July 24, 2004

The Jemaah Islamiyah terror group tried in the past year to carry out attacks in Southeast Asia but failed because it lacked funds, support from other militant operations and leadership within its ranks, officials said Friday. The al-Qaida-linked organization's ability to mount attacks was severely dented by the arrest of scores of militants after the Sept. 11 hijackings, including Hambali, the group's operations chief, a Malaysian government official told The Associated Press.

Remnants of Jemaah Islamiyah have made several attempts to regroup in Indonesia, but one of their biggest problems was they "could not agree on a leader to take over from Hambali," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Hambali -- a high-ranking al-Qaida leader and mastermind behind Jemaah Islamiyah -- was Southeast Asia's most-wanted fugitive before his August 2003 arrest in Thailand. Thai police turned him over to U.S. custody.
[He must be at Gitmo. Good place for him, because it seems that Indonesia is having trouble trying the other Bali bombers who were captured and sent into custody there. They may be freed on a legal technicality!--Jen]

Hambali is suspected of orchestrating the Oct. 12, 2002, Bali bombings that killed 202 people, and of hosting at least two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Kuala Lumpur ahead of the attacks in the United States.

A Malaysian security official also said the network had been severely crippled by arrests in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia in the last two years.
[...]
The government official also said authorities in Southeast Asia have in the past year gained the upper hand in cutting off Jemaah Islamiyah's support from militant groups in the Philippines, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He said the crackdown on cells in the region had also left the al-Qaida-linked group without funds to mount attacks.

"The threat posed by Jemaah Islamiyah especially in Indonesia is still there as several key members are still at large," the official said. "But they are on the run ... it is important that authorities keep up this pressure."

Excellent news!
I must admit that the significance of nabbing Hambali escaped me at the time of his capture...I must have been preoccupied with some other aspect of the War.
But this proves he was a big catch!
The War on Terror is being won, then, at least in the Asian/Pacific Rim corner and our methods are effective--I am heartened by the news and grateful for the diligence of our allies, too.
I guess we shouldn't cut Arroyo's Philippines loose completely just yet, in spite of their recent cowardice, in light of the cooperation they've rendered in these other areas.

July 23, 2004

Home for the first time

Aircraft carrier Reagan arrives in San Diego

Former first lady Nancy Reagan waves as she arrives on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan off the coast of San Diego.

ABOARD THE USS RONALD REAGAN – A smiling Nancy Reagan greeted sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan on Friday as it arrived at its homeport in San Diego Bay for the first time.

Thousands of spectators, mainly relatives of sailors aboard the ship, filled grandstands along the pier at Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado. Others lined the mainland side of San Diego Bay to witness the arrival of the Navy's newest carrier.

Under overcast skies, a flotilla of pleasure boats and fire boats shooting 50-foot streams of water escorted the ship, and sailors in white uniforms lined its edges as it reached the dock to the cheers of the crowd.

Mrs. Reagan had arrived aboard the ship by helicopter as the vessel approached the San Diego coast Friday morning.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz greeted her on deck before Mrs. Reagan, wearing a white pant suit, passed along rows of sailors, shaking their hands and exchanging greetings.

The late president's son Michael Reagan, actor Tom Selleck, the country music group SHeDAISY and the news media were also aboard, after flying out day earlier as the ship cruised hundreds of miles offshore.

The USS Reagan towers 20 stories above the waterline and is nearly as long as the Empire State Building is tall. Its flight deck covers 4 ½ acres.

Mrs. Reagan had christened the partially completed ship in 2001, breaking a bottle of American sparkling wine against its bow. She was on hand in Norfolk, Va., again last year when it was commissioned, telling the crew to "bring her to life."

Capt. Andres "Drew" Brugal, the executive officer, said he thrilled to be hosting Mrs. Reagan aboard the ship.

"Obviously it's kind of a sad time right now, so close to the president's death. She's the sponsor of the ship and we're very happy to see her," he said.

Mrs. Reagan visited the ship's Ronald Reagan Room, a museum featuring the former president's cavalry uniform, movie posters, a video presentation and a chunk of the Berlin wall.

In a nod to Reagan's Hollywood days, the ship also has a celebrity walk of fame with such names as Alfred Hitchcock and Spencer Tracy on the mess deck.

Ahead of the ship's arrival, a carnival atmosphere prevailed along the pier. SeaWorld workers dressed as whales and a Navy band playing rock music shared space with vendors hawking souvenirs, soft drinks and commercial services.

