August 31, 2004
GWB and Rush
President George W. Bush called in to The Rush Limbaugh Show today. Rush has posted the transcript and the audio (Windows Media).
No girlie man
Arnold Schwarzenegger was rockin' tonight at the RNC. Charisma to spare.
Let me tell you about the sacrifice and commitment I've seen firsthand. In one of the military hospitals I visited, I met a young guy who was in bad shape. He'd lost a leg had a hole in his stomach ... his shoulder had been shot through.I could tell there was no way he could ever return to combat. But when I asked him, "When do you think you'll get out of the hospital?" He said, "Sir, in three weeks." And do you know what he said to me then? He said he was going to get a new leg ... and get some therapy ... and then he was going back to Iraq to serve alongside his buddies! He grinned at me and said, "Arnold ... I'll be back!"
Ladies and gentlemen, America is back! Back from the attack on our homeland — back from the attack on our economy, back from the attack on our way of life. We're back because of the perseverance, character and leadership of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush.
My fellow Americans ...I want you to know that I believe with all my heart that America remains "the great idea" that inspires the world. It's a privilege to be born here. It's an honor to become a citizen here. It's a gift to raise your family here to vote here and to live here.
Our president, George W. Bush, has worked hard to protect and preserve the American dream for all of us. That's why I say ... send him back to Washington for four more years!
Thank you, America — and God bless you all!
Counterprogramming: AMC is airing The Terminator at the same time.
Mainstreaming the unwashed left
Fox's Brit Hume interviewed scholar Larry Sabato concerning deceptive reporting by the mainstream media about the actual nature of the leftist protesters in New York City.
HUME: When I picked up The New York Times this morning, I read about soccer moms, and other nice people, middle class people, people like you and me who had come to express and protest their president, and express their views in a peaceful way. I read complimentary things said about them by the police authorities in New York and I thought what a nice protest. What did you see?SABATO: I saw a very different protest. I saw lots of obscenities, not just on the banners but also hurled at almost anybody who looked like they might have been a delegate or anybody connected to the Republican convention. And you know, I tell you Brit, I saw much worse on the other major networks. I watched the coverage. They did something called mainstreaming. They were very careful to pick out a couple of Iraq War veterans, a little old lady had who attended her first convention and a married couple. A middle-class married couple who had very moderate things to say. Now that may have been 10 or 20 percent of the protesters, but I can guarantee you, having watched a good part of this demonstration, that was not representative of the demonstrations.
Tip via RatherBiased.com
Check Blogs of War for in-depth, continuing coverage of the protests, and their organizers and sponsors.
Debra Burlingame still courageous
Debra Burlingame spoke along with two other 9-11 widows at the RNC last night.
I'm Debra Burlingame.My brother, "Chic Burlingame," was captain of American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon.
To those who knew him, Chic was a legend. U.S. Naval Academy, class of '71. A fighter pilot. And navy reservist who volunteered for the Gulf War. His military experience trained him to be ready for battle.
But I'm certain he never expected to see action in the cockpit of his commercial jet. I know that he and every one of those pilots put up the fight of their lives that day.
Losing Chic on 9/11 was the most difficult thing my family's ever faced. But burden was lessened by the things that ordinary Americans did to help us. I want you to know that we were aware of what you did.
We saw the spontaneous memorials -- the cluster of candles on a front porch, the sign outside the Wal-Mart that said, "Pray for the Families."
We saw the flags on the office buildings, on store fronts and kids' bikes.
We saw the websites.
We read your letters. We received the pictures your children drew.
I'll also never forget the huge flag that was unfurled at the Pentagon, just a few yards away from where the plane went in. I especially remember it lit up against the dark sky in the wee hours of September 12th -- Chic's birthday.
My heart fell into a million pieces as it brought back the sweet memory of my brother as a nine-year-old Cub Scout, selling American flags door-to-door.
I am deeply honored and grateful for the privilege of standing before you so that I can thank you for these tender gestures and for the endless generosity which helped us carry on.
May God bless you.
Learn more about Debra Burlingame's courage here.
UPDATE: June 2005: Ground Zero has been Stolen
RNC - Day One
Rudy Giuliani had high octane stuff at the RNC Monday night. Via Blogs for Bush, my favorite passage:
On September 20, 2001, President Bush stood before a joint session of Congress, a still grieving and shocked nation and a confused world and he did change the direction of our ship of state. He dedicated America under his leadership to destroying global terrorism.The President announced the Bush Doctrine when he said: “Our war on terror begins with Al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”
And since September 11th President Bush has remained rock solid.
It doesn’t matter how he is demonized. It doesn’t matter what the media does to ridicule him or misinterpret him or defeat him.
They ridiculed Winston Churchill. They belittled Ronald Reagan. But like President Bush, they were optimists; leaders must be optimists. Their vision was beyond the present and set on a future of real peace and true freedom.
Some call it stubbornness. I call it principled leadership.
President Bush has the courage of his convictions.
In choosing a President, we really don’t choose a Republican or Democrat, a conservative or liberal. We choose a leader.
And in times of danger, as we are now in, Americans should put leadership at the core of their decision.
There are many qualities that make a great leader but having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader. Winston Churchill saw the dangers of Hitler while his opponents characterized him as a warmongering gadfly.
Ronald Reagan saw and described the Soviet Union as “the evil empire” while world opinion accepted it as inevitable and belittled Ronald Reagan’s intelligence. President Bush sees world terrorism for the evil that it is.
John McCain delivered a strong endorsement of President Bush...
As the President rightly reminds us, we are safer than we were on September 11th, but we’re not yet safe. We are still closer to the beginning than the end of this fight.We need a leader with the experience to make the tough decisions and the resolve to stick with them; a leader who will keep us moving forward even if it is easier to rest.
And this President will not rest until America is stronger and safer still, and this hateful iniquity is vanquished. He has been tested and has risen to the most important challenge of our time, and I salute him.
I salute his determination to make this world a better, safer, freer place.
He has not wavered. He has not flinched from the hard choices. He will not yield.
And neither will we.
... but his delivery was flat as usual. Small wonder that he could never achieve escape velocity as a presidential candidate himself.
August 30, 2004
The beginning of the end?
Viking Pundit, "the only conservative in Western Massachusetts," predicts that Wednesday, Sept. 1 will be the worst day so far for John Kerry's presidential campaign, and the beginning of end.
I’m basing this prediction on two events scheduled for Wednesday: Kerry’s appearance before the American Legion and Zell Miller’s keynote address at the Republican National Convention.Read more. Intriguing... but too sunny? Maybe, but several polls are moving Bush's way at the moment. Let's just be cautiously optimistic for now.
Tip via PoliPundit.
August 29, 2004
Good work by the Swiss
Newsweek reports that an important al Qaeda operation has been broken in Switzerland, with global implications.
A little-noticed investigation by Swiss federal police has uncovered the existence of an apparent terror-support network with ties to the upper levels of Al Qaeda—including an operative believed to have played a role in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the May 2003 bombing of a housing complex in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.The discovery of a largely invisible Al Qaeda network in the peaceful alpine nation has gotten virtually no public attention outside of Switzerland.
But criminal charges outlined in a July 30 Swiss prosecutor’s report—obtained by NEWSWEEK—seem to confirm the worst fears of many U.S. counterterrorism officials: that, despite a concerted assault by Western intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, Osama bin Laden’s organization has maintained a resilient operational structure that has a global reach, even larger than had been previously suspected.
Regardless of what is ultimately shown about the precise connections of the suspects to particular Al Qaeda attacks, the true importance of the case may be the evidence of a remarkably efficient transnational terror operation. According to the Swiss report, the Yemeni and Somali document forgers were in contact with confederates literally across the globe—in France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Turkey, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Malaysia, Ethiopia, Somalia and the Maldives. The United States isn’t mentioned, but U.S. officials take no comfort in that. They fear that similar rings are still operating within American borders—as yet undetected.
How to prevent another 9-11?
Federal judge Richard Posner casts a sceptical eye on the 9-11 Commission's final report. As usual, insightful and thought-provoking.
The tale of how we were surprised by the 9/11 attacks is a product of hindsight; it could not be otherwise. And with the aid of hindsight it is easy to identify missed opportunities (though fewer than had been suspected) to have prevented the attacks, and tempting to leap from that observation to the conclusion that the failure to prevent them was the result not of bad luck, the enemy's skill and ingenuity or the difficulty of defending against suicide attacks or protecting an almost infinite array of potential targets, but of systemic failures in the nation's intelligence and security apparatus that can be corrected by changing the apparatus.That is the leap the commission makes, and it is not sustained by the report's narrative. The narrative points to something different, banal and deeply disturbing: that it is almost impossible to take effective action to prevent something that hasn't occurred previously....
To conclude after a protracted, expensive and much ballyhooed investigation that there is really rather little that can be done to reduce the likelihood of future terrorist attacks beyond what is being done already, at least if the focus is on the sort of terrorist attacks that have occurred in the past rather than on the newer threats of bioterrorism and cyberterrorism, would be a real downer -- even a tad un-American. Americans are not fatalists. When a person dies at the age of 95, his family is apt to ascribe his death to a medical failure. When the nation experiences a surprise attack, our instinctive reaction is not that we were surprised by a clever adversary but that we had the wrong strategies or structure and let's change them and then we'll be safe. Actually, the strategies and structure weren't so bad; they've been improved; further improvements are likely to have only a marginal effect; and greater dangers may be gathering of which we are unaware and haven't a clue as to how to prevent.
Read the whole thing. It's important.
August 28, 2004
Kerrynomics
Changing the subject from medals and such, John Kerry is focused like on a laser beam on the evil federal deficit. He's "relentless." Really.
When Sen. John Kerry’s campaign wanted to refocus attention on the economy this week, officials turned to a group of Nobel Prize-winning economists who warned of President Bush’s “reckless and extreme” fiscal policy. Earlier in the month the campaign put the spotlight on its most prominent supporter from the business world, Robert Rubin, who said the prospect of long-term deficits is at the heart of the nation’s economic troubles.Kerry’s stump speeches pledge better-paying jobs and relief for stressed middle-class families, focusing on “kitchen table” issues like the cost of health care and college tuition. But the campaign’s relentless focus on the budget deficit reflects the priorities of an economic team dominated by veterans of the Clinton administration.
While the Kerry team may have sound economic reasons for focusing on fiscal issues, not everyone is convinced that concern about the deficit will resonate with voters.
“John Kerry is being the most responsible kid in the class,” said Dan Carol, a Democratic strategist not working with the campaign. “But the focus on fiscal responsibility is crowding out optimistic, exciting investment programs that will pay economic dividends and more importantly will appeal to voters.”
Except, of course, when he's not.
Sen. John Kerry's pledge to reduce record federal budget deficits is colliding with an obstacle that may be growing higher by the week: his own campaign commitments.A Washington Post review of Kerry's tax cuts and spending plans, in addition to interviews with campaign staff members and analyses by conservative and liberal experts, suggests that they could worsen the federal budget deficit by as much as President Bush's agenda.
If projected savings from unspecified cuts do not materialize, Kerry's pledges could outstrip those of the president, whom the Democrat has repeatedly accused of unprecedented fiscal recklessness.
August 27, 2004
Final conflict
John O'Neill -- Vietnam veteran, Houston attorney, author of Unfit for Command, and a leader of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth -- has a challenge for John Kerry.
We have faced assaults on our character, motives, personal backgrounds and honesty. We are told that Mr. Kerry's camp has prepared attack dossiers on the members of our organization. I have been charged with being a Republican shill. But for more than 30 years, I have been non-political, and have voted for as many Democrats as Republicans. In truth, I consider myself a political independent, regardless of how John Kerry and his supporters try to characterize me.The Kerry-Edwards camp has threatened TV stations with libel suits should they choose to run our ads. Mr. Kerry has filed a complaint with the FEC, seeking to silence us.
How many different ways will John Kerry devise to ask President Bush to condemn our ads and squash our book? Why, Mr. Kerry, are our charges as a 527 group unacceptable to you, while the pronouncements from 527 groups favorable to you are considered acceptable, regardless of stridency and veracity? And we do not have a George Soros, willing to drop millions into our modest group. We control our message. To date, we have received $2 million from 30,000 Americans who have donated an average of around $64.
Mr. Kerry, we ask you not to repeat the same mistake you made when you returned from war: Please stop maligning your fellow veterans. Dealing with us should be easy. Just answer our charges. Produce your Vietnam journal and notes, and execute Standard Form 180 so the American people can see your complete military record--not just the few forms you put on your website or show to campaign biographers.
Another Houston attorney, Herman Jacobs, has prepared a detailed brief. His conclusion:
Yes, it's true that under the strict terms of our long-standing domestic truce, John Kerry was not required to apologize for the things he said 30 years ago, even though he himself had more recently tested that truce with his attacks on George W. Bush's National Guard service. But then in January of this year, to burnish his credentials as a war president, Mr. Kerry's authorized biography reported a story implying that his Swift Boat comrades had fled the scene of an enemy attack while he alone returned to rescue the wounded. Honor being such an insignificant thing to John Kerry, he probably had no idea that--with his biography reviving war crimes accusations and, more specifically, implying cowardice on the part of his fellow Swifties--he had broken the domestic truce.The truce is over. The Swift Vets and all the other vets John Kerry has freshly maligned are determined that this time around he is not going to have it both ways. Men like Michael Benge, Kenneth Cordier, Joseph Crecca and Jim Warner, who have already lost too many years of their lives to the Vietnam War, would have much preferred that Mr. Kerry had not restarted this fight. But now that he has, they are not going to let it alone.
August 26, 2004
Swift Boat Veterans speak out on Cambodia
The third Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad is up at Human Events. Topic: Kerry's supposed secret mission to Cambodia, during Christmas 1968. Spokesman: Steve Gardner, former Kerry crewmate.
"I spent more time on John Kerry’s boat than any other crew member.John Kerry hasn’t been honest, he’s been deceitful.
John Kerry claims that he spent Christmas in 1968 in Cambodia and that is categorically a lie.
Not in December, not in January.
We were never in Cambodia on a secret mission, ever."
The old wounds
Invaluable C-SPAN will air the rancorous "Winter Soldier" testimony that John Kerry delivered to the U.S. Senate in 1971, tonight starting at 8:05 (ET). The most recent ad from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth will be aired immediately beforehand at 8:01 (ET).
C-SPAN has also posted the full transcript of Kerry's 1971 statements.
As noted earlier, former POWs are launching StolenHonor.com to protest John Kerry's anti-war activities. The site is now up, and Blogs of War has the latest developments, along with links to numerous other grassroots anti-Kerry groups that are forming.
Innumerable Vietnam veterans, including many who served with John Kerry, are still bitter about his conduct. The same is true for many refugees from the Communist hellhole of a conquered Vietnam. The old wounds are still raw underneath, and John Kerry ripped them open when he delivered his smarmy "Reporting for duty" salute at the Democratic Convention.
Sweet victory
There was a poignant celebration at the Athens Olympics yesterday. A long time coming.
Gal Fridman closed his eyes and enjoyed a sweet sound never before heard at an Olympic Games — the strains of Israel's national anthem playing in honor of the winner of a gold medal.Fridman yesterday won the windsurfing competition at the Athens Olympics, giving the Jewish state the first gold medal of the nation's 56-year history. As the blue-and-white flag of Israel was pulled up the flagpole, Fridman and a large contingent of Israelis sang the "Hatikvah" — The Hope.
And when the ceremony was over, Fridman dedicated his victory to some of his countrymen who weren't there — the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches killed by terrorists at the Munich Olympics in 1972.
"I'm sure they're watching us," Fridman said, draped in an Israeli flag. "We think about them all the time. They're always in our mind. When I get home, I will go to the memorial place for them and show them the gold medal."
For 32 years, Israel has competed at the Olympics under the shadow of tragedy. Before each Olympics, Israel's team visits a memorial in Tel Aviv erected in honor of those killed in Munich. It also holds a private memorial service at each Olympics.
This year's service was attended by International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge. That is something his long-serving predecessor, Juan Antonio Samaranch, never did — a fact that angered many Israelis.
Since the Munich Games, Israeli athletes have competed at the Olympics with apprehension and under extra security. In Athens, an extra fence protects Israel's 36-athlete delegation in the Olympic Village compound, and the Shin Bet secret service watches over the team.
The Israelis say they have been greeted warmly in Athens.
August 25, 2004
A boon to America's enemies
John Kerry, U.S. senator and political candidate, in response to the Schlesinger panel report on Abu Ghraib:
"By failing to plan to win the peace, by failing to make sure our troops received the proper training, equipment, reinforcement and command guidance, and by failing to take corrective actions once all of this became apparent, Secretary Rumsfeld did not demonstrate the leadership required from a Secretary of Defense."That is why today I am calling on Secretary Rumsfeld to resign effective immediately."
James Schlesinger -- formerly Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Energy and Director of Central Intelligence -- chairman of the independent panel investigating Abu Ghraib:
You've raised the question of the secretary of Defense.Let me say that his resignation would be a boon to all of America's enemies, and consequently I think that it would be a misfortune if it were to take place.
The secretary set out the policies -- if you read the testimony of General Sanchez and General Abizaid before the Armed Services Committee, they very specifically were asked, "What guidance did you seek from the Office of the Secretary of Defense?" Answer: "We sought no guidance. They provide us with policy. We in the Army implement that policy." So they were not seeking guidance from the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
One must recognize that the secretary of Defense gave guidance with regard to policy. He altered that policy in the -- he rescinded that initial policy as a result of the protests that came up from various lawyers in the Pentagon. He adjusted the policy, and I think that his conduct with regard to this issue has been exemplary.
Harold Brown -- formerly president of CalTech and Secretary of Defense -- who co-chaired the independent panel investigating Abu Ghraib:
Clearly the secretary of Defense is -- has a responsibility for everything that happens in the department. But if you look at what Secretary Rumsfeld has done in these matters, he was extremely careful about the issue of treatment of prisoners during interrogation. He instituted very stringent rules. Now, abuses nevertheless occurred, and they occurred, as the others have said, at levels -- at various levels in the department. The military -- uniformed military bear most of the responsibility.And I think that overall, Secretary Rumsfeld has handled this extremely well. If the head of a department had to resign every time anyone down below did something wrong, it would be a very empty Cabinet table.
John Kerry: opportunist and would-be enabler of "America's enemies." Just like in 1971.
POWs against Kerry
UPI's Richard Tomkins reports that more Vietnam-related opposition to John Kerry is mobilizing.
Sen. John Kerry's anti-war activism following his service in Vietnam is coming under attack by former U.S. prisoners of war and their families, who are launching a Web site and documentary that will likely further fuel election campaign rancor, sources told UPI Tuesday.The Web site, "Stolenhonor.com." could be online as early as Thursday night or Friday and will feature comments and statements about Kerry, the Democratic Party's nominee for president, by former inmates of North Vietnam's infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison complex, Ken Cordier said.
Among those appearing are Medal of Honor recipients Col. Leo Thorsness and Col. Bud Day, people Cordier called the "stars" of the Hanoi Hilton.
"This is going to be the POW story," he said. "They are going to be telling about the documentary ... and will tell the story about how John Kerry betrayed the POWs, his fellow Vietnam veterans and the country."
Cordier, who spent more than six years in the Hanoi Hilton, said the anti-war activities by Kerry and others were used for communist propaganda and to harm prisoner morale.
