August 29, 2009
Obama vs the CIA
Wolf here.
I’ve seen some pretty stupid and self destructive actions performed in my day by people who should at least have the sense of responsibility to think things through, weighing the pros and cons, before they act, of the decisions they make and the execution of what they’ve decided upon.
Unfortunately, and this goes not only for B. Hussein Obama but for the rest of that pack of dishonest scoundrels who call themselves Democrats these days.
They play politics, thinking only of their partisan ambitions without a thought to the good of America and the people who elected them to lead the nation.
They twist the truth and the accomplishments of potential victims of their political agendas to meet the requirements of those agendas.
Obama’s agenda, whatever it may be, certainly bides no good for this country, its economic future, its national security, our rights and freedoms, the values we hold dear, those that make us unique among nations, our morality, and his actions to date bear this up.
Now, to appease his “get Bush, Cheney and all their issue” base, Obama is attacking the CIA for operating, they were assured at the time, within the law.
Of course, we’re talking a renegade government run by Obama, Pelosi and Reid (Frankencense and Murtha?), and all the lies that come with it.
President Obama on Monday paid his first formal visit to CIA headquarters, in order, as he put it, to “underscore the importance” of the agency and let its staff “know that you’ve got my full support.” Assuming he means it, the President should immediately declassify all memos concerning what intelligence was gleaned, and what plots foiled, by the interrogations of high-level al Qaeda detainees in the wake of September 11.
This suggestion was first made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said he found it “a little bit disturbing” that the Obama Administration had decided to release four Justice Department memos detailing the CIA’s interrogation practices while not giving the full picture of what the interrogations yielded in actionable intelligence. Yes, it really is disturbing, especially given the bogus media narrative that has now developed around those memos.
bogus media narrative is the only kind of media narrative these days, and for some reason “bogus” and “Obama” seem to coexist easily in the same piece of thought.
This shows how bold, thanks entirely to the relative lack of awareness among the American people (read that as not paying attention to the little dictatorship style government we have developed since the third week of January), the liberals who control the Democratic party have become.
I’ll tell you something, people. Seth has said this to me before, and I have come to agree with him: If we allow these politicians to continue to go this far without voting the lot of them out of office, we, as a country, deserve every bit of shit they will eventually bury us in. It’s every voter’s sacred responsibility to study hard on what the government is doing, what our politicians are up to.
In other words, CIA interrogators wanted to use these techniques in 2002 to break a terrorist they believed had information that could potentially save American lives. Rest assured that if the CIA hadn’t taken these steps and the U.S. had been hit again, the same people denouncing these memos now would have been demanding another 9/11 Commission to deplore their inaction.
Gotta love them fuckin’ traitors Democrats. So crooked and sleazy honest and fair.
The memos give considerable indication both of the sheer quantity, as well as some of the specifics, of the intelligence gathered through the interrogations. “You have informed us,” wrote Mr. Bradbury in the May 30, 2005 memo, “that the interrogation of KSM — once enhanced techniques were employed — led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the ‘Second Wave,’ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles. You have informed us that information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of . . . Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell . . . tasked with the execution of the ‘Second Wave.’”
All in all, Mr. Bybee added, “the intelligence derived from CIA detainees has resulted in more than 6,000 intelligence reports and, in 2004, accounted for approximately half of CTC’s [the CIA's Counterterrorist Center] reporting on al Qaeda.”
In a saner world (or at least one that accurately reported on original documents), all of this would be a point of pride for the CIA. It would serve as evidence of the Bush Administration’s scrupulousness regarding the life and health of the detainees, and demonstrate how wrong are the claims that harsh interrogations yielded no useful intelligence.
The above emphasis is mine.
The Obama administration’s decision to release a previously classified 2004 CIA interrogation report and appoint a special prosecutor to look into possible misdeeds by personnel involved in questioning high-value terrorists is a huge mistake.
It’s almost as if - in addition to the war in Iraq, Afghanistan and on terror - the Obama administration has now declared war on the CIA, which is one of our most important assets in gathering intelligence for winning these conflicts.
First, these choices will likely have a chilling effect on the morale at the agency. Earlier this year Barack Obama himself vowed it was time to look forward, not back. (Of course, that is until it’s time to look back.)
In addition to being another Obama policy flip-flop, these decisions will likely leave officers in the field wondering whether they should be more concerned about getting terrorists or getting lawyers.
I can tell you first hand here that I know exactly where Mr. Brookes is coming from. Thank God I’m retired!
