Terror-Chicks Not Welcome At Al-Qaeda

There's a curious debate going on among the most radical of the jihadists.

More and more, Islamist women are demanding equal rights to blow themselves up, but al-Qaeda's sticking to its fundamentalist Islamic guns and saying no way -- in the process sparking something of a feminist debate among the jihadists. From AP:

In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman's role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters.

His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al-Qaida.

A'eeda Dahsheh is a Palestinian mother of four in Lebanon who said she supports al-Zawahri and has chosen to raise children at home as her form of jihad. However, she said, she also supports any woman who chooses instead to take part in terror attacks.

Another woman signed a more than 2,000-word essay of protest online as Rabeebat al-Silah, Arabic for "Companion of Weapons."

"How many times have I wished I were a man ... When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri said there are no women in al-Qaida, he saddened and hurt me," wrote "Companion of Weapons," who said she listened to the speech 10 times. "I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest...I am powerless."

A Muslim woman, Sara, has been chastising me lately for being ignorant of Islam. "Please educate yourself before you decide to write an article like this," she commented on a recent post. "You obviously know nothing about Islam. And the association you made between the prophet (peace be upon him) and the terrorist Muhammed Attah is just plain ignorance and stupidy [sic]." And this:

Those terrorist acts were initiated by extremist who are no better than heretics according to Islam. If you try to overcome your ignorant arrogance and read about the prophet you would know that he once made an explicit and clear statement that who ever kills an innocent person, including non muslims [sic] will literally go to hell.

Which Islam is it, Sara, which Prophet? Is Mohammed and his religion the Islam of peace you fantasize about, or is it this Islam:

"A lot of the girls I speak to ... want to carry weapons. They live with this great frustration and oppression," said Huda Naim, a prominent women's leader, Hamas member and Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza. "We don't have a special militant wing for women ... but that doesn't mean that we strip women of the right to go to jihad."

I wish Islam today were the Islam Sara says it is. More power to her; I wish there were more like her, and I hope that she and other Muslims who believe Islam should be a religion of peace will ultimately prevail.

They are our only hope because if "the girls who want to carry weapons" prevail over Islam's Saras, we will be threatened by Islam and killed by Islamists for the foreseeable future, and will have no choice but to fight back against the forced conversion to a religion that acts with such ugliness.

hat-tip: Jim

Is OC's Most Notorious Terrorist Dead?

Our local boy gone very, very, very bad, Adam Gadahn, aka "Azzam al-Amriki," al-Qaeda's English-language mouthpiece, may be dead, as we speculated earlier.

Here's an update from Counterterrorism Blog:

This afternoon, Al-Qaida's As-Sahab Media Foundation has released the second audio recording of Usama Bin Laden in the space of only three days--this time, openly addressed "to the Islamic nation." But, perhaps what is most interesting about Bin Laden's latest set of audio recordings is not what they contain--but rather, what they inexplicably lack: the English-language subtitles and matching transcript that have, until recently, been a customary feature of professional-quality As-Sahab videos. An analysis of the history of As-Sahab recordings and their evolution over time would seem to indicate that the responsibility for creating these English-language products fell largely on the shoulders of one man alone: Adam Gadahn (a.k.a. "Azzam al-Amriki"), the California native who was recruited by Al-Qaida computer specialists living in Garden Grove in the late 1990s, and who later traveled on to Pakistan seeking to join his new hero Usama Bin Laden. Gadahn's voice and, more recently, his face have been an integral part of As-Sahab releases since their first video production in 2001, "The Destruction of the U.S.S. Cole" (a.k.a. "State of the Ummah"). He has frequently appeared as a freely identified commentator in As-Sahab videos, with clips of him speaking in English juxtaposed amid footage of Usama Bin Laden and Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.

In January 2008, the U.S. military used a Predator drone to launch an airstrike on a house in Mir Ali, Pakistan, which was suspected to be hiding several high-ranking Al-Qaida leaders and operatives. Within days, Al-Qaida issued a series of statements and video recordings acknowledging that the airstrike had caused serious casualties, including Abu al-Laith al-Liby--a senior Al-Qaida leader considered to be the "Field Commander" in charge of foreign mujahideen military operations across large swaths of southern Afghanistan. But according to NEFA Foundation sources inside Pakistan, the legendary Abu al-Laith was not the only loss suffered in the strike at Mir Ali. These sources indicated that a host of other less-senior-but-still-significant Al-Qaida members were also inside the house at the time, including Abu al-Laith's deputy, a Somali holding Australian or U.S. nationality, two Kuwaiti jihadis, and--most interesting of all--none other than Adam Gadahn himself. Al-Qaida has never confirmed nor denied reports of Adam Gadahn's death, and that has only added to the growing mystery surrounding his whereabouts. (more here)

Let's hope it's true, and that Gadahn awoke on the other side of this mortal veil only to discover that he should have stuck with his family's Jewish religion and morals. No virgins, no paradise for Azzam al-Amriki. (Yes, I also hope and pray that at the last moment, Gadahn shook off his Islamic chains and accepted Christ -- but what are the chances of that?)

Still, if it is true that he's met his well-deserved fate, there is a family here that mourns him. For their story, read my posts summarizing an OC Register three-parter on the Gadahn family that I've linked to several times before:

From Liberal Jew To Al Qaeda In Two Generations
Flower Child Dad, Al Qaeda Son
"If You're A Good Believer, You'll Kill Your Parents."

hat-tip: LGF

Sunday Scan

Who You Gonna Mourn To?

China, an atheist regime that forces "religion" into a state-run box and prosecutes practitioners of serious religion, has called for three days of mourning for the tens of thousands of victims of last week's devastating earthquake.

Who will the country mourn to? A vacuum? The spirit of Mao, who, decomposed as he is, does not offer much eternal hope?

The answer is in the heart of those that suffer, as this AP story reveals:

Dozens of students were buried in new graves dotting a green hillside overlooking the rubble, the small mounds of dirt failing to block the pungent smell of decay wafting from the ground. Most graves were unmarked, though several had wooden markers with names scribbled on them.

Zhou Bencen, 36, said he raced to the town's middle school after the earthquake, where relatives who arrived earlier had dug out the body of his 13-year-old daughter, Zhou Xiao, crushed on the first floor.

Zhou cradled his wife in his arms, holding her hand and stroking her back while she sobbed hysterically. "Oh God, oh God, why is life so bitter?"

Oh God, give them comfort. The state certainly can't.

Moral Relativism Alert!

Before straying too far from AP, let's turn our attention to a story filed by Terence Hunt earlier this morning about Prez Bush's address to assembled Arab leaders in Egypt. Hunt tells us:

Winding up a five-day trip to the region, Bush took a strikingly tougher tone with Arab nations than he did with Israel in a speech Thursday to the Knesset. Israel received effusive praise from the president while Arab nations heard a litany of U.S. criticisms mixed with some compliments.

Gosh. I wonder why the tone would be different.

One of the rules of thumb I teach my employees is that when your opposition is lying, distorting or just being ignorant, use their own words against them. That would apply with Hunt's story. Let's look at Hunt's reporting on what Bush said to the Arab leaders and see if there's a reason for the contrasting tones, shall we?

"Too often in the Middle East, politics has consisted of one leader in power and the opposition in jail," Bush said ...

Israeli Arabs have the right to vote and are represented in government. On the other side, there's Mubarik, Assad and a host of other power-barons who have jailed or suppressed their opposition, and not one functioning democracy save the nascent one in Iraq and the crumbling one in Lebanon. Point Bush.