Jim Warner, another former POW, told UPI earlier that his interrogator showed him a transcript of Kerry's testimony and clippings from a left-wing U.S. newspaper and said Warner had committed atrocities and would never go home.
This war is about Des Moines
Major Glen G. Butler, USMC, took a break from flying helicopter missions over Najaf to send an open letter to The New York Times. An excerpt is below, but read the whole thing.
Now we are on the verge of victory or defeat in Iraq. Success depends not only on battlefield superiority, but also on the trust and confidence of the American people. I've read some articles recently that call for cutting back our military presence in Iraq and moving our troops to the peripheries of most cities. Such advice is well-intentioned but wrong - it would soon lead to a total withdrawal. Our goal needs to be a safe Iraq, free of militias and terrorists; if we simply pull back and run, then the region will pose an even greater threat than it did before the invasion. I also fear if we do not win this battle here and now, my 7-year-old son might find himself here in 10 or 11 years, fighting the same enemies and their sons.When critics of the war say their advocacy is on behalf of those of us risking our lives here, it's a type of false patriotism. I believe that when Americans say they "support our troops," it should include supporting our mission, not just sending us care packages. They don't have to believe in the cause as I do; but they should not denigrate it. That only aids the enemy in defeating us strategically.
Michael Moore recently asked Bill O'Reilly if he would sacrifice his son for Falluja. A clever rhetorical device, but it's the wrong question: this war is about Des Moines, not Falluja. This country is breeding and attracting militants who are all eager to grab box cutters, dirty bombs, suicide vests or biological weapons, and then come fight us in Chicago, Santa Monica or Long Island. Falluja, in fact, was very close to becoming a city our forces could have controlled, and then given new schools and sewers and hospitals, before we pulled back in the spring. Now, essentially ignored, it has become a Taliban-like state of Islamic extremism, a terrorist safe haven. We must not let the same fate befall Najaf or Ramadi or the rest of Iraq.
No, I would not sacrifice myself, my parents would not sacrifice me, and President Bush would not sacrifice a single marine or soldier simply for Falluja. Rather, that symbolic city is but one step toward a free and democratic Iraq, which is one step closer to a more safe and secure America.
I miss my family, my friends and my country, but right now there is nowhere else I'd rather be. I am a United States Marine.
August 24, 2004
Too strange, too stupid
Mark Steyn wonders what in the world the John Kerry campaign is doing.
Right now, it looks like the sanity of the Kerry campaign and its pals in the media that's beginning to unravel.I said a couple of weeks back that John Kerry was too strange to be President, and a week or two earlier that he was too stuck-up to be President. Since I'm on an alliterative roll, let me add that he's too stupid to be President. What sort of idiot would make the centrepiece of his presidential campaign four months of proud service in a war he's best known for opposing?
How cocooned from reality do you have to be to think you can transform one of the most divisive periods in American history – in which you were largely responsible for much of the divisiveness – into a sappy, happy-clappy, soft-focus patriotic blur without anybody objecting? Most Vietnam veterans of my acquaintance loathe John Kerry, and, if he wasn't aware of that, he's too out of it to be President.
That can happen to rich guys, particularly touchy, thin-skinned rich guys who prefer to surround themselves with yes-men. Kerry was apparently infuriated by the cool reception he got from a veterans' audience last week. But why would he expect anything different?
And even if he'd never slimed his comrades, there's something ridiculous about a fellow with four months in Vietnam running as Ike, the Duke of Wellington and Alexander the Great rolled into one.
Not so bad
National security advisor Condoleeza Rice on the state of U.S.-European alliances:
"You know, I'm tempted to say about the transatlantic relationship what I think Mark Twain apparently said about Wagner's music: it's better than it sounds."
Akhtar indicted
The strange case of Kamran Akhtar continued Monday in Charlotte.
A federal grand jury on Monday indicted a Pakistani citizen who was arrested last month after a police officer spotted him videotaping Charlotte's skyline.Kamran Akhtar, 35, of New York City, was charged with six counts in the new indictment, but none of them involved terrorism.
Akhtar was charged in the indictment with two immigration violations and four counts of lying to investigators after he was detained by a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer on July 20. He could face up to 55 years if convicted on all six counts.
George Miller, an attorney for Akhtar, said the new charges were not much different than what his client had already faced in a criminal complaint.
"There's not a lot of change and there is not a single terror-related charge," he said. "I'm pleased about that and I'm confident there won't be any terrorism charges." Akhtar will plead innocent to all six counts when he is arraigned, Miller said.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Darrel Stephens had to defend Akhtar's detention at a recent community meeting called by the Charlotte chapter of the anti-Semitic Islamic Political Party of America.
Some at the meeting had questioned whether the man was profiled because of his appearance or religion."I can say without reservation that the officer who stopped him has no idea what this individual's faith was," Stephens said.
Police have said they responded to evasive behavior, saying Akhtar tried to put the camera away when an officer approached him. Police also said he told the officer he was going to the bus terminal on West Trade Street, though he was walking in the opposite direction.
Stephens said police have investigated reports of 25 to 30 people videotaping buildings uptown in the last 18 months. Akhtar was different only because of his behavior and his inability to answer basic questions.
Read the full text of the federal indictment (PDF)
August 23, 2004
Thousands of complaints
It would appear that readers are being disenfranchised nationwide. Surely the American Library Association, champions of the "freedom to read," will complain immediately.
Controversial book "Unfit for Command," which fires an election-year salvo at Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry's war record, has claimed one unintended victim -- bookstore chain Barnes & Noble Inc .Barnes & Noble, the world's largest bookseller, on Monday issued a statement saying it had sold out of the book and, in effect, held up its hands in surrender to what it called "thousands of complaints" from both supporters and detractors of the book.
Supporters, Barnes & Noble said, are claiming the bookseller has intentionally not stocked the title or is hiding it, while detractors are asking stores to remove it altogether.
"(Complaints) started in the stores, and the home office has been inundated as well," said a company spokeswoman.
She said the company's statement was meant to "set the record straight." It is not Barnes & Noble's fault, she said, but rather small publisher Regnery Publishing who cut the chain's original order in half.
"We've been put in the difficult position of having to defend ourselves over a title we can't seem to get enough copies of from the publisher," Barnes & Noble chief executive Steve Riggio said in the statement.
Barnes & Noble said it is awaiting additional copies in order to restock its shelves, and it expects more later this week. But even the new order would not be enough to meet demand, the bookseller said.
Termites
More al Qaeda activity is being reported in Latin America, this time in Honduras.
Honduras tightened security at foreign embassies and declared a national terror alert after receiving information that al-Qaida was trying to recruit Hondurans to attack embassies of the United States, Britain, Spain and El Salvador, a government official said today.The heightened security was implemented three days ago after Honduras' intelligence services received reports of a plan allegedly targeting those countries' embassies here and abroad, Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said.
"We are facing a state of preventative national alert, because our intelligence services report that al-Qaida foreigners have made offers for Hondurans to carry out sabotage both here and abroad," Alvarez said at a news conference.
Some Hondurans reportedly were offered money to carry out attacks, while others were approached on ideological grounds. Honduras has a tiny Islamic community.
"We believe that there are Hondurans who could accept these offers, some for money, and others because they believe in Islam," Alvarez said. "Our best agents are investigating the case and working out a strategy to prevent international terrorists from using Honduras as a base for training terrorists."
August 22, 2004
Proud John Kerry
John Kerry was typically (i.e., ponderously) effusive as he spoke to the VFW last week.
Thank you. I am proud to be a lifetime member of this organization and grateful for your continued deep commitment to veterans and to the defense and security of our nation. For more than 100 years now, you have had many distinguished veterans come before you – some Republican, some Democrat, some presidents. But as a fellow veteran, I can proudly say that there is one title that is more important than all, and that is patriot. You have all earned that title and I am proud to stand with you today.
However, the Washington Times reports that Kerry and his new friends spoke a bit differently back in the 1970s when leading the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
Mr. Kerry, whose presidential campaign has emphasized his service as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam, joined VVAW in 1970, after returning from Vietnam and denounced the VFW in a 1971 book."We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the 'greater glory of the United States.' ... We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars," he wrote then.
A 1971 VVAW fund-raising letter, titled "Men of Peace" and signed "yours in peace," accused the VFW and the American Legion of promoting an agenda of "world domination."
A copy of the letter, obtained by The Washington Times, is part of an extensive collection of VVAW's papers in the collection of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in Madison. Records do not indicate whether the letter was sent.
The American Legion and the VFW "were partly responsible for the military attitudes in this country though their unlimited lobbying power — somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 million," the VVAW letter said. "That kind of influence must be confronted and dealt with."
VVAW "could support counteractions that will allow men to exist without the threat of nuclear annihilation or constant military ones," said the fund-raising letter.
The letter suggests that Mr. Kerry's group might replace both the VFW and the American Legion, which it said "have not been able, at the national level in the past five years, to recruit successfully among the younger veterans. These younger veterans are obviously not content with a paramilitary, pro-war organization representing them. We are their answer."
The VVAW letter suggests to potential donors that the dissident group could in time diversify and offer benefits similar what the VFW and the American Legion were offering, "but with a view toward total world peace rather than world domination."
Kerry will speak to the American Legion Convention next week. We can expect the same candor.
527 foolery
John Kerry and his spokesmen demand that President Bush "denounce" the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth; e.g., in this new Kerry ad:
TEXT OF AD:John Kerry: “I’m John Kerry and I approve this message.”
Narrator: “American soldiers are fighting in Iraq.”
Narrator: “Families struggle to afford health care.”
Narrator: “Jobs heading overseas.”
Narrator: “Instead of solutions, George Bush’s campaign supports a front group attacking John Kerry’s military record. Attacks called smears, lies. Sen. McCain calls them dishonest.”
Narrator: “Bush smeared John McCain four years ago. Now, he’s doing it to John Kerry.”
Narrator: “George Bush: Denounce the smear. Get back to the issues. America deserves better.”
Is Kerry thereby attempting to induce a violation of federal law? Little Green Footballs explains.
I don’t recall Kerry “standing up” and asking Michael Moore to “stop” his over-the-top scurrilous campaign of deception (indeed, he got a place of honor at the DNC next to President Carter), or asking MoveOn.org to “stop” comparing Bush to Hitler.Perhaps that’s because, according to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, it would be illegal for the Bush campaign to try to influence a 527 group like the Swift Boat Veterans, either to continue or to stop. Kerry knows this, of course; it’s just another dishonest ploy for sympathy.
Tip via Wizbang, which also notes the facts of "527" campaign activity so far:
Here's the breakdown in a nutshellPro-Democrat 527 groups: 17
Pro-Republican 527 groups: 7Pro-Democrat 527 groups, total receipts: $88,236,434
Pro- Republican 527 groups, total receipts: $5,912,638Number of the top 25 527 donors who gave to pro-Democratic groups: 24
Number of the top 25 527 donors who gave to pro-Republican groups: 1
Ranking of top pro-Republican donor: tied for 10th
Virtual combat
The U.S. military is getting into the video-game business in a big way, but for training, not mere entertainment. Sci-tech author Clive Thompson writes about it for the New York Times Magazine.
I play video games regularly and, modesty aside, usually do quite well. Though this was my first attempt at Full Spectrum Warrior, the reason that I played poorly was not that I was inexperienced but that the game was not designed solely for entertainment. Full Spectrum Warrior was created by the Institute for Creative Technologies, with help from the Army, to teach soldiers realistic strategies for surviving what the armed forces call ''military operations in urban terrain.'' As a result, the game is unforgivingly precise. The soldiers you command are programmed to respond the way a real soldier would. There are no magic weapons to bail you out. All you have going for you is the real world. ''This is what you'll really see when you're out there,'' said Maj. Brent Cummings, a soldier then stationed at Fort Benning, Ga., who worked as a consultant on the game and walked me through it.For the past three years, the military has been entertaining the surprising idea that video games, even those that you play on a commerical system like Microsoft's Xbox, can be an effective way to train soldiers. In fact, the Army is now one of the industry's most innovative creators, hiring high-end programmers and designers from Silicon Valley and Hollywood to devise and refine its games. Some of these games are action-packed, like Full Spectrum Warrior. Others, like one that the military's Special Operations Command is currently designing to help recruits practice their Arabic, are less so. All the games, however, speak to the military's urgent need to train recruits for the new challenges of peacekeeping efforts in places like Iraq.
Teaching someone to be an accurate shot is not particularly hard to do. Military trainers have learned that if you put someone through a week of intensive work with a point-and-shoot simulator (not unlike today's commerically available shoot-'em-up video games), he will be reasonably good with a rifle. Teaching judgment, however, is much harder than teaching hand-eye coordination. Today's military is in the market for games that train soliders, in effect, how not to shoot -- how to avoid conflict whenever possible, to recognize danger and find a route around it. As a squad leader in Full Spectrum Warrior, you do not even carry a gun that fires, which makes it the first military-action video game in which the player never discharges a weapon.
All in all, very interesting. One concern seems to have not been thought out very well. (Blame Microsoft.)
The Army made Full Spectrum Warrior in two versions: one for the military and a slightly modified form for the public. The commercial version instantly became a best seller. Today, you can walk into a game store, buy it and get a taste of what it is like to manage troops under Arab fire. (The decision to release the game to the public was driven by an interesting business consideration. Microsoft, which created the Xbox, reserves the right to approve any game that another company creates to run on it, and it charges a fee for each copy of the game that sells. Microsoft will typically only green-light a game with a sufficiently large market -- in the case of Full Spectrum Warrior, one that included not just soldiers but the general public.)If a game like Full Spectrum Warrior is an accurate representation of Army training, you might wonder about the wisdom of selling it to the public. Real-life terrorists might well use it to learn about the urban-warfare tactics of American soldiers. Granted, the version of Full Spectrum Warrior available to the public is not as precise about military doctrine (ambulances carry ammo, for example), and it has bigger, Hollywood-style explosions. But it turns out that the military-grade version of the game also resides on the disk of the public version. Anyone who can figure out the ''unlock'' code can buy the public game, unlock it and play the military one.
Morons?
Alice Cooper, Republican? Who knew?
In the eyes of Alice Cooper, all the rock stars campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry are guilty of one thing: treason. The shock-rock legend, a staunch Republican who attends NBA games in Phoenix with Arizona Senator John McCain, was disgusted when he learned of plans by Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, R.E.M. and other bands to hold a series of concerts aimed at unseating U.S. President George W. Bush."To me, that's treason. I call it treason against rock 'n' roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics," says the 56-year-old Cooper, who begins a 15-city Canadian tour on Aug. 20 in Thunder Bay, Ont.
"When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I'd run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as loud as I could. So when I see all these rock stars up there talking politics, it makes me sick.
"If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal."
al Qaeda in South America?
As noted earlier, South America, including Venezuela, is growing as a new front in the war on [Islamic] terror. A new Associated Press story provides a current overview.
Governments throughout Mexico and Central America are on alert as evidence grows that al-Qaida members are traveling in the region and looking for recruits to carry out attacks in Latin America - the potential last frontier for international terrorism.The territory could be a perfect staging ground for Osama bin Laden's militants, with homegrown rebel groups, drug and people smugglers, and corrupt governments. U.S. officials have long feared al-Qaida could launch an attack from south of the border, and they have been paying closer attention as the number of terror-related incidents has increased since last year.
Officials worry the Panama Canal could be a likely target. In 2003, boats making more than 13,000 trips through the waterway carried about 188 million tons of cargo.
In South America, U.S. officials have long suspected Paraguay's border with Brazil and Argentina as an area for Islamic terrorist fund-raising. Much of the focus has fallen on the Muslim community that sprouted during the 1970s, and authorities believe as much as $100 million a year flows out of the region, with large portions diverted to Islamic militants linked to Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Related: the strange case of Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed is set for trial in October here in Houston.
A South African woman whose arrest in McAllen last month raised fears about terrorists crossing the southern U.S. border pleaded not guilty in a Houston court Friday to charges of altering her passport, lying to investigators and illegal entry.U.S. Magistrate Judge Frances Stacy set an Oct. 12 trial date for Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed, 48, of Johannesburg, who was arrested July 19 at the McAllen-Miller International Airport.
Ahmed's baggage contained $7,300 in different currencies, muddy pants and a South African passport with three pages missing. She is accused of lying when she told investigators she had a U.S. visa, but that it was in New York.
Funding the Left
Money makes the world go round, including for the left-wing protesters gathering to demonstrate (and more) when the Republicans arrive in New York City this week.
Raging against the machine requires some heavy bankrolling, and the fatter coffers of the anti-establishment crowd are easing the strain of battle.And many of the groups planning protests here during the Republican National Convention next week stand to benefit directly from the blossoming wealth of well-funded, anti-status quo forces.
Such wealth among the so-called counterculture is dwarfed by the billion-dollar megaphones used by the two major political parties, of course. But multimillion-dollar groups such as Pacifica and the American Civil Liberties Union are every bit as politically formidable as a midsized political action committee or a D.C. lobbying firm.
It's the earnest image that often throws the public off.
"Many of these groups are portrayed as ragtag groups, but it turns out that many are heavily financed by people like [billionaire financier] George Soros and the Tides Foundation," says David Martosko, research director for the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit coalition of restaurants, food companies and citizens advocating consumer choice.
The center also operates a Web site, activistcash.com, that tracks the finances of a number of foundations, nonprofits and government agencies.
"Much of this money comes from nearly 600 big philanthropies that have a net worth well over $30 billion," Mr. Martosko said. "And every year, around 5 percent of that wealth gets passed around to the groups who do these protests."
Related:
• ActivistCash.com profiles a variety of "anti-consumer" groups and their supporters.
• Blogs of War frequently tracks the, well, unusual activities and statements of leftie activists.
WaPo on Kerry
The Washington Post examines some of the disputed facts of John Kerry's Vietnam experience. Their conclusion?
Establishing the facts is complicated not merely by fading memories and sometimes ambiguous archival evidence, but also by the bitterly partisan nature of the presidential campaign.An investigation by The Washington Post into what happened that day suggests that both sides have withheld information from the public record and provided an incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate, picture of what took place. But although Kerry's accusers have succeeded in raising doubts about his war record, they have failed to come up with sufficient evidence to prove him a liar.
It's a start, but not a definitive settling of accounts. Let's have more.
Clearly an obsession
Blogger Rachel Lucas has some serious yearning going on over the men of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, including one in particular.
Don't judge me. I am a sucker for men in armor and horsetail helms. Men with swords and blades and spears. Men on horses, bellowing from atop hillsides at the first light of dawn, Rohirrim!!! To the King!!! Ahhhhh.
Not that she's lost of sight of the real world.
Anyway, so I'm mad. I'm disgusted! I ask, how can we find out who's a lying bastard and who's not? So of course I turn to my LOTR obsession for answers. And I realized that if only we had some Elves or wizards or something, they could tell us who's a lying bastard and who's not. We need a Galadriel or a Gandalf. Someone who can look into the eyes of a man like Kerry and see that, indeed, he is a lying bastard, and can then smite him.Alternatively, they can discern that Kerry is a lying bastard and can then call upon, say, the mighty Rohan warrior Eomer to smite him. Oh, yes.
Tip via Accidental Verbosity
August 21, 2004
Hanoi John roundup
Vietnam veterans support John Kerry... at least some living in Hanoi.
HANOI - With the U.S. presidential race taking a decidedly bitter turn over John Kerry's Vietnam war record, U.S. veterans in Hanoi are selling T-shirts supporting his run for the White House."It's an effort on the part of a few of us to bring some attention to Kerry's war record to counter some of the allegations and some of the lies being made of his service in Vietnam," Chuck Searcy, who served for a year in Vietnam, said on Saturday.
