the Jews control world affairs.) In a perverse twist on President Bush's declaration that "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," Aryan Action's website voiced its unequivocal support for al Qaeda: "Either you're fighting with the jews against al Qaeda, or you support al Qaeda fighting against the jews."

Thus far, there has been no proof of neo-Nazi cooperation with Muslim terrorist groups in planning attacks. Despite the lack of proof of operational links, several figures with feet in both movements have actively tried to bring them closer. One such individual is Ahmed Huber, a 77-year-old Swiss convert to Islam whose study is adorned with twin pictures of Adolf Hitler and Osama bin Laden.

Huber told the Washington Post that his goal is to build bridges between radical Muslims and the "New Right." He said that a prevalent view on the New Right is that "what happened on the 11th of September, if it is the Muslims who did it, it is not an act of terrorism but an act of counterterrorism." Certain far-right figures, such as German National Democratic Party theorist Horst Mahler, seem amenable to Huber's ideas. Mahler has spoken of the "sense of sympathy" and "common ground" that far-right European groups share with Islamists, and has admitted to "contacts with political groups, in particular in the Arab world, also with Palestinians."

The neo-Nazis' newfound love for Islamists is by no means unrequited. Some radical Islamic groups have--perhaps in an effort to undercut one of the justifications for the state of Israel--forged intellectual ties with right-wing Holocaust deniers.

At the forefront of contemporary Holocaust denial is the California-based Institute for Historical Review (IHR), which is dedicated to the idea that the Holocaust is a historical fiction. The IHR has been so heartened by the support it's received in the Islamic world that investigative journalist Martin A. Lee noted its journal's frenetic description of a "white-hot trend: the rapid growth of Holocaust revisionism, fueled by increasing cooperation between Muslims and Western revisionists, across the Islamic world."

A number of Middle Eastern newspapers, in countries such as Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, have published articles endorsing the Holocaust deniers' thesis. Beyond that, neo-Nazi writers who lack legitimacy in the West have increasingly found a platform in the Arab world. For example, Lee further reported that an article by David Duke was featured on the front page of the Oman Times.

Nor is the Islamic promotion of neo-Nazis confined to the Middle East. Lee reports that Muslims, a New York-based weekly newspaper, has published opinion pieces by both David Duke and William Pierce.

Even some Islamic groups with more mainstream legitimacy have promoted far-right figures as featured speakers. One such speaker is William W. Baker, author of the anti-Israel screed Theft of a Nation and former president of the neo-Nazi Populist Party. (While Baker claims that he did not know at the time that the Populist Party was racist, his own words undercut these denials. The Orange County Weekly reports that, in a speech Baker delivered around the time that he headed the Populist Party, he referred to Jerry Falwell as "Jerry Jewry" and commented that he hated traveling to New York City "'cause the first people I meet when I get off the plane are pushy, belligerent American Jews.")

Baker's current avocation is promoting "religious tolerance" by emphasizing the commonalities between Christianity and Islam. In this capacity, Baker has frequently spoken at events hosted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations and various chapters of the Muslim Students' Association; he was also the featured speaker at the Assadiq Islamic Educational Foundation in Boca Raton earlier this year.

There are obstacles to further development of the relationship between Islamists and neo-Nazis. In Europe, ethnic Muslims are frequent targets of neo-Nazi violence, and not all neo-Nazis share the sympathy for Palestinians expressed by the likes of William Baker. As one white supremacist website puts it, "I hate Jews but that doesn't mean I automatically love the Jews' victims." And countless Muslims recoil from Nazi ideology.

Nonetheless, this developing alliance is not without historical precedent. Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, famously supported Adolf Hitler during World War II, broadcasting radio propaganda on Germany's behalf and even forming Bosnian Muslim divisions of the Waffen SS. As with al-Husayni and Hitler, the current Islamist/neo-Nazi love affair is rooted in the notion that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend": Both groups are united in their hatred of the Jews, and of the United States.

Moving forward, this peculiar alliance presents the risk that neo-Nazis may collaborate with Islamist terrorist groups on attacks. But a second danger is that the far right's newfound legitimacy in the Arab world may allow neo-Nazi figures to claw their way out from the lunatic fringe to which they're currently relegated.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is a counterterrorism consultant and attorney. Kamal Ghali provided research assistance for this article. "

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19362

Entry #122

Al-Qaida Operative Nabbed Near Mexican Border

  Reprinted from NewsMax.com

 

Sunday, Nov. 20, 2005 3:15 p.m. EST

"Al-Qaida Operative Nabbed Near Mexican Border

An al-Qaida operative who was on the FBI's terrorist watch list was recently captured near the Mexican border, housed in a Texas jail and turned over to federal agents, Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, said on Friday.

"A confirmed al-Qaida terrorist, an Iraqi national, was held in the Brewster County jail," Rep. Culberson told ABC Radio host Sean Hannity. "He was captured in Mexico. This was within the last six weeks. He was turned over to the FBI."

The Texas Republican said he obtained the stunning information about the terrorist's capture "from the sheriffs who were directly involved.

"In fact, one was the sheriff who incarcerated him in the Brewster County jail [and who] confirmed this as well," he explained. The same sheriff also confirmed "that this guy is on the FBI's al-Qaida list," he added.

The al-Qaida operative "had been in Mexico, living just about 60 miles east of El Paso," Rep. Culberson said. "He was captured in a little town called El Porvenir, right across from Fort Han ."

Rep. Culberson said the detainee had been living in Mexico for up to a year, where the terrorist "was taking careful notes on the movement of people, police officers, wildlife, etc."

The Iraqi national "had apparently aggravated a neighbor in Mexico, who turned him in to Mexican authorities," he explained. Mexican officials then turned him over to the U.S. officials, who temporarily housed him in the Brewster County jail.

Asked why this news hadn't been reported earlier, Culberson told Hannity, "That's a very good question and one that I intend to get to the bottom of in my subcommittee."

Rep. Culberson sits on the appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the FBI and the Department of Justice. "I guarantee that we're going to get to the bottom of this," he pledged.

He said FBI Director Robert Mueller had previously "confirmed" in testimony before his committee "that there are individuals from countries with known al-Qaida connections who are changing their Islamic surnames to Hispanic-sounding names and obtaining false Hispanic identities, learning to speak Spanish and pretending to be Hispanic immigrants."

"And these are clearly Arab terrorists," Rep. Culberson added, "from countries like Yemen, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. They're crossing the border, pretending to be Hispanic immigrants, and then disappearing."

Rep. Culberson said news of al-Qaida's penetration of the U.S.'s southern border has him worried that the next terrorist plot could involve setting off simultaneous truck bombs in major urban centers.

"The day they blow us up," he predicted, "the border will be sealed tighter than the Berlin Wall and you'll have armed United States military forces" enforcing immigration laws."

http://newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/20/151654.shtml

Entry #121

al Qaida Saddam YES linked

I believe that in most rational, logical, mature minds evidence emerging through sources ignored by the leftist lame-stream-media is demonstrating that

(1) we went into Iraq based upon evidence accumulated and agreed to during the Clinton administration up to when the current decision was made

(2) President Bush did NOT lie about that information

(3) Democrats unanimously agreed on that information but are now attempting to re-write history by repeating a lie long enough to have it replace the truth.... as all Marxist do.  Thank you internet!!!

____________________________________________

"No hype needed: Saddam, al-Qaida linked 

  By Victor Davis Hanson

 

"As American casualties mount in Iraq, politicians at home now fight over who said what and when about weapons of mass destruction and the need for going to war. One of the most frequent charges is that President Bush hyped a non-existent link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida — and that as a result, we diverted our efforts from finishing off the real terrorists to start a new and costly war to replace a secular dictator.

This charge is false for several reasons — and illogical for even more. Almost every responsible U.S. government body had long warned about Saddam's links to al-Qaida terrorists. In 1998, for example, when the Clinton Justice Department indicted bin Laden, the writ read: "In addition, al-Qaida reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al-Qaida would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al-Qaida would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."

Then in October 2002, George Tenet, the Clinton-appointed CIA director, warned the Senate in similar terms: "We have solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida going back a decade." Seventy-seven senators apparently agreed — including a majority of Democrats — and cited just that connection a few days later as a cause to go to war against Saddam: " ... Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq."

The bipartisan consensus about this unholy alliance was not based on intriguing but unconfirmed rumors of meetings between Saddam's intelligence agents and al-Qaida operatives such as Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta. Nor did the senators or the president ever claim that Saddam himself planned the Sept. 11 attacks. Instead, the Justice Department, the Senate and two administrations were alarmed by terrorist groups like Ansar al-Islam, an al-Qaida affiliate that established bases in Iraqi Kurdistan.

More importantly, one of the masterminds of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, Abdul Rahman Yasin, fled to Baghdad to find sanctuary with Saddam after the attack. And after the U.S.'s successful war against the Taliban, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the present murderous al-Qaida leader in Iraq, reportedly escaped from Afghanistan to gain a reprieve from Saddam.

All of this is understandable since Saddam had a long history of promoting and sheltering anti-Western terrorists. That's why both Abu Nidal and Abu Abbas — terrorist banes of the 1970s and 1980s — were in Baghdad prior to the U.S. invasion and why the families of West Bank suicide bombers were given $25,000 rewards by the Iraqi government.

Saddam worried little over the agendas of these diverse terrorist groups, only that they shared his own generic hatred of Western governments. This kind of support from leaders such as Saddam has proven crucial to radical, violent Islamicists' efforts.

After Sept. 11, it became clear that these enemies can only resort to terrorism to weaken American resolve and gain concessions — and can't even do that without the clandestine help of illegitimate regimes (from Saddam in Iraq to the Taliban in Afghanistan, the theocracy in Iran, Bashar Assad in Syria and others) who provide money and sanctuary while denying culpability.

Middle Eastern terrorists and tyrants feed on one another. The Saddams and Assads of the region — and to a less extent the Saudi royal family and the Mubarak dynasty — deflected popular anger over their own failures onto the United States by allowing terrorists to scapegoat the Americans.

Yet, for a quarter-century, oil, professed anti-communism and loud promises to "fight terror" earned various reprieves from the West for these dictatorships, who were deathly afraid that one day America might catch on and do something other than shoot a cruise missile at enemies while sternly lecturing "friends."

That day came after Sept. 11. To end the old pathology, we took out the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, pressured the Syrians to leave Lebanon, encouraged Lebanese democracy, hectored the Egyptians about elections, told Libya's Moammar Gaddafi to come clean about his nuclear plans, and risked oil supplies by jawboning the Persian Gulf monarchies to liberalize.