"America is deeply concerned about the plight of political prisoners in this region, as well as democratic activists who are intimidated or repressed, newspapers and civil society organizations that are shut down and dissidents whose voices are stifled ..."

Israel's' "political prisoners" are people who have carried out or planned violent attacks with real weapons against Israel. In the rest of the region, jails are full of people whose only weapon is the pen or the tongue. Freedom of speech in Israel, repression in all the Arab lands leads to point Bush.

"I call on all nations in this region to release their prisoners of conscience, open up their political debate and trust their people to chart their future ..."

Israel has no prisoners of conscience, just prisoners of action. It has an open political debate, and it trusts its future to its people. Anyone want to speak from the Arab side? Anyone? Anyone?

Point, game and match Bush.

On The Wrong Foot

The EU asked Interpol to look into the state of Islamist terror in Europe. Interpol found that it's bad and getting worse ... and it blamed England.

Britain's controversial foreign and military policy has made UK the hub of Islamic terrorism across Europe, and turned the country into a fertile ground for jihadist recruiters, a report by the EU warned.

The EU Terrorism Situation and Trend Report revealed that British foreign policy presented critical dangers for all Europe: "The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have a large impact on the security environment of the EU." (Source)

So the problem isn't the EU's policy of appeasing radical Islamists who promote race hatred under the protection of the EU's tolerance laws? And it's not Islam itself and its long history of violent jihad, sharpened in recent years by the phenomena of international migration, the Internet and Saudi-funded radical education?

The EU study may be worlds off in its finger-pointing, but it's probably right about this: It predicts more terror attacks in Europe from a "rejuvenated" al-Qaeda.

Where are we fighting al-Qaeda? Well, we and the Brits are fighting them in Afghanistan and Iraq. Where aren't we fighting them? Europe.

Big News From The Nanosphere

Advances in nanotechnology appear poised to dramatically increase the efficiency of thin film solar cells. As in from a theoretical cap of 31% efficiency all the way up to 45% efficiency.

Put on your techie hat and read about it here.

Anthropomorphic Hucksterism

More indications that the global warming debate is anything but over:

The Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) will announce [Monday] that more than 31,000 scientists have signed a petition rejecting claims of human-caused global warming. The purpose of OISM’s Petition Project is to demonstrate that the claim of “settled science” and an overwhelming “consensus” in favor of the hypothesis of human-caused global warming and consequent climate damage is wrong. No such consensus or settled science exists. As indicated by the petition text and signatory list, a very large number of American scientists reject this hypothesis. (source, via ICECAP)

The OISM list doesn't focus on climatologists, so the Warmies will discount the announcement. But all have university degrees in science and over 9,000 of them have PhD's so we can postulate that they know the difference between good and bad research methods, and the difference between evidence and proof.

Meanwhile, as we look at ten years of global cooling having no effect whatsoever on the prognostications and pontifications of our electeds, Richard Rahn writes in WashTimes that global warming constitutes the greatest intelligence failure of our era, concluding:

You may wonder — if the data from the last decade show the Earth is not getting warmer, and the climate models have been making incorrect predictions — why are so many in the political and media classes continuing to shout about the dangers of global warming and insisting the "science" is settled when the opposite is true. (You may recall that Copernicus and Galileo had certain problems going against the conventional wisdom of their time.)

The reason people like Al Gore and many others are in denial is explained by cognitive dissonance. This occurs when evidence increasingly contradicts a strongly held belief. Rather than accept the new evidence and change their minds, some people will become even more insistent on the "truth" of the discredited belief, and attack those who present the new evidence — again an "intelligence" failure.

Finally, many people directly benefit from government funding global warming programs and care more about their own pocketbooks than the plight of the world's poor who are paying more for food. This is not an "intelligence" but an "integrity" failure.

This One's A Stand-Alone


SF Readies For Big Gay Bucks

While the 60-plus percent of us in CA who voted that marriage in our state is between a man and a woman are unhappy with this week's CA supreme court decision overturning our will, tourism officials in San Francisco are decidedly ... uh, gayer.

San Francisco's tourist industry is betting that gay marriage will lead to a boon in same-sex wedding and honeymoon packages.

Nationally, gay tourism amounts to a $60 billion-a-year industry. Thanks to Thursday's ruling by the state Supreme Court striking down the ban on same-sex marriage, California stands to become a destination spot for gay and lesbian couples from around the world who want to get hitched.

And San Francisco is hoping for the biggest slice of the wedding cake.

No sooner did the court decision come down than the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau fired off a release to the gay press, inviting couples to get married in the city where "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history continues to be made." (source)

If the ruling stands, gays from any state will be able to wed in California, unlike Massachusetts, which only lets its own gays marry.

Cue up quickly, my friends. A constitutional amendment is likely to cut your fun short soon enough. Had gays gone the legislative route, they very well might have secured the right to marry in California, but as long as they rely on courts stripping the majority of the sanctity of their vote, the majority will stand together against gay marriage -- because they support the sanctity of a democratic, free vote, not necessarily because they support the sanctity of marriage.

Sunday Scan

Lessons In New Politics From Barack

Barack Obama is leaving the old politics behind, supplanting it with a new, cleaner style that leaves the smarminess behind. Here, courtesy of The LA Times (which provides a darn good compendium of Obama-smashing news, in its usual blatant favoritism for Hillary objective style), is a tutorial in how Obama approaches politics the new, clean way:

1. Need money after your first unsuccessful campaign for Congress? Then get a sweet job from a big campaign supporter to supplement your state senate income. (Obama got a $112,000 job from Robert Blackwell Jr., about double his state senate salary of $58,000.)
   
   
2. In return for the favor, urge the state legislature to grant a Blackwell company, table tennis promoter Killerspin, a $50,000 tourism grant. (Pingpong tourism is such an important tourist market, and so deserving of state subsidies!) ((Shall we make, or avoid, the devilishly clever connection between the name "Killerspin" and the Obama PR machine?))
   
   
3. Then, to show that a cash-stuffed paper bag the system really does work, land $320,000 in state subsidies for Killerspin tournaments.
   
   
4. Finally, get new political contributions from Blackwell as soon as the grants go through.

There are business people who feel it is their responsibility to run a profitable company, and there are business people who feel it is the people's responsibility to make their company profitable. There are politicians who believe in the former, and politicians like Obama who, despite all their fine talk about new ways of doing things, definitely believe in the latter.

Islamist Horror Stories

Bubba, of What Bubba Knows, has put together a list of stories for Sabine, a gal who apparently doesn't get the threat posed by Islamist thought and action. Here's his intro:

For Sabine's education, today's stories of atrocities by Muslims.

May you come to realize who and what is the real threat to peace, may you learn to recognize the face of the real enemies of your peaceful, tranquil world.

And here are the story links:

¤ Please Let Me Marry Her and Then Kill Me
¤ The criminality against children in the koran
¤ German Charity Helps Turkish Women Escape Forced Marriages
¤ Europe or Eurabia?
¤ Home-grown 'champion of Islam'
¤ Saudi women 'kept in childhood'
¤ Not Child's Play: The Teddy-Bear Intifada

The first link one tells of a particularly heartless murder carried out by an al-Qaeda in Iraq thug, who is now in prison, awaiting his death sentence. Another prisoner wanted to identify the thug's victim:

So, he asked the killer to give him the name of the victim.

