This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Terror War

  • Otra mas maleta-gate?

    Back in August, the Venezuelan government was busted cold smuggling oil money to then-Argentinian-presidential candidate Christina Kirschner. (New York Times) (more…)

  • The NIE and Iran; a lesson in common sense

    An awful lot of people in Washington think Americans are generally stupid – the same goes for an awful lot of people in other countries. So when the now-famous National Intelligence Estimate was released that claims Iran halted it’s nuclear weapons program four years ago, the wonks in Washington were sure Americans were going to swallow it hook-line-and-sinker. After all, it was released by those super-brainiacs at the State Department, right? Those guys with three first names who all graduated from Ivy-league schools.

    Well, according to a Rasmusen poll (h/t Flopping Aces) they only suckered in 18%;

    Just 18% of American voters believe that Iran has halted its nuclear weapons program. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 66% disagree and say Iran has not stopped its nuclear weapons program. Twenty-one percent (21%) of men believe Iran has stopped the weapons development along with 16% of women.

    I’m very happy that women are more skeptical than men - it means women are still thinking deeply about our national security instead of just going along with the herd of men who are trying to get in their pants.

    In the meantime, the Islamic Republic is shocked (shocked, I tell you) the the US is spying on them. Gateway Pundit quotes a FARS news report in which a general does his best impression of Nancy Pelosi;

    “The hypocritical and bullying face of Bush and the US neoconservative reactionaries was brought into light by this report,” Major General Hassan Firooz Abadi said in the wake of the latest report by 16 US intelligence agencies stressing that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

    Meantime, he called on Iran to maintain vigilance, reminding that the hawks are still in power in the US.

    “We should be vigilant as the hawks are still in power in the US and the aggressive forces of the world arrogance are still occupying Afghanistan and Iraq and their oppression and cruelty against the Palestinian and Lebanese nations have not ended,” the commander said.

    Meaning, I suppose, that the Islamic Republic’s military supports a Democrat candidate for President next Fall.

    Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Gates took an opportunity to warn about Iran’s continued malfeasance in the Middle East (Washington Times’ Lolita C. Baldor);

    Members of the audience challenged his rebukes of Tehran, evidence of the divide among Arab nations over the Bush administration’s tough stance. Asked if the U.S. would be willing to talk with Iran, Mr. Gates said the behavior of Iran’s current leadership “has not given one confidence that a dialogue would be productive.”

    “Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents — Christians, Jews and Muslims alike,” Mr. Gates said in his address at the event organized by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

    So, apparently, this administration’s policy reflects American public opinion more closely than the media and the three-first-named State Department wonks would care to admit.

  • Eyes off the prize

    The Democrats have lost the political initiative – they’ve been proven wrong on Iraq. Even their own ranks have conceded that the US troops have begun an effective pacification program and the Iraqis are taking control of their own security. So with an election on the horizon, they needed more ammunition.

    Democrats got their boost this week from the anti-Bush and China-loving elements at the State Department and the CIA. The weinies a the State Department decided to abruptly release a National Intelligence Estimate that doesn’t jibe with common sense (Jon Ward, Washington Times);

    Several current and former high-level government officials familiar with the authors of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran described the report as a politically motivated document written by anti-Bush former State Department officials, who opposed sanctioning foreign governments and businesses.

    A Republican senator plans to introduce a bill next week that would create a commission of policy experts to examine whether the new report on Iran is accurate, a spokesman said today.

    John Bolton finds the major flaws of the NIE report (h/t Atlas Shrugs)

    First, the headline finding — that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 — is written in a way that guarantees the totality of the conclusions will be misread. In fact, there is little substantive difference between the conclusions of the 2005 NIE on Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the 2007 NIE. Moreover, the distinction between “military” and “civilian” programs is highly artificial, since the enrichment of uranium, which all agree Iran is continuing, is critical to civilian and military uses. Indeed, it has always been Iran’s “civilian” program that posed the main risk of a nuclear “breakout.”

