In Praise of Obama, Remember Bush.

President Obama deserves praise for acting on intel that led to locating and killing Osama Bin Laden.  That is what Presidents do as Commander-in-Chief.  They make decisions, sometimes right and sometimes wrong, with only the available intel and their gut feeling.  President Obama made a great decision based on overwhelming evidence gleaned over nearly 10 years, and it paid off in the successful operation that avenged 9/11 by executing its chief architect.

As new details emerge over the coming days and weeks, it will become increasingly clear that this operation's success hinged on key decisions made by two very different Presidents.  President Bush assured Americans and the world in the wake of 9/11 that America would bring al Qaeda and Bin Laden to justice.  He issued an Executive Order on 9/17/01 authorizing US troops and intel assets to assassinate Bin Laden.  Wanted: Dead or Alive was Bush's doctrine, and his later decision to capture terrorists as enemy combatants and hold them at Guantanamo was grounded in a strategy of ferreting out information about al Qaeda's leaders and their locations.  Take the fight to the terrorists and disrupt/destroy their infrastrructure.  Remove their safe havens.  Put them on the run or in hiding.

Interrogations at Gitmo produced the first-known references to a trusted Bin Laden courier.  Bush-Era Interrogations Provided Key Details on Bin Laden's Location - FoxNews.com Interrogations then led to further intel regarding the location in Pakistan where the trusted courier was operating.  Intel obtained during the Obama administration finally provided the courier's true name and facilitated surveillance and the remainder of the necessary details to launch this week's successful strike operation.  Clearly, without the information gleaned from Gitmo detainees through the interrogations so  harshly criticized by Obama and his party, Bin Laden would still be haunting America today, living in luxury, free to run his terror network behind the wilfully blind eyes of Pakistan's military, intelligence, and government.

President Obama's deliberateness in not acting on intel until the CIA was highly confident Bin Laden was at the Abbottabad compound seems to have been a blessing to this operation.  The decision to not share key intel about the planned operation with even our staunchest allies was also wise.  Although Andrea Mitchell and other media figures have mocked Bush by hinting that Obama got the "mission accomplished" celebration that Bush dreamed of, Obama's classy action to call Bush and Bill Clinton to tell them the good news before announcing it to the world was a recognition on his part that he could not have succeeded in finding and killing Bin Laden without the tireless fight carried on by Bush/Cheney and to a much lesser degree, Clinton.

It is time for Republicans to be generous in their praise for President Obama's handling of this matter, in which he has been more Presidential than at any time since being elected.  It is likewise time for Democrats to cease their derision and apoplectic hatred for George W. Bush, who made decisions based on available intel, launched a war on al Qaeda, authorized interrogations that made Obama's successful operation possible, yet receives only spite and irrational loathing for his efforts to protect America and its allies from vicious terrorists.  It took the best qualities of Bush and Obama to bring Bin Laden to justice.  The two Presidents can stand side by side, join hands, and raise them together in this important victory.  Both men also know that we won a battle, but not the war.  Yet.

WSJ Better Off With Murdoch Than Burkle

There is a neglected question surrounding Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Dow Jones Company and the Wall Street Journal: why were critics of the purchase and Dow Jones and Wall Street employees themselves up in arms over the threat to journalistic independence posed by Murdoch but none of them seemed even slightly concerned over the potential danger to literary freedom that might have occurred under a different buyer? The media attention Murdoch’s purchase garnered revolved around the assumption that Murdoch might meddle with the Wall Street Journal and compromise its journalistic integrity while there seemed to be very little concern that an owner other than Murdoch might inject his or her own ideology into the paper’s news coverage.

Before Murdoch and the Bancroft family, owners of Dow Jones, entered into the latest intense round of purchase negotiations that ended with this morning’s announced final decision to sell to Murdoch, the names of other potential buyers made brief splashes on media pages, only to be obscured by the long shadow cast by Murdoch’s media empire. One billionaire who expressed significant interest in purchasing Dow Jones, parent company of the Wall Street Journal, was Ron Burkle, former grocery store magnate and unquestionably the closest influential and wealthy friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, both during Bill’s presidency and after.

Since leaving the White House, the Clinton’s have flown more mileage around the globe on Burkle’s private jet, an ostentatious Boeing 757, than on all other aircraft combined. Burkle’s Bel Air (Los Angeles) estate has hosted countless parties, fundraisers, rallies, and private retreats for the Clintons, as president and former president. Further cementing his position at the Clintons’ side, Burkle has consistently ranked as one of the top individual donors to the Democratic National Committee, Hillary’s election and reelection campaigns for the Senate, and currently to her presidential campaign.

I am not suggesting that there is anything improper about this cozy financial and political relationship. Wealthy and influential individuals in both parties have always ingratiated themselves with political figures for a variety of personal or business reasons. Likewise, I am not impugning Burkle’s motives for his desire to bankroll and provide free transportation to the Clintons to further their political ambitions. The significance of this relationship lies in the complete lack of attention given to it by the media and Dow Jones employees while Burkle was floating multi-billion dollar offers that many found more appealing than selling to Murdoch. While Murdoch was vilified for his personal involvement in making changes to previous news enterprises he had acquired, no one gave any serious consideration to how the Wall Street Journal might have covered news under Burkle’s ownership in light of his close ties to the Clintons.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), largely because of its foundations in American business, has usually been a reliably conservative publication, with a few exceptions such as its advocacy of open borders and amnesty for illegal immigrants. Even in taking that position, as flawed as it was, the WSJ was consistent with the views of many influential businesses that utilize cheap labor. Aside from that issue, though, the WSJ’s conservative news coverage and Op/Ed pieces are a welcome alternative to the brazenly liberal news coverage offered by the New York Times and most major dailies in America’s cities. As “meddling” as Murdoch’s takeovers and purchases of various media outlets may have been, few would argue that his influence has ideologically altered the news coverage of those outlets. It is certainly true that he has employed certain tactics such as shocking headlines and stories with some reference to sex to generate attention, particularly in some of his international publications. Yet he established Fox News as a more conservative alternative to liberal CNN and traditional network news offerings, and after more than a decade of broadcasting, Fox News remains dedicated to providing that conservative perspective. Dow Jones and WSJ employees should consider that aspect of Murdoch’s track record and breathe a little easier than they might have if Burkle had successfully purchased Dow Jones.