The killer replied he didn’t know, he asked from what tribe? The killer didn’t know, he asked from what sect? The killer didn’t know, he asked him from what province? The killer didn’t know.

Then he asked him, then why you killed him? The killer said he cannot remember, whether it was the victim's haircut or the way he was dressed or the music pouring from his car.

This is the enemy we're fighting, and this is why we're fighting this enemy. Islamist terrorists are the vilest villains we have ever fought, a fact the Left is quick to forget, despite unforgettable stories like this one.

Lessons In Environmental Hypocrisy

If you like the splendor and quiet, hot solitude of the desert, Anza Borrego is your state park. It's the state's largest park, stretching across most of eastern San Diego County almost all the way to the Mexican border, with 500 miles of dirt roads, 12 separate wilderness areas and untold miles of hiking trails.

Somewhere in that vastness, a long line of wooden power poles stretches from horizon to horizon, lost in the vastness, hardly noticed by most park visitors. Call the power lines the Maginot Line of the war between the Greenies and the rest of us.

San Diego Gas & Electric, in order to meet a state mandate that 20% of its power come from alternative sources by 2010 (that's less than two years away!), proposes to convert the current power corridor to a new Sunrise Powerlink, which would carry renewable power from the sun, wind and geothermal facilities to be built in the Imperial Valley.

The environmentalists, who demand that we stop using oil and go with renewable resources, are furious, of course. Here's Elizabeth Goldstein, prez of the California Parks Foundation, quoted in the LA Times:

"The idea that we're going to sacrifice critical pieces of our environment to protect other pieces of our environment seems a little ironic. That's an irony I cannot accept. We have to find a way to do both."

I think she means "protect both," not "sacrifice both," but the sentence's structure is a little hazy. The Sierra Club makes it more clear, talking about a "powerline juggernaut:"

Fare thee well, big skies and open vistas. To feed the energy demands of the West's inland megalopolises and crowded coasts, public lands in 11 Western states may soon be crisscrossed by a web of power lines and pipelines. These "energy easements," up to three-quarters of a mile wide, are slated for every sort of public property: national forests, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) holdings, state parks, even national parks. Since they'll be "preapproved," the easements will be ready to go at the energy companies' convenience.

Note that they don't say a word about these easements being required to comply with the alternative energy mandates they themselves demanded. So like a Kennedy attacking windmills, they attack the infrastructure required to make their alternative energy dream come true.

But you see, having 20% alternative energy isn't their dream, not if it means conventional power solutions. They wanted growth to stop, grids to be ripped out, and Americans to change the way they live. Nothing less will do.

So they will fight this power line, even though there really isn't a good alternative route. They would rather condemn private land than use public land for a public use. And the public, I hope, will see the Greenies for what they are: Demanding and totally inflexible, demanding the world without giving up a square inch, and self-righteous but thoroughly hypocritical.

Think Again, Code Pink

Before Code Pink half-wits picket Berkeley's USMC recruiting station, maybe they should read about the recruiters our recruiters are up against:

In an interview, two senior analysts who helped question the 48 captured fighters said the picture that emerges is of a cold and calculating process that recruits young alienated men who are social outcasts. Neither of the interrogators could be named for security reasons.

"Al-Qaida recruits these people from the Middle East and North Africa, hitting them at the most vulnerable time of the life," said one of the analysts with the U.S.-led Multinational Force.

The demand for many foreign fighters begins in places such as the dingy back streets of teeming Iraqi cities such as Mosul, where al-Qaida still holds sway.

An al-Qaida cell decides it needs two suicide bombers. It puts in an order which is funded by money made through racketeering, extortion and kidnapping. That request goes to Damascus, Syria, and to the facilitators and recruiters training young men in North Africa and Saudi Arabia. Three months later, the bomber is delivered, military investigators and officials say.

According to the U.S. military, records seized from al-Qaida show that 40 percent come from North African countries such as Libya and Algeria, and 41 percent from Saudi Arabia.

Al-Qaida in Iraq recruiters troll mosques for potential fighters — impoverished young men who are believed at odds with their family or angry at the West, the military summary says.

"They are experts at identifying these men" who are often sitting alone in mosques, one of the analysts said. "They befriend them, usually by saying that they are praying wrong and offering to correct it."

They then offer to help them with Quran studies, and that is the start of their indoctrination into the jihadi philosophy. (AP)

There is, I hope, a particularly hot and uncomfortable circle in Hell for jihad recruiters. If the meek -- the targets of these appallingly evil people-- are blessed, then damned, double-damned, are those who deliberately hunt them out and turn them into vessels of evil.

Of course, Code Pink will blame all this on America, instead of jihadist Islamism. When the intelligence recruiter was handing out brains, they must have been demonstrating at the "Breasts not Bombs" rally.

Bullseye!

Osama, from your hovel in whatever bleak, flea-bitten corner of nowhere it is, take note:

WASHINGTON (AP) - A missile launched from a Navy ship successfully struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, a defense official said. Full details were not immediately available.

It happened just after 10:30 p.m. EST.

Two officials said the missile was launched successfully. One official, who is close to the process, said it hit the target. He said details on the results were not immediately known.

A satellite flying at who knows what blinding speed 130 miles overhead nailed with pinpoint accuracy by a missile fired from the middle of the ocean.

Got a missile cruiser, Islamist dog? A spy satellite? Technology more advanced than a satellite phone (which, by the way, we invented). If Islam is so hot, what does it have to show for itself, save box-cutters, four guys who could pass flight school, and the highly advanced technology of strapping someone else's C4 around the bellies of suicidal psychopaths?

And you want the world to come to where you're at. Speaking for all the billions of us, no thank you.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Quote Of The Day: Relativism Gone Wild Edition

"If trials are held in Guantanamo by flawed military commissions, the system will be on trial as much as the men being accused of horrific crimes."
-- Jennifer Daskal, Human Rights Watch (source)

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his band of brothers buggers plotted the deaths of 2,973 Americans, none of whom were engaged in any kind of warfare with Mohammed's country or religion. He has, to our knowledge, never expressed one word of regret, other than a regret that he didn't kill more of us.

The Soros-funded Human Rights Watch, whose agenda is in significant part to embarrass America, will not rest until it has tried every trick to shift the focus from the ruthless Islamist terrorists to the American process for dealing with these dangerous, unrepentant men.

We will not be fooled, Daskal! Try as you will, you'll not convince us that Mohammed and his co-conspirators deserve anything more than prisoners of war deserve. They don't even deserve that, as they fight for no nation and wear no uniform.

Our system is not on trial, except by those who want to destroy our system, those who take their money and their cues from Soros, the world's premier America-hater and noted contributor to the Democratic party.

Here Come The 9/11 Death Penalties

A dilemma for Leftists and Truthers 9/11 whack-jobs is shaping up as, six and a half years after the crime, the U.S. is about to charge six al-Qaeda terrorists with the capital crime of planning the 9/11 attacks.

In addition to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, those to be charged, according to the NYT, are:

The official identified the others to be charged as Mohammed al-Qahtani, the man officials have labeled the 20th hijacker; Ramzi bin al-Shibh, said to have been the main intermediary between the hijackers and leaders of Al Qaeda; Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, known as Ammar al-Baluchi, a nephew of Mr. Mohammed, who has been identified as Mr. Mohammed’s lieutenant for the 2001 operation; Mr. al-Baluchi’s assistant, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi; and Walid bin Attash, a detainee known as Khallad, who investigators say selected and trained some of the hijackers.

