Infrequent example of court jester of Left making me laugh

Jon Stewart on the Underwear Bomber -- "Even if the bomb works, there's going to be 72 very disappointed virgins."

ABC News: Hasan sought contact with al Qaeda, according to two US officials

Bombshell revelation today I learned while listening to Laura Ingraham, as reported by ABC News. But not only was the suspect in Fort Hood massacre trying to make contact with the terrorist network --

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

A story that makes me more dumbfounded by the day.

The Maddow Doctrine

... As described by Air America Radio and MSNBC propagandist Rachel Maddow on her radio show this past Friday --

"I've always felt like the way you talk about the war in Iraq is to take the biggest possible perspective on it, which is, the analogy for me is that we had some sort of horrible illness as a country, which was evident in our vulnerability to global terrorism (emphasis added) and we went into the hospital for that illness and what we were given was a medicine to which we were allergic and we had a horrible, awful, very threatening allergic reaction to it. And now, after five and a half years (laughs) in Iraq, we've conquered the allergic reaction and we have sort of gotten rid of the negative, some of the negative effects of the wrong medicine that we took. But we still have this horrible illness."

And al Qaeda is trying to cure us if only we'd let them.

Every day is September 12

Amazing photo, isn't it?

I took it from a chartered flight in July 1993, a bachelor party for my future brother-in-law who's now a brother to me.

We flew due west from Plymouth to the Hudson River on a clear day in summer, then south to Manhattan, not far from the flight path taken by Flight 11, the first of the planes to strike on another crystalline morning eight years later.

Flying over the Hudson River with the New York skyline to our left, I remember thinking how odd it was that we could come so close to the skyscrapers, and that a bomber plane had slammed into the Empire State Building toward the end of World War II. That was my first reaction on Sept. 11, 2001, as I awakened my 2-year-old son and my wife called up to say a plane hit the World Trade Center. Must be another military plane, I thought. Turns out it was.

After passing Lower Manhattan, the skyscrapers looming above us and looking close enough to touch, we circled twice around the Statue of Liberty. I took the photo shown here during one of those circuits. From this perspective, we could see what the doomed souls on Flight 175 later saw in the last seconds of their lives. Minutes earlier, as we flew over the George Washington Bridge and approached Manhattan, we saw what those on Flight 11 last witnessed before barbarians snuffed out their lives.

I keep this photo on the wall of my office, not far from photos of my family and other relatives and cherished friends and wonderful places I've had the good fortune to visit. I keep this photo as a reminder that the more we lull ourselves into complacency about the threat posed by militant Islam, the more likely the wolves will strike again.

As they say in AA, the further you get from your last drink, the closer you are to the next.

Al Qaeda reaches out to children

... which isn't surprising in the least of jihadists for whom nothing is beyond the pale - as reported this morning by the AP -

LONDON - Britain faces an increased threat from al Qaeda-inspired terrorism and is now home to at least 2,000 people who pose a direct threat to the country's security, including children who are being groomed by extremists, the director of the domestic spy agency said yesterday.

Truer words never spoken

"History teaches us that underestimating the words of evil, ambitious men is a terrible mistake. Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. The question is, will we listen? ... Some here in Washington, D.C., dismiss it as a political rhetoric, an attempt to scare people into votes. Given the nature of the enemy and the words of its leaders, politicians who deny that we are at war are either being disingenuous or naive. Either way, it is dangerous for our country. We are at war and we cannot win this war by wishing it away or pretending it does not exist" - President George W. Bush, speaking at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday.

A lazy, simplistic editorial

Yesterday's lead editorial in the Boston Sunday Globe condemning the "intellectually lazy analogy of Islamism to fascism" was difficult to take seriously after reading this whopper of a paragraph -

"Al Qaeda and company cannot be compared with the fascist powers ruled by Hitler, Mussolini and Franco - neither for their ideas nor for their military power. The Nazis scorned religion, wanting to make the state the sole object of worship. Bin Laden and Hitler might share a proclivity for cruelty and killing, but for little else. Hitler cherished the operas of Wagner; bin Laden and his Taliban allies have been known to put musicians to the lash for playing music at a wedding. And bin Laden has no panzer divisions."

"Bin Laden and Hitler might share a proclivity for cruelty and killing, but for little else."

