June 26, 2004

Tortured Arguments

The good, if under-reported, news is that the pile of documents released by the Bush Administration this week effectively rebuts the charges of "torture" that have been flying around. While White House and Justice Department lawyers did explore the legal limits of permissible interrogation techniques -- something it would have been irresponsible not to do after 9/11 -- it turns out that none of the practices actually authorized even comes close to the abuses depicted in the photos from Abu Ghraib prison.

The bad, and entirely ignored, news is that our most deadly enemies now know where the U.S. will draw the line should they fall into American hands. Worse, in disavowing an August 2002 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that wrestles with the definition of "torture," the White House has hung a few very fine lawyers out to dry and ensured a hypercautious approach to advice that could very well hamstring future antiterror efforts.

The incentive from now on will be for lawyers to provide internal counsel along the lines of former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick's infamous 1995 memo instructing FBI agents and federal prosecutors to go "beyond what the law requires" in limiting their collaboration against al Qaeda. We trust the folks who've forced this retreat stand ready to offer their mea culpas to the commission investigating the next major terrorist attack on the United States.

Some of our media colleagues are painting the document release as insufficient, perhaps because they've been given nothing to support their innuendo that there was some kind of connection between the Geneva Convention status of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and the incidents at Abu Ghraib.

It was always unlikely of course that the likes of alleged abuse ringleader Charles Graner and Private Lynndie England were even aware of the Guantanamo detainees' legal status. And the idea that a classified legal debate to which only a handful were privy could have "set the tone" or "created the climate" for anything at all defies logic. True, Major-General Geoffrey Miller visited Iraq from Guantanamo last summer to advise on interrogations. But if he's the missing link in the alleged "culture of permissiveness," why didn't abuses happen in his own jail too?

What matters are the actual policies authorized by Secretary Rumsfeld and his commanders, and the memos show that the Defense Department has been as consistent privately as it has been in public that Afghanistan and Iraq were different conflicts to be fought according to different sets of rules. Captives from the former were denied prisoner of war status for the solid legal reasons that neither al Qaeda nor Taliban detainees met such Geneva criteria as fighting in uniform and belonging to an army that was itself committed to upholding the laws of war. In Iraq, Defense said from the start that Geneva protections for POWs and civilians did indeed apply to most detainees.

We realize that making any distinction at all between legitimate POWs and unlawful combatants is controversial in some quarters -- which unfortunately seems to include the International Committee of the Red Cross. But this is a policy dispute and the media should treat it as such, rather than go along with attempts to conflate unrelated issues such as whether a detainee is being accorded POW status and whether he is in fact subject to overly coercive interrogation.

Far from fostering an anything-goes culture at Guantanamo, it turns out that in December 2002 Mr. Rumsfeld actually rejected a number of proposed techniques as too harsh. They included suggestions of imminent death or severe pain, and actions "to induce the misperception of suffocation." He did approve the removal of prisoners' clothing, only to rescind the approval the following month. That's a long way from authorizing the piles of naked prisoners photographed by one unit at Abu Ghraib.

The bottom line is that everything we've learned over the past month supports the assessment that the Abu Ghraib abuses were an aberration caused by a few bad apples and enabled by poor command leadership. And many of the appropriate lessons seem already to have been drawn.

Major-General Antonio Taguba is probably right that military police should never have been involved in the interrogation of such detainees. Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski may also have a point that there were simply too many prisoners at Abu Ghraib for the number of MPs she had to handle. But there remains no evidence that anyone told Specialist Graner to do what he allegedly did, and there is no doubt that what he is accused of violated stated DOD policy. Should this picture change during the courts martial to come, we'll be among the first to take note. Reports yesterday that two military intelligence officers may face charges in the suffocation death of an Iraqi general also bear watching.

A further word on that August 2002 Justice memo is in order, since it complicates the argument of those who want to locate blame for a "culture of permissiveness" in the office of the Secretary of Defense. In fact, the lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel went as far as they did in the memo -- including questioning the constitutionality of a U.S. anti-torture statute -- because they were asked to do so by Attorney General Ashcroft.

And we are told by reliable sources that Mr. Ashcroft in turn was responding to a direct request from the CIA, whose officers wanted absolute immunity with respect to their own interrogations. We are further told that the National Security Council was also aware of and sanctioned this request. No doubt everyone can now claim that the arguments in the memo were at the least politically tone deaf. But blaming them on rogue Justice lawyers or the Defense Department is rewriting history.

Instead of repudiating its own lawyers, Bush officials would be better off explaining that what they are trying to do is the very difficult and complicated business of protecting a free society that believes in the rule of law from terrorists who believe in neither.

This editorial pretty much speaks for itself, as do the memos.
The Left has succeeded in tying the hands of our soldiers and our interrogators even more in the field of combat--Congratulations!
Now we're that much more at risk.
And you can tell that detainees have been telling us plenty, too.
With the release of this memo and how they show that the responsibility and establishment of policy goes all the way to the top, including Rummy, Tenet, Ashcroft and President Bush, will the Left--the partisan media, the EUrowhiners, the Dims and other assorted Bushbashers--SHUT UP ABOUT ABU GHRAIB?!?

The Intelligence: Iraqis, Seeking Foes of Saudis, Contacted bin Laden, File Says

Contacts between Iraqi intelligence agents and Osama bin Laden when he was in Sudan in the mid-1990's were part of a broad effort by Baghdad to work with organizations opposing the Saudi ruling family, according to a newly disclosed document obtained by the Americans in Iraq.

American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before Al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization. He was based in Sudan from 1992 to 1996, when that country forced him to leave and he took refuge in Afghanistan.
[...]
Last week, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks addressed the known contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda, which have been cited by the White House as evidence of a close relationship between the two.

The commission concluded that the contacts had not demonstrated "a collaborative relationship" between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The Bush administration responded that there was considerable evidence of ties.