Many Leftists will feel compelled to defend the six. For the hardcore, they are revolutionaries who attacked America, Bush and Wall Street. If the rhetoric is going to reach the road, they have no choice but to support. I hope this crowed is loud and highly visible.

More run-of-the-mill Lefties, marinated in anti-military beliefs, will defend the six because they were held in Guantanamo, away from due process, and will claim that evidence from their interrogation sessions must be rejected as coerced. While not as offensive as the first set, this group's protests will alienate most level-headed Americans who know intuitively that the six would have been dead long ago, were it not for the fact that it was America that captured them.

The anti-death sentence folks will be out in force, of course, as evidenced by the NYT, which didn't even wait for an editorial to editorialize:

Relatives of the Sept. 11 victims have expressed differing views of potential death sentences, with some arguing that it would accomplish little other than martyring men for whom martyrdom may be viewed as a reward.

Those relatives, if they exist at all, were not named in the article, which then went on to add:

Some countries have been critical of the United States’ use of the death penalty in civilian cases, and a request for execution in the military commission system would import much of that criticism to the already heated debates about the legitimacy of Guantánamo and the Bush administration’s legal approach there, some lawyers said.

The countries supposedly holding the view went unnamed as well. The lawyers were not identified.

Finally, the Truthers Imbeciles. It will be really something to see them mount an "It ain't them!" defense as the government rolls out its evidence against the six. Rosie, prepare to become even more obnoxious.

My view: The six are lucky to be alive. How nice it would be to be able to go back in time a bit and mount them in stocks on the sidewalks alongside the World Trade Center site, but we are no longer that country, thank God. We will see that evidence is presented against them, that their lawyers will be heard.

A military tribunal will decide their earth-bound fate. If indeed they are guilty, a higher power will consider their eternal fate.

OC Traitor Dead? Let's Hope!

Orange County's most infamous native son, Adam Gadahn, bin Laden's hate-spewing, turncoat, traitor mouthpiece, may have died in last Thursday's killer attack on senior al-Qaeda blood-luster Abu Laith al-Libi.

Gadahn's grandparents were liberal Jewish leaders in Orange County and now he is/was one of the world's premier Jew-haters.

His parents were mellow hippie goat-farmers with multi-culti coursing through their drug-soaked brains. It was Pop's goat sales to OC's first mosque that introduced their son to Islam -- and that's cool man, you know, because God is God is God, you know? Far out.

In no time, the preachers of the Religion of Peace had converted Gadahn into a new man: hateful, vicious and Hell-bound.

And now, if the rumors are right, he's reached that well-deserved location.

For my earlier posts summarizing the OCRegister's fascinating three-part series on Gadahn and his family, click here, here and here.

The Libyan Gets A Look At Hell

Abu Laith al-Libi, "The Libyan," a senior al-Qaeda operative who tried to kill President Cheney in Afghanistan a year ago, became a charred, dismembered victim of superior US technology today.

A CIA Predator drone piloted via video controls a thousand miles away fired a missile into a passle of Taliban and al-Qaeda scum, killing 12, including al-Libi..

As it happens, the 12 were hanging out in Pakistan, in the Waziristan tribal area next to Pakistan. That makes the hit an even better tactical strike, since it lets the enemy know there are no safe havens, and it sends Musharaff a much-needed message that if he can't take care of Waziristan, we will.

Next up: drones over Iran. Even more cool.

AP quotes Eric Rosenbach, a terror expert at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School:

"Al-Libi has been waging jihad for more than 10 years and it will be a blow to both al-Qaida and the Taliban, but not in a way that will lead to the downfall of those organizations."

Blows are good, even if not fatal. They mean we have good intelligence in the al-Qaeda's backyards and we have the capability and will to act on that intelligence, even at the expense of another nation's sovereignty.

The attack must have dispirited and demoralized al-Qaeda greatly, so I hope there are more to come, and soon. Name the enemy (which the Dems can't do), attack the enemy and kill the enemy using technology that boggles their minds. Dispirit and demoralize them some more.

Can we do it again tomorrow?

Hon, Let's Cancel That Trip To Yemen

Did these folks not see Babel?

Do they not read newspapers?

Suspected al-Qaida militants opened fire on a convoy of tourists in a remote desert mountain valley Friday, killing two Belgian women and their Yemeni driver. It was the second recent militant attack on foreign tourists in Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden.

The victims were traveling in a convoy of at least four vehicles through an ancient, ruin-filled desert valley called Wadi Daw'an in Yemen's eastern Hadramut region when the gunmen attacked, a security official said. Four people were wounded.

Karina Lambert, who survived the attack, said it was carried out by four gunmen hiding behind a pickup truck parked by the road.

''They wanted to kill, that's sure, because after the first bursts of machine-gun fire, they approached the vehicles and fired into the cars,'' she told Belgium's RTL-TVI television network. (AP)

In case you're wondering about the attraction that would drive tourists to the Yemeni desert, here's a lovely shot:

So darn pretty it kinda makes you want to risk getting your head blown open by some crazies junked up on Mohammed, doesn't it?

I'm beginning to think I'll never understand Europeans.

Sunday Scan

SoCal's Own Fruit And Nut

Adam Gadahn, born of OC, raised by hippie parents on a goat farm in the hills of Riverside County, gives us such pride. Not. He is, of course, al-Qaeda's American mouthpiece, and he's released another screed against the country that raised him:

"We felt it necessary to address the American people and explain to them some of the facts about these critical and fast-moving events. The first questions Americans might ask is has America really been defeated? The answer is yes and on all fronts."

If we're so defeated, I wonder why Gadahn feels compelled to say this:

Meanwhile, the occupied territories are awaiting their first visit by the Crusader Bush, and the mujahadeen are also waiting. [He switches here from English to Arabic, and leans into the camera.] At this point I issue an urgent call to our mujahadeen brothers in Muslim Palestine, and in the Arabian Peninsula in particular and all the region in general.

They should be in full readiness to receive the crusader arch-killer Bush in his visit to Muslim Palestine and to the occupied Arabian Peninsula at the beginning of January. They should receive him not with roses and applause, but with bombs and booby-traps.

He then proceeds to destroy his American passport. Good riddance, traitor.

The story of how a Jewish boy from SoCal could have become the hate-filled mouthpiece of al-Qaeda should be a lesson on the consequences of even gushy liberalism and its anti-establishment bent and ingrained distrust and hatred of America.

The only difference between Adam Gadahn and thousands of kids raised by very liberal parents is that Gadahn started attending a mosque, just as John Walker Lindh did.

For an in-depth three-part biography of Gadahn, his Jewish grandparents, hippie parents and Muslim conversion, here, here and here are links to my overviews, each of which includes links to the three parts of the article.

Czech Artists' Joke Bombs

They say you can't be an artist if you haven't suffered. Will three years in a Czech jail suffice?

Last June, anyone watching a certain Czech weather channel at the right moment saw a panning shot of the countryside near the Krkonose, or Giant Mountains, in Bohemia, when a yellow flash filled their screens and a skinny mushroom cloud lifted in the distance.

It was a hoax. A Czech artists' group had inserted the explosion digitally. A state prosecutor said on Thursday that six members of the group will now have to stand trial for the hack. They could face up to three years in jail. (Spiegel)

The artists wanted to make the point that it was easy to hack into broadcast computer systems -- a curious new form of art, eh?