The T-shirts being sold for $5 have "Americans Overseas for Kerry" on the front and a picture of President Bush's face with a line crossed through it.
Unfortunately for Kerry, his support among veterans living in America has been slipping, according to a new CBS News poll.
The appearance of his fellow Vietnam veterans at the Democratic convention helped John Kerry’s support among veterans, but the recent attacks on his Vietnam service may have moved veterans’ support back toward George W. Bush now. Kerry is running well behind his opponent among veterans; now, 55 percent of veterans back Bush, and 37 percent back Kerry. A few weeks ago, both candidates were tied among veterans.
The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have issued a new anti-Kerry ad, focused on his sweeping, savage attacks on the American military during the Vietnam War. Blogs of War has a thorough review of recent events concerning the Swift Boat Veterans.
Meanwhile, a clearly deluded Eleanor Clift writes about the Swift Boat Veterans in Newsweek; James Joyner dismantles her article with little mercy but with an obvious appreciation for the absurd.
Malkin in Houston
Pundit Michelle Malkin is going to speak at the Houston Forum next Friday about her controversial new book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on Terror.
Should be fascinating.
Spice it up
This is good news for television watchers, especially those of us here in Texas.
Pace Foods is reviving a popular Texas-themed advertising campaign from the 1980s in which salsa-savvy cowboys make sport of New York. The humorous ads begin running Monday in 21 television markets around the country, the company said.Pace is a subsidiary of the Campbell Soup Co., based in Camden, N.J., but the picante sauces are made in Paris, Texas.
"We wanted to find a way to connect consumers to our Southwestern roots with a lighthearted touch," Chris Foley, Pace brand manager, said of the two new ads.
Campbell bought Pace, founded in San Antonio, from billionaire entrepreneur Kit Goldsbury in 1995.
The original series of ads from the late 1980s featured a chuckwagon cook threatened with hanging when he tried to foist an unfamiliar brand of salsa onto a group of hungry cowhands.
The well-remembered punchline came when the cowboys found out that the salsa was from "New York City."
The new ads also involve cowboys, one of them an odd-fit novice from New York. In one spot, he uses a car remote to lock up his horse at a hitching post, and in the other he sprays graffiti on a calf instead of using a branding iron.
If memory serves, the old punchline, after the camp cook's salsa was revealed as being from New York City, was "Get a rope."
UPDATE: Saludos, Slate salsa afficionados. Despite our affection for Pace as a homegrown everyday salsa, our personal favorite is Arriba! Red. It's spicy and fresh tasting.
As long as you're here, take a minute to visit the Petrified Truth home page and see what else is being discussed. Then come back often. Adiós.
August 20, 2004
Counterattack
The New York Times counterattacks against the Swift Boat Veterans in a lengthy, page-one story that is focused on the supposed inside story behind the story, rather than the charges themselves.
A series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove.Records show that the group received the bulk of its initial financing from two men with ties to the president and his family - one a longtime political associate of Mr. Rove's, the other a trustee of the foundation for Mr. Bush's father's presidential library. A Texas publicist who once helped prepare Mr. Bush's father for his debate when he was running for vice president provided them with strategic advice. And the group's television commercial was produced by the same team that made the devastating ad mocking Michael S. Dukakis in an oversized tank helmet when he and Mr. Bush's father faced off in the 1988 presidential election.
Kerry's bogus Cambodia story, his most obvious self-aggrandizing fabrication, is mentioned near the very end, but (of course) only in passing.
This is typical defense attorney's strategy, applied to journalism: when the facts are inconvenient, attack the accusers. The other important goal of the story is to tie the Swift Boat Veterans as closely as possible to President Bush.
DRUDGE calls the NYT story "The Empire Strikes Back."
The Washington Times is running three excerpts from the related book Unfit for Command, by John O'Neill.
One of the Swift Boat Veterans was on the Chris Baker radio program yesterday and stated something like, "When you're catching flak, you must be over the target." Indeed.
UPDATE: Outside the Beltway and the omniscient InstaPundit have good observations and coverage of responses to the NYT's shot.
August 19, 2004
More McCain
The Bush campaign is picking up energy as the Republican convention nears. John McCain would seem to be an important ally.
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, once courted by Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry, is emerging as a major force in the re-election campaign of President Bush, who vanquished McCain in the 2000 Republican primary.Republican officials said plans are in the works for McCain to appear with Bush on the campaign trail during the week of the Republican convention in New York that will nominate Bush for a second term. Then the plan is for them to campaign together immediately after the convention.
This comes after the veteran senator traveled with the president last week to Florida, New Mexico and Arizona and spent the night at Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch, where they are said to have gotten along famously.
"It helps having him stand by my side," Bush said during a stop with McCain in Niceville, Florida, last week.
Rick Davis, who was McCain's 2000 campaign manager, said McCain and Bush are getting to know each other better and have spent more time together in the past month than in Bush's entire term.
NPR reported today that the campaign swing through Minnesota and Wisconsin found noticeably large and enthusiastic crowds. Good.
Unfit for Command
The Washington Times is excerpting Unfit for Command, the new book by John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi, currently #1 at Amazon.com.
Part 1: Kerry's fellow 'Swiftees' dispute his Purple Hearts
Part 2: 'Sampan incident' belies heroic image
Part 3: An angry dispute over a rescue in the river
Meanwhile, the Washington Post is finally addressing the controversy, by investigating a Kerry critic. Wizbang is there.
Dire straits indeed
Who knew that gifted guitarist Mark Knopfler was in a horrific accident eighteen months ago and nearly crippled? Luckily he's much better and has a new CD coming out. He's also remarkably mellow about the incident.
"If you're a writer, you have to have compassion for people. Maybe being a parent has an effect, too," he says. "What I do know is that because of what happened, I've had the opportunity to spend more time with my family, and the accident helped create my new record."His new album, Shangri-La, is due to be released next month. Despite one song entitled Don't Crash the Ambulance, and the lyrics of another - "Got shot off my horse, so what, I'm up again" - it is the title track that he cites as the song that is most closely linked to the aftermath of the crash.
"One thing I've learnt since the accident is how quickly things can change, and so I try to enjoy the present," he says. "I'm not constantly pushing forward and looking to the future the way I used to as a young man. Shangri-La is about getting as much out of the present as you possibly can and treasuring moments of happiness as they happen. For me, they are private moments with your loved ones. I've had lots of highlights through the years, but there's nothing that's sweeter than a child."
Olympic Games, old and new
The 2004 Olympics are indeed interesting in a special way because of the direct linkages between our modern world and the original, ancient Games.
Tony Perrottet, author of The Naked Olympics, pondered the appearance of female Olympic athletes in Playboy in a commentary on National Public Radio.
The semi-clothed portrayals of female Olympic athletes in Playboy leads Perrottet to note the original importance of the games as a "celebration of the human form." Perrottet says ancient Greek athletes, who trained and competed naked, would have approved of the 12-page photo essay.
Archaelogists have been working the ruins at Nemea and making great discoveries, including ancient athletic graffiti.
The Greeks held their first games in 776 B.C. in Olympia. Eventually, they used four sites, the last one being Nemea, a wide spot in a valley of vineyards and olive groves about 100 miles west of Athens. After decades of work, Nemea's original stadium and running track at Nemea have been painstakingly restored.In a National Geographic Radio Expedition, NPR's Christopher Joyce reports on what archaeologists are discovering amid the rubble. It's becoming more clear that the ancient games were very different from the modern ones -- but some things remain remarkably the same.
George Vecsey enjoyed the shot put competition held in ancient Olympia itself.
It takes a few hours in a simple place to realize how far we have been manipulated down the road away from simplicity, how distracted we are from appreciating the basic athletic act.We didn't get a replay of Andy Nelson's five consecutive fouls today. From a distance we could barely see him jumping up and down and waving his arms at the last foul call. Only a handful of people could see the joy on the face of Cleopatra Borel and her fiancé, even though she had finished far from a medal.
However, we could all see the intensity and the technique of these massive athletes, just as we were in touch with the simplicity of a stadium sunk in a mountaintop dell.
Now it's back to color and noise and artificial lighting. These Summer Games have had their Olympian moment.
Real vote fraud
Hugo Chavez's "victory" in Venezuela's recall election is looking more and more like a fraud.
The perception that a massive electronic fraud led to President Hugo Chávez's mandate not being cut short in the recall referendum on Sunday is rapidly gaining ground in Venezuela. All exit polls carried out on the day had given the opposition an advantage of between 12 percent and 19 percent. But preliminary results announced by the government-controlled National Electoral Council at 3:30 a.m. gave Chávez 58.2 percent of the vote, against 41.7 percent for the opposition.At first people scratched their heads in disbelief, including many Chávez supporters, but accepted these figures after César Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States, and former President Jimmy Carter said their own quick counts coincided with the electoral council's figures. Two days after the referendum, however, evidence is growing that the software of the touch-screen voting machines had been tampered with.
In other words, Chavez has carried out the scenario of which Paul Krugman deliriously dreams.
UPDATE: An organized gang of Chavez supporters attacked peaceful protesters on Monday.
A 61-year-old grandmother was shot in the back as she ran for cover. The bullet ripped through her aorta, kidney and stomach. She later bled to death in the emergency room. An opposition congressman was shot in the shoulder and remains in critical care. Eight others suffered severe gunshot wounds. Hilda Mendoza Denham, a British subject visiting Caracas for her mother's 80th birthday, was shot at close range with hollow-point bullets from a high-caliber pistol. She now lies sedated in a hospital bed after a long and complicated operation. She is my mother.I spoke with her minutes before the doctors cut open her wounds. She looked at me, frightened and traumatized, and sobbed: "I was sure they were going to kill me, they just kept shooting at me."
In a jarringly similar attack that took place three years ago, the killers were caught on tape and identified as government officials and employees. They were briefly detained--only to be released and later praised by Col. Chávez in his weekly radio show. Their identities are no secret and they walk the streets as free men, despite having shot unarmed civilian demonstrators in cold blood.
I was not in the square on Monday. I was preparing a complaint for the National Electoral Council regarding the fact that I had been mysteriously erased from the voter rolls and was prevented from casting a vote on Sunday. In indescribable agony I watched the television as my mother and my elderly grandparents--who were both trampled and bruised in the panic--became casualties in Venezuela's ongoing political crisis.
FBI alert
Here's another reminder about the national security risks along our all-too-porous borders.
The FBI has issued an alert for a suspected al-Qaida member who may try to cross the U.S. border through Arizona or Texas.Adnan Gulshair El Shukrijumah, 29, is suspected of being an al-Qaida cell leader and has been wanted by the United States since 2003, authorities said Tuesday.
The latest information places him in Honduras with the intent of crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, said Art Werge, a spokesman for the FBI's office in El Paso.
"We certainly don't want him crossing into the United States because his plan is to conduct terror operations," said Werge. "He is believed to be one of the most dangerous cell leaders below the leadership of al-Qaida."
Related:
• FBI Seeking Information Alert
• Profile via Wikipedia
August 18, 2004
Imperfect attendance
Non-partisan FactCheck.org examines the question of John Kerry's attendance record during his feeble tenure serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Advantage: Bush.
A Bush-Cheney '04 ad released Aug. 13 accuses Kerry of being absent for 76% of the Senate Intelligence Committee's public hearings during the time he served there. The Kerry campaign calls the ad "misleading," so we checked, and Bush is right.Official records show Kerry not present for at least 76% of public hearings held during his eight years on the panel, and possibly 78% (the record of one hearing is ambiguous).
Kerry points out that most meetings of the Intelligence Committee are closed and attendance records of those meetings aren't public, hinting that his attendance might have been better at the non-public proceedings. But Kerry could ask that his attendance records be made public, and hasn't.
How to move a car bomb
Terrorists and ambulances: not just for the Middle East anymore?
On Aug. 1, U.S. officials warned that al Qaeda terrorists could be planning attacks on financial institutions in New York City, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.ABC News has learned that in the wake of that alert, authorities in the Northeast are investigating at least four incidents where people asked suspicious, detailed questions of firefighters and emergency personnel about how ambulances are operated — how fast they go, and when drivers should turn on the siren.
"Within the past week, the Office of Counter-Terrorism received three reports of suspicious activity concerning ambulances," New Jersey Infrastructure Advisory Bulletin No. 143 began. "The most recent incident involved an individual who attended an open-house at an ambulance squad in Middlesex County.
"The man, who claimed he was from Pakistan and a physician, asked a series of questions to the squad members that related exclusively to the operation of the emergency vehicles, including the speed at which the vehicles responded to calls and the use of the lights and sirens," it said."The individual appeared very nervous, did not ask about patient care, and left the premises when asked to complete a membership application."
What was most curious about the incidents was not just that they occurred, but that all three occurred in the short space of just a few days in the past two weeks. That pattern, as much as the incidents themselves, is a focus of the investigation.
Tip via Michelle Malkin
Plane spotting
The hobbyists known as plane spotters are helping to keep a watchful eye on Heathrow Airport.
U.K.-based LAAS International, one of the world's largest aviation enthusiast clubs, has an arrangement with the British Airport Authority (BAA) and London's Metropolitan Police Service to encourage enthusiasts to report suspicious activity around the airport.Plane spotting got its start in the United Kingdom around the outbreak of World War II, when the British government asked citizens to spend their nights in dugouts looking for enemy aircraft, says David Seex, chairman of LAAS International. After the war ended, watching aircraft remained a hobby. But raised security awareness after 9/11 made airport authorities leery of letting people hang out on the perimeters of airports. Sensing a major blow to his members' pursuits, Seex wrote to the Metropolitan Police with an idea: Rather than outlaw plane spotters, why not enlist them in the war against terrorism? "At any one time, there are usually more aviation enthusiasts around an airport perimeter than police," he says.
The police, as well as the BAA, liked the idea and worked out the agreement with LAAS that commenced earlier this year.
This might seem merely quaint, but Heathrow has been considered a high-risk target for some time. Just this week, for example:
Eight men arrested in anti- terror raids were expected to appear in court today charged with conspiring to commit murder and launch radioactive or chemical attacks on Britain. They are also charged with planning to use radioactive materials, chemicals, toxic gases or conventional explosives in an attack.Their arrests two weeks ago followed intelligence from Pakistan and sparked fears of an attack at Heathrow, although the airport was not specifically mentioned in the charges.
Last year, soldiers ringed the airport when a plot was suspected.
Ever since two suspected al-Qaida terrorists fired two shoulder launched missiles at an Israeli passenger jet as it took off from Mombasa airport in November, the international airline industry has been bracing itself for the next attempt to bring down an airliner.But last night, as hundreds of troops continued to search Heathrow airport and along its flight paths in response to a specific and credible threat, aviation security experts warned that even with this concentration of manpower there was little that could be done to prevent attacks being mounted from outside the perimeter fence.
"Mombasa put the fear of God into the airline security community," said Chris Yates, aviation security editor at Jane's Tranport. "Ever since they have been asking how the hell they can protect aircraft during take-off and landing. The short answer is they can't."
Experts said Heathrow was an extremely tempting target for terrorists. Not only is it the world's busiest airport, it also has a massive perimiter area which makes it more difficult to secure. There are thousands of cars in its car parks at any one time, and it is bordered by woodland and open ground. "It is always going to be near the top of the terrorists' fantasy hit list," said Mr Yates.
So, keep spotting, folks. The police can use all the help they can get.
Vote early
Interesting take on the timing of the presidential campaign: early voting could be an important edge.
Many Americans don't realize it, but large-scale voting in the tight 2004 presidential race will begin well before Election Day in many battleground states. Some analysts estimate that nearly one in three voters will mark ballots before Nov. 2 -- accelerating efforts by both parties to mobilize targeted constituencies.Most of the potential battleground states in the contest between Mr. Bush and Sen. John Kerry will allow voters to cast ballots before Election Day -- without requiring a reason. In Iowa, early voting begins just three weeks after the Republican convention ends, on Sept. 23. In Arizona, where ballots can be cast as of Sept. 30, the Bush campaign calculates up to half the vote will be cast before Election Day, up from 37% in 2000. In Florida, where voting starts Oct. 18, the total of early voters could hit 30%, doubling the 2000 level.
In a race as close as this one, such figures mean the winner could be the candidate who draws more votes in September and October.
Each party is using sophisticated early-voting programs to maximize its harvest among specific target groups. For Democrats, such voters include sympathetic blacks and Hispanics who lean toward Mr. Kerry but historically haven't voted at rates commensurate with their share of the electorate.
For Republicans, they include married women with children who could help close Mr. Bush's gender gap -- if they have time to vote between rushing among their homes, work and the day-care center.
Via The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
Nuance man
Fareed Zakaria is a smart guy and his observations on what the Bush administration has done wrong in Iraq are worth pondering. But this week's column goes too far in ascribing credibility to John Kerry and his baggage train of nuances.
The more intelligent question is, given what we knew at the time, was toppling Saddam's regime a worthwhile objective? Bush's answer is yes, Howard Dean's is no. Kerry's answer is that it was a worthwhile objective but was disastrously executed. For this "nuance" Kerry has been attacked from both the right and the left. But it happens to be the most defensible position on the subject.
The plain truth is that John Kerry, for all his macho posturing and (sort of) tough-guy rhetoric about the war we're in, has no intention whatsoever of taking any meaningful action against our mortal enemy -- it's all talk, all the time. Just like Clinton, Albright and Holbrooke. Just like the EU. Just like the U.N. A long, hopeless, and eventually fatal retreat. So it's a waste of time to consider how the George McClellan of our time might have delivered better "execution."
George W. Bush and his team may have made lots of mistakes in a harsh and unforgiving world. But at least he's doing something. At last. Against long odds. And we're winning. Stay the course, W.
Freedom to Read (not)
Not content with glossing over Fidel Castro's totalitarian repression of Cuba's independent librarians, the American Library Association now seems to be well on its way to acting as a pro-Palestinian front organization.
At one time American libraries stood at the heart of community education, forming in a positive way the minds and character of our youth, changing lives for the better. But sadly, the traditional mission of these august institutions of learning for generations of Americans is disappearing as they gradually turn into indoctrination centers against the United States and Israel.One of the main reasons for this tragic and disturbing turn of events is the American Library Association, where a clique of leftists has taken over, dedicating itself to padding libraries across America with anti-Israel books, videos and other materials, excluding both sides in the Israel/Palestine dispute.
Those who support the actions and goals of terrorists and oppose Israel’s existence and America’s War on Terror have infiltrated America’s knowledge distribution centers – our libraries. As a result, all of us should take a good, hard look at what is going on at our local libraries and get involved.
Tip via Little Green Footballs. where several sane librarians comment. E.g.:
We had a staff meeting once where we spent a good half-hour "discussing" the Patriot Act. I piped up and said "If the feds want me to roll over on Mohammed Atta wannabes, I won't even wait for the dime to drop." I was very popular. Ahem.Of course, these are the same people who usually worry about how many copies of "Heather Has Two Mommies" they should keep on the shelf, so they're a bit deluded in the first place.
Sad. And exceedingly pernicious.
Chavez rising
Hugo Chavez is wasting no time in tightening his grip on Venezuelan society.
Strengthened by his victory in a recall referendum, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez set his sights Tuesday on centralizing power, including exerting control over the courts, local police and the nation's broadcast stations.The leftist government is "going to deepen the social and democratic revolution in Venezuela," vowed Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, the right-hand man to Chavez, who is praised by supporters for giving the poor majority better services and a voice in politics.