The theory behind all these messy and often caricatured efforts was not the desire for endless war — we removed by force only the two worst regimes, in Afghanistan and Iraq — but to allow Middle Easterners a third alternative between Islamic radicalism and secular dictatorship. No wonder that wherever there are elections in the Middle East — Afghanistan and Iraq — legitimate governments there have the moral authority and the desire to fight Islamic terrorism.

Americans can blame one another all we want over the cost in lives and treasure in Iraq. But the irony is that not long ago everyone from Bill Clinton to George Bush, senators, CIA directors and federal prosecutors all agreed that Saddam had offered assistance to al-Qaida, the organization that murdered 3,000 Americans. That was one of the many reasons we went into Iraq, why Zarqawi and ex-Baathists side-by-side now attack American soldiers — and why an elected Iraqi government is fighting with us.  ""

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051125/OPINION03/511250311/1110/OPINION

Entry #120

Finally An Explanation

I've pondered "thought processes" of the left but have been unable to understand their reasoning other than finding it to be equal portions of hysterical and anarchist, always alluding to some form of undefinable utopia.  Go figure!
Excellent article, well worth your time to read.

__________________

 

"The left hates inequality, not evil
by Dennis Prager
Townhall.com

"If you want to understand the Left, most of what you need to know can be summarized thus: The Left hates inequality, not evil.

 As one raised as a New York Jew (who, moreover, attended an Ivy League university) and therefore liberal -- it took me a while to recognize this fatal moral characteristic of the Left. But the moment I realized it, it became immoral not to oppose leftist values.

 It is neither possible nor virtuous to be devoid of hatred. Even those who think it is always wrong to hate must hate hatred. The question therefore is not whether one hates but what (or whom) one hates.

 For example, on the basis of the value system that I hold -- the Judeo-Christian -- I try to confine my hating to evil. By evil I mean the deliberate infliction of unjust suffering on the undeserving; cruelty is the best example of such evil.

 Those who hate evil hated the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union, after all, was a made-up country, created by a band of gangsters called Bolsheviks and Communists. They murdered between 20 million and 40 million innocent people, spread their totalitarianism around the world, and thereby rendered hundreds of millions of people slaves and automatons.

 From the 1930s to the 1950s, liberals and social democrats vigorously opposed communism. But the rest of the world's Left, especially its intellectuals and artists, not only did not oppose communist governments, they were the greatest defenders of communism.

 By the end of the Vietnam War (begun and prosecuted by liberals), however, most liberals abandoned anti-tyranny, anti-evil liberalism and joined the rest of the Left. Since the late 1960s, with almost very few exceptions (one is Sen. Joseph Lieberman), "liberal" and "Left" have become synonyms. (That is why The New York Times characterizes the Nation, a far-left journal, as "liberal.")

 Thus, when President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire," the liberal world condemned him. The Cold War, once regarded as an epochal battle between freedom and tyranny, came to be regarded by liberals as an amoral battle between "two superpowers."

 Likewise liberals almost universally mocked President George W. Bush when he labeled Saddam Hussein's Iraq, North Korea and Iran an "axis of evil." It takes a mind that either has little comprehension of evil or little desire to confront it to object to characterizing three of the worst regimes in modern history as "evil."

 How else can one explain the Left's enchantment with Fidel Castro, the totalitarian ruler of Cuba? Clearly his evil is of little consequence. What matters to people on the Left is that there is free health care and almost universal literacy in Cuba. Whereas non-leftists believe that it is far better to be illiterate but free, leftists believe that it is better to be a literate slave.

 Today, this inability to either recognize or to hate evil is manifested in the liberal opposition to the war in Iraq. As I pointed out in a previous column, opponents of the war should be asked to at least acknowledge that America is fighting evil people and an evil doctrine in Iraq. But even that is difficult, if not impossible, for most people on the Left.

 As noted above, everyone hates someone, and that includes people on the Left. The problem is that because they don't hate evil, they hate those who oppose evil. That is how liberals went from anti-communist to anti-anti-communist. To paraphrase one of the greatest moral insights of the Talmud, those who show mercy to the cruel will be cruel to the merciful. So, George W. Bush, not the Islamic terror world, is the Left's villain; life-embracing Israel is the Left's villain, not their death-loving enemies; and religious Christians who note moral weaknesses within the Islamic world are the real danger, not the moral weaknesses within the Islamic world.

 To be fair, it should be noted that confusion over evil and insufficiently hating it are not confined to the Left. There are religious people who conflate sexual sin with evil and/or advocate automatic forgiveness of all evildoers, even when no repentance has taken place.

 But the inability to acknowledge the greatest evils, let alone to join in fighting them, is the defining characteristic of the Left. That is why former Vice President Al Gore just announced that global warming was a worse threat to humanity than terrorism. He really believes that. As do the great many people on the Left whose moral passion focuses more on gasoline prices, drug prices, health care prices, and other expressions of material inequality than on people and movements dedicated to murder. That is why Robert Redford and friends from Hollywood can celebrate Fidel Castro. Castro may imprison political opponents, and most Cubans may have no right of dissent, but they are economically equal.

Dennis Prager is a radio talk show host, author, and contributing columnist for Townhall.com. "

http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/dennisprager/2005/11/22/176430.html

Entry #119

Is being in Iraq ILLEGAL?

Looks like both branches of government, the President and Congress both are functioning within the Constitution regarding Iraq. 

Seems we did have unanimous congressional approval for going into Iraq which nixes any arguments about any illegality of us being there. 

We're a member of the United Nations which created Resolutions 678, 687 and 1441 each made a part of the other by reference calling for the removal of Saddam by one or more member nations for non-compliance to these resolutions.

We are the only remaining super power in the world, the only nation powerful enough to remove Saddam so we did the right thing and lead the way. 

While removing Saddam which happened quickly we set about to provide a stable democratically elected representative republic government for the people of Iraq so that Iraq would not become the heartbeat for an Islamafascist terrorist state occupying most of Asia and eclipsing Europe over time.... which would further enable their stated goal of world domination.

Neal Boortz, attorney member of the Georgia Bar Assn., a Libertarian has covered the issue many times and here is what he says about our involvement in Iraq.

_______________________________________
   
 "OK, folks. One more time .. by the numbers ...
  1. Both the UN and the United States had knowledge of Saddam's WMDs.
  2. The UN ordered Saddam to destroy his WMDs.
  3. Saddam agreed to destroy his WMDs.
  4. Saddam agreed to provide evidence of the destruction of his WMDs
  5. Before destroying his WMDs Saddam kicked the UN inspectors out of Iraq.
  6. After Saddam kicked out the inspectors there was evidence that he began a program to hide his WMDs
  7. Saddam now claims that he destroyed his WMDs, after he kicked out the weapons inspectors.
  8. Saddam has never failed any evidence that he destroyed the WMDs.
  9. Three UN resolutions, Numbers 678, 687 and 1441 authorize either the UN or any member state to use force against Saddam Hussein if he fails to abide by his agreements to destroy his WMDs, and to document that destruction.
  10. The United States, Great Britain, Australia, Spain and about 38 other nations banded together to act against Saddam in compliance with those three UN resolutions.

....AND.........

" In 1991 our security analysts felt that Saddam would have a workable nuclear weapon by the end of the decade, if, that is, something wasn't done to stop him.  It was also know for a certainty that Saddam had previously purchased uranium from Niger.  In 1998 Saddam Hussein kicked the inspectors out of Iraq.  From 1998 until 2002, a period of four years, there were no inspections in Iraq.  Saddam had a free reign to act.  During this period America was attacked.  Other attacks had been planned but were averted, one by an alert female Philippine policewoman who became suspicious when told of some firecrackers that had gone off in a Manila apartment.

So ... here's your scenario.  You're the president, and here is the information you have:

  1. America is under attack.  Islamic terrorists are actively trying to kill as many Americans as they possibly can.
  2. There was and is evidence that Saddam Hussein was supporting Islamic terrorists.  Saddam himself was making a big show of writing checks to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
  3. You know that Saddam Hussein had both chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
  4. You know that Saddam had already killed thousands of Iranians and Kurds with his chemical weapons.
  5. You know that Saddam had begun one nuclear program, using uranium from Africa.  That program was slowed when Israeli fighter jets destroyed his nuclear facility in 1986.
  6. Saddam had ignored 12 years of United Nations resolutions calling for him to destroy all of the equipment and materials connected with his chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, and to present evidence to the UN that he had done so.
  7. In 1998 Saddam ended all inspections in Iraq.  During the very time that terrorist attacks against the United States were reaching a new peak, and during this time you have no way of figuring out what Saddam is up to within his own borders.
  8. You know that Saddam hates the United States and has a particular hatred for your father, the first President Bush.
  9. You firmly believe that if Saddam managed to develop a nuclear device, he could, in all probability, make that device available to a terrorist organization.
  10. You also know that our security efforts at our borders and ports would be completely ineffective in detecting and stopping a nuclear device from entering this country.

So, what do you do?  With that information can you really afford to sit back and just watch Saddam?  Can Saddam be watched that closely?  Could Saddam be watched closely enough to insure that he would not place either chemical, biological or nuclear weapons in the hands of any terrorist group?  This man, Saddam Hussein, was absolutely refusing to abide by any of the 17 UN resolutions.  The burden of proof had been on Saddam.  Prove that you have destroyed your weapons.  Show us how you did it.  Show us where you did it.  Give us the documentation.  Show us that those weapons and those weapons systems are gone and we'll  leave you alone.  But Saddam refused.

You're the president here, and you have two possible screw-ups you can commit.  You can attack Saddam and then fail to find those weapons of mass destruction.  Or, you can give Saddam more time and then try to explain to the American people why a nuclear device was detonated in the center of Chicago, or why thousands were killed when a poison gas was spread throughout the New York Subway system. 

Which mistake do you want?  Which screw-up do you want to explain to the American people?  Do you really want to try to explain to the American people that after Saddam kicked the inspectors out in 1998 that you thought he went on and did just exactly what the UN had demanded of him, and then didn't tell anybody?