Here are the two sides of the argument. First, the artists:

"We are neither a terrorist organization nor a political group," a statement by Ztohoven said. "Our aim is not to intimidate society or manipulate it, which is something we witness on a daily basis both in the real world and that created by the media. On June 17 2007, [we] attacked the space of TV broadcasting, distorting it, questioning its truthfulness and its credibility."

And the accuser:

No one was hurt, but a spokesman for Czech Television said, according to the UK's Guardian newspaper, "The fake broadcast was really very inadvisable and could have provoked panic among a wide group of people."

True, but I like Ztohoven's point about media manipulation more.

Saaskavili Vote Revisited

Here's what Speigel has to say about Mikhail Saaskavili's apparent victory in yesterday's presidential elections in Georgia:

President Mikhail Saakashvili wants to be re-elected in Georgia on Saturday -- after violent crackdowns on the opposition. This ally of the West is looking more and more like a dictator, with opponents arrested, beaten or sent into exile, and accusations of vote-rigging from critics inside Georgia and abroad.

Georgia, as I mentioned Friday, sits in one of the world's most strategic pieces of real estate. Both Saakashvili and his opposition support ties with the West and staying outside the sphere of Russia, but the government's crushing of opposition last summer has raised fears (including my own) that the U.S. may be getting back to the "Yeah, he's a dictator, but he's our dictator" school of diplomacy.

Last November, Daniel Fried, our Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, said in Tbilisi:

[W]e are all here because Georgia is on the frontiers of freedom. Frontiers of freedom began in Poland in 1989 and those frontiers have advanced. This is where the link between freedom and security is being made; where democratic institutions are being built.

Freedom is not a luxury that one looks to achieve as an afterthought. The 21^st century faces many challenges-terrorism, the proliferation of unconventional weapons and energy dependence are three important ones. The response, however, to these problems will be found through the expansion of democracy, of free markets, the rule of law, and the willingness to defend them. These values in turn make the resolution of these problems easier.

Georgia has taken strides in all these areas already. Georgians must know that the world is aware of and appreciates their progress.

Georgia's strong progress should not mask the progress yet needed. Georgia's ultimate fate is still to be determined. Much depends on the decisions Georgians and their leaders take in years to come. I can outline an American perspective on the issues at stake. To start, let me quickly deal with a couple of questions where easy answers are in fact available.

A bit of a wrist-slap there -- and a slap State should re-visit in the wake of the election, as opposition demonstrations broke out in Georgia's capital declaring the election results to be fraudulent.

Georgia is doing OK, but just OK, and Saaskavili has become problematic. He's too valuable an ally to lose, but he needs to face continuing pressure to reinstitute support for Democratic reforms, even as he receives our support.

BBC reports the elections appear to have been fair, but the opposition says not. That tees up State's first challenge following the election.

"A Cosmic Clock Being Reset"

Thomas P.M. Barnett writes that the seventh year of the Bush administration forces a reassessment of the entire Bush presidency:

The White House's recent policy reversals amount to a stunning repudiation of the first seven years of George W. Bush's presidency. Where allies were previously disrespected, now they're viewed as essential. Where diplomacy was eschewed, now it's pursued with vigor. No longer running the government from his base, George W. Bush finally tries to lead the entire nation.

Bush's political opponents detect weakness and regret and a last-ditch attempt to salvage legacy, while supporters point to a self-professed dissident leader extending a freedom agenda in his final months. Both perspectives hold much truth.

But, as someone who's worked extensively throughout the national security community across this administration, both inside and outside government, I am struck by how the world seems to be returning to its pre-9/11 correlation of forces, like a cosmic clock being reset. It's almost as if the sum total effect of the second Bush term will be to repair the damage caused by the first.

Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map, supported John Kerry in 2004 because he felt that Kerry would be more able to readily refocus on the broader, global issues that require cooperation between nations. Now Bush has reached that view and all that has been lost in the last few years is "time and opportunity, our most precious assets."

I would argue that national security is our most precious asset, and support Bush for a unilateralism that many can't forgive him for. But I agree with Barnett that the War on Terror has progressed enough that we can begin focusing more on other global issues, and my own support for Bush has increased in the last year, as the war in Iraq has been fought more intelligently, and diplomacy has improved.

The $400 Million Bail

War profiteer and greed-meister David Brooks is out on bail -- but my oh my, what a bail!

• A $400 million bond, which Brooks secured with $48 million in pledged assets.
• Monitoring of all communications, including Internet, excluding attorney-client privileged communications.
• Brooks funding of private guards authorized to use force to if necessary to restrain Brooks

Those are terms that would make a Mafia godfather shake his head in awe.

Brooks is the founder of DHB Industries, which manufactures bulletproof vests for U.S. troops in Iraq and cops here at home. The charges against him aren't for war profiteering -- a common complaint against him since he sells high priced, often defective products to the military -- but because he allegedly defrauded shareholders by overstating profits.

The Blotter explains the strict terms:

In large part, the terms, dubbed "bulletproof," by one senior law enforcement official, are so severe because Brooks' wealth and alleged blatant flaunting of the law make him a far larger flight risk than these and many other defendants, two federal officials said.

Brooks gained a bit of notoriety when he dropped $10 mil on his daughters bat mitzvah and another $10 mil on a diamond. Sounds like a lovely man.

No Further Debate Update

We all know the global warming debate is over and that changes in ocean temperature are caused by nothing more than the nasty emissions of SUVs, power plants and factories, but I thought I'd pass this along nonetheless:

ScienceDaily (Jan. 5, 2008) — A Duke University-led analysis of available records shows that while the North Atlantic Ocean's surface waters warmed in the 50 years between 1950 and 2000, the change was not uniform. In fact, the subpolar regions cooled at the same time that subtropical and tropical waters warmed.

This striking pattern can be explained largely by the influence of a natural and cyclical wind circulation pattern called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), wrote authors of a study published Jan. 3, in Science Express, the online edition of the journal Science.

Wind!? How are you going to build a user tax and fund a global bureaucracy on wind, for cryin' out loud?

Oh, My!

clipped from www.dailykos.com

Spitting On Returning Troops Update

Our troops have been treated pretty well, all in all. The American Left apparently has cut through their muddled cloudiness that is their brains on Liberalism and determined that spitting on returning troops is not always a good idea.

But in Britain (which, as you know -- unless, perhaps, you're one of the people interviewed in the clip above -- is a part of that advanced Liberal nirvana called Europe), the troops are not doing as well:

Scores of soldiers flying home from Afghanistan on Christmas leave were ordered to change out of their uniforms on a freezing runway before being allowed into a civilian airport terminal.

Troops were told not to be seen in public in their uniforms - which they had worn with pride while risking their lives during months of intense fighting against the Taliban.

Last night the Ministry of Defence and bosses at Birmingham International Airport blamed each other for the indignity suffered by the soldiers - which comes amid mounting anger over the treatment of British troops returning from war.

One soldier, who was ordered to undress for "security reasons", said: "It is an insult to the entire Army to force guys who've been fighting in Afghanistan to obey some jobsworth rule when all they want to do is get home to their families.

"So much for a nation proud of its servicemen. The temperature was Baltic on the runway but most of just wanted to get home so we cracked on."

The December 23 flight, carrying 200 personnel, had been diverted from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire to Birmingham because of bad weather.

The troops were told they could either wait for coaches to take them back to Brize Norton or else travel home via public transport - in which case they must change into civilian clothes before entering the terminal. (Daily Mail)

The Brit's Department of Defensed shuched and jived to come up with an excuse that I won't bother to even pass on, but I liked this quote from Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, a former infantry commander:

"This is just the sort of thing that gets seriously up the noses of fighting troops."