Chavez said at a news conference late Monday that the victory will give his government a "catalyzing energy" to carry out its initiatives, including "completing the transformation of the judicial branch."
Congress, which is controlled by Chavez supporters, recently approved a measure allowing that body to remove and appoint judges to the Supreme Court. One Supreme Court justice has already been ousted for allegedly falsifying his resume, a charge he denied.
The government is also seeking to exert control over TV and radio stations, many of which are deeply critical of Chavez and carry one-sided news reports against him. The government plans to submit a bill to Congress that would allow the government to ban programming it sees as slanderous or an incitement to violence and to punish violators.
The government is also studying the possibility of unifying municipal and state police forces into a national police force, wresting control from mayors and governors, many of whom are Chavez opponents.
Remember, Venezuela is the country on which we depend for 13% of our oil imports. Remember also that CITGO Petroleum is 100% owned by Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A., the nationalized oil company that now fuels Chavez's regime.
August 17, 2004
Ups and downs
The Bush campaign makes a simple but important point about John Kerry:
Throughout this campaign, Kerry has peppered his political attacks on the President with nuggets about his "experience" on the Senate Intelligence Committee, but he failed to show up for 76% of its public hearings.
The Boston Herald says the Bush campaign has landed a "solid blow."
We don't normally get too worked up about an elected official's attendance record at congressional committee meetings. The real work of legislating often gets done elsewhere. But given the weight Kerry himself has given his congressional experience with intelligence oversight and his stated desire to "reform the intelligence system," his record of missing 76 percent of public Senate Intelligence Committee hearings - and every one in the year after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center - is surely fair game.
The Kerry campaign counter-attacks, but doesn't actually cite alternative attendance statistics.
The Bush-Cheney Campaign is using misleading numbers and cannot pretend to have the facts. They rely only on whether Sen. Kerry made statements in one of a small number of open hearings... They rely only on whether Sen. Kerry made statements in one of seven open hearings.NBC's Andrea Mitchell asked Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts, and Democratic Rep. Jane Harman, about it on Meet the Press. Both replies were telling:
SEN. ROBERTS: Well, it's in a closed hearing. But here's the point. Jane Harman and Pat Roberts sat there day after day after day in the original 9/11 investigation hearings. Presence, being there, is extremely important. I found out in my eight years, especially the first two, that you really had to get up ahead of the curve to understand what is going on. The easiest way out of this is for John Kerry and John Edwards to request of Senator Rockefeller and myself to release the attendance hearings; not only the public hearings, which they have rebutted, but the closed hearings.Now, we have a lot of members on the committee. We have 17. That's probably too many. That's one of the things we'd like to fix, to cut down the number. But I'm not going to get into that because it is a committee rule that has to be approved by the vice chairman and the chairman in terms of attendance.
MS. MITCHELL: Well, has he been a hard-working member?
SEN. ROBERTS: They should request it. They should...
MS. MITCHELL: Because that's one of the credentials he cites in his campaign.
SEN. ROBERTS: Well, hard-working member is in the eyes of the beholder. I'm just saying that John Kerry and John Edwards could ask Jay and myself to release the attendance records. It is important because you have to be in attendance to learn the job.
MS. MITCHELL: Congresswoman, you are the ranking Democrat on the House side. How would you feel if some of your members showed up as infrequently as Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards have?
REP. HARMAN: Well, I don't know what the facts are on the Senate side. I really can't speak to that, and I think we'll just have to wait and see.
It would appear that the Bushies have done their homework and Kerry's team is stuck with a feeble defense. ABC News The Note says:
The Kerry campaign's interest in revealing Kerry's private attendance record is on par with the candidate's traveling press corps' interest in getting them to come clean.
There is even some evidence that the Kerry campaign staff doesn't actually know whether they are working for Kerry or Kerrey.
Blogs of War may in fact know where Kerry has been. If true, then voters should demand that Magic Mountain release its surveillance tapes. Full disclosure is the only way to settle it.
Lowering the bar
James Joyner at Outside the Beltway notes a disturbing article by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
Everyone knows it, but not many politicians or mainstream journalists are willing to talk about it, for fear of sounding conspiracy-minded: there is a substantial chance that the result of the 2004 presidential election will be suspect.When I say that the result will be suspect, I don't mean that the election will, in fact, have been stolen. (We may never know.) I mean that there will be sufficient uncertainty about the honesty of the vote count that much of the world and many Americans will have serious doubts.
How might the election result be suspect? Well, to take only one of several possibilities, suppose that Florida - where recent polls give John Kerry the lead - once again swings the election to George Bush.
Much of Florida's vote will be counted by electronic voting machines with no paper trails. Independent computer scientists who have examined some of these machines' programming code are appalled at the security flaws. So there will be reasonable doubts about whether Florida's votes were properly counted, and no paper ballots to recount. The public will have to take the result on faith.
Yet the behavior of Gov. Jeb Bush's officials with regard to other election-related matters offers no justification for such faith.
Joyner makes the pertinent observation that Krugman is thereby joining...
... the list of those preparing the ground to delegitimate the results of the election in case Bush wins again... Unfortunately, the tactic now seems to be to start the process of undermining confidence in elections months in advance so that there is a built-in excuse in case a candidate loses.
It is significant that Krugman's extravagant accusation, based not on fact but on a willful belief in Democratic political demonization, appears in The New York Times, not in some fringe publication. To this depth we have now descended. Bad.
Voice of reason
Crushing of dissent in Houston?
An anti-fishing sign on Interstate 45 that shows a dog with a fishhook through its bloody lip will be taken down because of numerous complaints, a nationwide sign company decided Monday.Along with the picture, the billboard, paid for by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, bears the question:
"If you wouldn't do this to a dog, why do it to a fish?"
The billboard went up Aug. 10. It is the first in a national campaign to emphasize the animal advocacy group's contention that fishers inflict torturous injuries and deaths on their catches, PETA spokesman William Rivas-Rivas said Monday.
Pat Murray, executive director of the 50,000-member recreational fishing group Coastal Conservation Association Texas, called the billboard "extremist" and said he's glad it will be removed.
"It's a gross mischaracterization of the sport and the pastime," said Murray, adding that he saw the sign, near the intersection of I-45 and Texas 146, on Sunday. "We're not dog fishing."
The billboard's owner, advertising giant Viacom Outdoor, informed PETA's Norfolk, Va., headquarters Monday that Viacom would exercise its contractual right to remove the sign because of complaints.
E-crime
CSO Magazine conducted a survey of the "cybercrime landscape" recently, in partnership with CERT and the U.S. Secret Service. The survey respondents said these were the Top Ten most effective ways to fight "e-crime."
1. Engage in internal employee monitoring.2. Have a written inappropriate-use policy.
3. Require employees and contractors to sign acceptable-use policies.
4. Monitor Internet connections.
5. Require internal reporting to management of insider misuse and abuse.
6. Host employee education and awareness programs.
7. Develop a corporate security policy.
8. Conduct new employee security training.
9. Do periodic risk assessments.
10. Conduct regular security audits.
Which ones does your employer use?
Why not all the records?
Vietnam veteran Lee Cearnal addresses John Kerry's lack of candor about his supposed forays into Cambodia during the Vietnam War, and how it's being buried by a seemingly uncurious national media.
The same news media that demanded George W. Bush release his National Guard records — and went over them with a microscope — have shown an appalling lack of interest in John Kerry's military service. And as it turns out, there are far more legitimate questions about the latter than the former. Kerry has made his four months and 11 days in Vietnam the central theme of his presidential campaign. This is entirely understandable given his 20 years as the Senate's leading dove. He needs the cover that Vietnam can give him.There is no evidence whatsoever that Kerry ventured into Cambodia during his abbreviated tour in Vietnam. No orders, no after-action reports, no confirmation from others, nothing.
To have been caught in Cambodia would have been an international embarrassment and a court-martial offense. The border was clearly marked with warnings signs and patrolled by a PT boat to ensure that no allied boats crossed it.
As to the truth of this tale, there is only Kerry's word, which the press seems quite willing to take, to the extent of not reporting on the controversy at all. It is not a trivial matter. Kerry has pimped the story repeatedly in an effort to paint himself as a stand-up eyewitness to events that were both illegal and, in his view, immoral.
To those of you who say such questions are unseemly, consider that John Kerry's principal claim on the presidency is that he served four months and 11 days in Vietnam. OK, fine. Let's examine the records — all the records, which, unlike Bush and contrary to popular perception, Kerry has not released — and have a debate. We would be if it were George W. Bush. The media would see to it.
The explanation is so simple (as we are reminded by the omnisicient InstaPundit):
“There’s one other base here: the media. Let’s talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants Kerry to win. And I think they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards -- I’m talking about the establishment media, not Fox, but -- they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic and all, there’s going to be this glow about them that some, is going to be worth, collectively, the two of them, that’s going to be worth maybe 15 points.” - Evan Thomas, Assistant Managing Editor, Newsweek
Bring 'em on home
As predicted earlier, President Bush has announced a 10-year plan for the redeployment of American military forces from Europe and Asia.
Germany is fretting over the economic impact, but both senators from Texas say it's a grand opportunity to station more troops in our state.
Germany watcher David Kaspar is very concerned:
But...but... this means job losses in the tens of thousands in Germany!! You can't do this! Germany is broke by all definitions and needs help, not another devastating blow to the job market! We're already struggling to sustain our 6-week-annual vacations and the 35-hour week, not to forget our generous welfare state - we simply can't afford even more job losses! We need US taxpayer dollars to keep our standard of socialism!Tip via Blogs of War
Mark Steyn says in The Telegraph that the presence of U.S. forces in Europe for so long has had unintended consequences anyway.
Like any other form of welfare, defence welfare is a hard habit to break and profoundly damaging to the recipient. The peculiarly obnoxious character of modern Europe is a logical consequence of Washington's willingness to absolve it of responsibility for its own security. Our Defence Editor, John Keegan, once wrote that "without armed forces a state does not exist".That's true in a certain sense. But, in another, for wealthy nations who've found a sugar daddy, it's marvellously liberating. You're able to preen and pose on the world stage secure in the knowledge that nobody expects you to do anything about it.
A wealthy continent liberated from the burdens of military expenditure is also liberated to a large degree from reality. Poor peoples have no choice but to live in the real world: if a drought wipes out their crops, they starve. Likewise, rich, powerful nations have traditionally required great vigilance to maintain their wealth and power.
But Europe increasingly resembles those insulated celebrities being shuttled around town from one humanitarian gala to another – like Barbra Streisand flying in by private jet to discuss excessive energy consumption with President Clinton. Just as elderly rockers and Hollywood divas are largely free from the tedious responsibilities of rich industrialists or supermarket magnates – payroll costs and plant upgrades – so the EU can flaunt its "concerns" about the world and leave the logistics to others.
Start bringing 'em on home, Mr. President.
August 16, 2004
Katy-zuela
The apparent, and likely fraudulent, victory by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela may mean more immigrants for the Katy area west of Houston.
Since President Hugo Chavez took office in 1999, thousands of former middle- and upper-income Venezuelans have moved to the United States and created their own little corners here.More than 10,000 Venezuelans now live in the Houston area, estimates Wladimir Torres, 51, publisher of the monthly newspaper El Venezolano de Houston. That's up from the 1,592 Venezuelans counted in the 2000 census.
Unusual among their neighbors for their low levels of emigration, Venezuelans until recently enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle because of the nation's oil wealth. Many of Chavez's opponents blame the coup-leader-turned-president for destroying that way of life.
But the Bayou City also has attracted thousands of these immigrants because they expected to find jobs here, particularly in Houston's oil sector, where former employees of the state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA, can utilize their experience.
"The ones who are really serious about getting a future here in the U.S., they are coming here to Houston," said Mary Grunewaldt, an oil-industry consultant.
She moved to the United States 13 years ago and has watched the Venezuelan community multiply, especially in the last three years.
Many of these recent arrivals are flocking to the Katy area, which Venezuelans now refer to as "Katy-zuela." They can afford $80,000 to $190,000 houses because many arrive with their life savings. They choose the Katy area because they approve of the school district and many work in the energy sector in west Houston.
"Katy is just a huge melting pot because of the oil, gas and high-tech influence out here," said Ann Hodge, president and chief executive officer of the Katy Area Chamber of Commerce.
"As a result, the foreign-born feel comfortable and are welcomed with open arms by our community."
And since Citgo Petroleum Corp., a subsidiary of PDVSA, began its relocation from Tulsa, Okla., to west Houston's energy corridor last Monday, more Venezuelans are expected to move to the Katy area.
Venezuela
It's over, but not over, for the Venezuela recall effort. Chavez will remain and will undoubtedly use his position to punish his opponents.
Venezuela's opposition has rejected as a fraud results showing President Hugo Chavez has won a referendum on his rule, and say they will contest the outcome."We firmly and categorically reject the result ... we're going to collect the evidence to prove to Venezuela and the world the gigantic fraud which has been committed against the will of the people," opposition leader Henry Ramos Allup told a news conference on Monday.
He spoke shortly after Venezuela's top electoral officer, National Electoral Council President Francisco Carrasquero, announced to the nation preliminary official results showing that Chavez had survived the recall vote.
Carrasquero said in a national broadcast the "No" option opposing Chavez's recall had obtained just over 58 percent of the vote, while the "Yes" vote obtained nearly 42 percent.
"Our numbers ... are very different," Ramos said, adding the opposition would ask international organisations who observed the referendum to check the voting machines and ballots.
Why do we care about what happens in Venezuela? Robert Jensen, leftist professor at The University of Texas at Austin, says it's just the usual attempt by Western oligarchies to prop up anti-democratic elements and control the natural resources of a exploited third-world country.
Whatever objections U.S. officials might have to the Venezuelan president's policies, it is clear the attempts to push Chavez from power have nothing to do with the charge that he is an authoritarian president (or "quasi-authoritarian,"as one U.S. newspaper described him in an editorial, or perhaps a "quasi-editorial"). Since his 1998 election, Chavez's real "crimes" have been not just consistently speaking out against the unjust distribution of resources in his country but taking tangible steps to help the poor, such as literacy programs and community-based health clinics.
Much more pertinent is the fact that Hugo Chavez is harboring terrorist camps and infiltrators from known state sponsors of terror in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Another South American hub of Arab terrorism has emerged recently in northern Venezuela near the border with Colombia. Thousands of terrorists now occupy an unknown number of camps in that region, and move about with the support and collaboration of the Venezuelan government. President Hugo Chavez plays host to a growing horde of Middle Eastern terrorists from some of the USA’s most notorious enemies, including Libya, Saddam’s Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Pakistan. Thousands of Venezuelan identity cards have been legally issued to these foreigners. Such cards can be used to obtain legal travel documents and passports for unimpeded entry into other South American countries and into the USA.These terror groups are known to work in conjunction with the Colombian anti-government insurgency group, FARC. They offer FARC terrorists safe haven in mountainous and unpatrolled regions of Northeastern Venezuela. They may provide Hugo Chavez with a covert force that can be used to support FARC against the Colombian government. Venezuelan cooperation with these terrorists may buy President Chavez a guarantee that terror assaults will not be perpetrated in his country.
South America is yet another front in the War on [Islamic] Terror, and Venezuela is in the forefront of risky countries.
Related:
Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of South America (PDF)
August 15, 2004
Chavez up or down?
Douglas Mackinnon, former aide to Sen. Bob Dole, is watching today's recall election in Venezuela with a worried eye.
On any given day, Venezuela is the No. 1 to No. 4 supplier of gasoline and oil to the United States. Its internal politics and stability are of great importance and concern to our national security. All in our government who follow this issue are holding their breath, crossing their fingers, and hoping that the opposition in Venezuela succeeds in ousting Chavez.Why? The reasons are many and simple. Since his election in 1998, Hugo Chavez has become a dictator in all but title. He has: openly courted and visited terrorist leaders around the world; he has aligned himself with Fidel Castro; he has imported thousands of intelligence operatives from Cuba to spy on his own people; he has used the vilest language to attack President Bush and our nation; he has openly tried to destabilize the government of Colombia; he has exported revolution throughout the region; and he has allowed members of al-Qaida to operate within the borders of Venezuela. By any rational definition, this man is a threat to our nation and to the entire Western Hemisphere.
Just a few months ago, all of the polls showed that the vast majority of Venezuelans would like to recall Chavez. Today, thanks to a disorganized, egotistical and a myopic opposition, record prices for a barrel of oil and the street-wise cunning of Chavez, the polls are basically even or show Chavez running ahead. When the last vote is counted or stolen in the late hours of Sunday, there is a very real chance that Hugo Chavez will not only survive this latest attempt to oust him from power, but emerge stronger.
Along with many others, I have long maintained that Chavez would not have approved this recall referendum in the first place if he hadn't already devised several ways to defeat it.
It is all or nothing for him, and he does not intend to relinquish a corrupt presidency that has allowed him and his supporters to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars out of the treasury.
Wall Street Journal author Mary Anastasia O'Grady says Chavez is well on his way to becoming "Fidel's Mini-Me."
If passions among Venezuela's opposition seem extreme in the run-up to today's recall referendum on President Hugo Chavez, it is not without good reason. From his presidential bully pulpit, Mr. Chavez virulently rails against the U.S. as an international menace, sympathizes with Middle Eastern militancy and, most frightening for Venezuelans, dreams of making his country into another Cuba.The process of Cubanizing Venezuela is well underway.
It's hard to be optimistic.
UPDATE: Apparently voters are turning out in record numbers.
Summoned by bugle calls and firecrackers, millions of Venezuelans turned out in unprecedented numbers Sunday to vote on whether to force leftist President Hugo Chavez from office.Lines snaked for blocks in upscale neighborhoods, where suspicion is high that the leftist leader plans a Cuba-style dictatorship, and in the slums, where support for his "revolution for the poor" is fervent. A seven-hour wait to vote was common.
The first-ever recall referendum for a president in Venezuela's history was aimed at putting a lid on years of often violent political unrest and came after a lengthy and complicated process of mass signings of petitions.
Election officials decided to keep polls open at least four hours longer than scheduled and assured voters that polling stations would be kept open until everyone in line cast their ballots.
UPDATE: Some violence is also breaking out.
A gunman in Venezuela's capital killed one person and injured 12 as they stood in line to vote on whether to recall President Hugo Chavez, the city's fire chief said.Bullets sprayed from a vehicle passing near a line of voters in the eastern Petare neighborhood of Caracas at about 5 p.m. in Caracas, Fire Chief Rodolfo Briceno said in an interview.
Wilful ignorance
Ignorant of how petroleum exploration is conducted, and apparently taking its lead from the anti-development Wildnerness Society, the Associated Press misinterprets what's going on with oil and gas leases on federal land.
Despite soaring oil and gas prices, oil companies and individuals who own nearly 30 million acres of nonproducing federal oil and gas leases have made little effort to transform them into energy producers, federal records show.An analysis of Bureau of Land Management records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act found that 98 percent of the more than 33,000 leases still considered nonproducing by the BLM have never had an exploratory well drilled.
Ninety-seven percent have never had a single application for a permit to drill filed with the BLM.
Industry officials argue that those numbers are misleading because many nonproducing leases have been joined with other leases into larger production units where active exploration is under way, and in many such cases the units are producing.