The Clintons already have an influential and widely read publication consistently doing their bidding: the New York Times. Their reach would have been enormously increased if Burkle had purchased the WSJ. It is extremely unlikely that an aggressive businessman like Burkle, who enjoys personal involvement in running his enterprises, would have been an absentee owner who would have kept his hands off of the WSJ’s journalistic ideology. Burkle is highly active in the DNC and his personal relationship with the Clintons would certainly have influenced what he would or would not want to read in his version of the WSJ. Why would he have paid billions of dollars to purchase Dow Jones and the WSJ only to allow it to undo his political activism through articles or Op/Ed pieces critical of his party and specifically the Clintons? That would not have been a wise return on his investment. Under Burkle’s ownership, the WSJ likely would have embarked on a slow but steady drift to the left, something neither its readers nor its employees would have appreciated.

It is easy to understand why Dow Jones and WSJ employees feared a Murdoch takeover, but they had much more to fear, including their jobs as conservative journalists, had a less controversial buyer like Burkle gotten his hands on the WSJ. Murdoch will be under enormous pressure to maintain the WSJ’s reputation and broad readership. He will surely tinker with the WSJ, attempting to make it more widely available, or perhaps bring it into more direct competition with the New York Times or even USA Today. Some of those efforts might achieve spectacular success, and some might prove to be dismal failures. The good news for WSJ employees is that his track record with Fox News indicates that he will not alter the generally conservative bent of the WSJ, which is the source of the paper’s journalistic independence in a news media world dominated by liberal lock-step ideology.

Technorati Tags:
Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch, Dow Jones, Takeovers, News Integrity, Ron Burkle, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton

Conservatives Use Liberals to Justify Acts

Conservative reaction to two recent news stories raises a question that conservatives should consider very carefully: is liberalism really the behavioral standard by which we as conservatives want to be judged?

The old excuse that “everyone else is doing it” seems to have infected the reasoning of conservatives, who increasingly cite examples of liberal misbehavior to justify their own similar words or actions. Although it may not be fair for liberals to constantly get free passes in the MSM for what most of us would consider illegal or immoral conduct, conservatives should be willing to point out the hypocrisy while continuing to take the moral high road in their own behavior. That is, or at least that was, what separated conservatives from liberals on so many issues, such as abortion, gay marriage, political corruption, personal morality in elected officials, and others. Now conservatives seem no longer to care much about living up to a higher standard than our liberal rivals, but instead demonstrate that we wish we could behave badly too and receive the same free pass from the media that liberals enjoy.

In the following paragraphs I will reference two recent news stories and conservative reaction to them to illustrate the shamefully growing practice of wanting to be judged by liberal, rather than conservative standards:

1. President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s perjury conviction sentence.
Regular readers already know that Capital Cloak argued that since there was no underlying crime in the case, i.e. the outing of a CIA operative, there should have been no trial of Libby or anyone else. However, since a trial was held, Libby was convicted by a stacked DC liberal jury, and sentenced to prison time, President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence to a fine and probation. Liberals were, not surprisingly, outraged that their attempt to bring down the Bush administration through scandal fear mongering failed. Ironically, the Clinton’s criticized the president’s commutation decision, with Bill Clinton making this extremely hypocritical statement:

The former president tried to draw a distinction between the pardons he granted, and Bush's decision to commute Libby's 30-month sentence in the CIA leak case.

"I think there are guidelines for what happens when somebody is convicted," Clinton told a radio interviewer Tuesday. "You've got to understand, this is consistent with their philosophy; they believe that they should be able to do what they want to do, and that the law is a minor obstacle."

Of course, I am not suggesting that Bill Clinton was justified in issuing 140 pardons to many convicted criminals including his own business and political associates. Those pardons were wrong and certainly confirmed the stench of graft and corruption conservatives smelled for 8 years of the Clinton White House. However, instead of merely defending President Bush’s decision to rescue Libby by citing legal reasons or simply stating the president’s authority and perceived moral obligation to do so, the White House and conservative radio hosts and Internet bloggers took the moral low road by justifying the action based on Clinton’s numerous pardons:

"I don't know what Arkansan is for chutzpah, but this is a gigantic case of it," presidential spokesman Tony Snow said.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has scheduled hearings on Bush's commutation of Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence.

"Well, fine, knock himself out," Snow said of Conyers. "I mean, perfectly happy. And while he's at it, why doesn't he look at January 20th, 2001?"

In the closing hours of his presidency, Clinton pardoned 140 people, including fugitive financier Marc Rich.

Conservative radio hosts like Sean Hannity, though doing so for the noble purpose of defending the obviously railroaded Libby, also joined the “look what Clinton did” chorus, pointing to the already mentioned pardons as well as former President Clinton’s impeachment in the House for perjury which ultimately resulted in no removal from office, no jail time, no fines, only the later loss of his law license. Libby was sentenced to two years for the same crime that Clinton committed. Conservative media figures also pointed to other examples of Clinton administration officials who have thus far escaped prosecution, such as former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger. They pointed out that Berger committed a serious crime against national security by stealing classified documents from the National Archive, to which he plead guilty. Libby, who was convicted of perjury would serve jail time while Berger, who hamstrung the 9/11 commission by removing and destroying top secret documents dealing with the counterterrorism actions of the Clinton administration, only lost his law license, hardly a fair outcome and a clear double standard in punishments dealt in DC.