It’s also a major distraction to the CIA’s embattled director Leon Panetta, who seems to be drowning in a sea of inquiries from his White House and the Democratic Congress. Doesn’t he have more important things to look after, like Iran and North Korea?
(Some believe Panetta won’t be around much longer, giving the already-rattled CIA its sixth leader since 9/11.)
How about a dose of reality, here, Mr. O?
It isn’t by chance that we haven’t been attacked in nearly eight years. Former Vice President Dick Cheney said that we owe the CIA a debt of gratitude for keeping us safe.
It’s a sentiment the Obama administration should really consider before it goes any further.
Wolf out.
August 21, 2009
A Trio Of Middle East Items
Chuck here (the durn contributor drop-down menu’s still not working).
Knowing that Middle east affairs, especially those of concern to Israel, are also of concern to Seth, I thought I’d bring up three items from that region.
The first is in response to a column by the excellent Caroline Glick, titled Et tu, Netanyahu?, that comes as something of a shock, considering that Benjamin Netaniahu has always been a strong defender of Israel’s right to its status as the Jewish Homeland, and was expected to resist, without compunction, any attempts by the Obama Administration to engender anything less.
This week we discovered that we have been deceived. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s principled rejection of US President Barack Obama’s bigoted demand that Israel bar Jews from building new homes and expanding existing ones in Judea and Samaria does not reflect his actual policy.
Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Attias let the cat out of the bag. Attias said that the government has been barring Jews from building in the areas since it took office four months ago in the hopes that by preemptively capitulating to US demands, the US will treat Israel better.
And that’s not all. Today Netanyahu is reportedly working in earnest to reach a deal with the Obama administration that would formalize the government’s effective construction ban through 2010.
Netanyahu is set to finalize such a deal at his meeting with Obama’s Middle East envoy George Mitchell in London next Wednesday.
Say what!?
Unfortunately, far from treating Israel better as a result of Netanyahu’s willingness to capitulate on the fundamental right of Jews to live and build homes in the land of Israel, the Obama administration is planning to pocket Israel’s concession and then up the ante. Administration officials have stated that their next move will be to set a date for a new international Middle East peace conference that Obama will chair. There, Israel will be isolated and relentlessly attacked as the US, the Arabs, the Europeans, the UN and the Russians all gang up on our representatives and demand that Israel accept the so-called “Arab peace plan.”
That deceptively named plan, which Obama has all but adopted as his own, involves Israel committing national suicide in exchange for nothing. The Arab plan — formerly the “Saudi Plan,” and before that, the Tom Friedman “stick it to Israel ‘peace’ plan” — calls for Israel to retreat to the indefensible 1949 armistice lines and expel hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. It also involves Israel agreeing to cease being a Jewish state by accepting millions of foreign, hostile Arabs as citizens within its truncated borders. The day an Israeli government accepts the plan - which again will form the basis of the Obama “peace” conference” — is the day that the State of Israel signs its own death warrant.
What the hell is the Israeli prime minister thinking? Has he caught Livni/Olmert Syndrome? How do you say “lemming” in Hebrew?
And if that’s not enough, well how about this?
Then there is the other Obama plan in the works. Obama also intends to host an international summit on nuclear security for March 2010. Arab states are already pushing for Israel’s nuclear program to be placed on the agenda. Together with Obama administration officials’ calls for Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — which would compel Israel to relinquish its purported nuclear arsenal — and their stated interest in having Israel sign the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty — which would arguably force Israel to allow international inspections of its nuclear facility in Dimona — Obama’s planned nuclear conclave will place Israel in an untenable position.
Meanwhile, Barack, Hillary & the gang continue to pussyfoot around a soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Iran.
Moving on
Recognizing the Obama administration’s inherent and unprecedented hostility to Israel, Netanyahu sought to deflect its pressure by giving his speech at Bar Ilan University in June. There he gave his conditional acceptance of Obama’s most cherished foreign policy goal — the establishment of a Palestinian state in Israel’s heartland.
Netanyahu’s conditions — that the Arabs generally and the Palestinians specifically recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state; that they relinquish their demand that Israel accept millions of hostile Arabs as citizens under the so-called “right of return;” that the Palestinian state be a “demilitarized” state, and that Arab states normalize their relations with Israel were supposed to put a monkey wrench in Obama’s policy of pressuring Israel.
Since it is obvious that the Arabs do not accept these eminently reasonable conditions, Netanyahu presumed that Obama would be forced to stand down. What Netanyahu failed to take into consideration was the notion that Obama and the Arabs would not act in good faith — that they would pretend to accept at least some of his demands in order to force him to accept all of their demands, and so keep US pressure relentlessly focused on Israel. Unfortunately, this is precisely what has happened.