But even after discounting such leases, there is no indication in BLM records of any oil or gas exploration on 26 million acres of federal land under lease, or two-thirds of all federal leased acreage. A little more than 10 million acres of federal oil and gas leases are listed as producing; another 4 million acres have been explored to some degree but still are not producing.
Environmentalists say the lack of exploration belies the Bush administration's push to open even more federal land to oil and gas development, particularly in environmentally sensitive areas. A recent Wilderness Society analysis of new BLM management plans in Utah, Wyoming, Montana and New Mexico concluded that 80 percent of the 6 million acres of environmentally sensitive land covered by the plans would be opened to oil and gas leasing.
The greens can't help but look for the nefarious conspiracy behind the scenes.
Pete Morton, a Wilderness Society economist, said the administration's push for more oil and gas leasing of federal lands is more about boosting the financial prospects of oil companies than producing more oil and gas."Share prices are based on rational expectations of future earnings potential," Morton said. "If companies can increase that potential, the expectations, and hence share price, by leasing more acres, then it may make economic sense to lease more acres regardless of whether the wells will ever be drilled and/or whether the wells drilled become economically viable."
AP does at least allow the industry to reply.
Oil and gas companies "don't make money and profits by sitting on leases," said William F. Whitsett, president of the Domestic Petroleum Council. "They go after their best prospects. The acreage drilled first is a function of expectation of what they believe they can discover and produce."Oil companies and other owners of nonproducing leases are paying the government more than $40 million a year in rent.
"They're actively studying those leases and trying to determine the best course of action in terms of timing to develop those leases," said Mark Smith, executive director of the Independent Petroleum Association of the Mountain States. "You wouldn't spend that kind of money just to hold on to them. It doesn't make sense."
In fact, the overwhelming majority of all land leased for exploration will never be drilled or produced. Leases have to be assembled before the industry can justify the cost of detailed geologic and geophysical studies, most of which will end of negative.
Oddly, AP and the Wilderness Society would seem to be calling for more aggressive exploitation of federal lands, rather than industry benignly sitting on the leases. Perhaps the industry response should be a pledge to conduct dramatically more aggressive drilling.
Unfortunately such a pledge would be hard to fulfill. The domestic industry has suffered since the 1980s; millions of jobs have been lost. A recent article in World Oil magazine shows that rig capacity is tight. (Note that the rig count was over 4,000 in the early 1980s.)
As in 1997 and 2001, this latest drilling cycle is characterized by increased waiting-on-rig availability, rising prices for drilling services, and an anticipated decline in rig efficiency, as marginal labor and equipment is pressed into service to meet high drilling services demand.Using RigData numbers, the US land market had 1,587 rigs that drilled one or more wells in the last few months of 2003. In January 2004, the average rig count was 1,231, yielding a utilization of 77.6%. At the end of May, the number of rigs that had drilled one or more wells in the preceding months rose to 1,672 units. Average rig count for May was 1,379 units, or utilization of 82.5%.
An old industry rule of thumb suggests that day rates begin to rise when utilization reaches 80%. This appears to be confirmed in the current market. Utilization rose above 80% in late March and early April 2004. US rig rates moved up early in the second quarter, increasing $500 a day by the end of June.
Trends point to an impending collision between rising demand and a finite supply of drilling units, further hampered by the first inklings of labor shortages in the US land market. The cap on rig availability - and rig count - resides with the two largest publicly held land drilling contractors, who now control essentially all remaining rig capacity. As a result, expect rig rates to accelerate, moving up from daily increases that ranged from $250 to $500 during second quarter 2004, into the $500 to $1,000 per day range by the 4th quarter 2004, particularly as the year-end approaches and operators begin tax-influenced spending or face lease-stipulated deadlines.
Related:
Response from the Domestic Petroleum Council
Baker Hughes rig count statistics
Bureau of Land Management
The Wilderness Society
More fun with data
The Federal Trade Commission has debunked an earlier report from the GAO about the supposed effects of oil industry mergers. News flash: pump prices are set by the world oil market.
Oil company mergers over the last decade didn't drive up the U.S. price of gasoline at the pumps, Federal Trade Commission economists said in a report released Friday.The price motorists pay for gasoline is set by the price of oil established on the world market, the FTC's Bureau of Economics concluded. Restructuring oil mergers and divestitures ordered by the FTC prevented combined companies from gaining the power to raise prices, the report said.
The report challenges findings by Congress's Government Accountability Office thatfive oil mergers since 1990 pushed up prices an average of 1 or 2 cents a gallon across the nation.
The FTC's press release has more details:
The report develops five major themes: 1) Mergers of private oil companies have not significantly affected worldwide concentration in crude oil – this fact is important, because crude oil prices are the chief determinant of gasoline prices; 2) Despite some increases over time, concentration for most levels of the petroleum industry has remained low to moderate; 3) Thorough FTC merger investigations and enforcement have helped prevent further increases in petroleum industry concentration and avoid potentially anticompetitive problems and higher prices for consumers; 4) Economies of scale have become increasingly significant in shaping the petroleum industry; and 5) Industry developments have lessened the incentive to be vertically integrated throughout all or most levels of production, distribution, and marketing. Several significant refiners have no crude oil production, and integrated petroleum companies today tend to depend less on their own crude oil production.
Related:
FTC's full report (PDF)
FTC's press release and supporting data via this page
GAO study abstract and full report (PDF)
August 14, 2004
Fun with data
Billionaire-by-marriage John Kerry has been criticizing the Bush administration (again) over the President's program of tax cuts, using a new study from the Congressional Budget Office as fuel for the fire.
Democratic Sen. John Kerry on Friday assailed President Bush's tax cuts as the latest congressional report showed that three rounds of reductions lowered taxes for the wealthy."Over the last four years, the burden of taxes has shifted from the wealthy to the middle class," the Democratic presidential nominee said at a front-porch event. "The middle class is paying more taxes."
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in a report released Friday, said that those in the top 1 percent of income got a bigger tax cut than those in the middle brackets. Kerry's economic platform calls for withdrawing tax cuts that went to those earning $200,000 or more, but Bush has said those tax cuts benefit small business and other job creators.
James Joyner asks the most immediate and logical question.
We actually commissioned a government study to demonstrate that, given an across-the-board tax cut, the people who pay the most taxes are going to get the biggest cut?
He also reprints a highly pertinent rejoinder he received from an expert on the Joint Economic Committee.
While many characterize the CBO report as evidence that the tax cuts shifted the burden of taxation to the middle class, CBO data show precisely the opposite effect. The tax cuts actually made the tax system more progressive. The highest 20 percent of earners now pay a larger share of federal income taxes than they would have without the tax cuts, while the share of income taxes paid by all other income groups fell.
Why the apparent discrepancy? How the math is done.
Some analysts cite total effective federal tax rates, as opposed to effective income tax rates, as the best measure of the effects of the tax cuts across income groups. This method can be misleading because it measures the burden of payroll taxes without accounting for the highly progressive Social Security and Medicare benefits to which payroll taxes are linked.
So, the Democrats are both hyping the obvious AND basing the argument on a misleading interpretation of economic data; i.e., comparing the proverbial apples and oranges. Typical.
Read the full CBO report (PDF) for yourself.
Cold War legacy ending
An important and long-awaited decision has apparently been made.
The US is expected to announce on Monday that it is pulling 70,000 troops out of Europe and Asia in the largest restructuring of its global military presence since the second world war. People briefed on the plan say two-thirds of the reductions will come in Europe, most of them military personnel stationed in Germany who will be sent back to US bases.An additional 100,000 support staff and military families worldwide will be part of the realignment.
The changes are expected to be announced by President George W. Bush at a speech to the Convention of Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cinncinatti, Ohio, on Monday.Although Germany will remain home to the largest contingent of American forces on the continent, both army divisions now based there the 1st Armoured and the 1st Infantry could be moved to US bases.
Germany will continue to be home to sophisticated training and command facilities and to a mobile infantry force which will be equipped with the new light-armoured Stryker vehicles and is expected to form the core of a restructured European presence.
Whatever it takes
Almost missed this interesting peek behind the GWOT curtain, until tipped by John Little: contract warriors are on the prowl in Pakistan on behalf of the U.S.
The United States, on the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is augmenting counterterror operations in Pakistan with scores of former special-operations warriors who work for the CIA and other agencies under contract.Thousands of U.S. troops are openly fighting in Afghanistan along the Pakistan border. The stated U.S. policy, however, is that no American troops are inside Pakistan pursuing bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorists or advising local troops.
The reality is there are "a load of contracts" with U.S. agencies attracting veterans of Special Forces and other elite units to Pakistan, one source told The Washington Times.
The official ban is in deference to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose solid alliance with the United States in the war on terror stops short of allowing American ground troops in his country.
But Washington is getting around the ban by signing up former Delta Force commandos, SEALs and Green Berets and assigning them to special duties in Pakistan, according to two sources close to the special-operations community.
"There are a load of contracts going on for ex-SF [Special Forces] types there for every alphabet agency there is," one of the sources said.
The source said the former covert warriors joined CIA operations in Pakistan and train local soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques.
I don't think this is what John Kerry means by a "more sensitive" war against [Islamic] terror, but it works for me.
Expedited removal
Window dressing or a step in the right direction? Time will tell if this Dept. of Homeland Security decision helps or not. "Expedited removal" might stop the automatic release of thousands of OTMs in Texas and other border states.
While expedited removal has been effectively used at official ports of entry in the U.S. since 1997, it has not been applied on the land borders between the ports of entry. The expansion of expedited removal processing will allow DHS to speed the removal of undocumented migrants who are caught while attempting to illegally enter the United States by fraudulent means or while attempting to elude Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol agents. This new procedure will only apply to those caught within 100 miles of the Mexican or Canadian borders, and only if they are apprehended within their first 14 days in the U.S. The expanded use of expedited removal is primarily directed at those illegal aliens who are not citizens of Mexico or Canada.When a migrant is apprehended and placed in expedited removal proceedings by a CBP Border Patrol agent, he or she generally will be detained and removed to his or her country of origin as soon as circumstances allow. The migrant will not be released into the U.S. in most cases, and is not provided a hearing before an Immigration Judge unless the migrant is determined to have a credible fear of return to his or her country.
Hunting another mastermind
More and more news is emerging from Pakistan about the very active campaign against al Qaeda.
A Libyan named as the "current top operational chief" of the al-Qa'eda terrorist network is at the centre of a major manhunt in Pakistan.Abu Faraj Farj, who reportedly once worked as a personal assistant to Osama bin Laden, is also wanted for his alleged part in two assassination attempts against Pakistan's president last December.
He also commands a network of overseas al-Qa'eda "sleeper cells" that are waiting to strike in the West, anonymous Pakistani intelligence officials claimed in Islamabad yesterday. "Farj was a personal assistant of bin Laden and our information is that he is the current top operational chief of the network," one official added.
"He heads al-Qa'eda's clandestine operational apparatus in Pakistan and also controls al-Qa'eda's sleeper cells in other countries to plot terror strikes."
The hunt for Farj, who is said to be on the run with an Egyptian named as Hamza Rabia, follows a month of intense activity against suspected al-Qa'eda operatives in Pakistan.
There's a lot going on.
August 13, 2004
They're back...
Good news: PBS has decided to act a bit more fair and balanced, and will air a new talking heads show starting in September, featuring the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal.
Each week, JOURNAL EDITORIAL REPORT will consider an array of timely topics in a fast-paced half-hour built around four regular segments and occasional special segments.The program leads off with a look at the story the editorial board considers the most important of the week, emphasizing the original reporting and analysis of the editorial board members. Next, "Briefing....and Opinion" will feature an in-depth taped piece from the field on a current issue of note, which will serve as a basis for a spirited discussion. This will be followed by "One on One," in which Gigot talks with individual writers, op-ed contributors or other newsmakers, getting "inside" the stories and issues that others aren't covering. Some weeks, this segment will alternate with "Cultural Divide," which will look at issues raised in movies, television, literature, and religion. The half-hour wraps up with "Tony and Tacky," which invites members of the editorial board to make their personal picks of the best and the worst of the week.
Leftie Eric Alterman, already concerned about the obviously right-wing nature of PBS, seems despondent.
Short of turning the broadcast day over to Rush Limbaugh or Richard Mellon Scaife, it's difficult to imagine a more calculated effort to undermine PBS's intended mission of providing alternative programming than this subsidy to a wealthy, conservative corporation to produce yet another right-wing cable chat show.Given the right's domination of television talk shows and its already strong representation on public broadcasting, the only imaginable explanation for the decision to put PBS resources in the hands of well-financed, well-distributed, unabashedly partisan and journalistically challenged ideologues can be naked political pressure. As we have seen over the past three decades, the relentless conservative campaign to "work the refs" works. If liberals are to retain their voice in the public discourse, they had better find a way to let the pooh-bahs of PBS know exactly what they think of decisions like this one.
Such retching only confirms how badly this antidote is needed. Hope to see it here in Houston, but the Sept. schedule is not yet published.
Akhtar meets the judge
Terrorist scout or video-geek tourist? We don't know yet, but, either way, Kamran Akhtar faced a federal detention hearing in Charlotte today.
The Pakistani national arrested last month in Charlotte while videotaping Uptown buildings appeared in federal court Friday under heavy security.As expected, Kamran Akhtar was ordered detained by U.S. Magistrate Judge Carl Horn.
Akhtar’s attorney really didn't put up much of a fight. George Miller said that he only had a chance to meet with his client for about five minutes prior to the hearing.
The magistrate cited numerous inconsistent statements made by Akhtar to federal agents, including a claim that he was a microbiologist, which was disproved. He allegedly lied about his immigration status and he said that he didn't have any money or property when he worth more than $100,000. Akhtar's attorney said the public should keep an open mind.
Akhtar’s court appearance was just a detention hearing. Next week there may be a probably cause hearing. If there is one, at the time the government will have to provide a sneak peek of the evidence that they have against Akhtar.
Pass the butter
Ever-delightful celebrity chef Julia Child has died at age 91. Raise a glass of wine to her tonight -- if you're eating well in America, you owe her.
The New York Times has a fairly detailed obituary. This passage is good:
For all her expertise at the stove, what made Mrs. Child such an influential teacher was her good-humored insistence that cooking was not brain surgery. If you drop the turkey on the floor, she would say, "You're alone in your kitchen."" Just pick it up and go on with the dressing. And by example she made cooking a respectable profession, for women as well as men.Mrs. Child also consistently refused to cut her cuisine to fit the current fashion. At the height of the reign of nutrition terror, in the 80's and 90's, when reliable health information seemed to have the shelf life of a baguette, she repeated one mantra: "If you're afraid of butter, use cream." Long before anyone ever put the words French and paradox together, she was advocating red wine and cheese, and the more the better.
Related:
Backcountry Conservative covers her history as an employee of the OSS during World War II
Julia Child: Lessons with Master Chefs at PBS
Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian (Flash site)
There and not there
Now John Kerry's sycophantic biographer says Kerry both was and was not in Cambodia. It will be interested to see whether this is corroborated by the numerous Swift Boat veterans. Unless of course Kerry went in solo during his "black op."
The biographer of John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, said yesterday there was no basis for one of the senator's favourite Vietnam War anecdotes - that he spent Christmas 1968 in Cambodia, a neutral nation which US leaders vowed was off limits for American forces."On Christmas Eve he was near Cambodia; he was around 50 miles from the Cambodian border. There's no indictment of Kerry to be made, but he was mistaken about Christmas in Cambodia," said Douglas Brinkley, who has unique access to the candidate's wartime journals.
But Mr Brinkley rejected accusations that the senator had never been to Cambodia, insisting he was telling the truth about running undisclosed "black" missions there at the height of the war.
He said: "Kerry went into Cambodian waters three or four times in January and February 1969 on clandestine missions. He had a run dropping off US Navy Seals, Green Berets and CIA guys." The missions were not armed attacks on Cambodia, said Mr Brinkley, who did not include the clandestine missions in his wartime biography of Mr Kerry, Tour of Duty.
"He was a ferry master, a drop-off guy, but it was dangerous as hell. Kerry carries a hat he was given by one CIA operative. In a part of his journals which I didn't use he writes about discussions with CIA guys he was dropping off."
UPDATE: The omnisicient InstaPundit is following the shifting tides of John Kerry's autobiography closely, including here.
Note that the U.S. media has thrown a blanket of silence over the story. It now seems safe to assume that they will not cover it at all, at least until the Kerry campaign works out the alternative story thoroughly. That's telling about their take on this election, not that we didn't know.
Reagan factors
Apparently the Ron Reagan ploy didn't work for the Kerry campaign, as demonstrated by this.
President Bush paid a visit to former First Lady Nancy Reagan on Thursday in a sign of easing tensions between the Bush and Reagan families despite their disagreement over stem-cell research.White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the issue of stem cell research did not come up in the meeting on Thursday.
He said the meeting was initiated two or three weeks ago when a member of Mrs. Reagan's staff contacted Bush's reelection campaign to ask how she could provide support and invited Bush to come visit the next time he was in the Los Angeles area.
Mrs. Reagan has formally endorsed Bush's reelection and repeated that support in a statement issued on Thursday.
Adopted son, but philosophical heir, Michael Reagan will appear at the Republican convention.
The Bush campaign, faced with criticism for loading the Republican National Convention schedule with prominent social liberal speakers, now says it will feature conservative broadcaster Michael Reagan on the opening night.The speech by the adopted son of the late President Ronald Reagan is intended as the Republican answer to the other Reagan son, Ron, who addressed the Democratic National Convention in Boston last month.
"It will be a battle of the brothers," said a Republican in New York, where the party convenes Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 in Madison Square Garden.
August 12, 2004
Stormy weather
Double trouble: looks like Tropical Storm Bonnie is going to pass right over my hometown back in SC tomorrow and Hurricane Charley may follow behind her on a very similar path.
As a side benefit, helpful NOAA taught me a new word today:
Maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 35 mph with higher gusts. Bonnie is forecast to become extratropical during the next 12 to 24 hours.
Note: NOAA has posted very nice high-resolution photos of both Bonnie and Charley.
You know, the third storm of the season could have been designated "Clyde." Then Florida would be getting hit by, well, Bonnie & Clyde. Shame.
Based on the intelligence itself
Still more warnings about possible terror attacks before the November election.
The presidential election campaign has entered a two-month period when the threat of an al Qaeda attack to disrupt the process could be greatest, a White House official warned on Thursday.The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, cited no evidence of an imminent attack inside the United States, but said authorities had gathered increasing detail about possible threats with the wave of arrests of al Qaeda suspects in Pakistan and Britain over the last month.
"It's not a presumption that we're imposing ... it is pretty clear, based on the intelligence itself, that al Qaeda is looking to influence the election," the official told reporters.
"Based on the intelligence, we are more concerned about the August-September time-frame," the official said in what was the first identification by the government of a specific period of heightened danger for the election.
However the official acknowledged that the potential for a campaign-related attack would continue up until the Nov. 2 poll.
Hitmen?
Pakistan sources say assassinations are the next al Qaeda strategy.
Al Qaeda hit squads are planning to assassinate British politicians and other international leaders closely linked with US President George W. Bush, according to a Pakistani intelligence source.These targeted killings were planned to be carried out simultaneously in a number of countries, The Times daily claimed, quoting the unnamed source. Terror suspects being held in Pakistan have told their captors that the orders for this campaign of political assassinations came directly from Osama bin Laden, the report said.
Key Al Qaeda men now in custody have revealed how, in his mountain hideout, bin Laden is still personally involved in drawing up plans for a new wave of attacks against the West.