    Obviously, a weak attempt to dissuade Americans that Iran is a threat to world peace. Now, this morning, we read that the CIA destroyed video tapes of interrogations in 2002 – instantly sending Democrats off on a false tangent of outrage (Wall Street Journal, Siobhan Gorman)

    The CIA’s acknowledgment that it destroyed videotapes of interrogations of detainees made in 2002 set off a fierce debate on Capitol Hill today, as it re-opened a contentious issue that the CIA director has worked for a year and a half to put to rest.
     
    It also raised new questions about the government’s handling of evidence in the trial of al Qaeda suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, who is now serving a life sentence after his conviction last year.

    But, Michele Malkin says Democrats in Congress were informed of the tapes’ impending destruction more than four years ago;

    Rep. Jane Harman of California, then the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was one of only four members of Congress in 2003 informed of the tapes’ existence and the CIA’s intention to ultimately destroy them.

    “I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it,” Harman said. While key lawmakers were briefed on the CIA’s intention to destroy the tapes, they were not notified two years later when the spy agency actually carried out the plan. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the committee only learned of the tapes’ destruction in November 2006.

    Yet the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party (otherwise known as the Washington Post) calls it a “startling disclosure”;

    The startling disclosures came on the same day that House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement on legislation that would prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics by the CIA and bring intelligence agencies in line with rules followed by the U.S. military.

    Hardly startling when even Rockefeller admits he knew about it a year ago. Yet, WaPo perpetuates the myth of “startling”;

    Hayden said he decided to discuss the tapes publicly because of news media interest and the possibility that “we may see misinterpretations of the facts in the days ahead.” The New York Times said on its Web site that it had informed the CIA on Wednesday night that it was preparing a story about the destroyed tapes.

    So how did the New York Times find out? Either leaky-ass Congress or the anti-Bush wing of the CIA – my money’s on both.

    WSJ writes on “our troops are SS concentration camp guards” Little Dick Durbin’s drama play;

    Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois fired off a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey asking for a Justice Department investigation of “whether CIA officials who destroyed these videotapes and withheld information about their existence from official proceedings violated the law.” On the Senate floor, Mr. Durbin rejected the CIA’s explanation that it was trying to protect the identity of its agents.

    Of course, the Washington Post thinks that the ACLU has a dog in the fight for our National Security;

    Civil liberties advocates denounced the CIA’s decision to destroy the tapes, saying the agency should have known by 2005 that the actions depicted on them were potentially the subject of litigation and congressional investigations.

    Jameel Jaffer, a national security lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the tapes were destroyed at a time when a federal court had ordered the CIA to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU seeking records related to interrogations.

    “The CIA appears to have deliberately destroyed evidence that would have allowed its agents to be held accountable for the torture of prisoners,” Jaffer said. “They are tapes that should have been released to the courts and Congress, but the CIA apparently believes that its agents are above the law.”

    The Leftists in this country can’t get it through their fat heads that this isn’t an exercise in law enforcement, it’s dealing with people who would kill us all if they had the chance – which is why we need to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions whether they’re advanced or not.

    But they’d rather play silly political games and russian roulette with our security.

  • Finally some clarity on the NIE Iran report

    I pretty much quit blogging after the release of the NIE report the other day, because it seemed like a muddled mess of polical posturing and I’ve read eveything I could get my hands on about this particular subject. But nothing blog-worthy.

    Until now. Today, John Bolton has turned on the lights in the Washington Post;

    Rarely has a document from the supposedly hidden world of intelligence had such an impact as the National Intelligence Estimate released this week. Rarely has an administration been so unprepared for such an event. And rarely have vehement critics of the “intelligence community” on issues such as Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction reversed themselves so quickly.

    All this shows that we not only have a problem interpreting what the mullahs in Tehran are up to, but also a more fundamental problem: Too much of the intelligence community is engaging in policy formulation rather than “intelligence” analysis, and too many in Congress and the media are happy about it. President Bush may not be able to repair his Iran policy (which was not rigorous enough to begin with) in his last year, but he would leave a lasting legacy by returning the intelligence world to its proper function.