Sometimes there are no really good choices.  Sometimes you have to chose between two options on the basis of which one would lead to the worst consequences, not necessarily the best result.  True leaders can make those decisions.  Demagogues cannot."

http://boortz.com/nuze/200309/09292003.html

 

___________________________________________

 

My question of the moment is what did Sen. Jay Rockefeller tell Assad on his visit to Syria in 2002 which may have prompted Saddam to truck out and hide any weapons of any kind that he had?????  See previous post

"Interesting Timeline"  https://blogs.lotterypost.com/konane/2005/11/interesting-timeline.htm

Entry #118

Petition with link

We've had a decisive vote to not withdraw from Iraq early, but IMHO need this petition to be delivered to silence those who live and breathe to weaken the US, our resolve to win in both the Iraqi theater ...... and the most important war we've ever engaged in .... the global war on terror. 

Thank you for your consideration.

BTW, they have a drop down box where you sign the peititon which shows different countries which leads me to believe they may be requesting world opinion ..... which Dems seem to consider more important than US opinion.   

   
___________________________ 
"On behalf of the Talkradio community of great patriots all across this land, I sponsor this petition to STOP THE MADNESS!

Scott Hennen
Host of Hot Talk
WDAY Radio
Fargo, North Dakota
"STOP THE MADNESS - Support the Presidnet and our troops
" Are you fed up with the political games being played in Washington, D.C.? Do you want critics of the Iraq war to stop the relentless attacks on the President and our troops? Then sign this petition. We are at war…still most Democrats in Congress attack the President and our troops without conscience. Sign here to ask them to STOP THE MADNESS!

This petition will be hand-delivered to every member of Congress and party leaders. Our message is clear:

We the undersigned believe it is time to unite this country. These baseless political attacks must stop. We are at war! 160,000 US Armed Forces are in Iraq fighting and winning. They deserve better. We call on Democratic leaders to stop the attacks on the President and our troops. And we call on Republicans in Congress to do a better job of stopping these attacks and stand with the President and our troops as well!

We will deliver this petition the day of the Presidents next State of the Union address in 2006. Please sign your name and include your city as well. If you'd like a response from Congressional members in your state, include your mailing address as well. These attacks must stop. If they do not, we will lose the war in Iraq and the terrorists will win! Please take action and let your voice be heard today!

Here are some of the recent examples of the political games being played:

THEN: Bill Clinton said President Bush had the responsibility to make sure Iraq's chemical and biological weapons did not get in the hands of terrorists. "After 9/11, let's be fair here, if you had been President, you'd think, Well, this fellow bin Laden just turned these three airplanes full of fuel into weapons of mass destruction, right? Arguably they were super-powerful chemical weapons. Think about it that way. So, you're sitting there as President, you're reeling in the aftermath of this, so, yeah, you want to go get bin Laden and do Afghanistan and all that. But you also have to say, Well, my first responsibility now is to try everything possible to make sure that this terrorist network and other terrorist networks cannot reach chemical and biological weapons or small amounts of fissile material. I've got to do that. That's why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot of stuff unaccounted for. So I thought the President had an absolute responsibility to go to the U.N. and say, 'Look, guys, after 9/11, you have got to demand that Saddam Hussein lets us finish the inspection process.' When you're the President, and your country has just been through what we had, you want everything to be accounted for." (Bill Clinton, "His Side of The Story," Time, 6/28/04)

NOW: Bill Clinton says The United States made a "big mistake" when it invaded Iraq. "Saddam is gone. It's a good thing, but I don't agree with what was done, " Clinton told students at the American University of Dubai. "It was a big mistake. The American government made several errors ... one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country." (Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST Nov. 16, 2005)

THEN: Senator Harry Reid, Democratic minority leader repeatedly warned Saddam Hussein was a threat:

"It's Good That The President Reminded The World Of The Commitments (Saddam) Has Reneged On." (Doug Abrahms, Nevada Delegation Split On Action Against Iraq, Reno Gazette-Journal, 9/13/02)

"Saddam Hussein, In Effect, Has Thumbed His Nose At The World Community. And I Think That The President's Approaching This In The Right Fashion." (CNN's Inside Politics, 9/18/02)

"[Saddam] Is Too Dangerous Of A Man To Be Given Carte Blanche With Weapons Of Mass Destruction." (Brendan Riley, Nevada Leaders React To Iraq Bombing, The Associated Press, 12/17/98)

"We Stopped The Fighting [In 1991] Based On An Agreement That Iraq Would Take Steps To Assure The World That It Would Not Engage In Further Aggression And That It Would Destroy Its Weapons Of Mass Destruction. It Has Refused To Take Those Steps. That Refusal Constitutes A Breach Of The Armistice Which Renders It Void And Justifies Resumption Of The Armed Conflict." (Congressional Record, 10/9/02, p. S10145)

"The Problem Is Not Nuclear Testing; It Is Nuclear Weapons ... The Number Of Third World Countries With Nuclear Capabilities Seems To Grow Daily. Saddam Hussein's Near Success With Developing A Nuclear Weapon Should Be An Eye-Opener For Us All." (Congressional Record, 8/3/92, p. S11188)

NOW: Now, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) claims Bush administration manipulated and cherry-picked Intelligence:

"[The Bush Administration] Manipulated And Cherry-Picked Intelligence To Hype The Threat." (Floor Statement, U.S. Senate, 11/15/05)

"We Must Know To What Extent This Administration Unfairly Hyped Iraq's Alleged Nuclear Capabilities And Links To Al Qaeda In Order To Sell Its Case For War." (Press Conference, 11/7/05)

"Staying The Course Is Not A Winning Strategy." (Floor Statement, U.S. Senate, 11/15/05)

He's not alone...here is what other Democrat Party leaders said BEFORE the war:

Former Secretary Of State Madeleine Albright: Think That Clearly Iraq Is A Very, Very Serious Problem ... Iraq Is A Very Serious Problem, And Clearly Has A Lot Of Weapons Of Mass Destruction ... (NBC's Meet The Press, 2/9/03)

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY): In The Four Years Since The Inspectors, Intelligence Reports Show That Saddam Hussein Has Worked To Rebuild His Chemical And Biological Weapons Stock, His Missile Delivery Capability, And His Nuclear Program. ... It Is Clear, However, That If Left Unchecked, Saddam Hussein Will Continue To Increase His Capability To Wage Biological And Chemical Warfare And Will Keep Trying To Develop Nuclear Weapons. (Sen. Hillary Clinton, Congressional Record, 10/10/02, p. S10288)

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA): We Have Known For Many Years That Saddam Hussein Is Seeking And Developing Weapons Of Mass Destruction. (Sen. Ted Kennedy, Remarks At The Johns Hopkins School Of Advanced International Studies, Washington DC, 9/27/02)

It's time to STOP THE MADNESS! The Democrats were right then, but they are playing politics now. What message does that send to our troops? Our enemy openly questions our will to fight and win this war...is it any wonder why? "
Sign here if you want ALL of the members of Congress to stop the attacks, to support the President and our troops...so we can win this war on terror and complete our mission in Iraq!
Entry #117

Murtha Fell off His Grandstand Dems Followed

Hghest accolades to the Repubs for backing treasonous Dems to the wall.
Follow events.... every time Dems speak against our Iraq involvement to the media ..... terrorists worldwide are emboldened and encouraged ..... more soldiers die.   
Had they expressed dissent within the walls of congress rather than grandstanding through the media, how many soldiers lives would have been spared?????  Plenty.
When the going got tough those who don't have the substance to lead or govern ..... followed those who've lead all along.
_________________________
"Lawmakers Reject Immediate Iraq Withdrawal
Nov 19, 7:56 AM (ET)

By LIZ SIDOTI

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republican-controlled House spurned calls for an immediate pullout of troops from Iraq in a vote hastily arranged by the GOP that Democrats vociferously denounced as politically motivated.

"To cut and run would invite terrorism into our backyards, and no one wants to see troops fighting terrorism on American soil," Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said Friday night after the House, as planned, rejected a GOP-written resolution for immediate withdrawal.

The vote, held as lawmakers rushed toward a two-week Thanksgiving break, was 403-3.

Democrats accused Republicans of orchestrating a political stunt that prohibited thoughtful debate on the issue, and nearly all voted against the measure.

That included Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the Democratic hawk whose call Thursday for pulling out troops set off a nasty, personal debate over the war.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20051119/D8DVI20O0.html

Entry #116

Interesting Timeline........

Both posts below From Powerlineblog.com.
This is going to be very interesting to follow ......  Lurking   
Thank you Powerline for catching and running with this!!
____________________             
"Let the meshing begin

"Several readers wrote to follow up on Jay Rockefeller's description of his trip to Syria in January 2002 to warn of the pending invasion of Iraq by the United States, or to warn Syria that President Bush was serious about doing something about Iraq. Take your pick.

These readers noticed the timing of the movement of WMDs from Iraq to Syria according to Bill Tierney in his Frontpage interview "Where the WMDs went." They point to this passage:

FP: Ok, so where did the WMDs go?

Tierney: While working counter-infiltration in Baghdad, I noticed a pattern among infiltrators that their cover stories would start around Summer or Fall of 2002. From this and other observations, I believe Saddam planned for a U.S. invasion after President Bush’s speech at West Point in 2002.
President Bush's West Point speech was given on June 1, 2002, and Tierney's timeline for WMD movement from Iraq seems tied with Rockefeller's visit as much as Bush's speech. Did Bush's speech confirm in Saddam's mind the information Assad had relayed to him from a member of the Senate Intelligence committee? "Mesh" away, if you know what I mean.
Posted by Scott at 08:54 PM | Permalink "
http://powerlineblog.com/
_____________________________
"Him with his foot in his mouth

On Sunday Jay Rockefeller told Chris Wallace: "I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq — that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11." Today Senator Rockefeller issued a press release responding to those of us (including the estimable Bill Bennett and Seth Liebsohn) who have raised questions -- termed "unfounded criticism" by his flack -- about his statement:

"It is ridiculous to suggest that any sensitive information was revealed during my January 2002 Middle East trip. Every aspect of this trip was sanctioned by and coordinated with the State Department and the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. I was accompanied in each country by either our U.S. Ambassador or our Deputy Chief of Mission, and each of our U.S. officials specifically praised my meetings and the message I delivered. I conveyed my belief that President Bush was very serious about taking action in Iraq. I had no knowledge of specific Bush Administration plans to invade Iraq, and I certainly never suggested that I did. I raised this issue on Sunday to make the point that while I hadn’t made up my mind until October of 2002, I believe the president had decided to go to war long before, and continued down that path into 2003 – even as some of the intelligence was being called into question. Once again, it appears that Republican defenders of the president are trying to distract from the real issue – whether the president was straight with the American people about the war in Iraq."
Senator Rockefeller's press release rewrites his original assertion to mitigate its inculpatory aspects. President Bush's "predetermined set course" of invasion has become "conveyed my belief that President Bush was very serious about taking action in Iraq." He appears to be saying that it was wrong to take his statement to Wallace too seriously; he was merely making a rhetorical point regarding his "Bush lied" lie. I get it.