Ahead of Obama’s meeting Tuesday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Al Quds al Arabi, reported that Obama has accepted Netanyahu’s call for a demilitarized Palestinian state. Although Netanyahu is touting Obama’s new position as evidence of his own diplomatic prowess, the fact is that Obama’s new position is both disingenuous and meaningless.
Obama’s supposed support for a demilitarized Palestinian state is mendacious on two counts. First, Palestinian society is already one of the most militarized societies in the world. According to the World Bank, 43 percent of wages paid by the Palestinian Authority go to Palestinian militias. Since Obama has never called for any fundamental reordering of Palestinian society or for a reform of the PA’s budgetary priorities, it is obvious that he doesn’t have a problem with a militarized Palestinian state.
The second reason his statements in support for a demilitarized Palestinian state are not credible is because one of the central pillars of the Obama administration’s Palestinian policy is its involvement in training of the Fatah-led Palestinian army. US Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton is overseeing the training of this army in Jordan and pressuring Israel to expand its deployment in Judea and Samaria.
Like they say, “SNIP”
There is another way. It is being forged by the likes of Vice Premier Moshe Ya’alon on the one hand and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on the other.
Ya’alon argues that not capitulating to American pressure is a viable policy option forIsrael. There is no reason to reach an agreement with Mitchell on the administration’s bigoted demand that Jews not build in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. If the US wants to have a fight with Israel, a fight against American anti-Jewish discrimination is not a bad one for Israel to have.
Ya’alon’s argument was borne out by Huckabee’s visit this week to Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. Huckabee’s trip showed that the administration is not operating in a policy vacuum. There is plenty of strong American support for an Israeli government that would stand up to the administration on the Palestinian issue and Iran alike.
Netanyahu’s policies have taken a wrong turn. But Netanyahu is not Tzipi Livni or Ehud Olmert. He is neither an ideologue nor an opportunist. He understands why what he is doing is wrong. He just needs to be convinced that he has another option.
Must read the entire column (yeah, there’s quite a bit more in there).
Speaking of Iran, while this isn’t all that surprising, it’s not exactly something to be taken lightly.
Ahmad Vahidi, nominated Thursday by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to serve as Iran’s defense minister, is a suspected international terrorist sought by Interpol in connection with a deadly 1994 attack on a Jewish community center in Argentina.
Mr. Vahidi, a former commander of the elite unit of the Revolutionary Guard known as the Quds Force, was one of 15 men and three women named to Cabinet posts by Mr. Ahmadinejad as he begins his second term in office. The choice is likely to further chill relations between Iran and the international community, especially Israel.
Interpol, the international police agency based in Lyon, France, placed Mr. Vahidi and four other Iranian officials on its most-wanted list in 2007 at the request of Argentine prosecutors, who say the men played a role in planning the July 1994 attack on the seven-story community center in Buenos Aires.
Obama’s friends, the Iranian government.
The bombing, which killed 85 people, is thought to have been carried out by members of Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia and political party with close links to Iran.
Kenneth Katzman, a senior analyst on Iraq and Iran at the Congressional Research Service, said that Mr. Vahidi is also suspected of having played a role in a 1996 attack on the U.S. Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia known as Khobar Towers.
Mr. Vahidi is not the first prominent Iranian to be wanted in connection with terrorist attacks. Presidential candidate Mohsen Rezai, a former revolutionary guard commander, was among the five Iranians identified by Interpol in 2007, as was former President Hashemi Rafsanjani.
But Mr. Vahidi’s ascension to the high-profile post of defense minister suggests that Mr. Ahmadinejad will continue his policy of defiance toward the West.
Obama’s good friends, the Iranian government.
Lastly, there’s this Op-Ed in the Washington Post by Crown Prince of Bahrain Shaikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa.
We need fresh thinking if the Arab Peace Initiative is to have the impact it deserves on the crisis that needlessly impoverishes Palestinians and endangers Israel’s security.
This crisis is not a zero-sum game. For one side to win, the other does not have to lose.
The peace dividend for the entire Middle East is potentially immense. So why have we not gotten anywhere?
Our biggest mistake has been to assume that you can simply switch peace on like a light bulb. The reality is that peace is a process, contingent on a good idea but also requiring a great deal of campaigning — patiently and repeatedly targeting all relevant parties. This is where we as Arabs have not done enough to communicate directly with the people of Israel.