    Please read it all.

  • Senile Reid denies his face has a nose

    According to Politico (h/t Crotchety Old Bastard) Harry Reid thinks it’s still 2006;

    But Reid, in a Monday press conference, ceded no ground.

    “The surge hasn’t accomplished its goals,” Reid said. “… We’re involved, still, in an intractable civil war.”

    A civil war, Harry? Really? Aside from the glaring statistics (like these from Gateway Pundit) you should catch the news from last week at Kuwait News Agency (h/t Dreams Into Lightening)?

    Leading Shiite cleric in Iraq Ali Sistani Tuesday banned the killing of Iraqis, particularly the Sunnis, and urged the Shiites to protect their brother Sunnis.

    Sistani bans the Iraqi blood in general the blood of Sunnis in particular. His announcement came during a meeting with a delegation from Sunni clerics from southern and northern Iraq.

    The clerics are visiting Najaf to participate in the first national conference for Ulemaa of Shiites and Sunnis.

    Sistani called on the Shiites to protect their Sunni brothers, according to Sheikh Khaled Al-Mulla, head of the authority of Ulemaa of Southern Iraq, noting that the Fatwa of Sistani would have positive impacts nationwide.
    “I am a servant of all Iraqis, there is no difference between a Sunni, a Shitte or a Kurd or a Christian,” Al-Mulla quoted Sistani as saying during the meeting.

    Sistani warned the Sunni clerics from the plans of the enemies to plant seeds of discord among the Iraqis.

    The visiting delegation voiced relief for the meeting and said they backed Sistani’s stance.

    Threats Watch explains the significance of Sistani’s fatwa;

    Western observers should note the significance of Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Among the world’s Shi’a, he is seen as a direct (and rational) competitor to Iran’s radical Ayatollah Khameini for the true leadership of the Shi’a ummah (community). Many in fact have already seen him as the true leader of the Shi’a. Unlike Khameini, Sistani sees room for democratic governance and a separation between the mosque and government.

    So, Sistani (al Sadr’s mentor, if anyone is keeping track) has forbidden Iraqis to kill each other – that kind of puts to rest the whole civil war thing, doesn’t it? I mean Murtha had to concede last week, for cripes sake. It’s as plain as the nose on your face, Harry.

    UPDATE: Brian Faughnan at The Weekly Standard Blog writes that Reid is prepared to cave on funding the war but Rollcall says the Democrats plan on using the short session to blackmail the Republicans into caving by holding their Christmas break hostage.

  • The Annapolis conference wasn’t a waste of time

    I’m probably all alone out here on this. I’ve read what a monumental waste of time the Arab/US/Israeli conference was yesterday and I’ve pretty much kept quiet on it. I guess I’ve got a bit of optimist left in me and I’m a bit of a dreamer.

    I read the blogs (even Don Carl’s post below) like PC Free Zone where Wild Thing called it a ‘worthless farce of a peace conference” and Dan McLaughlin at Redstate who warned us that “you can negotiate with terrorists, but you can’t negotiate about terrorism”. I agree with both of them – to a point.

    But anything that can get Ahmadinejad foaming at the mouth isn’t a complete waste of time (AFP);

    Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday predicted that Israel would not survive, as he lashed out at the US-hosted conference seeking to relaunch the Middle East peace process.

    “It is impossible that the Zionist regime can last,” state media quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in a cabinet meeting.

    “Deterioration is in the nature of this regime as it has been built on aggression, lying, crime and wrongdoing,” he added.

    He said the meeting which united Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Annapolis, Maryland had “failed already and was stillborn. It lacked the cornerstones of effective political work.”

    If it was “stillborn” how come your closest ally Syria ignored your pleas and went anyway? Mahmoud is feeling isolated like Chavez was feeling the last few weeks – and I suspect that was the whole idea in the first place. When Ahmadinejad starts one of his snot-slinging rants, we’re doing the right thing. 