"I think it's a special ship, and it's named for a special person," said Gail Everett, 46, who drove from Atlanta to attend the ceremony and see her son, a sailor aboard the USS Reagan.

The ship sailed May 27 from Norfolk with a crew of 3,600, making its lengthy journey through the Straits of Magellan at the tip of South America.

Reagan died June 5 at 93.

"It was probably most fitting and most appropriate that at the time of his passing, a carrier strike group named in his honor was in fact conducting the very same kind of operations that he espoused through his presidency – peace through strength," said Rear Adm. Robert Moeller, who commands the carrier strike group named for Reagan.

God Bless the USS Reagan and all who sail in her!
And it's nice to see Nancy have such a nice occasion to bring her out of the house after President Reagan's funeral.
The Rear Admiral is right, too; everywhere this carrier goes, its sends the message of strength and unrivaled US military power, which is what has kept peace throughout the world for a long time and will for years to come.

The Boldness of the President

[...]
Well, look now to what the 9/11 report has to say about the man to whom President Clinton, under attack by an independent counsel,delegated so much in respect of national security, Samuel “Sandy” Berger. The report cites a 1998 meeting between Mr. Berger and the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, at which Mr. Tenet presented a plan to capture Osama bin Laden.
[In actual fact, the NYSun gives Clinton too much of a pass because he was "under attack by an independent counsel;" truth was, from the minute he took office, Clinton couldn't be bothered with meeting with the CIA chief or hear about threats to our national security.--Jen]
   
 “In his meeting with Tenet, Berger focused most, however, on the question of what was to be done with Bin Ladin if he were actually captured. He worried that the hard evidence against Bin Ladin was still skimpy and that there was a danger of snatching him and bringing him to the United States only to see him acquitted,” the report says, citing a May 1, 1998, Central Intelligence Agency memo summarizing the weekly meeting between Messrs. Berger and Tenet.
[This, of course, is typical of the Clinton Administration's approach to the AQ terrorism problem and the barrier of the Gorelick "wall" where terrorism was to be treated as a legal matter to be tried in a US court of law and not acts of war against the nation attacked.--J.T.]

 In June of 1999, another plan for action against Mr. bin Laden was on the table. The potential target was a Qaeda terrorist camp in Afghanistan known as Tarnak Farms. The commission report released yesterday cites Mr. Berger’s “handwritten notes on the meeting paper” referring to “the presence of 7 to 11 families in the Tarnak Farms facility, which could mean 60-65 casualties.”According to the Berger notes, “if he responds, we’re blamed.”
[Blamed for what? Taking out 65 killers and enemies? What about the hundreds of innocents killed in AQ's first attack on the WTC in '93, the attack on the USS Cole and those killed and wounded in the African embassy bombings?]
    
On December 4, 1999, the National Security Council’s counterterrorism coordinator, Richard Clarke, sent Mr. Berger a memo suggesting a strike in the last week of 1999 against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan. Reports the commission: “In the margin next to Clarke’s suggestion to attack Al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote, ‘no.’ ”
[This is what Bergler was out to destroy when he stuffed classified, pass-word restricted docs into his socks and pants at the National Archives.]
    
In August of 2000, Mr. Berger was presented with another possible plan for attacking Mr. bin Laden.This time, the plan would be based on aerial surveillance from a “Predator” drone. Reports the commission: “In the memo’s margin,Berger wrote that before considering action, ‘I will want more than verified location: we will need, at least, data on pattern of movements to provide some assurance he will remain in place.’ ”

In other words, according to the commission report, Mr. Berger was presented with plans to take action against the threat of Al Qaeda four separate times — Spring 1998, June 1999, December 1999, and August 2000. Each time, Mr. Berger was an obstacle to action. Had he been a little less reluctant to act, a little more open to taking pre-emptive action, maybe the 2,973 killed in the September 11, 2001, attacks would be alive today.
    
It really doesn’t matter now what was in the documents from the National Archives that Mr. Berger says he inadvertently misplaced. The evidence in the commission’s report yesterday is more than enough to embarrass him thoroughly.He is a hardworking, warm man with a wonderful family,
[No doubt, but why bring that up here and now?--Jen]
but his background as a trade lawyer and his dovish, legalistic and political instincts made him, in retrospect, the tragically wrong man to be making national security decisions for America in wartime.
[What the NYSun fails to point out is that Ken Starr or not, why wasn't President Clinton the one who made these decisions? Or was he?--J.T.]
That Senator Kerry had Mr. Berger as a campaign foreign policy adviser even before the archives scandal is enough to raise doubts about the senator’s judgment.
[Well, DUH but it bears saying in print!]