An Israeli might be forgiven for thinking that every Muslim voice is raised in hatred, because that is usually the only one he hears. Just as an Arab might be forgiven for thinking every Israeli wants the destruction of every Palestinian.
Essentially, we have not done a good enough job demonstrating to Israelis how our initiative can form part of a peace between equals in a troubled land holy to three great faiths. Others have been less reticent, recognizing that our success would threaten their vested interest in keeping Palestinians and Israelis at each other’s throats. They want victims to stay victims so they can be manipulated as proxies in a wider game for power. The rest of us — the overwhelming majority — have the opposite interest.
It is in our interest to speak up now for two reasons. First, we will all be safer once we drain the pool of antipathy in which hatemongers from both sides swim.
Second, peace will bring prosperity. Already, the six oil and gas nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council have grown into a powerful trillion-dollar market. Removing the ongoing threat of death and destruction would open the road to an era of enterprise, partnership and development on an even greater scale for the region at large.
That is the glittering prize for resolving the dilemma of justice for Palestine without injustice to Israel. Effectively, this is the meta-issue that defines and distorts the self-image of Arabs and diverts too much of our energies away from the political and economic development the region needs.
The wasted years of deadlock have conditioned Israelis to take on a fortress mentality that automatically casts all Palestinians as the enemy — and not as the ordinary, decent human beings they are.
Speaking out matters, but it is not enough. Our governments and all stakeholders also must be ready to carry out practical measures to help ease the day-to-day hardship of Palestinian lives.
The two communities in the Holy Land are not fated to be enemies. What can unite them tomorrow is potentially bigger than what divides them today.
Both sides need help from their friends, in the form of constructive engagement, to reach a just settlement.
What we don’t need is the continued reflexive rejection of any initiative that seeks to melt the ice. Consider the response so far to the Arab peace plan, pioneered by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. This initiative is a genuine effort to normalize relations between the entire Arab region and Israel, in return for Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territory and a fair resolution of the plight of the Palestinians, far too many of whom live in refugee camps in deplorable conditions.
We must stop the small-minded waiting game in which each side refuses to budge until the other side makes the first move. We’ve got to be bigger than that. All sides need to take simultaneous, good-faith action if peace is to have a chance. A real, lasting peace requires comprehensive engagement and reconciliation at the human level. This will happen only if we address and settle the core issues dividing the Arab and the Israeli peoples, the first being the question of Palestine and occupied Arab lands. The fact that this has not yet happened helps to explain why the Jordanian and Egyptian peace accords with Israel are cold. They have not been comprehensive.
We should move toward real peace now by consulting and educating our people and by reaching out to the Israeli public to highlight the benefits of a genuine peace.
To be effective, we must acknowledge that, like people everywhere, the average Israeli’s primary window on the world is his or her local and national media. Our job, therefore, is to tell our story more directly to the Israeli people by getting the message out to their media, a message reflecting the hopes of the Arab mainstream that confirms peace as a strategic option and advocates the Arab Peace Initiative as a means to this end. Some conciliatory voices in reply from Israel would help speed the process.
Some Arabs, simplistically equating communication with normalization, may think we are moving too fast toward normalization. But we all know that dialogue must be enhanced for genuine progress. We all, together, need to take the first crucial step to lay the groundwork to effectively achieve peace. So we must all invest more in communication.
Once we achieve peace, trade will follow. We can then create a “virtuous circle,” because trade will create its own momentum. By putting real money into people’s hands and giving them real power over their lives, trade will help ensure the durability of peace. The day-to-day experience would move minds and gradually build a relationship of trust and mutual interest, without which long-term peacemaking is impossible.
When stability pays, conflict becomes too costly. We must do more, now, to achieve peace.
The question is, is the crown prince truly sincere about finding a lasting, peaceful solution to the Israeli-Arab problem, or is this just more of the usual Arab hype?
August 10, 2009
Speaking Of Obama’s Good Friends
Obama’s bosom buddies over in Israel, on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip have what they call a two party system.
Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims will kill them, and the Jews will hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and the trees will say: Oh Muslims, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” – except for the gharqad tree, which is the tree of the Jews. [...]
2nd boy: The Zionist aggression continues its attacks on Gaza with warplanes. This war will never be over. It will continue until the day comes when the stones and the trees say: “Oh Muslims, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” [...]
and the other is the “moderate” party, Fatah
“Although we have chosen peace we reserve the right to return to armed resistance,” Abbas said in his keynote at Fatah’s sixth General Assembly.
Abbas’ remarks came as the Palestinian economy in the West Bank has improved substantially in the last two years, thanks to Israel’s efforts to grow the Palestinian market and provide greater freedom of movement by reducing the number of roadblocks and checkpoints.