This argument successfully captured the understandable outrage of conservatives, and certainly by comparison Berger’s actions were far more serious than Libby’s, but by constantly holding out Clinton’s perjury, his last-minute pardons, and the treatment of Berger as an example, the White House and conservatives in the media contributed to the increasing trend of conservatives acting as if we wish to be judged by the loose moral and ethical standards afforded to liberals. If Libby’s commutation was legally and morally justified, as most conservatives agreed, why was it necessary to wallow in the mud with the Clintons and engage in childish and ultimately self-destructive “they did it and so can we” arguments?

Tony Snow’s snarky response quoted above was an unnecessary and atypical acceptance of the lowest common denominator in political judgment, the Clinton administration. Now conservatives are rallying to defend Congressman David Vitter (R-LA) who, when faced with a public outing by the madam of a highbrow DC brothel, confessed to his use of “services.” What is the most common conservative defense of Vitter? Clinton engaged in far more serious illicit behavior with a subordinate in the Oval Office itself and didn’t have to resign, so Vitter should not resign either! Is that really the moral high ground conservatives claim to occupy? Supporting his return to Congress because he was a good but flawed man would be one thing, but supporting him because Clinton got away with moral lapses sends a very different message to voters seeking to find some difference between the values of the two parties.

2. The arrest of Albert Gore III in California for DUI and narcotics possession.
Driving 100 mph is reckless and endangers the public. Driving 100 mph while under the influence of various controlled substances is incredibly irresponsible and inexcusable. This was not Al Gore III’s first DUI (two prior arrests), and it was widely reported that the young man had been abusing a number of prescription drugs. Clearly the former vice president’s only son has a substance abuse problem, possibly a parent’s worst nightmare. What was the “compassionate conservative” response to news of the incident? Few conservatives in the media extended to Gore or his son any sympathy or best wishes for a full recovery, yet many engaged in sarcastic jokes about the younger Gore’s environmental carbon footprint from driving 100 mph in a hybrid car. More plentiful were the admonitions that conservative radio hosts and callers had for the surely anguished father, chiding him for being, in their opinions, an irresponsible parent who spent more time on global warming than on his children.

I found it interesting that when some in the media asked rhetorically whether the children or families of public figures should be “fair game,” the overwhelming response from conservatives was to point out that the media had incessantly and viciously reported the Bush twins’ brushes with police for false id and underage drinking in their late high school and early college years, and so turnabout was fair play. Here is a brief sampling of conservative responses that were all too typical in the wake of headlines announcing Gore III’s arrest:

From Sweetness and Light
Doesn’t Algore have any problem with the fact that his son was burning the marijuana? Think of how much carbon dioxide got released… and is THC a greenhouse gas, anybody know? Now, take a look at the response to this from the same people who wanted to put the Bush twins in the stocks for drinking before they turned 21…..

Sad yes, doingwhatyoucan, but this is from a group who screams incessantly about how hypocritical and ‘holier-than-thou’ conservatives are and gleefully splay any and all faults, falls, and crimes (real and bogus) ad nauseum (and as 1st said, if it had been one of the Bush twins, breaking news alerts) - yet we hear barely a peep. And I for one had not known about his previous arrests. And therein lies the basic problem - the Bush twins drink at college (Gasp) and it is news for how many days?

Gore’s son is arrested (again) for speeding and drug possession - and nary a word is said. Sort of like Sandy’briefs’Burger and his non-punishment and yet Libby is drawn and quartered for a lie about a case that is utterly and completely based on a lie. Do As I Say - Not As I Do Liberals Strike Again. Sad, yes, deserved - absolutely.

From Hotair.com

Maybe instead of trying to save the UNIVERSE, AL GORE(the man who claims he invented the internet) should of stayed home more often.

A Crying shame. He might spend more time with his drug addicted son, or his celebrity seeking wife, or his addled brain.

The Eco-Messiah who wants to manage our environmental policy can’t even manage his own family.

From RedState

If any of the Bush or Cheney children were busted for drugs, speeding at 100mph right now, it would be front page news at both the New York Times and the Washington Post online.

College students Jenna and Barbara trying to sneak an alcoholic beverage was a huge scandal, but we're not supposed to question that Chelsea got a six-figure job to start out.

These were just a few examples from a mountain of such comments found on virtually all high-traffic conservative news sites. The comments made by callers to conservative radio in the wake of this story were of similar tone and content, with expressions of near-glee at the misfortune of the Gore family, in large measure because the media had been so quick and cruel to report the less legally serious misdeeds of the Bush twins. Certainly the media savaged the Bush twins for months after each incident, but conservatives should keep in mind that we loudly proclaim ourselves to represent family values, and showing a lack of sympathy for a family in crisis, as Gore’s clearly has been and continues to be, is unworthy behavior for “compassionate conservatism.” To adapt a scriptural warning to such behavior, “Nastiness never was happiness.”

If conservatives object to unfair media coverage of the family members of conservative public officials, how does salivating over stories about liberal families help resolve the issue? There is no question that great hypocrisy exists among liberals, their personal family issues, and the media responsible for news coverage. However, for conservatives there is nothing noble about wishing for others to suffer intense public scrutiny of painful personal matters simply because conservatives have also been victimized by the media.

Rather than wishing for equal media treatment with liberals when it comes to questionable behavior, conservatives should instead seek to live and uphold a higher behavioral standard than the one liberals aspire to. Conservatives should stand on principle instead of resorting to defending their actions or words based on what liberals have done in similar circumstances. If voters cannot detect a palpable difference between the two parties in 2008, they will likely side with the one that promises to represent the most significant change from the status quo. For conservatives hoping to hold onto the WH and regain the House and Senate, being different, rather than indistinguishable from, their opponents will be critical to potential victory.

Technorati Tags:
Scooter Libby, Bill Clinton, Presidential Pardons, Perjury, Sandy Berger, Conservatives, Liberals, Al Gore III, DUI, Media Double Standard, David Vitter

Why Courts Cannot be Entrusted with the War on Terror: Blind Judicial Trust and the Need to Keep Detainees at Gitmo

For anyone still clinging to the fallacious belief that the War on Terror should be chiefly a law enforcement effort involving prosecution in the U.S. court system, as the Clinton administration attempted, an AP report today provided another illustration of why that approach has never been, and will never be, a successful path to eventual victory.