  • BDS at Columbia

    Just perusing the usual sources, I ran across an article at The Weekly Standard this afternoon by John McCormack entitled “Columbia’s Concern” about a group of professors at Columbia University who’ve expressed their “concern” about the tone of University President Bollinger when he had the opportunity to question the president of the Islamic Republic, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back on September 24th. Their letter to the university president reads in part;

    3) The president’s address on the occasion of President Ahmadinejad‘s visit has sullied the reputation of the University with its strident tone, and has abetted a climate in which incendiary speech prevails over open debate. The president’s introductory remarks were not only uncivil and bad pedagogy, they allied the University with the Bush administration’s war in Iraq, a position anathema to many in the University community.

    4) In the name of the University, the president has publicly taken partisan political positions concerning the politics of the Middle East in particular, without apparent expertise in this area or consultation with faculty who teach and undertake research in this area. His conflation of his own political position with that of the University is unacceptable.

    At the New York Sun link is also a list of the numerous professors who signed this letter back on Novemebr 12th, in case anyone is interested. The real intellectual vacancy here is the line that accuses Bollinger of aligning with the Bush Administration simply by asking tough questions of the half-pint mahdi-worshipper. Excuse me?

    Well, over at the Huffington Post, Alan Dershowitz explains it;

    It all seems so inconsistent unless you understand what the real agenda is, and then everything becomes completely clear and totally consistent. The agenda is Israel. If you’re against Israel — as Matory, Foner, and their ilk are — then they want you to have complete freedom to speak against the Jewish state (as they certainly should and do). If, on the other hand, you’re perceived as pro-Israel (or pro-American, for that matter), then suddenly you have no right to free speech. It is so transparently cynical that I’m amazed that any reasonable person actually falls for it.

    Well, Alan, were not talking about reasonable people. Eric Foner is the guy who wrote “He’s the Worst Ever“, the Washington Post piece last December explaining why Leftist history professors want to impress upon us that President Bush is the worst president in our history – the article the Left drags out everytime they want to show us their authority for making such an idiotic claim – it ends with this line;

    It is impossible to say with certainty how Bush will be ranked in, say, 2050. But somehow, in his first six years in office he has managed to combine the lapses of leadership, misguided policies and abuse of power of his failed predecessors. I think there is no alternative but to rank him as the worst president in U.S. history.

    McCormack writes that about 60 Columbia professors have come to Bollinger’s defense;

    Bollinger’s defenders appear to have most liberal foreign policy observers on their side, according to Andrew Grotto, a senior national security analyst at the left-wing Center for American Progress. Grotto says it’s simply a fact that Iran is “financing and cooperating” with “certain Shia insurgent groups” in Iraq. “I’m not aware of any serious debate that Iran is not meddling in Iraq,” he says.

    “Serious” is the operative word in that sentence, of course. Grotto is a critic of the Bush administration, but he says, “We need a serious debate about Iran policy, and we can’t have that unless we’re pretty straight on the facts.” Grotto also thinks it’s unproductive for people to argue that “if Bush says it, it must be false.”

    So I guess Columbia nor the entire Left are completely awash in BDS. But to simply state that criticism of the Islamic Republic should not be allowed because it is a political position is incredibly intellectually vacant. Has Foner or his fellow boneheads seen what goes on in Iraq and Iran? Or are they just being willfully blind.

  • Iran to Host “Alternative” Conference

    Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans to host a conference in Tehran that is being bandied about as a “riposte” to the Annapolis Conference. He has invited representatives from the “militant” factions of Palestinian groups.

    This is an idea I support fully! All terrorists should meet in Tehran, and then we should drop several really really big bombs on them. Lets get as many targets in one place as possible and then blow the shit out of it. This is a basic tenet of marksmanship: Shoot where there are targets. If we wiped out Ahmadinejad as well, that would be a happy accident, now wouldn’t it? Breitbart/AFP story