Amazing. Where to begin?

Bin Laden and Hitler share far more than that, unbeknownst to the intellectually lazy editorial writers at the Globe. For example, the main thing they share in common, an elephant-in-the-room parallel that all but the most oblivious can ignore, is in their visceral loathing and wanton pathological cruelty toward Jews. And there's no "might" about it.

How about these for other parallels - Hitler and bin Laden's absolute intolerance of dissent, an unwavering belief in the alleged messianic quality of their respective crusades (yes, crusades) and the utter lack of anything resembling irony, self-deprecation or introspection.

Agreed, "bin Laden has no panzer divisions." Nor did he need them to destroy the World Trade Center, inflict grievous damage to the Pentagon and slaughter 3,000 innocent people in less than two hours.

Most importantly, Hitler and bin Laden share something else in common - a wolf-like grasp of appeasement disguised as well-reasoned argument from their foes.

Dept. of Unintentional Humor

"We have to play hardball if we're going to try to end this war" - US Senator Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., speaking today with radio talk show host Ed Schultz.

Hey, look at what they did to Papillon

"Rumsfeld flees France, Fearing Arrest" blares the headline over at AlterNet, followed by this:

"Former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today (Oct. 29) fearing arrest over charges of 'ordering and authorizing' torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the U.S. military's detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.
"U.S. embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush's 'war on terror' for six years ..."

Ron Paul's sliver of truth

First off, what Texas Congressman Ron Paul actually said in last night's debate about 9/11:

"I think the party has lost its way because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a non-interventionist foreign policy. Sen. Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy, no nation building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War, Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican Party, it is the constitutional position, it is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them.

"Just think of the tremendous improvement in (our) relationship with Vietnam. We lost 60,000 men, we came home in defeat, now we go over there and invest in Vietnam. So there's a lot of merit to the advice of the Founders and following the Constitution. And my argument is that we shouldn't go to war so carelessly, because when we do, the wars don't end."

Which led to a follow-up question from Fox newsman Wendell Goler -- "Congressman, you don't think that changed with the 9/11 attack, sir?"

Paul: "What changed?"

Goler: "The non-interventionist policies."

Paul: "No, non-intervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attacked us because we'd been over there, we'd been bombing Iraq for 10 years, we've been in the Middle East. I think Ronald Reagan was right, we don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican, we're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us."

Golen: "Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attack, sir?"

Paul: "I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reasons they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, I'm glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier. They've already now, since that time, have killed 3,400 of our men and I don't think it was necessary."

To which Rudy Giuliani responded: "That's really an extraordinary statement, an extraordinary statement. As someone who lived through the attack on Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've ever heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11" (followed by the biggest applause of the night, all but sealing the pundits' later verdict that Giuliani won the debate).

But lost amid the gnashing of teeth over Paul's suggestion that al Qaeda was justified in slaughtering 3,000 Americans was the kernel of truth at the heart of his remarks -- the undeniable connection between Iraq and al Qaeda's motivation for the 9/11 attack.

For years now we have heard the singsong of a claim, mainly from the Left but also from conservative isolationists like Paul and Pat Buchanan, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. To the extent that Iraq was not involved in the planning and execution of the attack, this remains a plausible assertion due to lack of evidence to the contrary (that such a link may eventually be proven, however, would not surprise me).

But this assertion has morphed into something entirely different -- that Iraq had nothing remotely to do with al Qaeda's motivation for attacking the US -- and this claim is not only false, but deceitful. In fact, US and United Nation policies toward Iraq -- yes, United Nations -- constituted two of the three reasons cited by bin Laden for the 9/11 attack when al-Jazeera broadcast its first post-9/11 video of bin Laden on Oct. 7, 2001, the same day US forces began bombing al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Bin Laden's statement, all of a dozen paragraphs, wasted little time in getting to Iraq -- it's in the fourth paragraph, according to the copy I saved from the New York Times.

"A million innocent children are dying at this time as we speak, killed in Iraq without any guilt," bin Laden said. What he was referring to were economic sanctions against Saddam's Baathist regime -- sanctions imposed by the UN, not US -- for Saddam's refusal to comply with every single one of 16 UN resolutions for him to disarm after the first Gulf War and renounce his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. A war precipitated by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, followed by a coalition of 30 nations led by the US ousting Iraq from Kuwait -- but not dishonoring the purpose of that coalition and taking ground forces all the way to Baghdad.