As reported in the New York Sun, Mohammed Salah, a convicted suspect awaiting sentencing in Illinois for perjury in a case involving a conspiracy to launder money for the terror group HAMAS, was not considered a flight risk by U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve, and will be allowed to remove a court-ordered electronic tracking device for his upcoming pre-sentencing vacation at Disney World. According to the Sun article, the Assistant U.S. Attorney in the case tried in vain to convince the judge that Salah’s promises to return to court for sentencing in June, made as they were by a convicted perjurer with links to a terror group, should not be trusted. The judge dismissed this logic, stating, “I’m confident that he will come back.” A delighted Salah reacted to the judge’s permissiveness:

"I get to take it off," a smiling Salah told reporters after court, pointing to a bulge under his left sock where the government has placed an electronic monitoring bracelet to make sure he stays under house arrest.

Judge St. Eve is living proof that President Bush has not appointed exclusively conservative judges during his terms in office. St. Eve, whose views and education are consistent with 1960s liberalism, admitted at her appointment in 2002 to not sharing the President’s political ideals: “Had there been a litmus test on a hot-button conservative issue, ‘I don't know how I could have passed,’ she confesses.” St. Eve's trusting nature is merely a symptom of the larger problem within the judiciary: Not taking the threat of terrorism seriously. For further examples of cases where judges ruled against the War on Terror, click here.

While Salah is grateful for St. Eve’s liberalism and happily sheds the ability of the Justice Department to monitor his whereabouts, another developing story demonstrated that misplaced faith in the judicial system’s efficacy in fighting terrorism is not limited to gullible judges. The Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) reported today that Democratic members of the U.S Congress are pursuing legislation to close the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and move detainees to brigs at military bases on the east coast, including the Quantico Marine Corps Base.

While Democrats have claimed that the expenses associated with Guantanamo justify closure of that facility, their pious demand for fiscal responsibility on this issue should be met with skepticism. Democrats have sought throughout the War on Terror to curb President Bush’s war powers, and forcing a closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo would be more than a symbolic victory in the only war they want to win, the War on Bush. Closing Guantanamo and moving prisoners to bases in the U.S. would effectively remove the detainees from Bush’s control as Commander in Chief and place them under the protective care of the Democrats’ preferred source of all rights and authority, the judicial system. The Times-Dispatch article confirms that granting legal rights and defense attorneys to terror detainees is at the heart of the matter:

Rep. James P. Moran, D-8th, said yesterday that he favors bringing Guantanamo detainees who have been charged with offenses to military brigs in the jurisdiction of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"That's the most conservative circuit court" in the nation, said Moran, a senior member of the House defense appropriations subcommittee. "So nobody can charge [the detainees] won't get a speedy and disciplined trial."

Representative Moran and his Democratic colleagues have not learned from the mistakes of the Clinton administration and continue to put their trust in a judicial system that has already proven incapable of investigating, punishing, and deterring terrorism. While the Clinton Justice Department investigated and ultimately prosecuted Ramsey Yousef for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, others were planning and training for upcoming attacks on our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, the USS Cole, and eventually 9/11. There is nothing in a criminal trial that can force a defendant to divulge operational information about his organization or co-conspirators. As long as the defendant is willing to accept prosecution and a prison sentence as a form of martyrdom for the cause, prosecutors have no leverage to apply in order to obtain intelligence information that could prevent future attacks or identify other terrorists.

From a purely practical perspective, the argument that operating the detention facility in Guantanamo costs the taxpayers too much money is dubious. If the detainees are moved to bases within U.S. District Court jurisdiction, taxpayers will be financing the legal costs for court proceedings, which will endure for years through endless appeals, as well as what would surely be upgraded housing and dietary provisions compared to Guantanamo. Representative Moran should be challenged to produce a cost comparison between current Guantanamo expenses and those his proposal would incur. Since this is actually a political stunt rather than a legitimate cost-cutting measure, I suspect Americans will never see any such comparison study made available for review.

How did Virginia’s Republicans react to the proposed move of these detainees to bases inside the U.S.? From the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star:

"The Democrat Congress may think it's a great idea to move Islamic Jihadists less than 35 miles of the Pentagon, but it strikes me as poorly conceived," said RPV chairman Ed Gillespie, in a press release. "Moran's proposal would not be good for our national security, and it would not be good for the people in Stafford and neighboring counties."

Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Gloucester, also released a statement criticizing the proposal--including the anonymous suggestion of keeping terrorism suspects at Quantico--calling it "reckless policy."

"Bringing terrorists to Quantico, among other places, poses a homeland security threat," said Davis, whose district includes Stafford. "We in Congress are supposed to be working to keep terrorists out of America, not helping to bring them in."

Our court system does not strike fear in the heart of any terrorist and offers no hope for deterrence of future terrorist attacks. One need only point to the juries in the O.J. Simpson or “Scooter” Libby trials for examples of how easily juries can be duped by cleverly presented appeals to their racial or political sympathies. Terrorists would consider it a great luxury and good fortune to be prosecuted in U.S. courts. They would like their chances for acquittal, but even if convicted they would enjoy planning their subsequent unmonitored trips to Disney World.

Perhaps Judge St. Eve and Representative Moran could collaborate with Disney World on a project that would end terrorism through our liberal goodwill: Disney Detainee Day! After a few hours of continuous sailing through “It’s a Small World,” the jihadists will desperately sue for peace. On second thought, we are told that torture is an ineffective tool in the War on Terror. The ankle bracelet-free Salah would surely agree that when it comes to prosecuting terrorism in America’s courts, “it’s a world of laughter. . . .”