The new document, which appears to have circulated only since April, was provided to The New York Times several weeks ago, before the commission's report was released. Since obtaining the document, The Times has interviewed several military, intelligence and United States government officials in Washington and Baghdad to determine that the government considered it authentic.

The Americans confirmed that they had obtained the document from the Iraqi National Congress, as part of a trove that the group gathered after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government last year. The Defense Intelligence Agency paid the Iraqi National Congress for documents and other information until recently, when the group and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, fell out of favor in Washington.

Some of the intelligence provided by the group is now wholly discredited
[Oh really? Says who and for what reason?--Jen], although officials have called some of the documents it helped to obtain useful.

A translation of the new Iraqi document was reviewed by a Pentagon working group in the spring, officials said. It included senior analysts from the military's Joint Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and a joint intelligence task force that specialized in counterterrorism issues, they said.

The task force concluded that the document "appeared authentic," and that it "corroborates and expands on previous reporting" about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the task force's analysis.

It is not known whether some on the task force held dissenting opinions about the document's veracity.

At the time of the contacts described in the Iraqi document, Mr. bin Laden was little known beyond the world of national security experts. It is now thought that his associates bombed a hotel in Yemen used by American troops bound for Somalia in 1992. Intelligence officials also believe he played a role in training Somali fighters who battled Army Rangers and Special Operations forces in Mogadishu during the "Black Hawk Down" battle of 1993.

Iraq during that period was struggling with its defeat by American-led forces in the Persian Gulf war of 1991, when American troops used Saudi Arabia as the base for expelling Iraqi invaders from Kuwait.

The document details a time before any of the spectacular anti-American terrorist strikes attributed to Al Qaeda: the two American Embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998, the strike on the destroyer Cole in Yemeni waters in 2000, and the Sept. 11 attacks.
[And yet they forget to mention the considerable Iraqi ties of the 1993 WTC bombers... and yet, Bin Laden chose the exact same target to be hit on 9/11 and they're not connected? Sheesh!--Jen]

The document, which asserts that Mr. bin Laden "was approached by our side," states that Mr. bin Laden previously "had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative," but was now willing to meet in Sudan, and that "presidential approval" was granted to the Iraqi security service to proceed.
[That's a big nod from Saddam for the benefit of the Dim Libs, most of whom seem to have failed reading comprehension.]
[...]

Mr. bin Laden "also requested joint operations against foreign forces" based in Saudi Arabia, where the American presence has been a rallying cry for Islamic militants who oppose American troops in the land of the Muslim pilgrimage sites of Mecca and Medina.

But the document contains no statement of response by the Iraqi leadership under Mr. Hussein to the request for joint operations, and there is no indication of discussions about attacks on the United States or the use of unconventional weapons.

The document is of interest to American officials as a detailed, if limited, snapshot of communications between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden, but this view ends with Mr. bin Laden's departure from Sudan. At that point, Iraqi intelligence officers began "seeking other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of his current location," the document states.

Members of the Pentagon task force that reviewed the document said it described no formal alliance being reached between Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence. The Iraqi document itself states that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."

The heated public debate over links between Mr. bin Laden and the Hussein government fall basically into three categories: the extent of communications and contacts between the two, the level of actual cooperation, and any specific collaboration in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The document provides evidence of communications between Mr. bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence, similar to that described in the Sept. 11 staff report released last week.

"Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime," the Sept. 11 commission report stated.

The Sudanese government, the commission report added, "arranged for contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

"A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan," it said, "finally meeting bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded."

The Sept. 11 commission statement said there were reports of further contacts with Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan after Mr. bin Laden's departure from Sudan, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship," it added.

After the Sept. 11 commission released its staff reports last week, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney said they remained convinced that Mr. Hussein's government had a long history of ties to Al Qaeda.

"This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and Al Qaeda," Mr. Bush said. "We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of Al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two."

It is not clear whether the commission knew of this document. After its report was released, Mr. Cheney said he might have been privy to more information than the commission had; it is not known whether any further information has changed hands.

A spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission declined to say whether it had seen the Iraqi document, saying its policy was not to discuss its sources.

The Iraqi document states that Mr. bin Laden's organization in Sudan was called "The Advice and Reform Commission." The Iraqis were cued to make their approach to Mr. bin Laden in 1994 after a Sudanese official visited Uday Hussein, the leader's son, as well as the director of Iraqi intelligence, and indicated that Mr. bin Laden was willing to meet in Sudan.

A former director of operations for Iraqi intelligence Directorate 4 met with Mr. bin Laden on Feb. 19, 1995, the document states.

This is just one document...I'm sure there are others, some of which we've found, some of which we will and others we may never find either because they've been destroyed or never existed in the first place.
(Leave it to the Bush-bashing NYTimes to be so hard-assed about proof and evidence while they let their reporters like Jason Blair just make up whole stories or let their Walter Duranty win a Pulitzer in the 1930's for his paean of praise to the Soviet Union which omitted to mention that Stalin's famines killed 20-30 million Russians.)
I have documented many more links, ties and connections between Saddam and AQ and OBL here on this blog, but for the full story, buy Steven Hayes's just published book The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America.
I've been doing a lot of reading about WWII lately and this reminds me of the Wannsee Protocol;
if you'll remember, Hitler's top SS men met at Wannsee in early 1942 and decided upon the Final Solution to the Jewish problem, meaning the final go-ahead for the Holocaust.
Only one copy of the minutes from the this meeting have survived for posterity and even this doesn't mention what we know happened there, which is that the High Command of Nazi Germany agreed to proceed with the mass internment and annihilation of Europe's Jews and other "undesirables" like homosexuals, gypsies and Seventh Day Adventists in the death camps.
I don't think either OBL or Saddam kept a lot, if any, of written records of their evil deeds of slaughter for the same reason.
But leave it to the Gray Lady to be a stickler for "evidence," particularly when not giving the benefit of the doubt to what is right before their eyes hurts President Bush and our war effort in the heart of the Islamist beast.
If OBL was concerned about "being labeled an Iraqi operative" even back in the early '90's, then the ties were extensive.