Indeed it does. (hat-tip: What Bubba Knows)

A Voice Of Reason In Iraq's Parliament

Give a listen to this video from MEMRI; it's about 12 minutes in length, but it's worth it if you want to hear an Iraqi Shi'ite political leader who is strongly religious defend flexibility and freedom in government.

The clip is of Iraqi MP Iyad Jamal al-Din, a Shi'ite who has survived four assassination attempts, being interviewed by Al-Arabiya TV, a Saudi/Dubai station. In other words, an elected Shi'ite interviewed on Sunni TV.

Al-Din is a secularist who has caught the attention of others as diverse as Spike and Dr. Sanity for his reformist positions.

In the clip, al-Din supports the concept of Sharia Law, but also says that following leaders who demand the sort of allegiance Muslims give only to Muhammed is wrong. Al-Din supports making bars legal, for example, because while he does not drink out of respect for his religion's laws, he does not see a non-Sharia government as a source of authority capable of demanding certain behaviors from Muslims.

He also says that he respects a woman who does not cover her head out of religious principle more than a woman who covers her head because she doesn't want to make waves.

As for the current government in Iraq, al-Din sees it as a blessing, but a mixed one:

President Bush and America should be thanked for saving us from that idol [Saddam Hussein] that wanted to be worshiped like Allah. If you were to go to Iraq in the days of Saddam Hussein, it was Saddam who (decided) everything from A to Z. Saddam gave life and took life and decided if people would be rich or poor.

Interviewer: Don't the new politicians have many, if not all, of Saddam's qualities?

Undoubtedly. We've gotten rid of Saddam, but not all the mini-Saddams. Even before the war, I said that I was worried that the democracy that we have longed for would turn into a Latin American-style democracy, a banana republic, relying on an economic mafia and a political mafia.

This is a complex man whose beliefs may well be mainstream demographically, but are hardly mainstream politically in conservative Muslim society. They are the sorts of beliefs that got Benazir Bhutto killed, so there's little surprise that al-Din been the targets of assassins. (He implies that the attacks on him were carried out by more dogmatic Shi'ites, not al-Qaeda because "al-Qaeda does not fail.")

Listening to a man like this gives one appreciation or the complexity of the task of establishing democracies in Islamic nations, but also clearly shows that there are some leaders who understand the benefits and see the process as possible, even under Islam.

Bhutto Clip: Bin Laden Dead?

clipped from mypetjawa.mu.nu

Jawa Report has posted this video in which Benezir Bhutto names names of who is likely to killer her -- and apparently gets it right. In it, she also drops in without comment this little tidbit: Naming Omar Sheikh as the man "who murdered Osama bin Laden."

Did she really know something? If she did, does it die with her?

Probably not. More likely, she just got the wrong name into the sentence -- speculation is that she meant to say "Daniel Pearl."

hat-tip: memeorandum

Religion Of Peace Staged Algiers Attacks From France?

French police have five men in custody who they believe provided support to al Qaeda cells in Algiers responsible for two bombings earlier in the month that killed 40 people, including 17 UN employees.

BBC reports that computers and telecom equipment was seized, which usually leads to interesting findings. The equipment, the report said, was to be shipped to al-Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb (AQLIM) terrorists in Algeria.

The arrested men are described as "French and Algerian," not Muslim, although in BBC's defense, that's self-evident with their aQ ties. It does not state whether the French men were ethnic French converts to Islam or Islamic refugees to France, which would be interesting to know.

Each convert to terror runs a chill down my spine, along with a strong desire for summary executions; especially if they involve tying the guy to a tree blindfolded, offering him a last cigarette (can they still do that, given the health concerns?), and blasting his chest apart in a splendid volley of lesson-teaching.

What? You say shipping computers to terrorists isn't a capital offense? It's war, baby, and these aQ operatives caught on Western shores are spies. Line up the firing squad.

Sunday Scan

Al Qaeda No Big Deal

Let's not overblow this whole al Qaeda thing, shall we? So says the retired (Thank God!) top adviser on terrorism to the British government, Richard Mottram. The Observer reports:

Britian's outgoing intelligence chief believes there is a danger of exaggerating the threat posed by al-Qaeda at the expense of equally significant security issues, such as global warming.

Sir Richard Mottram, who has just stood down as Permanent Secretary in charge of Intelligence Security and Resilience, the body that advises the Prime Minister on the country's response to emergencies, will use a lecture this week to call for individual citizens to play a new role in combating the risks associated with increasing globalisation.

I have to say I do like "Relilience" bit. Dept. of Homeland Security and Resilience? Nah. Half the country wouldn't understand the meaning.

There was a danger, he said, of over-emphasising the spectre of international terrorism, which could play to al-Qaeda's advantage and divide communities.

'What we shouldn't do is play into al-Qaeda's hands by exaggerating the extent and nature of the threat they present globally. This focus is not smart when it comes to dealing with people who are trying to make us think that they are the greatest threat.'

Instead Mottram ... said there was a need to understand the potential impact of a range of strategic risks, of which terrorism was just one. He identified global warming, flu pandemics, the emergence of rogue states, globalisation and its impact on power balances, global poverty and its impact on population movement, energy security, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and serious and organised crime as similarly significant problems.

Yes, let's be careful to keep our troops handy in case we need them to fight global warming, globalization and poverty!

Please, Mottram, let's acknowledge that different problems have different solutions and attentiveness to al Qaeda does not preclude attentiveness to the others.

Clarity In Des Moines

Nice town, Des Moines. Figured in my meeting of Incredible Wife. Long story. But here's a short story, from today's editorial page of the Des Moines Register:

“With dissension at home and distrust abroad, as American troops continue to fight wars on two fronts, the times call for two essential qualities in the next American president,” the Register’s editorial board concluded. “Those qualities became the paramount considerations in making endorsements for the Democratic and Republican nominees in the 2008 Iowa caucuses.

“The times call for competence. Americans want their government to work again. The times call for readiness to lead. Americans want their country to do great things again. They’ll regain trust in their government when they see a president make that happen.”

The times, the say, call for John McCain and Hillary Clinton -- the paper's picks for the upcoming caucuses.

You know, I couldn't agree more.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Pucker Up

It's going to get dry, very dry, here in California, thanks to the Natural Resources Defense Council, a premier Greenie litigation mill. We've been waiting with bated breath (parched throats?) for the decision in the NRDC's lawsuit against the future of California to come down, and it has, and badly:

FRESNO – A federal court order finalized Friday could mean millions of Californians will have to get accustomed to spending more money on less water – and soon.

The order by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, based in Fresno, wraps up his August decision in favor of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The environmental group sued state and federal agencies that pump water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Wanger ruled that those agencies failed to adequately protect the Delta smelt, a fragile fingerling listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. His final order in the case Friday could result in a 30 percent reduction in water pumped out of the Delta starting as soon as Christmas Day. (Sac Bee; registration required)

The Delta smelt is threatened, not endangered; that means a lot. Under section 4(d) of the Act, a threatened listing gives many more options for how to deal with the species listing. Then why are we facing a 30 percent reduction in water deliveries -- when we're already on the cusp of mandatory conservation measures?

That's why this decision is such a massive victory for the no-growth Greenies. While a lesser alternative could have been possible, the Greenies have succeeded in creating an artificial drought, a regulatory drought, under the guise of protecting a species that is merely threatened, not endangered, in order to place an artificial cap on humanity's growth in California.