Nevertheless, Senator Rockefeller's press release leaves a few questions open:

1. While Senator Rockefeller stated on Sunday that he took his trip to Syria "by myself," he now claims that it was "sanctioned and coordinated" by the State Department, as well as the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Intelligence Committees. Which was it? Did he act alone or did he act with approval and coordination of his committee and the Department of State? If the latter, who approved the trip?

2. Senator Rockefeller now claims each of the public officials involved "specifically praised my meetings and the message I delivered." Really? To whom? And if this is true, is Senator Rockefeller saying that it was State Department policy to allow and approve of individual Senators to visit with certified state sponsors of terror (who in this case were allied with Saddam) in order to convey the message to Saddam's ally that we were going to war with Saddam -- all before Bush made any public case at all? If so, we should know that too. The State Department should confirm or deny this.

3. To repeat the facts as we know them: Syria is and was a state sponsor of terror, on the Department of State's list as being so; Syria was an ally of Iraq; Syria is a place now contemplated by serious people as a haven for Iraq's WMDs; and a known place from whence terrorists travel into Iraq. Just why would a respected United States Senator tell a sponsor of terrorism and an ally of the regime we were to liberate something they otherwise had not heard, something the President had not said? And just what might that ally of the Iraqi regime have done with that information? In sum, what business of Senator Rockefeller's was it to speculate openly to the head of an enemy regime, and a sponsor of terror (when we were at war with terror), that the President was to go to war with that enemy's ally?

Just wondering, in case any journalist on good terms with Senator Rockefeller thinks the answer to any of these questions might be of interest to his or her readers, as it would be to ours.

Posted by Scott at 09:17 PM | Permalink "
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2005_11.php
Entry #115

Murtha's Grandstanding

 

"The Murtha of All Morons"
http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/fresh/showpics.cgi?the_murtha_of_all_morons


"John Murtha Urged Iraq Pullout Last Year

The press is pretending that Rep. John Murtha had been a longtime, staunch supporter of the Iraq war right up until yesterday's "shocking reversal," when the Pennsylvania Democrat abruptly called for an immediate U.S. pull out.

In fact, Murtha began advocating a cut-and-run strategy way back in May 2004 - after U.S. forces had been in Iraq just a little more than a year.

Standing at the time next to San Francisco-based House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi - who was last seen defending her city's decision to ban military recruiters from public school property - the allegedly pro-war Murtha proclaimed that the Iraq war was "unwinnable."

"We have to either mobilize or get out [and] I don't know that we have the will to mobilize," he declared 18 months ago.

 Peacenik Pelosi was delighted at the time - showing off her new catch as if Murtha was a prize-winning poodle.

"He is one of the most recognized experts on defense in the country," she boasted. "And no one has worked harder to meet the needs of our troops."

Of course, one of the troops' most compelling needs is support of their mission on the home front.

And Murtha very publicly yanked his support a long time ago.

 

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/11/18/110747.shtml
4 Comments (Locked)
Entry #114

"A Failed Former President

Carl Sanders, Governor of Georgia which Jimmy Carter defeated is remembered as one of the finest, most effective governors Georgia has ever had, Jimmy Carter as probably the least effective in modern history.
Carter's failed presidency speaks for itself through documented history, not his feeble attempts at rewriting it ..... the old "you didn't see what you saw, you didn't hear what you heard .... which is also being used by Clinton.
______________________________________________
"Known as "Georgia's Education Governor," (Carl) Sanders led the state from 1963 to 1967 (elected at the age of 37), and worked to move Georgia politics beyond race and into issues such as education and economic development -- factors that could improve the quality of life for all. Sanders is credited with the expansion of the University System of Georgia and increased spending to support public schools. He also secured authorization from the state legislature for the study of public education from kindergarten through graduate school. Today, Sanders manages the Atlanta law firm Troutman Sanders LLP, one of Georgia's largest firms, with more than 300 lawyers, and is involved in several companies." http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/gcq/gcqfall97/sanders.html
__________________________________________
"A Failed Former President
By Ben Johnson
FrontPageMagazine.com 

The only thing more painful than listening to Jimmy Carter lecture President Bush on how to conduct a successful presidency was living through his disastrous attempt to turn his advice into reality.

As I noted earlier this week, Carter has channeled his hatred of non-leftists, secular and religious, into a glut of slanders in his new bestseller, Our Endangered Values. He charges his opponents with, among other things, countenancing female circumcision, defending the murder of federal judges, torturing innocent Islamofascists, and forcing North Korea to manufacture nuclear weapons. Jimmy once again offers himself as the nation’s savior-by-acclamation, leading his errant people, like a latter-day Moses, to the Promised Land. Every time he flashes his toothy grin before an adoring interviewer, the American people should ask why they should listen to anything he has to say. Jimmy Carter’s presidency could be summed up by a Billy Joel couplet: “Ayatollahs in Iran/Russians in Afghanistan.” However, this would omit so much: “malaise,” the misery index, soaring interest rates, a “helpless giant” foreign policy, stagflation, gas lines, record deficits, and killer jackrabbits. The former president doesn’t ignore his record in his book; he lies about it.

Carter provides a portal into his alternate reality in chapter one, where he insists, “As a Southern moderate and former career naval officer, I espoused a conservative fiscal policy and a strong defense.” [1] Insert laugh track. He boasts, for instance, that he brought religious liberty to China (on p. 26), although his book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list the week Chinese Communists sentenced three Christians to a total of six-and-a-half years in prison for distributing Bibles. His tome is replete with such Carter revisionism.

 
 Above all else, Our Endangered Values book drips with self-congratulation for his enlightened racial views and clear intimations his opponents are bigots. Modern “fundamentalists” – especially the conservatives Carter relentlessly smears – have made “racial reconciliation” a defining priority. Evangelicals don’t need racial tolerance lectures from the man who campaigned for governor of Georgia as a self-proclaimed “redneck”; whose campaign distributed a photo of gubernatorial opponent Carl Sanders being embraced by black basketball players to a Ku Klux Klan rally; who pledged to invite George Wallace to Georgia; [2] and who said he was “proud” to have Lester Maddox as his lieutenant governor in 1970, calling him “the essence of the Democratic Party.”As Maddox’s successor, Carter turned criminals loose as part of “a competition over who could reduce his prison population the most.” [3]
  
 In 1972, he promised – then broke his promise – to the newly crippled George Wallace to nominate or second him at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, jumping at the opportunity to give the nomination speech for Henry “Scoop” Jackson. But Jimmy had just begun his self-promotion. According to his son, Jack Carter, the governor had his surrogates lobbyaggressively to become ultra-leftist George McGovern’s vice president. Carter had invited McGovern and fundraiser Morris Dees to the governor’s mansion, where this “Southern moderate” soon “found himself much more compatible with George McGovern than he had expected.” [4]
 
 The peanut farmer chartered his own course to the Oval Office by hoodwinking Southern conservatives. Twenty-five years after being chased out of the White House, Carter has discovered the perils of evangelical “marriage” to politicians. He writes such “a political marriage is in conflict with my own belief in the separation of church and state – I would feel the same even if the marriage were with Democrats.” [5] His actions tell another story. His self-described “campaign autobiography,” Why Not the Best? – which he wrote to advance his 1976 presidential run – was published by Broadman Press, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board. Carter admits, “They print all the Southern Baptist literature, and I had some influence with them as a member of the Baptists’ Brotherhood Commission.” During the North Carolina primary, he had his sister, Baptist evangelist Ruth Carter Stapleton, write a letter “to her extensive network of religious friends and contacts around the country” in which she declared:
 
 My reason for writing you is to acquaint you with an important facet of Jimmy, one that couldn’t possibly be pursued with any depth by the press and television, and that is his quality of deep personal commitment to Jesus Christ and his will to serve Him in whatever capacity he finds himself…please pray for Jimmy. And if you share my feelings that he is the best candidate, I urge you to actively support him. [6]           
  
 After finding people responded positively to the term “Born Again,” Carter wore his religion on his sleeve as he snookered evangelicals into enthusiastically supporting his campaign. Pat Robertson, Tim LaHaye, and the vast majority of “fundamentalists” Carter now derides campaigned tirelessly for Carter in 1976. Carter may have conveniently forgotten; the evangelicals certainly have not. Carter belittles Robertson by name three times in his book, LaHaye once. [7] Common mythology aside, Carter actually won the Southern Baptist vote in 1976 and 1980. [8]
 

The Foreign Policy Fiasco

 

Upon his inauguration, he provided a “strong defense” by slashing defense spending$6 billion (in 2003 dollars) in the first two years of his administration, canceling the B-1 bomber, and decimating the U.S. fleet. [9] Gerald Ford warned this would devastate military preparedness in their second debate but was instead remembered for quipping, “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”

 

Carter boasts as president he set about “convincing the Soviets of our ability and resolve to respond.” [10] Unfortunately, his response was naïvete and unilateral surrender. Carter failed to consult either the Pentagon or the Kremlin before removing U.S. missiles from South Korea within hours of his inauguration, a move Brezhnev interpreted as weakness rather than conciliation. In 1979, Brezhnev refused to remove Soviet submarines and aircraft from Cuba.

 

Carter now frets, “A recent announcement of withdrawal of U.S. troops farther away from the demilitarized zone has caused increasing concern in South Korea that hard-line leaders in Pyongyang and Washington might precipitate the threatened conflict.” Hard-liners “in Pyongyang and Washington,” Mr. President? [11] Beyond his reprehensible equation of President Bush with Kim Jong-il, Carter apparently forgot that he offered to remove all troops from South Korea during his presidency.

 
 His “positive inducements” and warnings about America’s “inordinate fear of Communism” led the Soviets, and Cubans, to believe the Third World was fair game. In his book, Carter praises himself for “establishing diplomatic relations” with Cuba in 1977. [12] That policy consisted of standing by as Castro kept Cuban soldiers fighting in Angola and sent 16,000 more to Ethiopia. He cut off aid to El Salvador, which was fighting a Communist insurgency, but gave more than $90 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Sandinistas. He soon halted diplomatic recognition of our allies on Taiwan and recognized Beijing in their place. The man who declared “human rights is the soul of our foreign policy”showered accolades upon Tito, Ceausescu, Ortega, and Kim il-Sung (the last, after his presidency). [13]
  

Meanwhile, brother Billy tried to open trade relations with Libya in 1978 after depositing a generous $220,000 “loan” from Qaddafi. He registered as an agent of a foreign government two years later. (Billy exerted no influence over his brother, although Jimmuh made his teenage daughter an ad hoc nuclear advisor.)