WSJ.com - Prosecuting Americans

Lacking the votes in the United Nations Security Council, the U.S. on Wednesday withdrew a resolution seeking another one-year exemption from prosecution at the International Criminal Court for American soldiers participating in U.N. peacekeeping missions. This humiliation comes despite flexibility from Washington, which gave an undertaking that this third exemption would be the last. And it follows the abandonment two years ago of a resolution seeking a permanent exemption.
[Hurry yet again for President Bush!
We don't want our troops under the aegis of the UN anymore.--Jen]

From the way supporters of the ICC keep pressing for leave to prosecute Americans, one would think that the U.S. was the foremost abuser of human rights in the world today.
[Whereas the truth of the matter is that the U.S. is the world's primary protector and guarantor of human rights! Outrageous.]
This hardly bodes well for the fairness of future prosecutions. Rather, every indication so far is that the U.N. is cementing its role as a forum for scoring political points against the Americans.

There can be little doubt that the American military justice system and legislative oversight will make sure that those responsible for the Abu Ghraib prison abuse are exposed and punished. But that didn't stop U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan from using the scandal to torpedo the exemption resolution.
[How long, oh Lord, are we going to have to put with Kofi Annan and his posturing on behalf of the world's bullies?]
Since neither the U.S. nor Iraq has ratified the treaty setting up the court, the events at the prison could never form the basis for an ICC prosecution. Nevertheless, Mr. Annan counseled, "I think in this circumstance it would be unwise to press for an exemption, and it would be even more unwise on the part of the Security Council to grant it."
[B*stard!]

It's only prudent that a commander-in-chief would want to protect his men and women before sending them into the world's hotspots where anyone trying to keep feuding parties apart runs the risk of being accused by one side. Moreover, the U.S. has a legitimate point that never before have non-signatories been bound by a treaty they didn't sign, an innovation that represents a significant intrusion on national sovereignty.

Mr. Annan's cheap political point-scoring only further undermines the legitimacy of the U.N. Given this attitude, it would be hard to justify U.S. participation in future U.N. peacekeeping missions. The Secretary-General holds himself up as a champion of the rule of law, but his actions imperil the cause of justice.

I don't think we would have gotten the immunity even without Kofi's tacky remarks, but they certainly didn't help.
(How I wish VP Cheney could tell him off the way he did Leahy and then revoke his diplo visa and kick him out of our country!)
This is a very good thing and I think that the Bush Administration has rope-a-doped another of its enemies once again.
We don't want our soldiers in UN blue helmets, thank you!
Maybe if we're lucky, we'll get to pull out of the whole Bosnian mess and let EUrope clean up it's own eastern back yard.
IMO, the UN aspect was one of the biggest reasons our involvement in Somalia was such a fiasco and exacerbated the "Black Hawk Down" incident:
while our soldiers were supposed to be there to get food to the hungry, they ended up nabbing warlords, too, and got into an ambush (armed and prepared by Osama and Al Queda).
They weren't fully equipped and ready for battle because they were supposed to be "peacekeepers."
And because it was a UN force, the Pakistanis wouldn't budge out of the Mogadishu stadium and come rescue them in a timely fashion.
I know most of my fellow Americans don't need any explanation and know that the UN is worthless and irrelevant, but in case any Lefties are reading this, it will make our position clearer.
President Bush has already negotiated bilateral agreements with every nation in the free world and has reaffirmed our national committments in organizations like NATO and the OAS, so we don't need no steenkin' UN!
And while Kofi may feel pretty smug about this right now, that Oil-for-Food (which should be called "Blood for Oil") scandal isn't going away any time soon as both Paul Volcker, Norm Coleman's Senate Subcommittee, the U.S. Attorney's and the Manhattan Attorney's office all move on getting to the bottom of this $5 billion + massive scandal.
Let's see how quick the UN is from now on to "commit peacekeeping troops" to every little 3rd world problem area now that we, the yeoman of that guard, aren't going to be participating!

June 25, 2004

Sen. Miller to Speak at GOP Convention

Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, the highest profile Democrat to endorse President Bush for re-election, will speak at the Republican National Convention later this summer, a congressional aide said Friday.

Bravo, Zell!
Sen. Miller is a fine man who has great wisdom and discernment and a marvelous, "down home" sense of humor.
(How I wish he would announce on the night of his speech that he's switching his allegiance to the GOP!
We've got a Big Tent, Senator Miller--Y'all come!)

Cheney Utters 'F-Word' in Senate - Aides

Vice President Dick Cheney blurted out the "F word" at Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont during a heated exchange on the Senate floor, congressional aides said on Thursday.

The incident occurred on Tuesday in a terse discussion between the two that touched on politics, religion and money, with Cheney finally telling Leahy to "f--- off" or "go f--- yourself," the aides said.

"I think he was just having a bad day," Leahy was quoted as saying on CNN, which first reported the incident. "I was kind of shocked to hear that kind of language on the floor."

"That doesn't sound like language the vice president would use but there was a frank exchange of views," said Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems.

Woohoo!
Dick Cheney rocks--BIG TIME!
Lord knows I've told Leahy the same thing zillions of time when I see him on TV doing his awful obstuctionist thing!
And the Vice President was probably in the mood to tell us his enemies to pound sand after this terrific SCOTUS ruling that was handed down yesterday afternoon also:
Court Won't Order Cheney Papers Released

The Supreme Court protected the Bush administration Thursday from having to reveal potentially embarrassing
[B.S.! This is AP editorializing!--Jen]
details about Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force until after the election, sending the case back to a lower court and noting a "paramount necessity of protecting the executive branch from vexatious litigation."