Quoting the source, the report said: ‘‘Osama has given the go-ahead to target important places and personalities in the US, UK and Pakistan.’’
Details of the assassination plot were said to have been found on a computer belonging to an Al Qaeda suspect, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, who was a frequent visitor to Britain.
They suggested that the assassins are in place in many of the countries being targeted by the terror network.
Akhtar just a tourist?
Kamran Akhtar's family says he is no terrorist -- just a video buff with a fascination with public buildings and such. The feds are playing it cool.
Relatives of a New York man arrested last month with a homemade videotape of buildings in Dallas, Austin, Houston and other southern cities accused federal authorities Wednesday of trying to turn an innocent tourist into a terrorist.Family members said Kamran Akhtar, a 35-year-old native of Pakistan who lists an address in Queens, had been on a cross-country bus trip last month and was taking video remembrances with a newly purchased camera.
"Nobody has ever said it was a terrorism connection," said one federal law enforcement official in Washington who requested anonymity. "All we said: It was suspicious. Nobody has ever said he was a terrorist."
The official confirmed that Mr. Akhtar's wife and brother in New York were interviewed and given polygraph tests and that family members in Austin also were questioned. "We're just trying to validate one way or the other the statements [made by Mr. Akhtar] with all of this," he said.
Asked about family members' explanations that Mr. Akhtar was just a well-traveled tourist with an interest in buildings, the official said: "That may well be what we find out."
Mr. Akhtar's younger brother, Irfan, said Wednesday in Queens that his brother had left New York in early July and traveled alone by bus through several cities in the South on his way to visit his cousin in the Austin, Texas area.
The younger Mr. Akhtar said that his brother simply likes to take pictures of buildings and bridges and that he is not involved in planning terrorist attacks.
August 11, 2004
Akhtar covered his tracks
Before getting arrested in North Carolina, supposed photo-tourist Kamran Akhtar tried hard to cover his tracks while he traversed the southeastern U.S. It's more and more suspicious.
Investigative sources say that Akhtar traveled across the country in a way designed not to attract any attention. Akhtar took a Greyhound bus across the country. He went to Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans and Austin, Texas.“He had training to know not to leave a paper trail,” said Cindy Combs, a terrorism expert at UNC-Charlotte.
Sources say that while Akhtar was close to the finest of hotels and motels, he didn’t sleep in any of them. Instead, he chose to rest on the bus. While agents are still investigating his finances, it appears that Akhtar did not use credit cards or any ATM cards.
While agents are still trying to determine if Akhtar is connected to terrorist groups, Combs suspects the worst.
“I’d say the best guess is someone who is supported by random cells of groups here, maybe more than one because he was able to travel and connect properly in a variety of different cities,” Combs said.
Agents also said that Akhtar used a discovery pass to travel around the country on the bus. The bus line does not keep a record of where passengers traveled while on the pass and they are free to come and go as they please.
Linked to today's Beltway Traffic Jam.
Iranian diplomacy
Here's how John Kerry's diplomatic idols get results without all that rude unilateralism.
Iran has issued an extraordinary list of demands to Britain and other European countries, telling them to provide advanced nuclear technology, conventional weapons and a security guarantee against nuclear attack by Israel.Teheran's request, said by British officials to have "gone down very badly", sharply raises the stakes in the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme, which Britain and America believe is aimed at making an atomic bomb.
Iran's move came during crisis talks in Paris this month with senior diplomats from Britain, France and Germany.
The "EU-3" were trying to convince Iranian officials to honour an earlier deal to suspend its controversial uranium enrichment programme, which is ostensibly designed to make fuel for nuclear power stations but could also be used to make fissile material for nuclear bombs. Iranian officials refused point-blank to comply, saying they had every right under international law to pursue "peaceful" nuclear technology.
They then stunned the Europeans by presenting a letter setting out their own demands.
Iran is playing for keeps. So are the Euros, but they don't seem to recognize it.
August 10, 2004
TIA, oh TIA
Total Information Awareness is still with us and still needed, according to former project chief John Poindexter.
Despite the fact that he resigned from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) a year ago, despite the fact that DARPA subsequently dissolved the Information Awareness Office (IAO) he had built, and despite the fact that DARPA ostensibly canceled TIA (the broad-ranging program designed to apply technology-based intelligence as a counterterrorism measure), Poindexter still firmly believes in TIA (he pronounces it Tia, like the woman's name). In fact, he says, TIA has gone away in name only. And he cautions that if the debate about its merits remains emotional, rather than reasoned, the nation may well end up with a less effective, but more invasive, set of technologies to combat terrorism.Hardly humbled by the public maelstrom surrounding his project and his eventual resignation (events he says he largely foresaw), Poindexter seems energized by the controversy. If anything, he says now, TIA didn't go far enough. It needed to encompass more of the national security infrastructure (not just intelligence) and more of the national policy (not just technology) infrastructure.
Query: what does Tia look like in his dreams?
Note that the TIA thong apparently is still available...
For those who cannot speak for themselves
Apparently the U.S. isn't the only place where defense lawyers are willing to do or say anything for an acquittal. But some decent people won't take it lying down.
The American son of a September 11 victim accused a German lawyer of desecrating his mother's memory by saying that the U.S.-led war on terror was mired in a "swamp of torture".Their exchange, across a Hamburg courtroom, came during a dramatic opening session at the retrial of Mounir El Motassadeq, a Moroccan man accused of plotting the suicide hijack attacks of 2001 with Mohamed Atta and others.
Defence lawyer Josef Graessle-Muenscher filed a motion to dismiss the case, saying the truth could not be established because it lay with al Qaeda figures in U.S. captivity who had probably been tortured.
"In this swamp of torture and prison camps, no court can ascertain the truth any more," he said in a long intervention detailing alleged U.S. abuses of prisoners, especially at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
American Dominic Puopolo, whose mother died on the first plane to hit the World Trade Centre, said he found the argument "very offensive" and irrelevant to the case against Motassadeq.
"What I find troubling is this indictment of all our soldiers, our men and women in uniform. You're desecrating the memories of 3,000 people who died, including my mother," said Puopolo, 38, from Boston.
Still grinding forward
More encouraging news today about the economy from Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve:
The Federal Open Market Committee decided today to raise its target for the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 1-1/2 percent.The Committee believes that, even after this action, the stance of monetary policy remains accommodative and, coupled with robust underlying growth in productivity, is providing ongoing support to economic activity. In recent months, output growth has moderated and the pace of improvement in labor market conditions has slowed. This softness likely owes importantly to the substantial rise in energy prices. The economy nevertheless appears poised to resume a stronger pace of expansion going forward. Inflation has been somewhat elevated this year, though a portion of the rise in prices seems to reflect transitory factors.
The latest Department of Energy forecast calls for softening of oil prices as the year goes along, and notes the effect of non-economic factors at play.
With rising consumption and little global surplus production capacity, near-term prices remain volatile and sensitive to news relating to possible reductions in oil production. Some reduction in prices is likely if increased production continues to flow and inventories build. However, short of a serious slow down in demand during the coming months, the floor for prices probably remains above $30 for the foreseeable future.The current world oil prices may not entirely reflect pure economic fundamentals of the world oil supply market because the Iraqi war and the Russian government's actions on its major oil company have increased world-wide perceptions that the supply of oil during the short-term is more vulnerable to disruption than normal and may have added a premium to what otherwise might be a lower world crude oil price.
This economy has been impressive; despite innumerable obstacles and setbacks, it keeps grinding its way forward. This is a three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust game, not long ball. Terrorism is the biggest concern.
Watching us
It's a never-ending contest now. Nowhere is really safe.
A Pakistani citizen with suspected terrorist ties appeared in federal court in Charlotte on two immigration violations Tuesday after local police detained him for questioning several weeks ago when they saw him videotaping uptown landmarks.When Charlotte-Mecklenburg police interviewed Kamran Akhtar, 36, on July 20, they found videotapes showing the Bank of America building and former Wachovia building that now houses Charlotte's FBI offices. He also had footage of buildings in Atlanta, Austin, Houston, Dallas, New Orleans and several transit systems in those cities.
During Tuesday's hearing, the charges against Akhtar – alleging he violated federal immigration and naturalization laws and made a materially false statement – were unsealed.
Police did not release many details regarding the federal investigation. They said once they brought Akhtar in for questioning and watched the videotapes, they forwarded him to the joint terrorism task force.
After reviewing his immigration file, authorities found that Akhtar did not have a green card and was in the country illegally. He had told Charlotte-Mecklenburg police that he received a green card in 1997, that he was born in Pakistan and crossed into the U.S. from Mexico illegally in 1991. [emphasis added]
The local/regional angle:
FBI spokesman Bob Doguim in Houston confirmed they have received a copy of the videotape. According to the authorities, the Houston tape included the Downtown Transit Center and the downtown Metro Trolley.Federal documents confirm that public transportation in Dallas, Atlanta and New Orleans were on the tape, as well as the Bank of America Building and the building that houses the FBI in Charlotte, according to federal authorities.
Rudy Landeros, an assistant police chief in Austin, told the Austin American Statesman that the suspicious videotape also contained images of the State Capitol, the Governor's mansion and Mansfield Dam in Austin.
Landeros told the Statesman the video and at least one other piece of evidence prompted federal authorities to issue a bulletin to local officers late last week. The bulletin urges police to remain vigilant and instructs commanders to tell patrol officers to be on the lookout for suspicious activity, according to Landeros.
"Let's put it this way," Landeros told the Statesman. "It was enough to concern us. You have to consider all the news that is coming out throughout the nation. We aren't going to sit back."
Kathy Walt, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, told the newspaper Monday night: "We don't believe there is a credible threat against the State of Texas. Obviously, there is a concern when any situation crops up. But this individual is in custody."
Monday afternoon, more than 50 federal, state and local law enforcement officers and representatives from security firms for downtown Austin businesses met in a closed-door meeting to discuss the possibility of a terrorist threat, according to Landeros. He said an FBI agent showed the tape, which he said was not narrated and contained suspicious close-up shots.
"You have a person driving around Austin that is taking video footage of several locations, prominent locations in Austin, and they are being taken from various angels," Landeros told the newspaper.
Related coverage at:
Blogs of War
Backcountry Conservative
Full text of the federal criminal complaint and news videos via WCNC-TV, Charlotte.
Too strange
Mark Steyn sums up the presidential contest pretty well.
John Kerry is too strange to be president. I don't mean "strange" in the way of his predecessor. Al Gore, the first Android-American to run for president, was weird. But Kerry's strangeness is of an entirely different order.
Why? An autobiography riven with incoherent and duplicitous statements, focused solely on his 4-month Vietnam experience, which is all we've been given as a basis to consider Kerry's candidacy. It was always inconsistent overall, but now he's been exposed as an outright liar about his supposed experience in Cambodia in Dec. 1968.
For most of his adult life John Kerry has peddled as his central Vietnam anecdote – the one that drove him to turn on his nation's leaders – what appears to be a complete fantasy. Why would he do such a thing?
Related information via the omnisicient InstaPundit, and coming soon to a major media outlet near you.
The football
President Bush has nominated Rep. Porter Goss to be the new CIA director. Don't expect his years of experience in Army Intelligence, as a CIA case officer, and as chairman of the House intelligence committee to count for much -- his confirmation hearing, to be held prior to the November elections, will be a circus of partisan assault from Democrats in the Senate and elsewhere. It starts with a few euphemisms:
Democrats have urged Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) to prepare for an extensive confirmation hearing this fall, according to several Democratic congressional aides.Democrats on the Hill have disputed the idea that Goss would sail through the process. "We could have a referendum on the CIA," said one senior Democratic staff member has said.
This will be bloody. It can also be a win for the Administration if handled properly and with vigor.
August 09, 2004
Spinning?
ABC News Nightline will cover the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth vs. John Kerry debate tonight. My expectations are low, especially given the handwringing program notice sent out by producer Leroy Sievers today:
Now I say people are angry because we have gotten a number of e-mails, starting the day the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth began their campaign, accusing us of all sorts of bias and worse for not investigating their claims. Whatever happened to patience? We wanted to investigate, but that takes a little time, but these days, unless there is some sort of instant response, it's clearly evidence of a conspiracy, or bias, or worse. Not sure what the "worse" is, but it seemed like a good way to end the sentence. I am increasingly convinced that we have lost something important in this country, and that's the capacity for honest disagreement. These days it's not enough that you have to prove the other person is wrong, you have to attack them and prove that they are a bad person for being wrong.In any case, we're going to take a look at all this tonight. Correspondent Jake Tapper will take a look at the dispute, the dueling groups of swift boat veterans, and the political connections on both sides. He'll also try to sort out the accuracy of the claims on both sides, although, as I said above, I don't expect that to satisfy anyone. And I don't say that with any happiness. Correspondent Mike Cerre, himself a veteran of Vietnam, will look at the split within the Vietnam veteran community as a whole. And does this dispute matter to other voters?
Michel Martin will anchor tonight. Will we answer people's questions about this? That's certainly our intention. Will we bring back civility to this debate, or any other? I'm not that naïve.
Note that only the anti-Kerry mail he's received is characterized as "angry," accusatory, and uncivil. No doubt he has never heard from those on the Left who freely characterize the President of the United States as an imbecilic, corrupt warmonger. Or perhaps he does not consider such statements to be uncivil.
Compare his plight with gentlemanly Michael Novak, who got several hundred e-mails that "erupted in bitter anger" because he suggested John Kerry might lose in November.
An astonishing number of e-mails consisted simply in calling me idiot, moron, imbecile, and far more unprintable scatological terms. Some writers sure know how to express total contempt.A good many wondered whether I was on a different planet, and expressed sheer disbelief that anyone could doubt Kerry would win.
Leroy Sievers needs to get out more. We'll see how far tonight's program goes in fairness and rigor.
TV tonight
Reminder: the two-hour season finale of TNT's excellent mini-series The Grid is on tonight. Watch to see if America will escape a catastrophic terror attack. This is most excellent drama.
Virtual surveillance
How dumb is this? Unbelievable.
The widespread availability of sensitive information on corporate Web sites appears to have been largely overlooked by IT and security managers responding this week to the Department of Homeland Security's warning of a heightened terrorist threat against the financial services sector.Freely available on the Web, for example, are 3-D models of the exterior and limited portions of the interior of the Citigroup Inc. headquarters building in Manhattan -- one of the sites specifically named in the latest terror advisory issued by the DHS. Likewise, details of the Citigroup building's history of structural design weaknesses, including its susceptibility to toppling over in high winds, the construction of its central support column and the fire rating of the materials used in the building, are readily available on the Web.
Similarly, the Web site of the Chicago Board of Trade includes photographs of the facility's underground parking garages, floor plans of office suites and contact names and phone numbers for the telecommunications service providers that serve the building.
Eric Friedberg, managing director of New York-based security firm Stroz Friedberg LLC, said the warnings about sensitive Web site postings that his company took to the private sector two years ago have "fallen on deaf ears."
What did the experts find in 2002?
The amount of sensitive data uncovered by Stroz Associates at various corporate Web sites is startling, said Eric Friedberg, managing director at the New York-based firm and a former computer crime coordinator at the U.S. Department of Justice."Many Web sites constitute a gold mine for potential attackers," said Friedberg. Audits have found descriptions of physical locations of backup facilities, the number of people working at specific facilities, detailed information about wired and wireless networks, and specifications on ventilation, air conditioning and elevator systems. Other sites give graphical representations of floor plans, cabling connections and ventilation ductwork, Friedberg said.
Just a few months ago, a RAND study let government web sites off the hook as dangerous information sources because "nongovernment" sources were more detailed and up-to-date.
Less than 1 percent of publicly available federal Web sites and databases contain geospatial information not readily available elsewhere that could help terrorists and other hostile forces mount attacks in the United States, according to a Rand Corporation (www.rand.org) study issued last month.Although publicly available spatial information from these Web sites and federal databases could potentially help terrorists select and locate a target, attackers are likely to need more detailed and current information, which is better acquired through direct observation or other sources -- such as textbooks, nongovernment Web sites, and street maps -- according to the study.
Linked to today's Terror News Roundup at Backcountry Conservative.
Eyewitness
Heard this morning: NPR's incredulous Renee Montagne gets the lowdown from interpreter Ali Fadil in the center of embattled Najaf. Listen as Ali describes how the inept fighters working for so-called "cleric" Muqtada al-Sadr have had their asses kicked and are pinned down in just one tiny area of Najaf, as well as how the residents of Najaf can't wait for Iraqi and American troops to either kill them all or run them out of town.
The new morning voice of NPR sounds like she can't quite believe it.
UPDATE: Iraqi blogger Omar at Iraq the Model has more.
... the fact is that Muqtada has gathered his criminals from many cities and focused on Najaf and Baghdad only because he knew he wouldn’t find enough people to support him had he depended on the people of Najaf alone.While the fights in other cities were small compared to Baghdad and Najaf and there was absolutely no fights in the rural areas which shows that the distribution of fighters was planned to focus on important areas only, and this ensures more media coverage which in my mind is one of the main goals of such movement, as it’s clearly supported and planned by outside parties which are dying to show Iraq as an unstable and hopeless place.
Besides we all saw how the people of Najaf were delighted to see the IP control the city again in the previous revolt after many days of fighting. Also an uprising is a reaction rather than a planned action and here the percentage of the fighters from outside the city show clearly that this is closer to a planned revolt.
Tip via the omniscient Instapundit
August 08, 2004
Contact sport politics
Here's some very hardball politics at work in Iraq.
Iraq has issued an arrest warrant for Ahmad Chalabi, a former governing council member, on counterfeiting charges and another for Salem Chalabi, the head of Iraq's special tribunal, on murder charges, Iraq's chief investigating judge said Sunday."They should be arrested and then questioned and then we will evaluate the evidence, and then if there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial," said Judge Zuhair al-Maliky.
The warrants, issued Saturday, accused Ahmad Chalabi of counterfeiting old Iraqi dinars -- which had been removed from circulation following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime last year, he said.
Both men were reportedly out of the country Sunday.
Dennis explains
Quote of the day: Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert to Tim Russert on Meet the Press.
"You know, Tim, I taught economics for 16 years to high school kids. I always said it was the toughest job I ever did until I came to Congress and tried to explain it to some members of Congress."
OTMs - Turning a blind eye
Here's an issue on which John Kerry could run if he were serious about homeland security: the regular release of non-Mexican illegal aliens after they have already been detained.
When a Muslim woman with an altered South African passport was arrested at the McAllen airport last month after illegally crossing the Rio Grande, it highlighted fears that terrorists could find easy entry along the porous Southwest border.And while federal prosecutors have not lodged any terrorism-related charges against Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed, 48, who remains jailed on immigration charges, law enforcement officials, as well as veteran Texas congressmen, say they are worried that Ahmed's detention may be the exception to the rule.
In particular, they're worried about what they derisively call the Department of Homeland Security's "capture and release" program.
Brought on by a shortage of detention space, the program allows immigration officials to routinely release tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico after extracting a promise from each toshow up at a future detention hearing.
Homeland Security officials acknowledge that more than 70 percent of those released disappear from law enforcement's radar, resulting in a fugitive population of 400,000 nationwide.
Mexican migrants who are detained are deported and are usually bused to a port of entry where they cross the bridge to Mexico.
"I don't think people realize that 15,000 of these people (non-Mexican migrants) have been dumped in communities in Texas in the last eight months," said Republican U.S. Rep. Henry Bonilla, whose district includes nearly 800 miles of the Texas-Mexico border.