And While We're On The Subject

Meanwhile, in LA:

In the midst of a drought, Los Angeles officials announced Friday that 600 million gallons of water must be dumped from two reservoirs that supply a swath of the city because an unexpected chemical reaction rendered it undrinkable.

Silver Lake and Elysian reservoirs registered elevated levels of the suspected carcinogen bromate between June and October, the result of an unusual combination of intense sunlight, bromide naturally present in groundwater and chlorine used to kill bacteria. (LA Times)

LA gets its water primarily from the Owens Valley, not the Delta, but this is not a good time to be losing any water supplies in California.

Another Terrorist Guilty Plea

Friday, it was two terrorists pleading guilty in OC; today it's one in San Diego.

A well-known animal rights activist pleaded guilty yesterday to a charge of showing people at a speech in San Diego four years ago how to make a destructive device with the goal of having someone commit a violent crime.

The plea by activist Rodney Coronado [shown here with a jug of gasoline] ends a controversial case that involved free-speech rights and an unsolved arson case in University City in 2003.

Coronado's case went to trial in September, but the jury could not reach a decision and a mistrial was declared. Some on the panel said afterward that the majority was leaning toward acquitting Coronado.

Coronado's lawyer, Jerry Singleton, said that as part of the guilty plea, the government will not pursue two other cases against his client. One in Washington, D.C., involves the same charge stemming from a speech Coronado gave at American University there. (SD Union Tribune)

Coronado is a cause celebre in the radical animal rights movement, and his guilty plea ends his years-long effort to exploit his criminal behavior to draw more goofball animal lovers into his Animal Liberation Front terror cells.

Note to warden: Throw away the key.

Where Is The Passion?

On Capitol Hill, they drone on with their "my esteemed colleague" this and "the gentleman from North Dakota" that. Yawn. Where is the passion?

Is it just that we're not eating enough kimchee?

Who even knows what they were fighting over this time at the Korean Parliament? Sky News just calls it "an election fight." Whatever.

It's comforting, isn't it, to know that while Samsung and LG and Hyundai are becoming globally competitive and knocking our products around, the SoKo government is knocking itself out.

Stupid Penguins Warmies

Where is the intelligence in this?

Penguins In Peril As Climate Warms

ScienceDaily (Dec. 15, 2007) — The penguin population of Antarctica is under pressure from global warming, according to a WWF report.

The report, Antarctic Penguins and Climate Change, shows that the four populations of penguins that breed on the Antarctic continent — Adélie, Emperor, Chinstrap and Gentoo — are under escalating pressure. For some, global warming is taking away precious ground on which penguins raise their young. For others, food has become increasingly scarce because of warming in conjunction with overfishing.

There's causality between overfishing and global warming? Did not know that?

I also did not know that the penguins had not survived the multitude of previous warming/cooling cycles they've been through. Pity they were wiped out the last time it got warm!

Oh, they weren't wiped out last time? Perhaps someone should tell the WWF, since the the Greenie/Warmie WWF does not appear to have the collective IQ of that other WWF, the ones that smash themselves up in a wrestling ring.

Who's Stuck In Iraq's Quagmire?

Jack Kelly is one of my favorite columnists; clear-headed, supportive of our troops and the War on Terror, and a no-BS critic of those who don't understand life in the post-9/11 world. So imagine my surprise at this lead to his column today:

We're floundering in a quagmire in Iraq. Our strategy is flawed, and it's too late to change it. Our resources have been squandered, our best people killed, we're hated by the natives and our reputation around the world is circling the drain. We must withdraw.

Rest assured; it's just evidence of Kelly's skills as a journalist, not of his turning against the mission.

No, I'm not channeling Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. I'm channeling Osama bin Laden, for whom the war in Iraq has been a catastrophe.

The evidence is clear for the clear-eyed:

Al-Qaida is evacuating populated areas and is trying to establish hideouts in the Hamrin mountains in northern Iraq, with U.S. and Iraqi security forces, and former insurgent allies who have turned on them, in hot pursuit. Forty-five al-Qaida leaders were killed or captured in October alone.

Al-Qaida's support in the Muslim world has plummeted, partly because of the terror group's lack of success in Iraq, more because al-Qaida's attacks have mostly killed Muslim civilians.

Meanwhile, at the mis-named AmericaBlog, we find the D-featist attitude continues unquelled by hard facts and changed circumstances:

Oh how he’s [sic, referring to Bush, not Bush's] loves to beat that drum over and over again… the troops, the troops, the troops. As if the only way to support them is to provide Bush with the sufficient funds to continue getting them killed for his delusional plan for Iraq.

Al-Qaeda and the Muslim world can read the writing on the wall, but the American Left cannot. Delusional? Please explain, and please offer a better alternative.

Of course, the Left cannot explain and cannot offer a viable alternative ... because they are stuck in a Bush-hatred quagmire.

hat-tip: memeorandum

NYT Leaks Again, To Detriment Of War

It's a pipsqueak by comparison, but today's NY Times leak-driven story on the new Dept. of Defense planning for alliances in the tribal regions of Afghanistan is not entirely unlike the paper leaking details of the Normandy invasion during the months leading up to D-Day.

A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.

If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said.

We're not talking a lot of U.S. troops here -- just the current 50 or so growing by "dozens." Any U.S. troops in the tribal regions of Pakistan are already at high risk of terrorist attack, and this story won't calm down the Islamists any.

Its real risk, though, is against the tribal leaders with whom we hope to ally. Until today, they were just tribal leaders under the watchful and threatening eye of Islamists, who have shown in Iraq and Afghanistan alike their eagerness to assassinate any leader who affiliates with the Americans. Now, they are potential U.S. allies.

We know that already this story has been translated and is circulating amidst al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan. They know the best tactic against the U.S.: Ruthlessly murder a few of the potential U.S. allies and their families, leave them beheaded in pools of blood, and let the other potential allies consider the road ahead.

Without the NYT, special ops forces could have quietly begun working with the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force recruited from the various border tribes. Granted, their presence there would have been known soon enough, but it would have been known on our terms, not the NYT's terms.

NYT acknowledges that aspects of the new effort have already been leaked by the LA Times and WaPo. These stories dealt with increased aid to the region and did not put soldiers or their allies at risk. The NYT got the leak on the military support and joined the leak-fest to avoid being journalistically one-upped.

The story itself is straightforward and remarkably non-critical, drawing parallels to successes in Anwar that it does not question ... much:

The proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great success in fighting foreign insurgents there.

"Has been hailed as a great success" is about as positive as you'll get in the anti-military media today. But that sentence is followed with this:

But it raises the question of whether such partnerships, to be forged in this case by Pakistani troops backed by the United States, can be made without a significant American military presence in Pakistan.

Nowhere in the story is that concern addressed again, let alone attributed to any source, named or unnamed. Who raised the question? The three-reporter team it took to break the story? Did they, in raising the question, consider that by leaking the plan and putting the military and the tribal leaders at greater risk, and that they therefore may be contributing to the need for more than a few dozen additional troops?

Who knows? All we k now for sure is that beating the LAT and WaPo is reason enough to put soldiers' lives at greater risk.

See more coverage at memeorandum.

Sunday Scan

It's NOT the Economy, Stupid

Tune in a Dem prez debate and prepare to get the glummies about the economy. Where would the Democrankies be without their charges of the rich getting richer, the jobs going overseas and the economy of the verge of tanking?