The justices voted 7-2 to have an appeals court decide whether a federal open government law could be used to compel the administration to publicly release task force documents, dragging out an already 3-year-old fight over the records.

It was the second significant case in two weeks resolved without a ruling on the main issues. Last week, justices said a California atheist did not have standing to challenge on behalf of his daughter the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, sidestepping the broader church-state question.
[That was a great ruling, too! I'm beginning to like the Supremes again!--Jen]

In the Cheney case, two groups that sued to get access to the task force documents argued the public had a right to know whether energy company executives played a key role in crafting the industry-friendly recommendations.
[Here's a clue: they didn't.--J.T.]

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said that a federal district court judge who ruled against the Bush administration demanded the opening of too much task force information and that the president and his executives were not given appropriate deference.

While the case was about privacy, that issue has been largely overshadowed in the public eye by conflict-of-interest questions involving Justice Antonin Scalia. He refused to step aside after it was revealed he and Cheney took a hunting trip together shortly after the court agreed to hear the case. Scalia sided with the majority, though he made it clear he felt the court could have dismissed the lawsuit.

The ruling was an anticlimactic end - for now - to a case with the potential to be a major test of executive power. It brought up echoes of the Supreme Court's 1974 ruling that rejected President Nixon's claim of executive privilege and ordered him to surrender secretly recorded White House tapes.

But Justice Kennedy said there was no comparison between the criminal subpoena requests in the Nixon case and the interest by outside groups in what went on at Cheney's closed-door energy task force meetings.

Michael Greenberger, a Justice Department attorney in the Clinton administration, said the court saved Cheney from an "adverse public relations dance of having to assert executive privilege," a last-ditch legal maneuver to avoid disclosure of sensitive material.

Cheney, a former energy industry executive, was put in charge of the task force by President Bush in 2001. Most of its major recommendations, such as opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, have been stalled in Congress.
[Thanks to Dimocrat (and RINO) Senators like Leahy, Kennedy, Daschle, and Clinton.--Jen]

The Sierra Club, a liberal environmental group, and Judicial Watch, a conservative legal group, sued to get the records. The organizations contended that environmentalists were shut out of the meetings while executives such as former Enron Corp. Chairman Kenneth Lay were key players.
[I highly doubt Ken Lay was there and if he was, he wasn't on the task force for long after his Enron world came tumbling down in late 2001.--J.T.]

The Supreme Court directed an appeals court to decide if a 1972 law, the Federal Advisory Committee Act, applies to the Cheney panel. The issue was whether energy lobbyists were a type of "de facto" member.

The Bush administration argued that only government officials were on the task force, which would mean the details of meetings could be kept secret.
[See? No Ken Lay and no Halliburton dudes, so take off those tin foil hats, Bush haters!]

"We believe the president should be able to receive candid and unvarnished advice from his staff and advisers. It's an important principle," press secretary Scott McClellan said in reaction to the ruling.
[...]

The Sierra Club had asked Scalia to stay out of the case because the justice flew with Cheney to hunt in Louisiana in January, weeks after the high court agreed to hear the administration's appeal. Many Democrats and dozens of newspapers also called for his recusal.

Scalia, a Reagan appointee and close friend of the vice president, had said the duck hunting trip was acceptable socializing that wouldn't cloud his judgment. "If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," he wrote in announcing his decision to stay on the case.
[I love Justice Scalia!
President Reagan did a lot of wonderful things for our country, but one of them was certainly putting up Nino Scalia for the SCOTUS!--Jen]

Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately Thursday to say they would have ruled for the Bush administration outright. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan "clearly exceeded" his authority in ordering the administration to release records, Thomas wrote for the two.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter disagreed with the ruling. Ginsburg, reading her objections from the bench, said lower courts were sensitive to the executive branch's arguments.
[Ginsburg and Souter, always the Lefties on the bench. Sigh.]

In the main opinion, Kennedy said that the president is not above the law, but there is a "paramount necessity of protecting the executive branch from vexatious litigation that might distract it from the energetic performance of its constitutional duties."

Justice Kennedy said it all.
My suspicion is that this task force is planning for the eventuality, among other things, that oil is unavailable to us if either Iraq's oil, Iran's and/or Saudi Arabia's is cut off by Islamist terrorist warfare, a looming possibility, particularly given the AQ attacks inside Soddy of late.
If you'll recall, the Bush Administration has been stockpiling crude in our national reserves against that day, which is why President Bush wouldn't release any when the price of gas went so high in the last few months.
Happily, VP Cheney didn't have to disclose the activities of this task force as they are a matter of our national security and this is information our enemies should not have!
We are at war, you know.
So go Dick and here's hoping that all of Team Bush will quit taking the Dims' crap!

June 23, 2004

Afghans behead Taliban in revenge for beheadings

Afghan soldiers beheaded four Taliban fighters after guerrillas cut off the heads of an Afghan interpreter for U.S.-led forces and an Afghan soldier, a government commander said on Tuesday.The interpreter and the soldier were beheaded after becoming separated from a patrol of Afghan and U.S.-led foreign troops in the Arghandab district of Zabul province on Monday night, Namatullah Tokhi, commander of the government's 27th division in the province, told Reuters.He said government troops later captured and killed four Taliban guerrillas in the same way.

"They cut of their heads with a knife, so when our forces arrested four Taliban, we cut off their heads too."

This is one very effective, although not very "civilized," way to deal with the "militants" barbarity.
But then in comes our multi-culti, super-caring pals from Human Rights Watch to tell the Afghans that this is a "war crime:"

Summary executions of prisoners were a serious violation of the Geneva Conventions and human rights law, said John Sifton, Human Rights Watch representative for Afghanistan.