So far this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, 2003, Homeland Security officials released from Border Patrol custody 21,979 of the 49,705 illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico, known to the Border Patrol as OTMs, said spokesman Mario Villarreal.
Both Bonilla and U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, said federal law enforcement officials have told them that suspicious foreigners have been detained on the Texas border.
Law enforcement officials told Ortiz that among those released were several people who claimed to be from South or Central American countries, but couldn't speak Spanish.
''The concern was they weren't from where they said they were from, and they might be militants who could do us harm," said Kathy Travis, Ortiz's press secretary.
But Kerry won't -- Democrats cannot abide the notion of effective border controls, in large part because illegal immigrants offer a rich potential source for votes.
Show and tell
Islamic terrorists are using more sophisticated communications techniques to get their message out. The latest example:
Followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi released a CD-ROM urging Muslim men to take up arms against the "crusaders" in Iraq and threatening to kill Iraq's interim prime minister.The 45-minute CD-ROM, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, appeared aimed at recruiting potential fighters and included claims of responsibility for attacks in Iraq and footage of bombings against U.S. forces and other targets in Iraq.
The release of the CD, the contents of which could not be independently authenticated, was reported Friday by Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyassah, which provided a copy to the AP. It was not clear where the CD was produced.
Titled "The Winds of Victory," the recording shows fighters purportedly from al-Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group undergoing weapons training in different locations, some apparently in the desert and others in grassy areas. It also contains footage taken from inside cars following militants in Iraq conducting attacks, some of which has been previously aired by TV stations.
The Kuwaiti newspaper said the professionally produced CD-ROM is being circulated among fundamentalists in this oil-rich country, which borders Iraq.
DEBKA has seen the CD-ROM and has additional details.
The 45-minute disk appears to be aimed at recruiting fighters. It shows footage of al Qaeda’s most striking terrorist attacks in Iraq, runs interviews with suicide bombers and airs war and religious hymns. Zarqawi is the narrator. He personally interviews his “star turn”, Abdel al Dusari, whose nom de guerre is “Abu Haras,” for a step-by-step demonstration of how a suicide terrorist goes about his mission, first stepping into a bomb truck, then connecting the detonator strapped to his body to the explosive charge, before driving off. When and how he pushes the button at the target location is explained.Zarqawi speaks of “raids,” using Prophet Mohammed’s term for his offensives against the Meccans in 624 and 627.
Before setting out on a “raid,” the bomber performs religious rituals known as “ceremonies of yearning for the brown-eyed ones,” which are a kind of pre-nuptial rites to prepare the “martyr” for his union with the promised 72 virgins waiting for him in Paradise at the end of his mission. Male choirs raise their voices in songs of praise for the martyrs and their coming marriage.
DEBKA has more details, including the links between al-Zarqawi and Syria, and what Jordan is doing about it.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources note that most of the voices heard on the disk use the Syrian Arabic dialect... Jordan’s PM Faisal al Faeez was in Damascus secretly to deliver a last warning, after three more al Qaeda explosives trucks were intercepted on the Jordanian border: Stop sending those vehicles into Jordan, he told Syrian officials, or Amman will publicly expose Syria’s deep involvement in global terror.
Not so coincidentally, National Public Radio had a report just a few weeks ago about the use of multi-media communications techniques by both the terrorists in Iraq and the American military. al-Zarqawi's "Winds of Victory" is just the latest example of what they reported.
Draining the boil
Bloated poseur Michael Moore will get counterpunched at an upcoming "pro-America" film festival in Dallas. It sounds like the place to be in September.
When it comes to responding to the politics of filmmaker Michael Moore, Jim Hubbard of Dallas thinks conservatives should put up or shut up. He’s putting up by sponsoring the American Film Renaissance Festival.The first-ever festival, scheduled Sept. 10-12 in Dallas, will show more than a dozen films, several of which take on the filmmaker behind “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine.”
To combat Moore, Hubbard thinks conservatives should eschew boycotts and silencing behaviors. He pointed to MoveAmericaForward.org and its campaign to keep “Fahrenheit 9/11” out of theaters.
“Conservatives are on the wrong track to boycott something when they think of Hollywood as the enemy,” he said. “Our biggest criticism is not with liberals. Our biggest criticism is with conservatives.”
“Boycotts are for the weak. Get out there and produce your films,” Hubbard said, adding that he believes “the better ideas over time will rise to the surface and be implemented”
Tip via Relapsed Catholic.
Related:
American Film Renaissance
HollywoodReporter.com
Michael Moore Hates America
August 07, 2004
News alert
Breaking news: Teresa snaps in Iowa.
Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, refused to apologize today for telling a Girl Scout in Iowa yesterday to “blow it out your ass.”Even though Ms. Kerry’s remark appeared to be unprecedented in the annals of national politics, especially for a campaign rally attended by Girl Scouts, Mrs. Kerry defended her comment today, telling reporters, “That little bitch was asking for it.”
Mrs. Kerry stopped short of divulging exactly what the Girl Scout had done to incur her wrath, but sources who attended the rally said that the nine-year-old had attempted unsuccessfully to sell her a box of Girl Scout cookies just prior to Mrs. Kerry’s outburst.
“Oh, so you want my money?” Mrs. Kerry hissed at the Scout before gesturing towards her husband. “Well, get in line behind this guy, sister.”
Moments after her “blow it out your ass” remark, Sen. Kerry reportedly yanked a power cord out of the wall, silencing Mrs. Kerry’s microphone and plunging the rally into darkness.
It has been a tough few days for the Kerry campaign, which has been shadowed since Monday by a Predator drone dispatched by the Department of Homeland Security.
Cheers
This call to a U.S. Navy recruiter is just too much, as is this video of Pinkey, a cat who needs adoption in the worst way.
Both via The Braden Files. Thanks for this invaluable public service!
Re-upping
Gifted Peggy Noonan has taken a leave of absence from The Wall Street Journal in order to help the Bush campaign. Why?
Because I am a conservative I support the party that best represents conservative views, the Republican Party. Sometimes I get mad at it; often it disappoints me. It is imperfect, and not perfectible. But to a greater degree than in the past I feel an urge to help it. Since peace was wrenched off the tracks on 9/11, deep in my heart I have pulled for President Bush, Vice President Cheney, members of the current administration, and Republicans in the Senate and the House. With the decline of the Democratic Party I have become convinced there is a greater chance we will win the war if the Republican Party wins the election.In the past four years I have written about and given advice to both parties in this column. But a week ago, while watching the Democratic convention, I made a decision.
I am going to take three months' unpaid leave from The Wall Street Journal and attempt to support the Republican Party in the coming and crucial election. (Every four years everyone says "this is the most important election of my lifetime," but this year I believe it is true.) I'm going to give whatever advice and encouragement I have in terms of strategy, approach, message--I hate that word--and issues. No one has asked me to do this, and I do it as a volunteer, not for a salary but simply to give my time to help what I think is the more helpful side. This will take a bite out of my finances but I can do it. Actually most of us, when we die, wind up with a few thousand dollars in the bank. We should have spent it! I am going to spend mine now.
The White House does not need my help. They have the best political strategists, communications specialists and speechwriters since the Reagan era, which had the best of all these since the time of JFK. President Bush has his sound, and it's a good one. He's getting his sea legs on the stump--it's hard to go from being-president to being-president-and-running again-for-president, it's a bit of a shift and is always awkward. But he's got it together and they've got it together.
There are others, however, lower down on the power pole, who might benefit from another hand on deck. I've called a few this week and they've been welcoming and I'll see if I can add to their fortunes. If I can't I'll at least try not to sink them
I am not so confident that I will be wonderful at what I do. I haven't lived a political life since 1988. I have no idea if my ideas will prove pertinent or helpful.
I... decided that when you are living through crucial history and you believe one political party is on balance right, and trying to fight a valiant fight, you should join in if you can.
When I return after the election I hope I will bring to my work a new and deeper knowledge of modern politics, the American electorate, and changes in media coverage of both. If it turns out things go well I'll come back and tell you why I think it went well. If things don't go well--if the Republicans lose, or they lose plus I'm a big flop in my efforts--I'll tell you about that too.
Personally, I think the Bushies can use her help. God speed, Peggy.
"The Price of Valor"
Anyone who wants to understand the true cost of freedom should read this report in The New Yorker under the byline of Dan Baum.
Its subject: how our military personnel must shed their deeply-held inhibitions towards killing others, even when the targets are the enemy, and how the burden of killing falls on their shoulders alone, with insufficient preparation or support. Fascinating, and sobering.
Since Vietnam, the Army has not had to dwell on how soldiers are affected by the killing they do. The first Gulf War was very short, and the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo were largely fought from long range, with airpower and artillery, which rendered the killing abstract. In the current Iraq war, though, soldiers are killing with small arms on battlefields the length of a city block. Exactly how many Iraqis American forces have killed is not known—as General Tommy Franks said, “We don’t do body counts”—but everyone agrees that the numbers are substantial.Major Peter Kilner, a former West Point philosophy instructor who went to Iraq last year as part of a team writing the official history of the war, believes that most infantrymen there have “looked down the barrel and shot at people, and many have killed.” American firepower is overwhelming, Kilner said. He ran into a former student in Iraq who told him, “There’s just too much killing. They shoot, we return fire, and they’re all dead.” Even some of the most grievously wounded Iraq-war veterans seem more disturbed by the killing they did than they are by their own injuries. I spent a week in December among amputees at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., and was struck by how easily they could tell the stories of the horrible things that had happened to them. They could talk about having their arms or legs blown off in vivid detail, and even joke about it, but, as soon as the subject changed to the killing they’d done, a pall would settle over them.
Kilner and a number of observers inside and outside the Army worry that the high rate of closeup killing in Iraq has the potential to traumatize a new generation of veterans. Worse, they say, the Army and the Department of Veterans Affairs avoid thinking or talking about it. Although both organizations have produced reams of studies on every other aspect of combat trauma—grief, survivor’s guilt, fear, and so on—the aftereffects of taking an enemy’s life are almost never studied. “The blind spot in the scholarship is glaring,” said MacNair, whose book “Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing” is devoted, in part, to soldiers. “I kept thinking there must be a huge amount of research on this that I’m missing, but I never found it.” Lieutenant Colonel Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, an Army psychiatrist based in Bethesda, has called killing “the dead elephant in the living room that nobody wants to talk about.”
Tip via the weekly e-mail from Jonathan V. Last, online editor of The Weekly Standard, who said:
We have a devastatingly effective, all-volunteer army that is more lethal than any other force in history. But then these men need to come home, turn off the mechanisms that allow them to kill, and integrate back into society. It's a hard circle to square.There is, however, something hopeful about the very idea of Baum's article: It says something very good indeed about a society that produces volunteer soldiers who hate killing. I'd feel a lot more better about the future if MEMRI or LittleGreenFootballs unearthed an article from a Middle Eastern journal about a similar reluctance on the part of our Islamist foes.
That is indeed the contextual silver lining, but the dark cloud is still there too: America does not provide what its veterans need and deserve. One would think a veteran could run for President or something on that platform...
August 06, 2004
Medevac
John Burns of The New York Times profiles the helicopter crews of the Army's 45th Medical Company in Iraq. They get results under incredible conditions.
For Mr. Carroll and more than 100 other crewmen at Taji, Thursday was one more day to tick off in a slow countdown to the end of their 12-month hitch here. Flying medevac missions is an intensely hazardous undertaking in Iraq, where the unarmed Black Hawks have frequently come under ground fire."I've seen tracer fire going past the nose of the aircraft at night, so close that after we've landed we have had to check the rotors for damage," Mr. Carroll said, relaxing between missions at Taji, a huge American encampment that used to be the headquarters of Mr. Hussein's armored units, and a site for secret weapons development projects.
Other pilots described making steep, terrain-hugging turns after coming under rocket fire, or seeing the launch smoke, then hearing the boom, from surface-to-air missiles fired by insurgents crouching on rooftops or hiding in palm groves. Some even described people throwing stones, though for every account of hostility from people on the ground there were others describing Iraqis waving as the helicopters fly by, and even, in one case, a village where the words "We love you America" had been traced in the dirt.
Facing an enemy with scant respect for the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit attacks on ambulances, is far from the only challenge.
In Iraq, there are sudden sandstorms, children's kites that fly almost invisibly from myriad rooftops, and the searing heat, now at its worst, which degrades avionics systems, exhausts crews and causes huge thermals that can turn any flight into a succession of gut-wrenching bumps.
But worst of all are the power lines that sweep across the landscape, many of them poorly mapped, or not mapped at all. Compounding the threat, many lines were looted for their copper wire after the American invasion last year. Many of these have now been repaired, so that aircrews can be confronted, without notice, with power lines that have suddenly reappeared.
Related links:
"Medevac units give wounded a fighting chance" - The Telegraph (UK)
The Dustoff Association
Hypocrisy
Here's John Kerry Thursday:
"Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, 'America is under attack,' I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to -- and I would have attended to it," Kerry told the Unity conference of minority journalists in response to a question about what he would done.
Here's John Kerry to Larry King last month:
KING: Where were you [on September 11]?KERRY: I was in the Capitol. We'd just had a meeting -- we'd just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle's office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. [emphasis added]
And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation.
Via Redstate.org which notes that President Bush waited for seven minutes before leaving a packed school classroom that dreadful day, whereas Kerry's statement to Larry King indicates that he "sat down" at a table for 40 minutes (the time between the 2nd WTC tower hit and the Pentagon hit) and was "unable" to think.
Note also that this is the same CNN interview in which Kerry professed that he just didn't have time to be briefed on a terrorism alert.
KING: Let's get to, first thing's first, news of the day. Tom Ridge warned today about al Qaeda plans of a large-scale attack on the United States, didn't increase the -- do you see any politics in this? What's your reaction?KERRY: Well, I haven't been briefed yet, Larry. They have offered to brief me; I just haven't had time.
Tip via NRO's The Corner
John Kerry is a piece of work indeed.
August 04, 2004
Veterans for Truth
Following up in a campaign that started in May, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have fired their newest salvo against John Kerry: a 60-second television ad already being described widely as "devastating." So it is.
Then what about that "Band of Brothers" stuff?
John Kerry has been able to convince about 13 men who served on Swift boats in the Mekong Delta to support him, 7 or 8 of whom were at various times crew members on his own 6-man boat. Those are the men the Kerry campaign so prominently featured at the Democratic Convention. The photograph we have posted at SwiftVets.com shows Kerry with 19 of his fellow Swift boat OICs (Officers In Charge) in Coastal Division 11. Four OICs were not present for the photograph. Only one of his 23 fellow OICs from Coastal Division 11 supports John Kerry.Overall, more than 250 Swift boat veterans are on the record questioning Kerry's fitness to serve as Commander-in-Chief. That list includes his entire chain of command -- every single officer Kerry served under in Vietnam. The Kerry game plan is to ignore all this and pretend that the 13 veterans his campaign jets around the country and puts up in 5-star hotels really represent the truth about his short, controversial combat tour.
The Swift boats fought in groups, so the other OICs who fought alongside Kerry know him well and can accurately describe what he did and did not do. In many cases Kerry's fellow OICs had a better perspective than his own crew members, since the latter had no way to determine whether he was following orders and how well he worked with his peers.
Tips via PoliPundit
Jihadists everywhere
Here's a mystery: why would the Clinton administration allow al Qaeda to take root in Liberia unmolested in the 1990s, and then why would the Bush administration fail to act against them after 9/11?
The senior Al Qaeda operative captured in Pakistan last week met with former Liberian president Charles Taylor in the years before and after Sept. 11, 2001, and received refuge from the former US ally while planning further terrorist operations, according to US intelligence officials and United Nations investigators.The officials and investigators also painted a picture of Liberia under Taylor as a haven for Al Qaeda, and raised new questions about why the United States waited so long to support Taylor's ouster and continues to refrain from using its influence to bring him before a UN war crimes tribunal.
The Defense Department approved a special forces raid to capture Al Qaeda leaders under Taylor's protection in 2001, but called it off and never reactivated the plan, the US officials said in recent interviews, on condition of anonymity. Meanwhile, senior leaders of Al Qaeda continued to receive Taylor's protection.
On July 25, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was arrested in eastern Pakistan along with more than a dozen other Qaeda operatives and is being held in connection with the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa. But for at least three years beginning in the late 1990s, he lived in an army camp and hotels run by Taylor's government in Liberia. In addition, Taylor's forces harbored other suspected Al Qaeda leaders, including MIT-educated biologist Aafia Siddiqui, US officials and UN investigators said.
Al Qaeda allegedly paid Taylor for protection and then joined him in the African diamond trade, raising millions of dollars for terrorist activities, according to UN war crimes documents.
''It is clear that Al Qaeda had been in West Africa since September 1998 and maintained a continuous presence in the area through 2002," according to a new confidential report by the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone. The report was written by UN investigators preparing the case against Taylor.
Tip via NRO's The Corner
There's no answer, at least not yet. But Africa is just one of many fronts in the War on [Islamic] Terror. Besides Europe and North America, the jihadists are also active all over Asia, the Pacific, and even in South America (e.g., in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela). Would be no surprise to find them in Antarctica.
The sheer scope of this war is well beyond the awareness of most ordinary people. Let's just hope it isn't beyond the imagination of our government. This is one more thing the President should be discussing.
August 03, 2004
Listing to the left
Here's confirmation of something we already knew: refreshingly candid buzzing from inside the media Hive.
But do journalists really want John Kerry to defeat George W. Bush? It depends where they work and how you ask the question, at least according to the unscientific survey we conducted last weekend during a press party at the convention. We got anonymous answers from 153 journalists, about a third of them based in Washington.When asked who would be a better president, the journalists from outside the Beltway picked Mr. Kerry 3 to 1, and the ones from Washington favored him 12 to 1. Those results jibe with previous surveys over the past two decades showing that journalists tend to be Democrats, especially the ones based in Washington. Some surveys have found that more than 80 percent of the Beltway press corps votes Democratic.
POWs on Kerry
Veteran UPI correspondent Richard Tomkins reports that John Kerry's anti-war activities during the Vietnam War are haunting many former POWs.
John Kerry's bid to become commander in chief of wartime America has opened old wounds among some former Vietnam-era POWs who bristle over Kerry's anti-war activism and atrocity allegations during the Vietnam conflict.Those activities and statements, pushed out of sight by a campaign that spotlights Kerry's service in Vietnam, were used by the POWs' North Vietnamese captors to sap the morale of prisoners and U.S. troops still in the field in South Vietnam, former POWs told United Press International.
"They were always talking about that (anti-war demonstrations), and they picked right up on Kerry's throw-away line, 'Don't be the last man to die in a lost cause, or die for a lost cause,'" said Kenneth Cordier, an Air Force pilot who spent 2,284 days as a prisoner. "They repeated that incessantly.
"They used these photographs and inputs, voice tapes, whatever, from these peace people to try to convince us the whole country had turned anti-war and we were showing a very bad attitude and would never go home."
To some, the bitter memories will be a vital part of their decision in November.
Cordier [and other POWs] are dead set against a President John Kerry. Cordier says it's just not his anti-war past, but his record till now, including his voting against funds for troops in Iraq."The measure of a person's character is their whole history up until the present," he said. "It's not what they say they believe or what they'll do when president or all these platitudes. ... And he has consistently taken the side of our enemies and other countries that oppose us or have a different viewpoint."
Read the whole thing.