Bulletin to Hil et. al.: Do not read Thomas C. Reeves' The Terrible State of our Economy? that's up on History News Network. In the piece, Reeves makes enough points to make Hil look like a giant stack at Waffle House, including:

• "In the first place, it now seems certain that the Bush tax cuts of 2003 stimulated the economy. Individual income tax receipts, according to the Congressional Budget Office, have soared by 46.3% in four years. In 2007, the IRS collected a total of $2.568 trillion, 6.7% more than the year before."
  
  
• "The wealthy paid much of the bill; in 2005, the richest 1% paid 39% of all income taxes, up from 37% in 2000. (At the same time, the bottom 50% of families enjoyed an average tax rate that fell by a third to 3%.)"
  
  
• "For fiscal 2007, the CBO predicts a federal budget deficit of $158 billion, a $96 billion decline from 2006."
  
  
• "Federal spending (despite Iraq and the continued impact of Katrina) is growing at a lower rate, up just 2.8% last year, comfortably below the 7.3% average over the previous five years."
  
  
• "The U.S. Treasury Department reports that in September, 110,000 new jobs were created, “the 49th straight month of job gains.” The nation has added 8.4 million jobs since August, 2003."

And on and on Reeves goes, rebuttal after rebuttal of the major Dem talking points on the economy. Wag a finger at Bush's management of the economy, Dems, and chances are Reeves will bite it off.

Who Started al-Qaeda Anyway?

You may have thought our blood enemy got its hatching in the mind of bin Laden, as he toiled away as a rich young mujahadeen against the Soviets in Afghanistan ... but you'd be wrong, half a world away wrong.

Here, from that pillar of truth, Iran's Fars News Agency, is what really happened:

"The Untied States has deployed its military troops in 8 different countries in the region in a bid to control oil reserves and secure free flow of oil," representative of Tehran at the Islamic Consultative Assembly Hossein Sheikhol Eslam said while addressing a meeting dubbed "A World without US Intervention" in the northern city of Behshahr Saturday night. ...

"But after it failed in attaining [Saddam's victory over Iran], the White House leaders thought of new plots to maintain their domination over regional reserves, including the formation of such terrorist groups as the al-Qaeda," he said.

See, we created al-Qaeda all because of our lust for oil and power. It's nice to know there's someone more paranoid and anti-American than the American left.

Image credit here.

Maria Shriver for President?

I don't think so, and neither does Arnie. He told a group of Silicon Valey business leaders Friday that Shriver has no interest in the job because of her upbringing:

"She grew up and was a victim, where she was always thrown into events and photographs, and Sunday nights there were always 100 people in the house ... and she was at the factories telling people, 'Vote for my daddy, vote for my daddy,"' Schwarzenegger said.

"When she was 21 years old, she went out and decided she would find a man who had no desire to be in politics. She bumped into a man who was from an Austrian farm, a bodybuilder who was only interested in oiling up ... and wearing tight pants ... and then going into Hollywood," he said to more laughs. (OC Register via Flash Report)

First Take Out The Media

Pervez Musharraf is following classic coup procedures. On day one, he took out television and his main enemy, Pakistan's supreme court.

On day two:

Hundreds of political activists, senior judges and human-rights leaders were rounded up by police. The country's deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, was confined to his cordoned-off home, with no one allowed to approach. ...

Some of the country's most venerable jurists and human-rights activists were among those rounded up and roughly bundled into police vans.

They included Munir Malik, a senior attorney who has been at the forefront of a pro-democracy movement that swelled in recent months, and Asma Jehangir, a distinguished lawyer who leads the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Up to 200 policemen stormed the office of the rights commission in the eastern city of Lahore, arresting all the group's senior staff. (LA Times)

It occurred to me this morning that The Lives of Others, which I reviewed yesterday, would be reviewed quite differently by the Kos Krowd. They would see East Germany's repression not as a window into places like Pakistan and NoKo, and a cry for the need for democracy, but as a warning of what Bush would like to do to our country.

I'm sure that as they read of Musharraf's closing down of Pakistan's tenuous Democracy, they're thinking in their negative little minds that Bush will be following his puppet shortly. What a waste of creative brainpower.

"Gen. Musharref, Saakashvili's on the Phone"

One person looking enviously at Musharref is President Michael Saakashvili of Georgia. How he must long for tough martial law and the jailing of dissidents.

Up to 10,000 Georgians demonstrated for a third day against Presidential Mikhail Saakashvili on Sunday, accusing him of authoritarian rule and demanding his resignation.

Some 70,000 had rallied in front of Georgia's parliament building on Friday, calling for a parliamentary election to be brought forward to early 2008 as a step to abolishing the presidency. By Saturday, opposition activists were mounting pressure for Saakashvili to step down. (Reuters)

Saakashvili came to power backed but just such demonstrations, dethroning Eduard Shevardnadze in 2003's Rose Revolution. But revolutions can be demanding things, and Georgians are fed up with the economy and allegations of human rights abuses.

Georgia should be, as our president has called it, "a beacon of democracy," and it can be again if Saakashvili simply calls early Parliamentary elections.

Judge Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales

So writes Diane Feinstein in today's LAT, in saying that Mukasey's got her vote. She goes in the face of Leahy, Schumer et. al. and says Mukasey has answered the questions, especially the questions on waterboarding, sufficiently and should be confirmed.

Go Di. I disagree with her often, but have to admit she shows an independence from the Dem goose-steppers frequently enough to still earn my grudging respect.

Shakin' Things Up

How bad is it when the ground shaking is so strong the seismological instruments can't even measure it? I don't want to know; and I don't want to be anywhere close to Mt. Kelut in Indonesia.

A day after a false alarm on Indonesia's Mount Kelut led to panic among residents on its slopes, the volcano is showing signs of an imminent eruption, a scientist said Sunday.

"An eruption is now very, very much possible, although so far it has not yet happened," said Agus Budianto, a geologist monitoring the activities of the volcano in the densely populated East Java province.

On Saturday, continuous tremors beneath the volcano became so strong that they could no longer be read on seismological instruments, leading scientists to evacuate their posts and warn an eruption appeared to have occurred.

They could not confirm it visually as the top of the historically deadly mountain was shrouded by clouds but their warning led residents still in the danger zone to flee in fear for their lives.

Maybe It's The Unintelligible Docs

A recent survey has found that more Americans are discontent with the state of our medical care system than are residents of Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand or the United Kingdom, with theirs. According to the survey, one-third of Americans say the whole system needs an overhaul.

In addition to cost concerns, U.S. patients report more fragmented and inefficient care, including medical record and test delays, perceptions of waste and more time spent on paperwork, compared to patients in other countries.

The study was conducted by The Commonwealth Fund, a group that advocates fundamental shifts in health policy, including a shift from pay-for-services to a system that would pay for each health episode, thereby incentivizing the medical profession to seek more efficient cures.

One third is not 50%, and dissatisfaction with status quo is not a demand for a national health insurance program a la Hillarycare.

Some parts of the survey's conclusions seem questionable, like the finding that Americans say they receive more erroneous test results than patients in the other countries. How do they know the tests are wrong? Do the patients in other countries even have access to their results? The survey reports that the highest number of US patients claiming bad test results are those seeking multiple opinions -- a luxury that may not be afford the citizens under national health care systems.

All in all, the survey shows that the Canadian system is the worst of the bunch and the European systems offer access levels similar to ours. No wonder the GOP always rushes to compare Hillarycare to Canada, and Dems always gaze fondly at Europe.