 
 Carter further demonstrated his mettle by surrendering the Panama Canal after a few riots. Ports at either end are now controlled by a front for the Chinese military: Hutchison Whampoa Ltd., and this month, President Bush had to plead for “equal access” to the canal. More troubling, it now stands at risk of a potential terrorist attack. In 2001, the canal was visited by Adnan Gulshair El Shukrijumah, a 30-year-old Saudi-born al-Qaeda terrorist dubbed “the new Mohammed Atta.” Last summer, this most-wanted operative surfaced in Honduras, possibly recruiting for the strike. In response, a dozen nations participated in a simulated terror assaulton the isthmus. [14]
 

The ex-prez now asserts he did a better job of collecting international intelligence than Bush-43. “It was quite different when I was there,” he told Tim Russert. He called his CIA chief “Stansfield Turner, a notable man…an admirable person in every respect, and he gave me unequivocal intelligence regularly…We didn’t have any secret intelligence agencies established within the Defense Department” that already had “a commitment to go to war with Iraq.” To this day, he says, “there hasn’t been any allegation of impropriety” of his use of intelligence.

 

Stansfield Turner gutted the CIA, cutting 820 human intelligence positions. Without assets of its own, Langley had to rely on the intelligence agencies of foreign governments. Thus, on New Year’s Eve 1977, Carter would toastthe Shah’s Iran as “an island of stability in one of the more troubled areas of the world…[due] to the respect, admiration and love which your people give to you.” Eight months later, the CIA issued the report Iran in the 1980s, in which Carter’s spooks surmised, “Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a ‘prerevolutionary’ situation.” As tensions mounted, Carter withdrew U.S. support from the Shah, turning Iran into a beacon of hope for jihadists around the world. Before admitting the exiled Shah to America, he accepted Iranian guarantees they could secure our embassy, one of the costliest miscalculations in the history of American foreign policy. If al-Qaeda was emboldened by American reversals in Beirut and Somalia, one can only imagine their glee at the 14-month-long hostage crisis. Carter ultimately agreed to pay a ransom of $8 billion (of which, Iran netted $3 billion), [15] although Ronald Reagan’s toughness and resolution was the decisive factor in ending the crisis.

 

Nonetheless, in his book Carter presumes to advise George W. Bush on how to deal with Iran. [16] Without Carter’s policies, the Iran-Iraq war would not have raged for nearly a decade; the United States would not have had to form an unsavory alliance of convenience with Saddam Hussein, in order to hem in the mullahs; Hezbollah would not receive $100-$200 million a year from Tehran’s coffers; al-Qaeda would not have received training in Iran in 1992; and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, if they existed, would be of no consequence to the West whatsoever.

 

Jimmy Carter’s presidency was the lowest point of American prestige in modern history. The missteps he made during those critical years continue to threaten the United States and the West.

 

The Domestic Disaster

 

Today, Carter’s foreign policy failures nearly obscure the mess he made of his country in every other way. President Carter enacted his “conservative fiscal policy ” by running annual deficits more than twelve times larger than Richard Nixon’s and increasing the federal debt by 42 percent, more than previous president who had not fought a world war. Had his agenda been implemented, that total would have been higher yet. (Before Hillarycare, he proposed a national health insurance plan, in 1979.)

 

In Our Endangered Values, Carter advises Bush on how to achieve “far more savings” on the price of oil. [17] Average gas prices more than doubled during Carter’s presidency, reaching $1.25 a gallon by election day 1980, or roughly $3.00 a gallon today. Carter’s price controls gave us gas lines, shortages, and rationing. Prices continued to rise until Reagan abolished price controls by executive order. Rather than stand up to OPEC during the 1979 gas crisis, Carter cracked down on the American auto industry, and blamed the American people for their “crisis of confidence” in his incompetent leadership.

 

Carter has discussed his views on reducing abortion through a combination of social welfare spending (such as WIC, which he created) and economic prosperity. [18] However, abortion increased to near-record highs under Carter, skyrocketing from 1.3 million in 1977 to nearly 1.6 million in 1981.

 

President Carter’s economic genius created the situation that, by 1980, interest rates stood at 21 percent, inflation at 13.5 percent, unemployment at 7 percent, and the “misery index” he coined during the 1976 campaign reached 20.5 percent.

 

Carter was so vulnerable a half-hearted primary fight from a wounded Ted Kennedy presented a major challenge. During his re-election campaign, the best pitch he could make was, “I'll be a better president in the next four years.” The New Republic (which endorsed John Anderson that year) editorialized, “He has made our society less prosperous without making it more generous. He has made this country less respected and feared abroad without making it more loved.” Jimmy Carter pulled out all the stops, even dispatching Armand Hammer to negotiate for Soviet interferencein his race against Ronald Reagan. (Hammer told Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, “Carter won't forget that service if he is elected.” Perhaps this was what he meant about show the Soviets he intended “to respond.”) Still, to this day, Carter excuses his landslide defeat by slandering columnist George F. Will.

 

The Post-Presidential Peril

 

It has long been an unwritten rule for former presidents not to criticize the incumbent officeholder, especially on foreign policy. Those who have broken that law in the last 100 years include Herbert Hoover, Jimmy Carter, and, as of yesterday, Bill Clinton. History has judged all as failed presidents. But no former president actively sabotaged the foreign policy of a sitting president before Jimmy Carter.

 

Carter began his long history of interfering in his successors’ affairs in 1984 by again suggesting Dobrynin interfere in a U.S. election, this time on behalf of Walter Mondale. During the meeting, Carter complained, “there would not be a single agreement on arms control, especially on nuclear arms, as long as Reagan remained in power.” He and other Democrats maintained relations with the Soviets out of concern that Ronald Reagan was an extremist.

 

Before Operation Desert Storm, Carter wrote a letter to UN Security Council members, asking them to oppose the war. Five days before military operations were to commence, he again wrote to Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, “I urge you to call publicly for a delay in the use of force while Arab leaders seek a peaceful solution to the crisis.”

 

However, it was during the Clinton administration that his personal diplomacy reached its zenith. Carter writes that, in 1994, when North Korea began threatening to build nuclear weapons, he left on negotiations “with the approval of President Bill Clinton” [19] Clinton allowed Carter to visit, after Al Gore pushed for the trip. However, as President Bill Clinton tried to convince Pyongyang all options were on the table including a military response, Carter “unilaterally” promised that even economic sanctions would not be forthcoming. When asked about this discrepancy, President Clinton told reporters, “None of us have talked directly with President Carter. We don’t know what he said.” [20] For once, Bill Clinton sounded believable. Carter’s behavior in North Korea led a Clinton administration Cabinet member to call him a “treasonous prick.”

 

During his 1994 trip to North Korea, Carter found time to bolster the image of the Stalinist enclave, saying he didn’t see anyone starving, and the well-stocked groceries of Pyongyang reminded him of the “Wal-Mart in Americus, Georgia.” Soon, he worked out agreement to give Pyongyang 500,000 metric tons of oil, tons of grain, and a light-water nuclear reactor – and he pressed the Clinton administration for a weaker agreement yet. The unverifiable agreement Carter designed allowed North Korea to develop as many as half-a-dozen nuclear weapons – which he now blames on George W. Bush.

 

Despite his previous betrayal, Clinton sent Carter to Haiti the following September to restore Marxist Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power. Carter was to tell Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras an invasion would follow imminently if he did not step down. He instead legitimized Cedras, allowed him to stay past the deadline, and offered his own policy views on CNN – before reporting to the White House. When Clinton finally called his bluff by launching “Operation Restore Freedom,” Carter said he was “distressed.” (The move worked; Cedras resigned. Aristide proved no better than his predecessors.)

 

Carter has hobnobbed with murderous tyrants throughout his post-presidency. He once pounded out a speech delivered by Yasser Arafat. In 2004, he certifieddubious election of pro-Castro strongman Hugo Chavez.

 

However, he distinguished himself for useful idiocy by visiting Castro’s Cuba in 2002. Then as now, he opposed the Cuban embargo while acknowledging “the benefits of Cuba’s superior services in education and health.” [21] At this time, then-Undersecretary of State John Bolton stated Castro had some form of biological weapons research in progress, an allegation dating back to the Clinton administration. From overseas, Carter called him a liar, because he had not seen evidence of these programs during his tour. Condoleeza Rice quickly responded, “That’s not how biotech weapons work. And they’re actually very easy to conceal.”

 

Carter’s crusade to embrace every two-bit thug in the world garnered him a 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, awarded on political grounds, as Carter opposed Operation Iraqi Freedom. Gunnar Berge, chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, said the honor “should be interpreted as a criticism of the line that the current administration has taken.” Carter was happy to administer the criticism in a speech pointedly criticizing U.S. policy on Iraq.

 

He has escalated his criticism ever since. In a 2004 “Hardball” interview, Carter told his former speechwriter that Operation Iraqi Freedom was like the Revolutionary War, because “in some ways the Revolutionary War could have been avoided. It was an unnecessary war.”

 
 Now in 2005, Carter has launched this book tour to convince the American people George W. Bush is leading the nation over the precipice and smear the Southern Christians he once courted, all the while feigning concern over Democrats and abortion. His book is a roadmap to the familiar oblivion he forced upon this nation and the world during his misrule. Nonetheless, the American Left now encourages the greatest president since Ronald Reagan to accept advice from the worst president since James Buchanan. [22]
 
 This is part two of a series of articles on Jimmy Carter’s new book, Our Endangered Values. Click HEREto read Part One.
 