Nancy: Yes to W
Contrary to earlier rumors and some wishful thinking by the weak-minded, Nancy Reagan is publicly supporting President Bush in the fall election.
While Nancy Reagan disagrees with President Bush's stance on limiting stem-cell research, the former first lady Nancy Reagan strongly endorses Bush's re-election bid."She's in full and complete support of President Bush's candidacy," Reagan spokeswoman Joanne Drake said Tuesday. "The campaign is certainly about more than one issue."
Mrs. Reagan, whose public appearances have been limited since the death of her husband two months ago, won't be attending the Republican National Convention in New York this month, Drake said. But the former first lady hasn't ruled out campaigning for Bush.
"She's taking it one day at a time right now. We'll see," Drake said. "She will certainly want to help but there are no plans right now."
Noon blog roundup
Lots to read over lunch today:
Happy 21st birthday to Athena, who says she's studying to be the Director of National Intelligence someday.
James Joyner says President Bush should call John Kerry's bluff about acting on the 9/11 Commission's recommendations.
On a similar note, Donald Sensing finds it amusing to think about John Kerry and his puppy returning to Senate work during the August recess, a measure for which Kerry has called.
Backcountry Conservative Jeff Quinton wonders if Steven Spielberg has caved in to terrorists.
Econopundit ponders what kind of intellectual feels it necessary to put the words "free market" and "hegemony" in quotes.
Melanie Phillips in the U.K. documents a disinformation campaign underway to "drive John Scarlett from his new post as head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service."
Back to work now.
Imminent threat?
Newsday is reporting that an al Qaeda attack on U.S. financial institutions is specifically targeted for early September.
More financial institutions than previously disclosed may be at risk of attack, and an al-Qaida operative has told British intelligence that the group's target date is early September, intelligence sources said yesterday.The operative, described as "credible" by British intelligence, told his debriefers that the attack would take place "60 days before the presidential election" on Nov. 2, according to a former senior National Security Council official. On Sept. 2 President George W. Bush is expected to address the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden.
Counterterrorism officials are analyzing data from a computer seized in Pakistan last month to see if financial institutions in addition to the five disclosed Sunday are at risk of attack, U.S. officials said yesterday.
The former senior National Security Council official said he was told by British intelligence that they are interrogating an al-Qaida operative who confirmed that financial institutions are being targeted and that an attack was planned for September.
Tip via Blogs of War
Oddly, this report is currently juxtaposed with stories in The New York Times and the Washington Post, among others, highlighting that much of the information on a planned attack is "old."
"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."
Interesting that there are anonymous officials who want to carp about the heightened security this week, and that our major media are so eager to lap it up... and thereby imply that the Bush administration is manipulating events for electoral gain. Maybe we should focus on security now and slice-and-dice the details a little later.
FBI blues - Far Right fever
This report did not receive lots of attention yesterday thanks to the Big Story about terror alerts in New York and elsewhere. But it has two sinister dimensions. For one, if proven true, it's harsh news about the FBI: another whistleblower who says the Bureau isn't yet serious enough about counter-terrorism.
As a veteran agent chasing home-grown terrorist suspects for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Mike German always had a knack for worming his way into places few other agents could go.In the early 1990's, he infiltrated a group of white supremacist skinheads plotting to blow up a black church in Los Angeles. A few years later, he joined a militia in Washington State that talked of attacking government buildings. Known to his fellow militia members as Rock, he tricked them into handcuffing themselves in a supposed training exercise so the authorities could arrest them.
So in early 2002, when Mr. German got word that a group of Americans might be plotting support for an overseas Islamic terrorist group, he proposed to his bosses what he thought was an obvious plan: go undercover and infiltrate the group.
But Mr. German says F.B.I. officials sat on his request, botched the investigation, falsified documents to discredit their own sources, then froze him out and made him a "pariah." He left the bureau in mid-June after 16 years and is now going public for the first time - the latest in a string of F.B.I. whistle-blowers who claim they were retaliated against after voicing concerns about how management problems had impeded terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks.
This isn't the first accusation of FBI intransigence. Just days ago, news leaked that an FBI translator got support from the Bureau's IG over her complaints of mediocre intelligence work.
A classified Justice Department report says a former FBI translator who complained that bureau linguists produced sloppy and incomplete translations of critical post-September 11 terrorism intelligence was dismissed, in part, because of her accusations, which were never aggressively investigated by the agency.FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that while the department's Office of the Inspector General did not conclude that the FBI had retaliated against the translator, Sibel Edmonds, it found that her accusations against the bureau "were at least a contributing factor" in her termination.
Just as importantly, the Mike German story also raises the fearsome prospect of an unholy alliance between Islamic jihadists and far right extremists.
Mr. German refused to discuss details of the 2002 terrorism investigation, saying the information was classified.But officials with knowledge of the case said the investigation took place in the Tampa, Fla., area and centered on an informant's tip about a meeting between suspected associates of a domestic militia-type group and a major but unidentified Islamic terrorist organization, who were considering joining forces. A tape recording of the meeting appeared to lend credence to the report, one official said.
Law enforcement officials have become increasingly concerned that militant domestic groups could seek to collaborate with foreign-based terrorist groups like Al Qaeda because of a shared hatred of the American government. This has become a particular concern in prisons.
The conventional wisdom is that jihadists and the far right haven't fully bridged the gap between their world views.
Do domestic terrorist groups have ties to al-Qaeda?There are no known operational links between domestic terrorist groups and al-Qaeda, but monitoring organizations have noted that both American right-wing extremists and Islamist militants spread similar theories about Jews, Freemasons, and other groups conspiring to control the world. Moreover, some white supremacists applauded the September 11 attacks. “Anyone who is willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews is alright by me,” said one leader of the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group based in West Virginia; “I wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude.”
Still, the potential is there, given the power of intense shared hatreds, both here and in Europe.
Since 2001, when Islamic extremists and neo-Nazis cheered the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the two camps have echoed one another's abhorrence of what they view as a world controlled by Jews and enforced by Washington's military power. There are no links suggesting that right-wing and Islamic groups are collaborating on terrorism-related strategies, but law enforcement officials are concerned over the growing, and sometimes surreal, attraction between the two."The common ground they share is deep on two issues," said one Western diplomat. "They cannot tolerate the existence of Israel, and they share a conspiracy theory that the U.S. wants to control the Middle East and the world's energy supply. It's a very paranoid world view, but they share it deeply."
Following 9/11, specific European linkages were noted.
One of the people identified by the US government as providing financial support to the al-Qaeda terrorist network is also a well-known figure in the European far-right political movement.The link is likely to raise new concerns over ties between Islamic and rightwing extremists.
Ahmed Huber, a 74-year-old Swiss businessman and former journalist who converted to Islam in the 1960s, is a board member of Nada Management, a financial services and consultancy company which is part of the international Al Taqwa group. The US says this group has long acted as financial advisers to al-Qaeda.
Mr Huber, who is based in Bern, is known in Switzerland and Germany as an Islamic fundamentalist who attempts to forge links to far-right and neo-Nazi movements.
In fact, the Southern Poverty Law Center has presented a detailed history indicating links dating back many years.
Even before World War II, Western fascists began to forge ideological and operational ties to Islamic extremists. Over the years, these contacts between Nazis and Muslim nationalists developed into dangerous networks that have been implicated in a number of bloody terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East.Wealthy Arab regimes have financed extremists in Europe and the United States, just as Western neo-Nazis have helped to build Holocaust denial machinery in the Arab world.
In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia hired an American neo-Nazi as a lobbyist in the United States. In the 1980s, U.S. neo-Nazi strategist Louis Beam openly called for a linkup of America's far right with the "liberation movements" of Libya, Syria, Iran and Palestine.
In the 1990s, an American Black Muslim was convicted in a plot to bomb the United Nations and other New York landmarks that was masterminded by a blind Egyptian cleric.
Just last year, a meeting sponsored by a U.S. Holocaust denial group brought together Arab and Western extremists in Jordan. And after the Sept. 11 attacks, a spate of articles by American neo-Nazis and white supremacists appeared in Islamic publications and Web sites.
Although links like these illustrate the ties between Muslim extremists and Americans, such ties are far more developed in Europe.
But since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, there are a number of signs — including a spate of articles by American neo-Nazis that have appeared in Islamic publications and websites — that an operational alliance may be taking shape in the United States as well.
SPLC's conclusion?
The psychological dynamics that propel the actions of Islamic terrorists have much in common with the mental outlook of neo-Nazis.Both glorify violence as a regenerative force and both are willing to slaughter innocents in the name of creating a new social order.
The potential for an alliance between American neo-Nazis and Islamic terrorists — an alliance that could develop into strong operational ties — cannot be ruled out given the long and sordid history of fascist links to the Muslim world.
Lest we forget, there are still large, unresolved questions about links between Middle Eastern terrorists and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. For example, was Saddam Hussein involved and/or al Qaeda?
A former investigative reporter for the NBC affiliate in Oklahoma City last night told Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly she has gathered massive evidence of a foreign conspiracy involving Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in the 1995 bombing of the federal building that killed 168 people.Jayna Davis, former reporter for KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, says she took her evidence -- including hundreds of court records, 24 sworn witness statements and reports from law enforcement, intelligence and terror experts -- to the FBI, which refused even to accept the material.
Davis said federal authorities investigating the bombing decided early on in the probe that the blast was the result of a domestic conspiracy, not a foreign one, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
She said a Middle East terrorist cell was in operation only blocks from the federal building, and that an Iraqi national who formerly served in Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard was in contact with McVeigh the day of the bombing. She said this suspect arrived at the crime scene in a Ryder truck moments before the blast and sped away in a brown Chevrolet pickup truck immediately after.
An all-points bulletin was issued for this suspect, but was later withdrawn inexplicably.
Davis said her evidence indicates a conspiracy involving McVeigh, Nichols and at least seven men of Middle Eastern ethnic background. She called bin Laden the mastermind of the conspiracy.
Note the claim, again, that the FBI doesn't seem to treat inconvenient evidence seriously. If an alliance based on a shared enemy worked for Timothy McVeigh and foreign terrorists, then more such collaboration is surely possible. It's disturbing that the FBI may be dropping the ball.
Linked with today's Beltway Traffic Jam
Linked with Terrorism Wrap-Up at Backcountry Conservative
August 02, 2004
TV tonight
Reminder: the next episode of TNT's excellent mini-series The Grid is on tonight. Next Monday is the two-hour finale.
After watching this very good drama about a jihadist attack on America (ripped from today's headlines, as it were), catch Tommy Franks on ABC's Nightline. He'll be discussing his new book, American Soldier, and probably a lot more.
Looking at the world
Belmont Club ponders the strange separation between the world as we [want to] perceive it and the often grim reality of it all.
... there is a reluctance to acknowledge that these things exist at all -- religious wars, death cults, dysfunctional societies, biological weapons in the hands of certified maniacs, blackmarkets in nuclear weapons -- beyond being film subjects; because to do so would imply having to do ugly things to solve them.
Avoiding these realities is part of candidate John Kerry's sales pitch -- what Power Line discusses as a collective longing for a "return to normalcy." Just prior to the Democratic Convention last week, savvy political ronin Dick Morris summed up Kerry's dilemma this way:
No matter how well he does in Boston, Kerry will never be able to persuade America that he is Bush’s equal or his better on these foreign policy topics.It is not in the nature of a candidacy to afford such a possibility. Only the incumbent can own issues like these, unless he so transparently screws them up as Carter did in the hostage crisis and Johnson did in Vietnam.
Essentially, Kerry has to use this convention to turn the clock back to September 10, 2001 and run on those issues which he and his party can win rather than those on which they are doomed to defeat.
Is it possible that enough Americans will try to avoid the reality of our post-September 11 world to reject President Bush's bid for re-election? That's hard to imagine, given the blood that's been shed by this war's victims and warriors alike. But not impossible.
Helping Marines
Nice work by Marine for Life, a national support group for Marines re-entering the civilian world, and now operating in Houston. Those would be some good employees.
About 27,000 Marines return to civilian life each year, military officials said. Many are 18 to 26 years old and find the transition a tough one.The Marine For Life network is an Internet clearinghouse of information linking Marines who are seeking jobs with potential employers, often former Marines. Established in 2000 by then-Commandant of the Marine Corps James L. Jones, the network operates in nearly 100 cities nationwide. It began operating in Houston in October 2003.
In addition to helping Marines find jobs, the program helps them find schooling, housing, child care, veterans' benefits and other services.
[Dano] Townsend, who served in the infantry with the Marines in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, said finding reliable workers was sometimes difficult until he heard about the network. He has hired three Marines, including Joshua Soileau, of South Houston, through the network and expects to hire two more.
"It's great. With the discipline of the Marine Corps, I know they'll show up every day on time and aren't afraid to work, to get dirty," Townsend said. "Everything I ask of those guys, it's done. I don't have to ask twice."
August 01, 2004
Iraq continues to morph
Terrorism escalated in Iraq today, with a newly sharpened focus on anti-Christian violence.
Car bombs exploded outside at least five Christian churches in Iraq on Sunday, killing more than a dozen people and wounding many more in an apparently coordinated attack timed to coincide with evening prayers."We are expecting a huge number of casualties," an Interior Ministry source told Reuters, saying there had been four blasts at churches in Baghdad and two in the northern city of Mosul. Police in Mosul said they knew of just one church attack there.
In the deadliest attack, a suicide car bomber drove into the car park of a Chaldean church in southern Baghdad before detonating his vehicle, killing at least 12 people as worshippers left the building, witnesses said.
Violence against Assyrian Christians and other Christian groups in Iraq is nothing new since the U.S.-led invasion, but today was dramatically worse in scope.
Alaa at Iraqi blog The Messopotamian is outraged.
What can we say? One is speechless, numb, shocked, bleeding internally, and angry; oh, so angry, never been angrier in a whole lifetime.Whoever did this and whoever organized and financed this; whoever remotely tries to find excuses and justification for this, whoever even keeps quiet or is indifferent to this here and everywhere, in the East or in the West; must be pronounced excommunicate from membership of the sensible human race. All those calling for retreat and submitting to the intimidation of these monstrous zombies are traitors and cowards and will not reap but their own destruction when horror comes to their own front doors. Those who think that turning their backs and escaping the confrontation to barricade themselves in their secluded islands, is going to save their skins, are in profound and fatal delusion.
The horror will come to your own cities and your own houses. The time to fight is now and here; and the security of the Iraqis and your own security is one and indivisible.
Humans of the World: Remember.
Israeli intel site DEBKA says the strikes were pure al Qaeda, coordinated to coincide with threats against Italy and to show Sunni Baathists who might be tempted to negotiate with the U.S. and Interim PM Alawi that Iraq is a jihadist battleground, nothing else.
Al Qaeda’s assault on Iraq’s Christian churches – the first attack suffered by the Christian minority since the fall of Saddam Hussein – underlined the seriousness of the threat al Qaeda’s al Masri Brigades issued against Italy that very morning, Sunday, August 1 in the London Arabic publication, al Quds al-Araby.The threat to Italy is addressed to prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and gives him 15 days to withdraw his troops from Iraq or endure attack. Operational squads were already roaming through Rome and other cities primed for action, according to the published warning.
On Sunday, the fundamentalist terror organization was at pains to demonstrate its power to torpedo any deal the Baath-Sunni side might strike with Washington by ever-more horrendous terrorist attacks against Iraqis to put paid to any chances of stabilizing the country. Neither the Americans nor prime minister Iyad Allawi would manage, moreover, to evict the terrorist group from the country. Al Qaeda was in Iraq to stay.
The fundamentalists were cracking the whip to punish their Iraqi allies for another unforgivable sin: the new guidelines the Baath leadership recently issued guerrilla commanders, which stressed that the Baath rather than al Qaeda was the driving force of the anti-US insurgency and, furthermore, that the nature of the struggle was national rather than religious. Al Qaeda was not denied a role in the struggle, the commanders were told, only a say in charting Iraq’s future.
Al Qaeda had no intention of letting the Baath get away with this; Sunday it unsheathed its claws against fellow Iraqis partly to put the Sunni Baath in its place.
DEBKA is often alarmist and wrong, but this seems plausible. However, there's just no way to know (yet) if their statements about negotiations supposedly underway now are true or not.
Terror alert
Unsettling announcements today from the Dept. of Homeland Security and the City of New York concerning specific threats by terrorists against targets in New York, New Jersey, and DC.
Blogs of War has been following the various news reports and announcements since last night.
So has Michelle Malkin, who also usefully reminds us that a missing New Jersey gasoline tanker is still unaccounted for -- a fact that Fox News re-confirmed today in an on-air report.
FNC has a good roundup of what's known at this point.
DHS has posted the full text of Tom Ridge's statement.
It'll be a tough decision to go to work tomorrow if you're employed at the IMF, World Bank, or other named targets.
Hewitt on the campaign
Radio talk show host, blogger, and author Hugh Hewitt was interviewed by National Review Online following the Democratic Convention.
NRO: What does Bush need to do to win this election?HEWITT: Speak clearly and repeatedly about the central issue of the campaign: Which candidate will better lead the nation in the war on terror? It is a war — not as Kerry's senior foreign-policy adviser Rand Beers said yesterday, a struggle — and it will go on for a very long time. On any given day, the U.S. might find itself devastated by an attack the Dems seem to spend a lot of time trying not to imagine. The views of Bush and Kerry are so radically different on how the war ought to be conducted — indeed, on the question of whether it really is a war or a law enforcement matter — that the campaign needs to remind Americans again and again that hundreds of thousands if not millions of Islamists would gladly kill as many Americans as come within range of their knife, gun, bomb or WMD.
NRO:What's the most interesting conversation you've had this week?
HEWITT: Gray Davis sat down and talked on air with me about Michael Moore. He likes Michael Moore, respects him, and thinks there is a lot of truth in F911.
It is astonishing to me that Democrat after Democrat, many of whom have held senior positions — from Presidents Carter and Clinton, to Davis and of course Senator Kerry — have embraced this bald-faced liar whose propaganda is virulently anti-American and whose paranoia and hate are so palpable. I have been saying all week that Moore is to this convention what Buchanan was to the GOP gathering of 1992, but that really understates the damage he is doing to a once great party. The Democrats have opened the door to a radical of breath-taking duplicity. It will not be rid of him for a very long time, and until it is, it will not be qualified to lead the country.
NRO:Anyone's reception surprise you?
HEWITT: Moore's. He's a nut. Obviously and repeatedly demonstrated to be a liar. And he's John Kerry's unofficial running mate. When Kerry took his shot at the Saudi Royal family, he blew a kiss to Moore.
Blood and fear
Read a remarkable letter to the Beacon Blog from Los Angeles Times news photographer Rick Loomis about his frontline experience with the U.S. Marines in bloody Fallujah: upclose, detailed and thoughtful.
... at that moment I knew that photographing a gunfight can be like photographing a triple play in baseball. While it's certainly a dramatic moment - a photograph sometimes can't serve to capture the essence of the drama you are witnessing. The pictures of the men shooting out of the window in the next room conveyed little of the life and death intensity of the moment, the sound of gunfire, the smell, the gulping sense of mortality. They could have just as well been during a moment when they were shooting at tin cans in the alleyway.I knew the bullets were aimed at people who were in turn shooting back at them. But my photographs did not depict the intensity that ultimate sense of risk. But was I going to make a target of myself when at least two men were already shot and RPG's were bouncing off the walls as fast as the men shooting them could reload.
Tip via Blackfive.
A gallery of Loomis's photographs is available via the L.A. Times.