Here is how bin Laden ended his statement:
"Every Muslim must rise to defend his religion. The wind of faith is blowing and the wind of change is blowing to remove evil from the Peninsula of Muhammad, peace be upon him.
"As to America, I say to you and its people a few words: I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the armies of infidels depart the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him. God is the greatest and glory be to Islam."

The "evil" that bin Laden refers to on the "Peninsula of Muhammad"? American military forces in Saudi Arabia -- sent there at the invitation of the Saudi government after Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990. Forces that remained in Saudi Arabia, as requested by the Saudi government, for the decade to follow -- due to Saddam's continued defiance to disarm in good faith.

As for Paul's claim that we'd been "bombing Iraq for 10 years," he was conspicuously negligent in elaborating. Allow me to fill in the gaps. Shortly after the first Gulf War, and in a move to prevent Saddam from slaughtering thousands more Kurds and Shiites rising up against him, no-fly zones were imposed over huge swaths of north and south Iraq -- by the US, Great Britain and -- are you sitting down for this? -- France -- without -- still sitting down? -- UN authorization.

Two years after the first Gulf War, then-President Bill Clinton ordered aerial attacks against Saddam's regime after evidence was uncovered of an Iraqi plot to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush during a visit to Kuwait.

In December 1998, Clinton ordered another attack on Saddam's regime one month after UN weapons inspectors were ousted from Iraq -- an absence that remained right through 9/11 and leading up to the months before the second war. The reason many people don't remember the four-day Desert Fox campaign? It neatly coincided with the House vote to impeach Clinton.

I have nothing but respect for the strength of character exhibited by Giuliani on 9/11, and for Giuliani's resolve in the difficult weeks and months followed. And Giuliani's anger toward Paul's suggestion that America had it coming on 9/11 is entirely justified.

But I find it disheartening that Giuliani, of all people, a man nearly murdered by al Qaeda on Sept. 11, 2001 and who may well become our next president, is oblivious to the obvious role that Iraq played in al Qaeda's rationale for attacking us.

Reviving the Bubba Doctrine

Revisiting Hillary Clinton's response to the debate question last month on how she would respond to an al-Qaeda attack on American cities -- what Clinton suggested sounded vaguely familiar, as if we'd done this before. In fact, we have, and with disastrous consequences.
First, Clinton's response:

"Well again, having been a senator during 9/11, I understand very well the extraordinary horror of that kind of an attack and the impact that it has, far beyond those who are directly affected. I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate. If we are attacked, and we can determine who was behind that attack, and if there were nations that supported or gave material aid to those who attacked us, I believe we should quickly respond.

"Now that doesn't mean we go looking for other fights," Clinton went on to say. "You know, I supported President Bush when he went after al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. And then when he decided to divert attention to Iraq, it was not a decision that I would have made had I been president because we still haven't found bin Laden. So let's focus on those who have attacked us and do everything we can to destroy them."

In other words, do exactly what Bill Clinton did in response to the bombings of two American embassies in Africa in August 1998. After quickly determining that al Qaeda was responsible, then-President Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks against al Qaeda targets in Sudan and Afghanistan two weeks after the bombings -- followed by withering criticism that Clinton was engaged in "wag the dog" chicanery to divert attention from the Lewinsky scandal.

And what happened after the cruise missile attacks ...? Nothing much, at least for the remainder of Clinton's lame-duck, post-impeachment presidency. Come to think of it, Saddam Hussein booted UN weapons inspectors out of Iraq a few months after the embassy bombings, not that Iraq and al Qaeda had anything remotely to do with one another, as we've heard claimed ad infinitum ad nauseum for years now. Clinton responsed to Hussein's ouster of weapons inspectors by lobbing cruise missiles into Iraq, postponing the congressional vote on his impeachment for a day, before the status quo of American timidity was quickly restored.

Then in October 2000, al Qaeda fanatics struck at the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 American sailors, followed by Clinton doing ... nothing. All the while, al Qaeda grew emboldened by the specter of a paper tiger worried about looking like it was looking for a fight.

What was it that line from Trotsky? You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

Change in jihadist tactics

Anyone else find it significant that the Fort Dix Six allegedly targeted an American military base -- as opposed to American civilians?