"If these beheadings actually occurred, it is a very serious incident: the killing of captured prisoners in the context of an international conflict is a war crime," he said.

The soldiers responsible, and the commanders who could have prevented the killings, should be arrested and tried, he said.

Funniest thing, but I haven't seen any press releases from HRW saying the same things about Al Queda's beheadings, either of the Afghans killed, or of Paul Johnson in Soddy Arabia or Nick Berg or of the South Korean hostage Kim (RIP) beheaded yesterday in Iraq--civilains all, BTW.
Maybe as long as AQ doesn't wear uniforms and act like too much of a nation's formal army, HRW and Amnesty International will continue to give them a free pass...or do they just hate America and her friends and allies?

Israel to help safeguarding Athens Olympics

Israel will play a major role in securing the upcoming Athens Olympics, with its navy patrolling the Greek coast and military and intelligence officers working closely with the Greek armed forces, the US Army and NATO, according to Israeli military officials.
[...]
A seven-nation security task force, including the United States, Britain and Israel, are involved in the $1.2 billion security plans for the Aug. 13-29 games.

There is already close liaison between the Israeli navy, its Greek counterpart, the US 6th Fleet and the relevant air forces. Greece, the US army and NATO are also in close contact with Israeli intelligence, the officials said.
[...]
Israel's Shin Bet security agency will protect the Israeli team - guarding Israeli quarters in the Olympic village, sites Israeli athletes may visit and sailing events off the Greek coast - as it has done since the 1972 killing of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics.

This makes me feel a little better about the Olympics, but not much.
(At least the Greeks are smarter than the Germans, who refused to let Israel handle the Munich IslamoNazi killers in 1972.)
The Olympics are for peacetime--they're supposed to show that nations can compete peacefully in sports instead of on the battlefield and clearly, since the 9/11 attacks on America, the Enemy doesn't feel that way and started another world war.
After the disastrous Olympics of 1936 in the heart of Hitler's Berlin, there were no Olympics during WWII for this reason and it's my opinion that we should suspend the 2004 events for the same reason, but if we must go ahead with it, I'm delighted to hear that the formidable Israeli forces, as well as ours, are on board!

Iran Postpones Talks on British Sailors

The release of eight British sailors has been postponed at least until Thursday, Iranian state television reported Wednesday, contradicting reports that the men were already freed.

There was no immediate clarification. Hours earlier, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told The Associated Press the eight Britons had been released.

The sailors were detained Monday for illegally entering Iranian waters as they traveled in three boats on a waterway that runs along the Iran-Iraq border.
[...]
In London, the British Foreign Office said it had not been told officially that the release had been delayed to Thursday. A British diplomat said, however, that a delay was possible because it was already nighttime in Iran.
[...]
A top military official said the sailors were being released because their intrusion into Iran's waters was apparently a mistake.

After their capture, the sailors were shown on Iranian television blindfolded and seated cross-legged on the ground.
[...]
Iran had earlier said the men would be prosecuted.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman told AP that Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi played a key role in resolving the minor border incident that had threatened to turn into a major diplomatic crisis.
[Don't look now, Britain, but it's an act of war!--Jen]

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had called Kharrazi on Tuesday to ask for the release of the sailors.
[Too polite! Straw should have demanded their release...or else.--J.T.]

The waterway, Iraq's main link with the Persian Gulf that divides Iran and Iraq, has long been a source of tension between the neighbors. The 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war broke out after Saddam Hussein claimed the entire waterway.
[...]
British-Iranian relations have run hot and cold for years. The detentions follow a fresh strain after London helped draft a resolution rebuking Iran for past nuclear cover-ups at last week's meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors.

Iran says its program is aimed only at producing energy, while the United States accuses Tehran of trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran accused Britain, which it had seen as a partner in the investigation into its nuclear activities, of caving in to U.S. pressure.

Iranians repeatedly demonstrated in front of the British Embassy in Tehran last month, throwing stones at the building to protest the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. Britain is America's main coalition partner in Iraq.

Protesters also condemned war damage to Shiite holy shrines in Iraq, demanded the expulsion of the British ambassador to Tehran and called for the embassy to be closed.

British-Iranian ties also were strained in 1989 when the founder of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against British author Salman Rushdie.

In 1998, the Iranian government declared it would not support the fatwa and the two countries exchanged ambassadors in 1999.

In 2002, Iran rejected a British candidate for ambassador, claiming he was a Jewish spy. A year later, shots were fired at the British Embassy in Tehran, after Britain briefly held an Iranian diplomat accused of helping to mastermind the car bombing of a Jewish center in Argentina.

What are the mad mullahs up to now???
I have no doubt that the British navy has been making patrols on the Shatt-al-Arab (Can't you just hear the lads having a laugh about the name "Shatt?") waterway since OIF began over a year-and-a-half ago.
(Who can tell where a border ends in a waterway and another begins?)
So the Iranians made their move and this is indeed a very hostile act.
If there was any doubt about that, the Iranians confirmed it by airing video of the Brit sailors on TV blindfolded and "confessing," all of which are violations of the Geneva Convention.


The Sun elaborates on the broadcast video of the captured sailors even further:

The Iranians breached the Geneva Convention by showing the six Royal Marine Commandos and two Royal Navy sailors wearing blindfolds.

They also falsely claimed the eight were heavily armed.

Pictures beamed around the Arab world showed footage of M-16 rifles — claiming they belonged to the Commandos. But they were US Marines’ weapons taken months earlier.

Check out the Iranian gratitude factor, also:

It came six months after Britain helped hundreds of thousands made homeless in the Bam earthquake that killed 35,000 Iranians on Boxing Day.

Millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ cash was spent on a rescue operation.

The Marines are said to be from Scottish units. They include ex-Scottish amateur boxing champ Scott Fallon.