Pakistan Wheels and Deals with Taliban: Pirated U.S. Missile Technology Used Against NATO Aircraft

Have you ever wondered what happened to the cruise missiles fired on orders of then-President Clinton into Afghanistan in 1998 in his less than half-hearted attempt to strike at Osama Bin Laden? According to Afghani Taliban and Al Qaeda sources interviewed by the Asia Times Online, some of those high tech missiles never detonated and were then retrieved by Pakistani military units near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. If you have read Tom Clancy’s novel The Sum of All Fears, in which Arab terrorists (not the ridiculous Hollywood version with white supremacist villains) acquire a nuclear bomb when an Israeli Air Force fighter jet loses a nuclear bomb that does not detonate on an Arab farm, you can envision what Pakistan did with these armed and fully intact U.S. cruise missiles.

Pakistani military scientists took note of the sophisticated sensors utilized in the cruise missiles and reportedly did what China has been doing with Microsoft software and Motion Picture Association recordings for years: they made illegal copies. The copied sensors were then successfully fitted to an unknown number and variety of existing Pakistani missiles, which greatly enhanced the capabilities of Pakistani offensive and defensive weaponry.

The Taliban, meanwhile, had long sought more sophisticated weapons to utilize against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan after 2001 in their efforts to return to power and oust President Karzai. According to the Asia Times Taliban sources, the Taliban acquired older Soviet model SAM-7s (Surface to Air Missile) in 2005, and received immediate training from Al Qaeda operatives. However, those ancient anti-aircraft missiles were largely ineffective against high tech coalition fighter jets and bombers because they lacked an important technological capability: heat-signature tracking and exhaust decoy sensors. The Taliban needed to seek help with resolving this sensor disadvantage and they turned to their natural ally and protector, Pakistan, the alleged American ally in the War on Terror, and its stock of pirated U.S. cruise missile sensors. In a new deal struck between Pakistan's government and the Taliban, Pakistan has reportedly provided the Taliban with pirated sensor technology the Taliban is using to upgrade its arsenal of SAM-7s.

As Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief, noted: the introduction of SAM-7s equipped with the copied sensors ironically could alter the dynamics of the NATO battle with the Taliban. This shift could give the Taliban important advantages in much the same fashion as the Afghani resistance forces benefited from the U.S. gift of Stinger missiles in their historic fight against Soviet occupation. American and NATO planes would be under constant threat from American sensor equipped SAMs. For a stunning series of photos of a next-generation SAM-7 (SAM-14) terrorist attack on a DHL courier jet in Iraq, click here. These photos and the accompanying account of the attack on an Airbus 300, illustrate that terrorists in Iraq, equipped by Iran (and by some accounts, Pakistan), are in possession of even more sophisticated SAMs than the Taliban’s modified version.

Shahzad reported that the Pakistani government (he does not specify at what level) has formed an alliance with the Taliban:

Using Pakistani territory and with Islamabad's support, the Taliban will be able safely to move men, weapons and supplies into southwestern Afghanistan. The deal. . . will serve Pakistan's interests in re- establishing a strong foothold in Afghanistan (the government in Kabul leans much more toward India). . . . Despite their most successful spring offensive last year since being ousted in 2001, the Taliban realize they need the assistance of a state actor if they are to achieve "total victory".

Taliban commanders planning this year's spring uprising acknowledged that as an independent organization or militia, they could not fight a sustained battle against state resources. They believed they could mobilize the masses, but this would likely bring a rain of death from the skies and the massacre of Taliban sympathizers. Their answer was to find their own state resources, and inevitably they looked toward their former patron, Pakistan.

Interestingly, also reported today was the announcement by Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell that the CIA has “compelling” evidence that Bin Laden and his second in command Ayman al Zawahri are currently in Pakistan and are reestablishing al Qaeda training camps in the provinces bordering Afghanistan. While Pakistan makes mostly symbolic occasional arrests in the War on Terror to placate America and retain enormous amounts of financial aid, it is simultaneously forming logistical alliances with and providing pirated weapons technology to our Taliban enemy. While playing this duplicitous game of “(Evil) Axis and (Naïve) Allies,” Pakistan may also be providing Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership safe haven within Pakistan’s borders with the tacit approval of the Islamabad government. These factors should make more clear the reasons why Vice President Cheney and Stephen Kappes, CIA Deputy Director, made separate visits this week to Islamabad to confront President General Musharraf, presumably with a diplomatic pouch full of satellite imagery and ultimatums.

Spy the News! has previously documented Pakistan’s growing threat to the region, its minimal efforts to capture and extradite Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, and its fear of radical Islam within its population. Pakistan’s pirating of U.S. missiles to improve its own defense capabilities occurred pre-9/11 and, while patently dishonest, should have been a predictable response to the recovery of abandoned multi-million dollar missiles that, like their mission itself, failed spectacularly. However, Pakistan’s provision of this missile technology to the Taliban in its fight against the Karzai government and American and NATO forces is inexcusable for an alleged post 9/11 ally.

The Bush administration, beyond the personal visits and verbal warnings of the Vice President and CIA Deputy Director, must send a clear message to Pakistan that not $1 in U.S. financial aid (Pakistan is the second leading recipient of U.S. financial aid) will be given to Pakistan until Pakistan, with NATO assistance if requested, destroys every Taliban and Al Qaeda camp within Pakistan’s borders, including all mobile anti-aircraft batteries infesting the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan pirated the sensors for those SAMs and must now atone for the traitorous act of supplying them to terrorists engaged in conflict with the U.S. and NATO.

Pakistan currently meets most of the criteria set forth by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq: Offering safe haven to terrorists; documented proliferation of nuclear weapons technology or materials; arming and funding known terrorist organizations (state sponsor of terror), including the new cooperative agreement described in this post and in the Asia Time Online. Clearly, generous American financial aid has not moved Pakistan reliably into the American camp in the War on Terror. It is time to invest elsewhere until Pakistan reforms itself and swings both legs over the fence it has been straddling. President Bush received much liberal criticism for the following ultimatum in November 2001, but it should be repeated to and accountability demanded from the country that holds the key to defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda but refuses to turn it or provide it to those who will:

A coalition partner must do more than just express sympathy, a coalition partner must perform. . . . That means different things for different nations. Some nations don't want to contribute troops and we understand that. Other nations can contribute intelligence-sharing. ... But all nations, if they want to fight terror, must do something.