 ENDNOTES:
1. pp. 7-8.
2. Bourne, Peter G. Jimmy Carter: A Comprehensive Biography from Plains to Post-Presidency. (NY: Lisa Drew/Scribner,1997), pp. 192-3.
3. “Tim Russert Show.” Saturday, November 5, 2005. CNBC. An identical account is found in his book, Our Endangered Values, p. 79.
4. Bourne, p. 225.
5. Carter, Jimmy, p. 39.
6. Bourne, p. 304.
7. Robertson on pp. 20, 60, and 67, LaHaye on p. 113.
 8. Carter, Stephen. God’s Name in Vain. (NY: Basic Books, 2000), pp. 46-47. Carter won 59.1 percent of the Southern Baptist vote in 1976 to Gerald Ford’s 37.6 percent, and 50 percent in 1980 over Reagan’s 46.6 percent.
9. D’Souza, Dinesh. Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader. (NY: The Free Press, 1997), p. 143. 
 10. Carter, Jimmy, p. 149.
 11. pp. 110-111.
12. pp. 102-103.
13. Ambrose, Stephen. Rise to Globalism (NY: Penguin Books, 1993 ed.), pp. 281-302.
14. This author recognizes good people were on both sides of the Panama Canal debate, particularly William F. Buckley Jr. and George F. Will. However, these problems would have been unthinkable under U.S. control.
 15. Ambrose, pp. 295, 297, 302.
16. Carter, Jimmy, p. 142.
17. pp. 167-168.
18. pp. 71-78. Nearly all media appearances have discussed the abortion issue; to his credit, he has said he does not believe in Partial Birth Abortion. It is unknown where the courage of his convictions were when President Clinton repeatedly vetoed the PBA ban and banished pro-life Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey from the 1992 convention.
19. p. 107.
20. Gertz, Bill. Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1999), p. 116.
21. p. 104.

22. Grant and Harding may have been weak and corrupt, but they didn’t set totalitarianism on the march, decimate the U.S. economy, and transform an allied nation into an exporter of Islamist fundamentalism – all in one term. The presidency itself was a weaker institution in their day. By the modern era, the American president acted as leader of the free world. In that capacity, Carter choked during the most strategic moment of the Cold War. If the sundering of the Union would not have sanctioned slavery and diminished America’s role in advancing liberty throughout the world in the following century, Carter would qualify as the worst president ever.

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20232
Entry #113

"Where the WMD's Went

Superb interview with someone who was actually in Iraq conducting inspections.  Very worth the read.
________________
"Where the WMD's Went
By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com
"Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bill Tierney, a former military intelligence officer and Arabic speaker who worked at Guantanamo Bay in 2002 and as a counter-infiltration operator in Baghdad in 2004. He was also an inspector (1996-1998) for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) for overseeing the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles in Iraq. He worked on the most intrusive inspections during this period and either participated in or planned inspections that led to four of the seventeen resolutions against Iraq.
FP: Mr. Tierney, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

 

Tierney: Thanks for the opportunity.

 

FP: With the Democrats now so viciously and hypocritically attacking Bush about WMDs, I’d like to discuss your own knowledge and expertise on this issue in connection to Iraq. You have always held that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Why? Can you discuss some actual finds? 

Tierney:  It was probably on my second inspection that I realized the Iraqis had no intention of ever cooperating.  They had very successfully turned The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections during the eighties into tea parties, and had expected UNSCOM to turn out the same way.  However, there was one fundamental difference between IAEA and UNSCOM that the Iraqis did not account for.  There was a disincentive in IAEA inspections to be aggressive and intrusive, since the same standards could then be applied to the members states of the inspectors.  IAEA had to consider the continued cooperation of all the member states.  UNSCOM, however, was focused on enforcing and verifying one specific Security Council Resolution, 687, and the level of intrusiveness would depend on the cooperation from Iraq.

 

I came into the inspection program as an interrogator and Arabic linguist, so I crossed over various fields and spotted various deception techniques that may not have been noticed in only one field, such as chemical or biological.  For instance, the Iraqis would ask in very reasonable tones that questionable documents be set aside until the end of the day, when a discussion would determine what was truly of interest to UNSCOM.  The chief inspector, not wanting to appear like a knuckle-dragging ogre, would agree.  Instead of setting the documents on a table in a stack, the Iraqis would set them side to side, filling the entire table top, and would place the most explosive documents on the edge of the table.  At some point they would flood the room with people, and in the confusion abscond with the revealing documents. 

 

This occurred at Tuwaitha Atomic Research Facility in 1996.  A car tried to blow through an UNSCOM vehicle checkpoint at the gate.  The car had a stack of documents about two feet high in the back seat.  In the middle of the stack, I found a document with a Revolutionary Command Council letterhead that discussed Atomic projects with four number designations that were previously unknown.  The Iraqis were extremely concerned. I turned the document over to the chief inspector, who then fell for the Iraqis’ “reasonable request” to lay it out on a table for later discussion.  The Iraqis later flooded the room, and the document disappeared.  Score one for the Iraqis.

 

On finds, the key word here is “find.”  UNSCOM could pursue a lead and approach an inspection target from various angles to cut off an escape route, but at some point, the Iraqis would hold up their guns and keep us out. 

 

A good example of this was the inspection of the 2nd Armored Battalion of the Special Republican Guards in June 1997.  We came in from three directions, because we knew the Iraqis had an operational center that tracked our movement and issued warnings.   The vehicle I was in arrived at the gate first.  There were two guards when we arrived, and over twenty within a minute, all extremely nervous. 

 

The Iraqis had stopped the third group of our inspection team before it could close off the back of the installation.  A few minutes later, a soldier came from inside the installation, and all the other guards gathered around him.  He said something, there was a big laugh, and all the guards relaxed.  A few moments later there was a radio call from the team that had been stopped short.  They could here truck engines through the tall (10”) grass in that area.  When we were finally allowed in, our team went to the back gate.  The Iraqis claimed the gate hadn’t been opened in months, but there was freshly ground rust at the gate hinges.  There was a photo from overhead showing tractor trailers with missiles in the trailers leaving the facility. 

 

When pressed, Tariq Aziz criticized the inspectors for not knowing the difference between a missile and a concrete guard tower.  He never produced the guard towers for verification.  It was during this period that Tariq Aziz pulled out his “no smoking gun” line.  Tariq very cleverly changed the meaning of this phrase.  The smoking gun refers to an indicator of what you are really looking for - the bullet.  Tariq changed the meaning so smoking gun referred to the bullet, in this case the WMD, knowing that as long as there were armed guards between us and the weapons, we would never be able to “find,” as in “put our hands on,” the weapons of mass destruction.  The western press mindlessly took this up and became the Iraqis’ tool.  I will let the reader decide whether this inspection constitutes a smoking gun.

 

FP: So can you tell us about some other “smoking guns”?

 

Tierney: Sure. Another smoking gun was the inspection of the 2nd Infantry Battalion of the Special Republican Guards.  After verifying source information related to biological weapons formerly stored at the National War College, we learned at another site that the unit responsible for guarding the biological weapons was stationed near the airport.  We immediately dashed over there before the Iraqis could react, and forced them to lock us out.  One of our vehicles took an elevated position where they could look inside the installation and see the Iraqis loading specialized containers on to trucks that matched the source description for the biological weapons containers.  The Iraqis claimed that we had inspected the facilities a year earlier, so we didn’t need to inspect it again.

 

Another smoking gun was the inspection of Jabal Makhul Presidential Site.  In June/July 1997 we inspected the 4th Special Republican Guards Battalion in Bayji, north of Tikrit.  This unit had been photographed taking equipment for the Electro-magnetic Isotope Separation (EMIS) method of uranium enrichment away from inspectors.  The Iraqis were extremely nervous as this site, and hid any information on personnel who may have been involved with moving the equipment.  This was also the site where the Iraqi official on the UNSCOM helicopter tried to grab the control and almost made the aircraft crash. 

 

When I returned to the States, I learned that the Iraqis were extremely nervous that we were going to inspect an unspecified nearby site, and that they checked that certain code named items were in their proper place.  I knew from this information the Iraqis could only be referring to Jabal Makhul Presidential Site, a sprawling mountain retreat on the other side of the ridge from the 4th Battalion, assigned to guard the installation.  This explained why the Iraqis caused the problems with the helicopter, to keep it from flying to the other side of the mountain.

 

We inspected Jabal Makhul in September of 1997.  The Iraqis locked us out without a word of discussion.  This was the start of the Presidential Site imbroglio.  The Iraqis made great hay out of inspectors wanting to look under the president’s furniture, but this site, with its hundreds of acres, was the real target.

 

During the Presidential Site inspections in Spring of 1998, inspectors found an under-mountain storage area at Jabal Makhul.  When the inspectors arrived, it was filled with drums of water.  The Iraqis claimed that they used the storage area to store rainwater.  Jabal Makhul had the Tigris River flowing by at the bottom of the mountain, and a massive pump to send water to the top of the mountain, where it would cascade down in fountains and waterfalls in Saddam’s own little Shangri-la, but the Iraqi had to go to the effort of digging out an underground bunker akin to our Cheyenne Mountain headquarters, just so they could store rainwater.

 

A London Sunday Times article in 2001 by Gwynne Roberts quoted an Iraqi defector as stating Iraq had nuclear weapons in a heavily guarded installation in the Hamrin mountains.  Jabal Makhul is the most heavily guarded location in the Hamrin mountains.  With its under-mountain bunker, isolation, and central location, it is the perfect place to store a high-value asset like a nuclear weapon.

 

On nukes, some analysts wait until there is unambiguous proof before stating a country has nuclear weapons.  This may work in a courtroom, but intelligence is a different subject altogether.  I believe it is more prudent to determine what is axiomatic given a nation’s capabilities and intentions.  There was no question that Iraq had triggering mechanisms for a nuke, the question was whether they had enriched enough uranium.  Given Iraq’s intensive efforts to build a nuke prior to the Gulf War, their efforts to hide uranium enrichment material from inspectors, the fact that Israel had a nuke but no Arab state could claim the same, my first-hand knowledge of the limits of UNSCOM and IAEA capabilities, and Iraqi efforts to buy yellowcake uranium abroad (Joe Wilson tea parties notwithstanding), I believe the TWELVE years between 1991 and 2003 was more than enough time to produce sufficient weapons grade uranium to produce a nuclear weapon.  Maybe I have more respect for the Iraqis’ capabilities than some.

 

FP: Tell us something you came up with while conducting counter-infiltration ops in Iraq.

 

Tierney: While I was engaged in these operations in Baghdad in 2004, one of the local translators freely stated in his security interview that he worked for the purchasing department of the nuclear weapons program prior to and during the First Gulf War.  He said that Saddam purchased such large quantities of precision machining equipment that he could give up some to inspections, or lose some to bombing, and still have enough for his weapons program.  This translator also stated that when Saddam took human shields and placed some at Tarmiya Nuclear Research Facility, he was sent there to act as a translator.  One of the security officers at Tarmiya told him that he had just recovered from a sickness he incurred while guarding technicians working in an underground facility nearby.  The security officer stated that the technicians left for a break every half hour, but he stayed in the underground chamber all day and got sick.  The security officer didn’t mention what they were doing, but I would say uranium enrichment is the most logical pick.