I believe the threat still exists that Iran may put them on trial for their "crimes."
This is punishment for what they must regard as Tony Blair's "betrayal" when he didn't run interference (along with the perfidious French and their poodle the Germans) for Iran at the IAEA meeting.
It also may be an attempt to smoke out how committed the UK is to fighting the War on Terror.
In its way, it's similar to the Al Queda bombing of the Madrid subway on 3/11 that got Asnar out of power...it's obvious that Blair has sizable opposition at home to his support of President Bush and our WOT (and his party just did very badly in the elections a week ago) and maybe the Iranians are hoping that public pressure, inflamed by this incident, will force Blair to pull Britain out of the Coalition, like Spain.
Or maybe the mullahs are crazy and they really do have those nukes and are itiching to use them.
They are very much a part of the axis of evil that needs to be "regime changed" and they are really pushing it--God knows why.
If I were the mullahs, I'd drop this and say that they were the ones who made the mistake, but they've used this waterway to wage an 8-year war with Saddam that cost them hundreds of thousands of lives and we Americans know all about their hostage taking habits.
Thank God we don't have a man in the White House like Jimmy Carter and Blair can be tough when the time comes.
The mullahs may be about to find out about nukes, from the receiving end and of course, we have 150,000 troops just next door.
Until this is resolved, however, may God be with these 8 British servicemen.

Ignoring Putin's revelation

At a press conference on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered an extraordinary statement that might explain why President Bush felt such a great sense of urgency about driving Saddam Hussein from power. Mr. Putin said that Iraq was planning some kind of attack against the United States. Unfortunately, the same major media that have erroneously suggested that the September 11 commission's report debunks any linkage between al Qaeda and Iraq have shown little interest in Mr. Putin's revelation.
    
According to Mr. Putin, sometime between the September 11 attacks and the start of the Iraq war, Russia's intelligence service "received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests." The Russians passed this information on to the United States, and Mr. Bush personally thanked a Russian intelligence official for the information.

This story is a potential blockbuster for manifold reasons — not least of which is the fact that Moscow had long been one of Saddam's closest allies and Mr. Putin was staunchly opposed to the war. Given Saddam's history of supporting terrorism — and his attempt in 1993 to assassinate the first President Bush — one would think that the American media would take this story seriously, and be deluging American and Russian officials with questions about the specifics of the Iraqi plot.

  But the reaction has been subdued. While ABC's "World News Tonight" covered the story on Friday, other networks felt that they had more important things to talk about than a possible attack on America by Saddam . According to the Media Research Center, Friday's CBS "Evening News" didn't mention Mr. Putin's revelation, even though it spent more than two minutes on the debate over ties between Iraq and al Qaeda. (Dan Rather thought that a more important story was Bill Clinton's statement, in his new book, that he warned President-elect Bush about Osama bin Laden, but Mr. Bush didn't care.)
[Between "Sixty Minutes," Dan Rather and their movies like the slanderfest they almost inflicted on the American public "about" President Reagan, CBS has become the lead soldier in the War on Bush and the Truth!--Jen]

NBC "Nightly News" skipped the Putin story and focused on something else: a story undermining the Bush administration's contention that arch-terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — given refuge by Saddam — is linked to al Qaeda. On "Today" the next morning, NBC buried the Putin story behind excerpts of Mr. Clinton reading a passage from his book about how Martin Luther King Jr. had inspired him. On Saturday, The Washington Post relegated the story to Page A11.
    
The public is poorly served by such coverage. The fact that the president of Russia effectively is taking Mr. Bush's side on the question of whether Saddam posed a threat to this country is a major news story and should be treated as such. That it is not getting this kind of coverage suggests that many journalists do not have their priorities straight.

I beg to differ--they do have their priorities straight, which is to bring back their Leftist, appeasenik pals like John Kerry into power so that they can live in their 9/10/01 utopian world of universal peace and love.
Whatever.
If you're reading this blog, then it's safe to assume that you've already given up on getting the real news from the mainstream and partisan media! Good for you.
I know I have.
For me, the watershed moment was the Election controversy in 2000, when it became so obvious that they were pulling for Gore and the Left (Dimocrats) and no longer reporting the "news."
I know we're tuning out and that their bias is blatant to all but the most brain dead Americans, but how long can they keep it up?
And how much more can they side, in effect, with the Enemy in this war before they're truly called on it?
Don't forget that they've hammered on President Bush for saying that Saddam was an "imminent threat" in his 2003 SOTU address ever since, even though he didn't say it and yet if he had, this intell of Putin's would have constituted sufficient cause for him to do so.

Saudis Offer Militants One-Month Amnesty

Saudi Arabia announced a limited amnesty Wednesday for Muslim militants
[How long, oh Lord, will the Leftist press persist in calling these terrorists "militants?"--Jen]
who surrender in the next month, saying they will not face the death penalty and will only be prosecuted if they committed acts that hurt others.

Crown Prince Abdullah read the brief announcement on behalf of his half-brother, King Fahd, on state television Wednesday.
[...]
"We are opening the door of amnesty ... to everyone who deviated from the path of right and committed a crime in the name of religion, which is in fact a corruption on earth," he said.

I wonder if his brother, Clown Prince Nayef, got the memo...you know, the one who sponsors Islamofacist terrorism within the Soddie "security forces."
I think this is nothing more than posturing and window-dressing for the West, but poor old Prince Abdullah probably means it.
I'm sure he'll get lots of takers. Aren't you?
I also wonder if Abdullah also secretly--or perhaps not so secretly--thinks that the bad guys staging the attacks on Western "infidels" in his country are Zionists?