Over time it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. . . . You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror.

It is time for Pakistan to give its final answer.

Liberal Reaction to Failed Taliban Attack on U.S. Vice President: "Better Luck Next Time"

The major news story yesterday was a suicide bomber’s detonation outside the secured perimeter at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, during Vice President Cheney’s visit with military personnel there, but the attack was only half the story. The unabashed disappointment expressed by liberals to the fact that the attack failed was perhaps the aspect that deserves the most attention.

To summarize the incident liberals cheered, the bomb killed at least 23, including one U.S. soldier, one South Korean soldier, and one U.S. contractor. The remaining 20 victims were reportedly Afghani civilians, many of them truck drivers employed to deliver goods to the Bagram base, waiting in line to go through security screening for entry to the base. The bomber did not penetrate security and detonated outside the checkpoint, thus it would appear the Taliban claim that Vice President Cheney was the target of the attack was likely mere political bluster. The U.S. Military put forth the following statement that best describes a plausible motive for the rush by the Taliban to claim the attack targeted the Vice President:

"We actually think that their tying it to the vice president's visit ... was an attempt to draw attention away from the fact that the attack killed so many Afghan civilians, including a 12-year-old boy," said Lt. Col. David Accetta, a U.S. military spokesman.

Attacks at sites where high level U.S. dignitaries are visiting understandably receive extensive international coverage. However, the bombing also served to reveal something very ugly and despicable in American society: personal disdain for a vice president that has become so vitriolic that members of the opposing party are unashamedly disappointed when an alleged assassination attempt of the U.S. Vice President by a foreign enemy fails.

Consider this historical hypothetical comparison which should help place the liberal reactions to the claimed attack on Vice President Cheney quoted below in proper perspective:

It is February 1945, and after 4 years of brutal war in Europe and the Pacific, America has suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties fighting a war against ideologies bent on the destruction of America. Vice President Harry Truman decides, at great personal risk, to visit U.S. troops at an air base in the Pacific preparing for a spring offensive against Okinawa. Keeping his intended destination secret, Truman arrives at the Pacific base, greets and dines with soldiers, offering them encouragement and continued support. During Truman’s visit, an enemy combatant approaches a security checkpoint at the Pacific base and detonates a suicide bomb that kills 23 people, including 2 Americans. Truman is taken to a prepared shelter until base security is confirmed, and then, in courageous fashion, continues with his visit and later flies to Manila to meet with a cooperative but somewhat embattled local leader, all while still in mortal danger from further attempts on his life. When news reaches America that the enemy claimed it had attempted to assassinate Truman but failed, many Americans write letters to the editors of local and national newspapers expressing their disappointment that the enemy had not shown more competence and succeeded in “killing Truman over there so we won’t have to do it here.”

Of course, in February 1945, no true American of any party would have harbored such thoughts or wishes against Truman regardless of political persuasion or war opposition (a negligible phenomenon in that war). Yet in today’s supposedly “enlightened” liberal society, disappointment and write-in expressions of anger that Vice President Cheney survived the attack at Bagram were the reactions of such a high number of readers of a highly popular liberal blog, the Huffington Post, that the web site managers were forced to shut down the reader comment thread for an article titled, “Over 20 Die in Attack on Cheney” after reader comments containing wishes that the Vice President had been killed filled 12 pages, as reported by World Net Daily. WND also successfully captured the comments before they were deleted by Huffington Post site managers.

For the record, the Huffington Post acted responsibly by closing the thread and deleting the comments, as they could potentially be a legal liability should some reader determine, based on the shared support of so many fellow readers, that he/she should attempt to do what the Taliban failed to accomplish. Thanks to World Net Daily, we have a representative sample of how personal, irrational, and truly un-American the anti-Cheney (and anti-Bush, which is actually even more acerbic) sentiment in the Democratic Party has become:

Better luck next time! (TDB)

Dr Evil escapes again ... damn. (truthtopower01)

So Cheney is personally responsible for the deaths of 14 innocent people ... and then he waddles off to lunch!! What a piece of sh--! (fantanfanny

Jesus Christ and General Jackson too, can't the Taliban do anything right? They must know we would be so gratefull (sic) to them for such a remarkable achievement. (hankster2)

Hey, Thalia, lighten up. I, for one, don't wish Cheny (sic) had been killed. I wish he had been horribly maimed and had to spend the rest of his life hooked to a respirator. Feel better now? (raisarooney)

Let's see ... they're killing him over there so we don't have to kill him over here? (ncjohn)

And they missed!? Oh, Hell. Like Mamma used to say, I guess it's the thought that counts ... (Anachro1)

You can never find a competent suicide bomber when you need one. Mark701)

Amazingly Democrats wonder why Republicans question their patriotism. As much as Republicans disliked Bill Clinton, hopefully even the liberal left can recognize that impeaching a man for perjury is a lesser level of disdain than wishing that terrorists had killed him while in office. Expressing such wishes verbally or in writing actually constitutes a felony under federal law, hence the Huffington Post’s wise decision to remove such comments from the blog. Republicans were not particularly fond of President Carter, but would have responded with unanimous condemnation and retaliatory force had he been sitting on the reviewing stand with Anwar Sadat when Sadat was assassinated in 1981. The idea of anyone attacking or killing our elected leaders should produce nothing but outrage and a determination to prevent that from happening to any of them, anywhere they may go, in war time or periods of peace.

More disturbing is the realization that many so-called Americans would ever wish for an enemy to determine who holds office by circumventing our democratic process through assassination. We choose our leaders and we should condemn and thwart any effort that takes that choice out of our control.

Many conservatives have argued that liberals are rooting against American success in Iraq and Afghanistan, and expressions of ignorant and inflammatory vitriol, as demonstrated by Huffington Post readers, provide additional evidence that such observations are accurate. Clearly the majority of readers commenting on the incident at Bagram Air Base hate Vice President Cheney on the same level as the Taliban, as they too wished to see him dead.

Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton have declared that Iraq is “Bush’s war,” which has become a phrase used interchangeably with “Iraq War” throughout the liberal media. Framing the war in that manner assures that actually winning in Iraq or defeating terrorists anywhere will hurt Democratic chances in 2008, hence they cannot be expected to do anything to tangibly improve national security or lead to military victory in the Middle East. They simply cannot afford to allow President Bush to succeed in any way, and their personal hatred for the Bush/Cheney team trumps all other instincts, even their own survival. After all, if the Taliban reportedly hoped to kill Vice President Cheney, why would Democrats think they would be immune from such attempts if they were in office?

Terrorists don’t distinguish between our parties and call cease fires on Americans during Democratic administrations. Apparently forgotten are the seizing of our embassy in Tehran in 1979, the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998, the bombing of the USSS Cole in 2000, and other attacks during the Carter and Clinton administrations.

The liberal Vice President Cheney haters, in their rabid desire to blame him for everything from global war to global warming, should focus on organizing enough votes to elect a vice president they can support rather than wish radical Islamic terrorists would eliminate a man they failed to defeat politically. Americans should be united in our gratitude that the Vice President was not hurt, not because it was “Dick Cheney, “ or “Darth Cheney,” as liberals like to call him, but simply because he is America’s Vice President, regardless of party affiliation. A phrase the ACLU has not yet litigated against because it contains no God reference, E Pluribus Unum, states perfectly the unity with which America should respond when its leaders are targeted for assassination: Out of many, one.

The FISA Reversal: Bush Sees Clinton in His Mirror

The Bush administration’s domestic anti-terror policy is morphing rapidly into a mirror image of the Clinton administration’s and as in all mirrors, left is right and right is now left.

One of the principal criticisms leveled against the Clinton administration’s handling of terrorist incidents including the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the US Embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, and the attack on the USS Cole was that terrorism could not be suppressed or countered exclusively through law enforcement investigations. Clinton’s critics, justifiably, have condemned him for not doing more to take the fight to the terrorists abroad. Clinton’s approach to terrorism, primarily consisting of arresting and prosecuting terrorists through our porous judicial system, appeared to be the antithesis of President Bush’s after 9/11.

Post 9/11, Bush adopted the pre-emptive strike doctrine and invaded Afghanistan, declared terrorists as “enemy combatants” who could be held captive indefinitely in a state of war, and implemented military tribunals to process terrorists captured in combat with US troops. Detainees were questioned and yielded valuable information on Al Qaeda leadership and cell structure. The NSA domestic surveillance program was effectively utilized to glean information from intercepted communications between terrorists abroad and their supporters/operatives in America. The Clinton and Bush strategies could not have been more diametrically opposed.

Today, however, the Bush administration’s domestic strategy for conducting the Global War on Terror (GWOT) has lost its unique bravado and in its place the soft Clinton approach has reemerged. Yesterday Attorney General Gonzalez announced that monitoring of international communications involving suspected terrorists in the United States will require authorization and oversight from a court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). After years of insisting that the President’s program was legal and that immediate discovery and disruption of terrorist plots within the US could not be accomplished through traditional court orders, the Bush administration has now reversed course under pressure from the newly empowered Democrats in Congress. What are the practical implications of this reversal?

The Bush administration now insists, with hypocritical confidence, that the secret FISA court will operate with much more flexibility and speed than a traditional court, and thus will not hamper the efforts of America’s intelligence agencies once a suspect has been identified. While Attorney General Gonzalez’s announcement touts FISA court speed and usefulness, the obvious question is why, if FISA courts do not hamper the rapid response needed for counterterrorist investigations, the administration has avoided them like the proverbial plague since 9/11? Administration officials have staunchly defended the NSA domestic surveillance program by arguing that under post 9/11 laws an early warning detection system was critical to national security and thus could be authorized by the President independent of a FISA court. Consider this explanation for the need to circumvent FISA courts in a letter sent by the Department of Justice to the House and Senate Intelligence committees in December 2005:

FISA could not have provided the speed and agility required for the early warning detection system. . . . There is undeniably an important and legitimate privacy interest at stake. That must be balanced, however, against the government's compelling interest in the security of the nation.

Does the President feel the “early warning notification” provided by the NSA domestic surveillance program is no longer needed? Is the government’s interest in national security less compelling now than it was in December 2005? The reversal by the Bush administration signals an abandonment of the aggressive domestic counterterrorist stance once championed confidently by the President. While Justice Department officials submit applications for surveillance (a subpoena equivalent) to the FISA court, American intelligence agencies will be missing communications between terrorists living among us and their international planners/financiers. The letter from the Justice Department further stated that “FISA has proven to be a very important tool, especially in longer-term investigations.” A FISA court may operate with a less glacial pace than a federal district court, but that should be of little comfort to those who understand that real-time communications interception is critical to identifying and thwarting imminent threats.

Like its predecessor, the Bush administration has placed America’s domestic safety in the hands of judges. In the case of FISA courts, the judges routinely rotate, resulting in decisions made by judges with no continuity or grasp of the full context of the application for surveillance presented before them. Rotating judges unfamiliar with established precedent will delay authorizing time-sensitive surveillance while researching previous applications, resulting in precisely the ponderous, inefficient review process the Bush administration has been intentionally and justifiably avoiding since 9/11.

Because we have been unsuccessful in infiltrating Al Qaeda and other advanced terrorist groups, communications intercepts are often the only advance warning available to our intelligence and law enforcement agencies. “Fighting the terrorists there so we won’t have to fight them here” may be a catchy slogan, but the reality is we ARE fighting them here and the administration’s reversal on domestic surveillance will open wider the window of opportunity for terrorists preparing for attacks in America. If we are serious about winning a Global War on Terror, further binding the hands, or in this case covering the ears, of our intelligence/law enforcement agencies is a dangerous step toward a counterterrorist strategy reminiscent of Clinton.