 

What, not enough smoke?  There was the missile inspection on Ma’moun Establishment.  I was teamed with two computer forensic specialists.  A local technician stood by while we opened a computer and found a flight simulation for a missile taking off from the Iraqi desert in the same area used during the First Gulf War and flying west towards Israel.  The warhead was only for 50 kilograms.  By the time we understood was this was, the poor technician was coming apart.  I will never forget meeting his eyes, and both of us realizing he was a dead man walking.  The Iraqis tried to say that the computer had just been transferred from another facility, and that the flight simulation had not been erased from before the war. The document’s placement in the file manager, and the technician’s reaction belied this story. UNSCOM’s original assessment was that this was for a biological warhead, but I have since seen reporting that make me think it was for a nuclear weapon.

 

These are only some of the observations of one inspector.  I know of other inspections where there were clear indicators the Iraqis were hiding weapons from the inspectors.

 

FP: Ok, so where did the WMDs go?  

 

Tierney: While working counter-infiltration in Baghdad, I noticed a pattern among infiltrators that their cover stories would start around Summer or Fall of 2002.  From this and other observations, I believe Saddam planned for a U.S. invasion after President Bush’s speech at West Point in 2002.   One of the steps taken was to prepare the younger generation of the security services with English so they could infiltrate our ranks, another was either to destroy or move WMDs to other countries, principally Syria.  Starting in the Summer of 2002, the Iraqis had months to purge their files and create cover stories, such as the letter from Hossam Amin, head of the Iraqi outfit that monitored the weapons inspectors, stating after Hussein Kamal’s defection that the weapons were all destroyed in 1991.  

 

I was on the inspections that follow-up on Hussein Kamal’s defection, and Hossam said at the time that Hussein Kamal had a secret cabal that kept the weapons without the knowledge of the Iraqi government.  It was pure pleasure disemboweling this cover story.  Yet the consensus at DIA is that Iraq got rid of its weapons in 1991.  This is truly scary.  If true, when and where did Saddam have a change of heart? This is the same man who crowed after 9/11, then went silent after news broke that Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague. Did Saddam spend a month with Mother Theresa, or go to a mountain top in the Himalaya’s? Those that say there were no weapons have to prove that Saddam had a change of heart.  I await their evidence with interest.

 

FP: So do you think the WMD is the central issue regarding Iraq?

 

Tierney:  No, and it never should have been an issue.  The First Gulf War -- and I use this term as a convention, since this is actually all the same war -- was a prime example of managing war instead of waging it.  Instead of telling Saddam to get out of Kuwait or we will push him out, we should have said to get out of Kuwait or we will remove him from power.  As it was, we were projecting our respect for human life on Saddam, when actually, from his point of view, we were doing him a favor by killing mostly Shi’ite military members who were a threat to his regime.  I realize that Saudi Arabia, our host, did not want a change in government in Iraq, and they had helped us bring down the Soviet Union with oil price manipulation, but we should have bent them to our will instead of vice versa.  Saddam would not have risked losing power to keep Kuwait, and we could have avoided this whole ordeal.  

 

We topped one mistake with another, expecting Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party, a criminal syndicate masquerading as a political party, to abide by any arms control agreement.  Gun control and Arms control both arise from the “mankind is good” worldview.  If you control the environment, i.e. get rid of the guns, then man’s natural goodness will rise to the surface.  I hope it is evidence after more than a decade of Iraqi intransigence how foolish this position is.  The sobering fact is that if a nation feels it is in their best interest to have certain weapons, they are going to have them.  Chemical weapons were critical to warding off hoards of Iranian fighters, and the Iraqis knew they would always be in a position of weakness against Israel without nuclear weapons.  The United States kept nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet Union, but we would deny the same logic for Iraq?

 

There is also the practicality of weapons inspections/weapons hunts.   After seventeen resolutions pleading with the Iraqis to be nice, the light bulb still didn’t go off that the entire concept is fundamentally flawed.  Would you like to live in a city where the police chief sent out resolutions to criminals to play nice, instead of taking them off the streets?

 

As I said earlier, I knew the Iraqis would never cooperate, so the inspections became a matter of illustrating this non-cooperation for the Security Council and the rest of the world.  No manipulation or fabrication was necessary.  There was a sufficient percentage of defectors with accurate information to ensure that we would catch the Iraqis in the act. UNSCOM was very successfully at verifying the Iraqis’ non-cooperation; the failure was in the cowardice at the Security Council.  Maybe cowardice is too strong a word.  Maybe the problem was giving a mission that entailed the possible use of force to an organization with the goal of eliminating the use of force. 

 

On the post-war weapons hunt, the arrogance and hubris of the intelligence community is such that they can’t entertain the possibility that they just failed to find the weapons because the Iraqis did a good job cleaning up prior to their arrival.  This reminds me of the police chief who announced on television plans to raid a secret drug factor on the outskirts of town.  At the time appointed, the police, all twelve of them, lined up behind each other at the front door, knocked and waiting for the druggies to answer, as protocol required.  After ten minute of toilet flushing and back-door slamming, somebody came to the front door in a bathrobe and explained he had been in the shower.  The police took his story at face value, even though his was dry as a bone, then police proceeded to inspect the premises ensuring that the legal, moral , ethnic, human, and animal rights, and also the national dignity, of the druggies was preserved.   After a search, the police chief announced THERE WERE NO STOCKPILES of drugs at the inspected site.  Anyone care to move to this city? 

 

FP: Let’s talk a little bit more about how the WMDs disappeared.

 

Tierney: In Iraq’s case, the lakes and rivers were the toilet, and Syria was the back door.  Even though there was imagery showing an inordinate amount of traffic into Syria prior to the inspections, and there were other indicators of government control of commercial trucking that could be used to ship the weapons to Syria, from the ICs point of view, if there is no positive evidence that the movement occurred, it never happened.  This conclusion is the consequence of confusing litigation with intelligence.  Litigation depends on evidence, intelligence depends on indicators.  Picture yourself as a German intelligence officer in Northern France in April 1944.  When asked where will the Allies land, you reply “I would be happy to tell you when I have solid, legal proof, sir.  We will have to wait until they actually land.”  You won’t last very long.  That officer would have to take in all the indicators, factor in deception, and make an assessment (this is a fancy intelligence word for an educated guess).  

 

The Democrats understand the difference between the two concepts, but have no qualms about blurring the distinction for political gain.  This is despicable.  This has brought great harm to our nation’s credibility with our allies.  A perfect example is Senator Levin waving deception by one single source, al-Libi, to try and convince us that this is evidence there was no connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda, as though the entire argument rested on this one source.  Senator Levin, and his media servants, think the public can’t read through his duplicity.  He is plunging a dagger into the heart of his own country.

 

Could the assessments of Iraq’s weapons program been off?  I am sure there were some marginal details that were incorrect, but on the matter of whether Iraq had a program, the error was not with the pre-war assessment, the error was with the weapons hunt.

 

I could speak at length about the problems with the weapons hunt.  Mr. Hanson has an excellent article in “The American Thinker,” and Judith Miller, one of the few bright lights at the New York Times, did an article on the problems with the weapons hunt that I can corroborate from other sources.  But if the Iraqi Survey Group had been manned by a thousand James Bonds, and every prop was where it should have been, I doubt the result would have been much different.  The whole concept of international arms inspections puts too much advantage with the inspected country.  Factor in the brutality used by the Baath Party, and it amounts to a winning combination for our opponents.

 

I was shocked to learn recently that members of the Iraqi Survey Group believed their Iraqi sources when they said they don’t fear a return of the Baath Party.  During my eight months of counterinfiltration duty, we had 50 local Iraqis working on our post who were murdered for collaborating.   Of the more than 150 local employees our team identified as security threats, the most sophisticated infiltrators came from the Baath Party. This was just one post, yet the DIA believes no one was afraid to talk, even though scientists who were cooperating with ISG were murdered.  You can add this to the Able Danger affair as another example of the deep rot inside the intelligence community.

 

I believe that once the pertinent sources have a sense of security, a whole lot of people are going to have egg on their face.  I believe the Iraqis had a WMD program, and I am not changing my story, no matter how many times Chris Matthews hyperventilates.

 

FP: Before we go, can you briefly touch on some of the prevailing attitudes in the U.S. military that may hurt us?

 

Tierney:  There is a prevailing attitude that the U.S. is too big and ponderous to lose, so individual officers don’t have to take the potentially career-threatening risks necessary to win.  I have heard it said that for every one true warrior in the military, there are two to three self-serving, career-worshipping bureaucrats.  We shouldn’t be surprised.  After all, the Army advertised “Be all you can be!”  Or in other words, get a career at taxpayer expense.  

 

President Clinton changed the definition of the military from peace makers to peace keepers, and no senior officers resigned or objected.  President Clinton took a one star general who ran a humanitarian effort in Northern Iraq, Shalikashvilli, and made him Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The signal was out, warriors need not apply.  Shalikashvilli later spoke at a U.N. meeting and listed the roles for the military in the “Revolution in Military Affairs.”   He included warm and fuzzy things like “confidence building,” but failed to mention waging war.  In my five years at CENTCOM headquarters, I very rarely heard the words, “war,” “enemy,” or “winning.” This was all absorbed into the wonderful term “strike operations.”

 

Operation Desert Fox was a perfect example of the uselessness of strike operations. Iraqis have told me that the WMD destruction and movement started just after Operation Desert Fox, since after all, who would be so stupid as to start a bombing campaign and just stop.

 

It was only after Saddam realized that President Clinton lacked the nerve for anything more than a temper-tantrum demonstration that he knew the doors were wide open for him to continue his weapons program.   We didn’t break his will, we didn’t destroy his weapons making capability (The Iraqis simply moved most of the precision machinery out prior to the strikes, then rebuilt the buildings), but we did kill some Iraqi bystanders, just so President Clinton could say “something must be done, so I did something.” 

 

General Zinni, Commander of CENTCOM, and no other senior officer had any problem with this fecklessness.  They apparently bought into the notion that wars are meant to be managed and not waged.  The warriors coming into the military post 9/11 deserve true warriors at the top.  I believe the house cleaning among the senior military  leadership started by the Secretary of Defense should continue full force.  If not across the board, then definitely in the military intelligence field.

 

FP: Mr. Tierney it was a pleasure to speak with you today. Thank you for visiting Frontpage.