June 20, 2004

The Pastiche of a Presidency, Imitating a Life, in 957 Pages
According to Michiko Yakutani, Billy Jeff Blythe Clinton's just published memoir
"My Lies Life" is..."at 950 pages, sloppy, self-indulgent and often eye-crossingly dull — the sound of one man prattling away, not for the reader, but for himself and some distant recording angel of history."
Read the whole delicious thing, made all the more yummy by the fact that it was published in the NYSlimes and that, for once, they told the truth and didn't run cover for one of their "darlings!"
(Wonder how long MoDo's been sobbing into her pillow over this one?)
Then, this juicy item turned up in today's Telegraph over in Britain:
Clinton rages against Dimbleby in Panorama confrontation over Lewinsky

Bubba lost it on BBC TV! I love it!
(Do go to the link--there's a perfectly awful picture of Slick Willy looking as if the slime creature from the movie Alien is going to morph out of his face!)
The Brits act completely shocked, but I knew the night he wagged his finger at the American public and said "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." that he had a terrible temper.
Who said that the " Summer of Clinton" would be boring or that it would be a good thing for him?
If only Bill could shut up, particularly after we've just mourned the passing of President Reagan, who took the Oval Office to some of its greatest heights, only to have it followed by the "sound and the fury signifying nothing" of a man who took that office to its' lowest depths.
You know, Scadenfreude is underrated when it comes to the Clintons or the French, in my book; they asked for all the scorn, contempt and opprobrium the world gives them and I find myself more than delighted to share in their discomfort.

[Hattip to La Divina Lucianne, who has at least one good reason (besides her own good name) to cherish revealing articles about Bill Clinton like the 2 cited above--her friend and a great patriot, Linda Tripp.]

Bush Speaks to Troops in Washington

Surrounding himself with soldiers fresh from the battlefield, President Bush on Friday used a western campaign swing to compliment America's military for the fight against terrorism and pick up praise from Sen. John McCain, who has rebuffed overtures from Democrat John Kerry to be his running mate.
[Hello! McCain's a Republican!
A Kerry-McCain was never going to happen.--Jen]

"People from all over the country join me in saying, 'Thank you for what you are doing,"' the president told hundreds of camouflage-garbed soldiers gathered in a hanger. "There is no cave or hole deep enough to hide from American justice."

McCain, a popular Republican senator who rejected calls to join Kerry's campaign on a unity ticket, praised Bush's efforts in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"You will not yield," McCain told the troops, "and neither will he."

Bush, in turn, praised McCain's work in the Senate and as a Navy pilot. "It is a privilege to be introduced to the men in uniform by a man who brought credit to the uniform," Bush said.

McCain offered his support to Bush's decision to take America to war, saying it is a "just and necessary fight."

It is a fight between right and wrong, good and evil," McCain said. "It is no more ambiguous than that."
[...]
Fort Lewis is one of the nine major bases in Washington state, home to more than 94,000 uniformed personnel and civilian employees. Bush said the soldiers there strike so quickly and so quietly, they've become known in Iraq as the Ghost Riders.
[...]
After delivering the speech, Bush was scheduled to meet privately with wounded soldiers and relatives of GIs killed in Iraq.
[And yet the "Liberal" Left pillories him because he won't meet inert caskets of servicemen and women who've been KIA at Dover AFB.--Jen]
He then takes his campaign to Nevada.
[...]
Bush's visit to Fort Lewis is only the second by a sitting U.S. president in the last 60 years.

Ft. Lewis was certainly long overdue for some earned recognition from its Commander-in-Chief!
And you could just hear the Dims speed-dial the pharmacy for more Prozac and Viagra when Sen. McCain showed up to boost Bush and the troops in a just war!
The Dimocrats made far too much of the supposed "hate" that McCain had for Bush because they were both one-time rivals for the GOP presidential nomination...that and they mistook McCain's willingness to "reach across the aisle" to pass legislation in the Senate for his willingness to get into bed with the Dims.
Republicans are gentlemen and gentlewomen, manners and civility being things the Democrat Party seems to know nothing about whatsoever.

I'd never heard of the St. Peterburgh, FL journalist Susan Taylor Martin until yesterday, but I'd like to hear from her a lot more as this is the best analysis of what we're up against in Saudi Arabia of all the articles that have appeared in the past few days:
The seeds of terrorism sown by Saudi system

How do you stop anti-Western terrorism in a place where al-Qaida may have infiltrated the security forces, schools teach a rigid form of Islam and the ruler blames most of his problems on Zionists?

That's the challenge facing Saudi Arabia in the wake of attacks that have killed dozens of foreigners, including Paul Johnson, an American beheaded Friday by an al-Qaida group. And the Saudis' reluctance to acknowledge their own role in the growth of extremism doesn't bode well for the future, experts say.

"Take any cross section of Saudi society and you will find people who do not think slitting the throat of an infidel is a bad thing," says John R. Bradley, a British journalist who worked for a Saudi newspaper.

Another expert predicts violence will continue, even though the Saudis claimed Friday that they killed the leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the group behind the kidnapping and murder of Johnson.

"It seems to me we haven't seen the worst of it yet," says Michael Doran, an assistant professor at Princeton University. "There are deep-seated problems that are not going to go away."

And as if the Saudis didn't have enough internal trouble, their plodding efforts at reform have been hurt by the chaos in neighboring Iraq.

The United States is "so widely and deeply disliked in Saudi Arabia that it gives democracy a bad name because we're promoting it," says Michael Hudson, professor of Arab studies at Georgetown University.

Ever since oil was discovered in the kingdom in the 1930s, the ruling al Saud family has struggled with two conflicting forces - rapid modernization fueled by oil wealth, and the backward pull of Wahhabism, a puritanical form of Islam whose adherents condemn Western secularism and materialism.
[It doesn't help things that the godfather of the House of Saud was Waahab himself, the founder of the fundamentalist sect, and that the Royal Sods feel beholden to uphold the faith of their ancestor.--Jen]

In 1979, Islamic fundamentalists, outraged by what they saw as thecorrupting influence of Western culture on the Sauds, seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca. The government crushed the takeover, but it scared the royal family into giving the Wahhabis enormous control over Saudi society and education.