Technorati Tags: Alberto Gonzalez Attorney General Domestic Surveillance Program FISA Court FISA Bush Administration NSA Law Enforcement terrorism national security Bill Clinton Global War On Terror

Clinton Spokesman: Conservative Media Ruined Bill's Presidency

Bill Clinton’s former spokesman, Mike McCurry, has been busy on the collegiate lecture circuit offering revisionist history to students at Princeton University. In an address to students yesterday, McCurry attempted to rewrite history by depicting his former boss (McCurry was White House Press Secretary from 1995 to 1998) as the victim of a media conspiracy that hobbled all efforts by Clinton to grapple with “more substantive topics.”

As reported by the Daily Princetonian, McCurry’s explanation for former President Clinton’s political failures included a casual dismissal of Clinton’s penchant for personal scandal. McCurry jokingly stated Clinton’s political legacy would forever be a “stain,” in clear reference to his messy relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Were it not for Clinton’s lack of discipline, McCurry opined, Clinton could have risen much higher in his political skills and accomplishments. At first that might seem to be a candid and objective assessment from someone who worked so closely with the former president. Then McCurry proceeded to offer an incredibly deceptive argument for the reason Clinton’s legacy will be a “stain.”

Though McCurry never used the term “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” to label the forces that in his opinion made certain Bill Clinton could focus on nothing other than his personal scandals, he did not have to. When setting out to enumerate the three factors that most influenced the Clinton presidency, McCurry decried the growth of the Internet and “partisan media networks” that focused only on Clinton’s scandals. It is easy to sympathize with McCurry, who must have found it difficult to try and steer media inquiries away from scandal after scandal to more important matters, like Clinton’s failed efforts to respond to the first World Trade Center bombing, the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, the missed opportunity to capture or kill Bin Laden . . . . On second thought, Mr. McCurry, perhaps it worked out better for you that the focus was NOT on the administration’s performance record. Hiding behind the skirts of the Monica scandal permitted you to market your boss as a victim of a vicious media assault, a figure to pity, not to impeach.

Shall we begin with the “blame the partisan media networks” defense? When a former Clinton spokesman uses the term “partisan media networks,” to what networks and web sites is he referring? The author of the Daily Princetonian story specifically mentioned the Drudge Report as an example of electronic media that McCurry noted would not look beyond scandals including gays in the military, "White House sleepovers," Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment proceedings. McCurry was quoted as saying, "This was the press' focus day after day. There was an inability to change to more substantive topics." Perhaps McCurry should consider that personal character, self-restraint, and honesty ARE substantive topics, especially when the man holding the most powerful position in the world clearly lacked all three.

What McCurry failed to include in his “expert” assessment of the rise of alternative media, such as talk radio and the Internet, was the context in which they began to flourish. McCurry railed on “partisan media networks” while omitting the obvious: the existing major media networks were then and continue to be blatantly partisan, made up almost entirely of liberal-leaning journalists who intentionally select story titles that mislead and use terms that evoke memories rather than reality (quagmire, anyone?). One need look no further than recent exposures of New York Times reporters’ story fabrications or the CBS News Bush National Guard episode during the 2004 campaign to know which party members of the media personally prefer in power. I will never forget standing at a major political event on election night in 2000 and seeing the unmistakable glee on the faces of CNN’s live news team when they initially called Florida for Gore. That memory is contrasted so clearly with the palpable gloom I observed in the same crew when that fictitious result was retracted and Florida went to Bush instead. There are numerous books and columns exposing the liberal leanings of the traditional media, but none of these address it as effectively as Hugh Hewitt’s revealing interview with ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin. Halperin seemed to believe he was completely impartial, but note his descriptions of his own staff at ABC News. Halperin clearly saw that the vast majority of employees at major media outlets were liberal Democrats and that media bosses like himself needed to correct this imbalance because it was harmful to objective reporting. I find it impossible to accept that McCurry, a former White House Press Secretary, could innocently omit this truth while telling Princeton students the new conservative media networks were responsible for stalling Clinton’s presidency.

Mr. McCurry, here is a novel idea: stop rewriting history by asserting that alternative conservative media introduced media conflict and an unhealthy focus on scandals. There were no conservative “partisan media networks” in existence during Watergate, Iran-Contra, or other “scandals” during Republican administrations. The media, liberal or conservative, have always sought scandal (apparently this former press secretary is not acquainted with the historical term Muckrakers) because we as a society seem to crave it and seek after it for entertainment. The talk radio and Internet phenomenon, including the blogosphere, sprouted because the majority of Americans grew weary of hearing and reading only the liberal interpretation of the news. Fox News, which is often attacked by liberals for being too conservative, was a breath of fresh air ten years ago because it presented stories from the novel perspective that there were in fact two sides and each was worthy of being reported. With all the major network and cable news channels marching in liberal lockstep, they were forced to compete with each other for shocking news, since they all shared the same opinions and thus none of their reporting was original. With conservative media now presenting its side of the political debate, all networks, liberal or conservative, will be more inclined to focus on a return to issues rather than muckraking.
The most discouraging aspect of McCurry’s defense of Clinton through media blame is the subtle attempt to remove personal character from the qualifications required for a president. Rather than complain about the media coverage of Clinton’s scandals, McCurry should have told Princeton students that if we would elect leaders with character and integrity, the media muckrakers would be reporting on “more substantive topics” out of an absence of scandal. Ironically, the very voices McCurry and Clinton want to blame for Clinton’s failed political legacy may never have risen to prominence had Clinton not stained his own presidency. History will show that the Clinton years brought more balance of opinion into the media than existed for several decades previously, not through liberals embracing conservative viewpoints in liberal newspapers or news programs, but through conservatives embracing new forms of media to take their media-repressed views directly to a thirsting audience.

Bill Clinton Mike McCurry Hugh Hewitt Monica Lewinsky Rush Limbaugh conservative media Princeton