 

Tierney: Thank you Jamie for the opportunity to say there were weapons, and that we were right to invade Iraq."

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20154

Entry #111

"Separation of Family and State

Very eloquent argument against governmental social engineering.
____________
"Separation of Family and State
By Arnold Kling
Tech Central Station 11-10-05
   
"The rioters are generally 12 to 25 years old, and roughly half of those arrested are under 18...Traditional parental control has disappeared and many Muslim families are headed by a single parent. Elders, imams and social workers have lost control. Paradoxically, the youths themselves are often the providers of local social rules, based on aggressive manhood, control of the streets, defense of a territory.

 

 

...Americans, for their part, should take little pleasure in France's agony -- the struggle to integrate an angry underclass is one shared across the Western world."
-- Olivier Roy

 

 

One way to describe libertarianism is that we believe in the separation of family and state as strongly as the American Civil Liberties Union believes in the separation of church and state. In contrast, both the Left and the Right view government as a substitute parent. As pointed out by George Lakoff in Moral Politics, the Left wants government to be a nurturant parent and the Right wants government to be a strict parent.

 

 

Libertarianism does not want the government to act as a parent. What I want is for government to ensure that property disputes are resolved peacefully, according to rules. The rules themselves do not have to be perfect. They should reflect prevailing custom, which in turn may evolve gradually over time.

 

 

Teenage Rebellion

 

 

With some trepidation, I chose to connect this essay to the news du jour, namely the riots in France. Everyone wants to interpret those riots according to their preconceptions. Some pundits see the riots as an anti-Western intifada. Others see them as a cry for social justice.

 

 

My reaction to the riots is to view them as teenage rebellion against the state as parent. The French government, like a deer caught in the headlights, cannot decide which direction to turn. Should it adopt the strict parent model, and crack down? Or should it adopt the nurturant parent model, and try to provide better education, jobs, and social acceptance for ethnic minorities?

 

 

In this particular case, I believe that libertarian thinking tends to correspond to conservative thinking. With property being destroyed and people being assaulted, government needs to enforce the rules, by force if necessary -- and force is clearly necessary.

 

 

Libertarianism also offers clear philosophical resistance to the solutions dear to the hearts of those who want government to act as a nurturant parent. I think it is fair to say that France ought to have rules that forbid discrimination against ethnic minorities. Beyond that, however, the libertarian message to people of color in France would be, "Your prosperity and dignity come from your own efforts. They do not come from the state." Of course, our message to the white French would be exactly the same.

 

 

To the traditional Left and Right, one question raised by the riots is how the French welfare state affects Muslims and other minorities. The Right worries that it provides too much support for "alien" immigrant "parasites." The Left worries that it does not provide enough education and employment opportunities.

 

 

To libertarians, the welfare state is something that is economically ineffective and morally wrong for everyone, not just for ethnic minorities. Families and non-coercive institutions, such as charities and churches, ought to provide for basic needs. Education and health care ought to be primarily the responsibility of families, not of the state.

 

 

The Coase Theorem and Imperfect Rules

 

 

I believe that a key element of practical libertarianism has to be a willingness to live with imperfect rules. I view the famous theorem of Nobel Laureate Ronald Coase as an illustration of this.

 

 

Suppose that there are two users and a common resource. An example would be a ball field that could be used by soccer players and baseball players. Another example would be a stream that could be used either to water livestock or irrigate crops.

 

 

Roughly speaking, the Coase theorem says that it does not matter who owns the common resource, as long as someone owns it. If the farmer owns the stream, then the herder can buy water from the farmer. If the herder owns the stream, then the farmer can buy some water. Either way, water will be allocated efficiently. Furthermore, the owner will have an incentive to maintain the stream in such a way as to maximize the value for both uses. On the other hand, if no one owns the water, then each user will attempt to consume too much. Perhaps the stream will go dry.

 

 

A willingness to live with imperfect rules is a little-noticed requirement for libertarianism. If instead you say, "I believe in a government that only enforces rules, but the rules must satisfy the larger needs of justice," you have created a hole in libertarianism through which one can drive a proverbial truck of big government. As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, the Quest for Cosmic Justice is never-ending and self-defeating.

 

 

Family, Church, and State

 

 

The United States and France have been fairly aggressive about separating church and state. For example, in public schools the U.S. bans school prayer and France bans Muslim head scarves.

 

 

Libertarians would like to see equally aggressive policing of the boundary between family and state. We would eliminate the controversy concerning religious expression in public schools by eliminating public schools.

 

 

Under the welfare state, government usurps the role of the family in education, health care, and saving for retirement. As economic historian Robert Fogel has pointed out, these are the fastest-growing segments of our economy. Government's role in the economy, as measured by the ratio of taxes and government spending to GDP, is certain to increase sharply as long as we fail to enforce a boundary between family and state.

 

 

Policies that treat the state as parent often are defended as helping families that are economically disadvantaged. However, in Bleeding-heart Libertarianism, I showed how we could have a redistributionist tax regime without having government take over family functions. (See also, What's Wrong With Paternalism?)

 

 

Does family-state separation have the same Constitutional status as church-state separation? In practice, it clearly does not, and perhaps one could argue that nothing in the Constitution favors family-state separation. However, it strikes me that church-state separatists choose a particularly strict reading of the "establishment clause" of the first amendment, while paternalists choose a particularly loose reading of the parts of the Constitution that limit government's powers in other realms. I would prefer a strict reading on all counts.

 

 

What I would like to see is a philosophical movement for the separation of family and state. Such a movement could act as a bulwark against "big-government conservatism." Government should leave children behind and let seniors face the cost of prescription drugs. Those needs should be addressed by families, with support from non-coercive charitable institutions."

http://www.techcentralstation.com/111005A.html

Entry #110

More on the CIA

Looks like the powerlineblog.com guys have begun challenging a supposed non-partisan CIA. 

Liberals love to hatch conspiracy theories which don't exist, but looks like conservatives have a real one crafted by the left being unraveled before their very eyes. 

Kudos to Powerline plus the other conservative journalists and bloggers!!  If it weren't for them Wilson would remain "sainted" by the MSM and the CIA's part in it would go unnoticed.

___________________________

"Three years of the Condor

 

Last week before the dam began to break on the subject of the CIA war on the Bush administration, I contacted the CIA public information officer who fields media questions regarding Joe Wilson. I asked him why the Agency hadn't required Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement regarding his trip to Niger. He hesitated for a few seconds, then responded: "I don't know." At his suggestion, I followed up with my questions by e-mail:

(1) Why wasn't Wilson's February 2002 trip to Niger made subject to a confidentiality agreement?

(2) Did the Agency contemplate that Wilson would publicly discuss the trip at will upon his return?

(3) Did the agency anticipate that if he did so, it would attract attention to the employment of his wife by the agency?

(4) Why did the Agency select Wilson for the mission to Niger to check out such an important and sensitive matter given his lack of experience in intelligence or investigation?

(5) Was the Agency aware when it selected him for the mission of his hostility to the Bush administration?

The CIA officer responded:
Given the ongoing legal process, I don't have anything for you in response to your questions about Ambassador Wilson.
Joe Wilson was not the only CIA-related political opponent of the Bush administration who emerged during the run-up to the 2004 election. In July 2004, the same month that the Times published Wilson's notorious op-ed column, CIA analyst Michael Scheuer published his strange book Imperial Hubris.

In the epilogue to the paperback edition, Scheuer stated that he "was never told why the CIA permitted publication." Following publication of the book, the CIA permitted Scheuer "anonymously" to criticize the Bush administration's conduct of the war on terror in media interviews until his criticisms extended beyond the administration to the intelligence community. (Scheuer left the Agency last November -- the week after the election.) I also asked the CIA the following questions regarding Scheuer:

(1) Has the Agency ever before in its history authorized the publication of a book by a current Agency employee attacking the incumbent administration?

(2) Was Scheuer's employment status classified at any time between 1999 and the time he resigned from the Agency? If so, over what period?

(3) Can you cite any previous instances in the history of the Agency of currently employed Agency analysts attacking the incumbent administration?

The Agency's response to these questions was a bit more forthcoming:
[A]ll CIA employees have prepublication obligations. Beyond the obvious prohibition on releasing classified information, the outside writings and speeches of serving officers must not affect either their ability to do their jobs or the agency's ability to accomplish its mission. Because CIA is not a policy organization, its regulations discourage current employees from speaking or writing publicly on policy issues.

In light of that common-sense guidance, the chances are extremely remote -- to put it mildly -- that a presently serving officer would be allowed to write a book today injecting him or herself into a national policy debate. That is how things stand now.

Which leaves the open question: How did things stand last year? The Daily Standard has posted my column on the subject of the CIA's apparent efforts to undermine the Bush administration: "Three Years of the Condor."

Jed Babbin provides a take similar to my own in a column for the Spectator: "The CIA disinformation campaign." Babbin's column points to additional anomalies in Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger, but Babbin erroneously asserts that the 2002 trip was Wilson's first such trip. Babbin overlooks the Senate Intelligence Committee Report's brief reference to Wilson's having performed a previous mission to Niger on behalf of the CIA in 1999. At the American Thinker, Clarice Feldman picks up the thread: "Joe Wilson's earlier mission to Niger." The American Thinker also posts an intriguing column by James Lewis speculating on the possible French role in the affair as well: "The French connection."

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on prewar intelligence is the key document on Wilson's trip. If only the Senate Intelligence Committee had classified the Report and leaked it to the Times, it might have had an impact on the mainstream media story line on the Wilson affair. As it is, the fact that the Report demonstrated Wilson's thoroughgoing mendacity essentially remains confidential insofar as mainstream media reporting is concerned.

One of these days some big-time journalist is bound to take a look at the story underlying Joe Wilson's phony baloney assertions of wrongdoing against the Bush administration and dig out the evidence of the CIA's scandalous efforts to undermine it. Right?

Posted by Scott at 05:42 AM | Permalink "
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Entry #109

"Déjà Vu"

A cartoon format satire about current events which I find to be outstanding.  Big Grin

Be sure to click the picture for his explanation.  Scared

Not for the PC crowd or those looking to be easily offended!!

_______________________________

"Déjà Vu" by Jay D. Dyson    (11/07/2005) (Sacredcowburgers)

http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/fresh/showpics.cgi?deja_vu 

Add this one too:

"French 'Negotiations'"

http://www.sacredcowburgers.com/fresh/showpics.cgi?french_negotiations

Entry #108
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