Whether the suspected terrorists would have carried out their plot had the feds not intervened is impossible to know, but it's hardly a stretch to surmise that the plotters would have encountered much less resistance -- and firepower -- had they targeted a shopping mall, commuter rail station (or college campus) than a military base.

Then again, why target civilians when the likely effect would be to unite Americans against the jihad? That's the last thing terrorists want. Far better for them if Americans remain divided on the true nature of the threat we face. For example, a Rasmussen poll released last week found more than one-third of Democrats, 35 percent, believe President Bush knew the 9/11 attacks were coming. Another 26 percent of Democrats "weren't sure" while 39 percent doubt that Bush knew of the onslaught in advance.

What's the point of killing American citizens if jihadists can already count on Democrats acting as useful idiots in losing the hearts and minds?

Name that Jihadi!

Time for yet another round of that drearily predictable game that's all the rage in the new millennium .... Name That Jihadi!

The rules are simple and straightforward -- every time I hear of terrorist suspects arrested here or abroad, I guess how many have the name "Muhammad" or any of its innumerable variations.

As for the so-called "Fort Dix Six" allegedly involved in a plot to attack American military personnel at Fort Dix, N.J., I guessed that at least two of the suspects had "Muhammad" as part of their names. Turns out only one did -- Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer -- but he's the alleged ringleader, so that counts as two, at least according to the evolving rules of ... Name That Jihadi!

But of course they hate books too

The headline this hour at the website of the NY Times -- "Explosion kills 20 in Baghdad Book Market" -- that the jihadists would target a bookstore comes as no surprise. From their perspective, patrons of such an establishment are automatically suspect, what with their propensity for curiosity and asking awkward questions. Something else the Islamists have in common with the Nazis, their ideological cohorts of the last century. Then again, the Nazis burned books, they didn't blow them up. So much more efficient to set them ablaze.

Another prime target -- children -- typical of a warped ideology that offers all the future of a death cult while harkening back to an alleged golden age which never existed. Going after children means fewer book store patrons to target in the future.

James was always the solemn one

"The United States, with its war, racism, sexual restlessness, religious confusion, and economic disparity, is a nest of festering confusion" -- Boston Globe columnist James Carroll, in today's paper.

Odd how Carroll and so many other vociferous critics of this "nest of festering confusion" can rarely bring themselves to live in other -- invariably worse -- "nests."

Yeah, and it cost him a PT boat

John F. Kennedy "believed that the use of military force should be a last resort" -- excerpt from a March 2 op-ed in the Boston Globe by Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and author of "Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Disaster."

Well yeah, that too

In an AP story earlier this week, Rudy Giuliani explains his Democratic past (I know how you're feeling, gov) and is quoted thus: "I don't think anything separates us more right now between Republicans and Democrats than how we look at taxes. What we understand as Republicans is that, sure, the government is an important player in this, but we are essentially a private economy. What Democrats really believe is that it is essentially a government economy."

Couldn't agree more with the latter part of that statement, nor disagree more with the former. A much biggest difference? Democrats are convinced that George W. Bush is the greatest threat to peace in our time -- Republicans know that the threat comes not from Bush, but from radical Islam, and has since for long before Sept. 11.

Timeless wisdom

"We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would do us harm" -- George Orwell

Refreshing intelligence on intelligence

... as stated by former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith last week on "The Charlie Rose Show" -

"One of the things that I think would be useful for your viewers to understand is that intelligence often gets talked about as if it is a matter of objective truth, but intelligence is almost never a matter of objective truth (emphasis in the original). It's sketchy information, it's bits and pieces, it's analysis, it's speculation, and there's an enormous amount of ground for reasonable people to interpret the bits and pieces of intelligence in different ways."

The crucial caveat - "reasonable people" - which rules out Islamic fanatics and their Western liberal apologists.

Watching the House debate

Another bogus claim by Bush's critics in Congress -- expressing opposition to his policies doesn't embolden our enemies, it demonstrates what a robust democracy we have. Which is true, if our enemies viewed the world from the same rational, post-Enlightenment perspective -- which they don't. Rather than seeing efforts to undermine Bush as evidence of our strength, the jihadists see it for what it is -- confirmation of weakness.