During the conference, Fatah officials discussed a possible strategic alliance with Iran, which continues to defy the international community’s demands that it halt its nuclear program. Iran is also the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in training, arms and financing to terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
Yes, moderate.
Abbas and the Fatah charter demand the release of thousands of Fatah prisoners who are in Israel prisons. Many of these prisoners, such as Marwan Barghouti, have been convicted of multiple counts of murder and acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians. At the conference, Tayeb Abdel Rahim, a senior Fatah operative and aide to Abbas, said there would never be a permanent solution between the Palestinians and Israelis until Israel first releases all prisoners in Israeli jails.
…convicted of multiple counts of murder and acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians…..
there would never be a permanent solution between the Palestinians and Israelis until Israel first releases all prisoners in Israeli jails.
Of course, there’s also this, so what can I say?
November 16, 2006
NAU Revisited
Not too long ago, I posted about the coming of the North American Union, an agenda which, much to my chagrin, is being engineered by the man I voted for twice for President and his counterparts in Mexico and Canada.
Some commenters took this either with a grain of salt, some with a degree of alarm, some, I thought, may have humored me with their comments.
As they say, it’s all good. The very concept sounds both farfetched and absurd, like the plot of a Robert Ludlum novel or the fantasies of a serious paranoid.
After all, conspiracy theories abound, right?
I had thought my research on the subject was pretty extensive, in fact, somewhere along the line I was reminded of my ex-wife’s own “ravings”, back in the days of the Carter Administration, when she talked about then National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ambitions toward what was called the Trilateral Commission.
In those days I was still kinda’ sorta’ liberal and pretty laid back, and to tell the truth, couldn’t give the proverbial “flying fuck” about such things. Please excuse mah French (spit!)….
In the comments section of my post on the North American Union ambitions of those involved, the forever awesome Always On Watch suggested that I contact a great blog called Sixth Column, who had been following the NAU proceedings for some time. I did.
We resolved to share information on anything our respective research unearthed on the subject. In that quarter, they have thus far kicked my ass, LOL.
An emailed article I recently received provides the entire history, names, methods, intentions, chronology and all, of events leading up to what is now the plan for the North American Union. It is lengthy and will require some time, but I urge you to read it in its entirety.
It should convince you, in alarming detail, of what is to come in the next four years, no matter what else occurs in the political spectrum of the United States of America.
As I said last time out, we are indeed in grave trouble, because our very sovereignty is about to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate expediency. While our future Congresses and POTUSes will govern our country, they will be like state legislatures, while extranational congresses determine the details of our economy (a collective with Mexico and Canada), eventually becoming part of a global collective consisting of the EU, the NAU, the SAU, the AU, etc….
We are in big trouble here, a world government awaits just around the corner, and most unfortunately, the politicians who might be able to prevent it are being kept outside the loop.
As I said in my previous post about this, the involved congresses/parliaments, etc involved herein have been kept in the dark about it, as has the media.
I am wondering whether we are going to wake up and deal with this, or whether we’re simply going to drift into it in blissful ignorance, becoming an entirely different country….
ULTRA-MAJOR and MEGA-GRATEFUL hat tip to CUBED!
July 17, 2006
Works For Me!
I love the way the media pounced on Bush’s use of a four letter word, especially in this headline that says Mideast crisis drives Bush to colorful language.
Bush replied: “What they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit.” Shortly afterwards Blair noticed the microphone and hastily switched it off, but not before the recording had reached news media.
{The correction from “it” to “is” in the quoted text is mine, there is a typo in the actual article}.
Hmmm, reminds me of an occasion on which Ronald Reagan, purportedly not realizing a mic was live, scared the piss out of the Soviets with a quip about preparing to launch missiles.
I like the fact that the leaders of the U.S. and Britain are friendly and informal enough in their private conversations to speak without having to be “PR”. The way the media sounds, you’d think this was an earth shaking event. Possibly even more earth shaking than when a President makes adulterous “whoopie” with his interns, lies to Congress, commits rape and serves up sexual harrassment as frequently as a server in a diner delivers coffee to customers.
Personally, I’d've preferred, “Tony, I hope Israel tears those terrorist motherfuckers a new asshole”, but you can’t have everything….
February 1, 2006
State Of The Union Address 2006
For those who, for whatever reason, didn’t catch the President’s SOTU address yesterday, the full transcript can be found here.
The Wall Street Journal has published a number of key excerpts from the speech, which are here.