While oil prices were high, Saudis enjoyed a leisurely lifestyle as Americans and other foreigners ran the economy. But when oil prices fell in the mid '80s, the economy soured and Saudis whose education was based on memorizing the Koran had few marketable skills.

As a result, Saudi Arabia finds itself in a paradox - foreigners still hold millions of jobs while unemployment among Saudis is around 30 percent. The difficulty of "Saudi-izing" the workforce - replacing foreigners with natives - was illustrated a few months ago when the travel industry almost collapsed because Saudis couldn't handle even simple jobs like making reservations.
[Unreal! Can you believe that human beings could be so lazy or ignorant?--J.T.]

"The work ethic has not really been possible in a place that's been awash in oil," Hudson says.
[Maybe they need some of our 17th Century Puritans and/or our 19th Century Yankees?--Jen]

The high unemployment rate has had a more insidious effect: It makes it easier for extremist groups to recruit dissatisfied young Saudis.

You have this ideological mixing with these awful economic conditions - there could not be a more opportune situation for a popular uprising," says Bradley, who is writing a book on the kingdom. "I think al-Qaida is going to ride that wave rather than attack oil installations or the (royal) family."

In recent months, terrorists have gone after "soft" targets with lighter protection. Al-Qaida has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks, including some in which there is evidence of collusion by Saudi security forces.

Last month, former employees of Vinnell, a U.S. company that trains the Saudi National Guard, said some guardsmen knew in advance about the May 2003 bombing of a housing compound in Riyadh that killed 35 people.

As many as 70 guards stayed away that day, leaving the compound defenseless, the employees told London's Independent. Guard members allegedly gave inside help to al-Qaida, possibly including a detailed map of the compound.

And in last month's attack on a compound in Khobar that killed 22, gunmen purportedly wore military uniforms.

"The evidence from the last few weeks is that al-Qaida is in control of the situation, they are deciding when to attack and where to attack while the royal family seems simply to be hoping that the problem will go away," Bradley says. "They have no strategy to deal with it - the only strategy is the security forces, who have been infiltrated by al-Qaida."

Princeton's Doran says collusion between police and extremists is not surprising, given the government's support of the Wahhabi-brand of education.

"You've got to feel sorry for those poor grunts in the Saudi security system. They're up against a foe that believes deeply in what they're saying and harping on the theme that every Saudi schoolboy has learned from the clerics and is willing to die for. What ideals are the grunts fighting for? They fight for the royal family and who wants to die for the royal family?"

Heavy pressure by Islamic fundamentalists on the Saudi regime resulted in the United States pulling most of its troops out of the kingdom. And as violence surged this spring, the State Department urged all Americans - about 35,000 - to get out.

"It's ironic that we have 135,000 troops in Iraq trying to bring democracy to that place while in Saudi Arabia, which arguably is much more important - certainly in oil terms - we are urging people to leave," says Georgetown's Hudson.

Both countries insist their relationship remains strong even though the Bush administration has been frustrated by the Saudis' slowness to acknowledge the real causes of terrorism in the kingdom. Just days after the State Department praised Saudi Arabia for its "aggressive" campaign against terrorists, Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler, announced that "Zionism is behind everything," Newsweek reported.

A popular "parlor game" in Washington, Hudson notes, is guessing how long the royal family will remain in power. Most experts doubt the country is in imminent danger of revolution but say the Sauds must press ahead with democratic and educational reforms.

For all their drawbacks, the royals often have been a force for modernization and liberalization, using much of the country's oil wealth to build hospitals, highways and schools open to women as well as men.

"But the problem is that whenever they did that in the past, they did it from a position of strength in the middle of the oil boom," Bradley says. "Now it's the reverse - in the middle of an economic crisis, they have to give up power and marginalize the Wahhabis and there's absolutely no precedent for that."

The Magic Kingdom of SA has all the makings for the "perfect storm" and it will probably get it.
I'd love to say that the beheading slaughter of Paul Johnson (RIP) will be the last such murder of a Western "infidel" that we'll see, but I doubt it, despite all the lip service Clown Prince Abdullah and Prince Bandar pay to "fighting terrorism" in their country and despite their very loud announcement that their security men killed Johnson's alleged murderers.
Sadly for us all, there are more where these "evil 12" came from and there will be more Paul Johnsons before we're done.
I was surprised at the people who were shocked by Johnson's beheading--weren't they shocked by Daniel Pearl's or Nick Berg's or even stunned by 9/11?
(The only "shocking" thing about it was that Johnson wasn't Jewish--just a plain old ordinary generic American--and that it happened in Saudi Arabia this time, not Pakistan or Iraq.)
It's no coincidence that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi or that since we've liberated Iraq, we've had Al Queda attacks on Westerners in Saudi itself.
SA is the "heart of the beast," if you will, and will probably be the last and final place where we will clean out Islamofacism, because SA is it's "nest"...but why not start at the very source now?
The day may soon come when U.S. forces will have to go back into SA to either save the SA Royals and/or to protect the oil fields in eastern Arabia (which would be easier and conscionable than the protecting the rule of the corrupt Sauds!).
The Left mocks the slogan "No blood for oil" as if it's a very bad and venal concept for America to have, but let's see them run their cars and homes without crude oil energy, please.
This will be a war for the oil and it will be worth it!
(Curiously, the Arabs in eastern Saudi are Shi'ites, who are indeed oppressed by the Sunni Waahab Royals, so we'd be liberating them, too, as well as securing the oil fields.)
And if the Royals sound scared, it's because they know that if all the Westerners leave the kingdom to save their own lives, Al Queda will come after them next!