Neither Mr.Berger nor any other American is to blame for the deaths of Americans on September 11, 2001. The moral fault lies only with the terrorists, not with the victims.With the war still on,one can’t help but to ponder who might best defend the country going forward, and how.
   
 The commission’s report contains plenty of other valuable information. Many of the recommendations — to move operations functions to the Department of Defense from the CIA, to speed the transition between administrations so that key defense positions are not left vacant, to stress “widespread political participation”in the Arab and Muslim world,to declassify the intelligence budget, to provide a written national security transition handover memo when administrations change — make sense.
[Note that these recommendations were based on what happened to Team Bush during the Florida Recount mess; Bill Clinton refused to let the Bush people have access to their transition offices and the process of getting the Bush Administration in place and staffing all key positions was put off by months.]

Other aspects of the report, including the absence of serious recommendations for dealing with the terrorist threats from Syria or Iran, are harder to understand. The report is being taken seriously for its political ramifications for the Bush administration and for its policy recommendations. But perhaps its greatest value is
as a history — more, a sad epitaph — of the Clinton-Berger administration.
    
Why was it Mr. Berger rather than President Clinton himself making all these judgment calls? As the report puts it, these decisions “were made by the Clinton administration under extremely difficult domestic political circumstances.Opponents were seeking the president’s impeachment.”
[This doesn't pass the smell test for me as an excuse! There are men out there now who keep trying to impeach President Bush and he is under attack daily from Dimocrat Senators and Congresspersons and from the Leftist media, but it doesn't impair his ability to function as a wartime president!--Jen]

    One can blame the special prosecutor law or Mr. Clinton for agreeing to name a special prosecutor, or one can blame the underlying reckless behavior by Mr. Clinton that got him into the “difficult domestic political circumstances.” Or one can blame the Republican Congress. No matter what one’s view of the underlying merits, it is hard to deny that one of the costs to the country was a preoccupied president.
[I maintain that Clinton was just preoccupied. Period. This is evident in his recent memoirs and in the non-accomplishments of his 8 years in office.
The man just plain couldn't focus.]
There’s no guarantee that, in the absence of the scandal and the prosecutor, Mr. Clinton would have acted against Mr. bin Laden. But the chances would have been at least somewhat increased, and it would have been Mr. Clinton rather than Mr. Berger making the call.
[I'm not so very sure that from the way I understand the Clintoon Administration "worked," Bubba was even "bothered" with making these "unimportant" decisions.
Check out Monsoor Ijaz's story about how his negotiations as a "Clinton ambassador" with the Sudanese government to get OBL in American custody were thwarted by not being able to get access to Clinton.
And then there's the officer who carried the football and who wrote Dereliction of Duty about Clinton being "too busy" with golf tournaments to give the orders for a strike on Osama if Berger, Clarke, Lake and others were successful in recommending one.]

The boldness of the president, in Justice Scalia’s phrase,had been lost,and the man left in charge, Mr. Berger, was not up to it. When we think of the repairs that need to be made in the coming months, it is of this: The need to carry on our national politics with an eye to protecting the boldness of our leaders and particularly in a time of war. It is something to think about amid one of the bitterest, most adhominem political seasons in the history of the Republic.

So Berger didn't have the guts to back a strike on Bin Laden or to recommend that we get him from the Sudanese, but he did have the nerve to break all kinds of laws and to jeopardize our national security by stealing and destroying classified documents from the National Archives?
IMHO, Bergler's burglary was nothing less than a coverup for Clinton, to destroy notes and reports which showed that Clinton and his Administration knew OBL was a real threat to the American homeland, but they did nothing with that knowledge.
IOW, Clinton knew and people died.
The Left keeps harping on the timing of the news that Bergler was being investigated for these crimes, as if that really mattered.
When would have been a good time for the news to break that once again, a member of the "most ethical administration in history" had committed an unethical act?
The news broke this week just 3 days before the report of the 9/11 Commission went on sale to the American public.
This report lets Clinton, Richard Clarke and Bergler off the hook for any culpability for the 9/11 attacks and that's what matters to these people.
I be willing to bet that the Clinton/Bergler/Clarke people leaked the news this week to Lanny Davis's favorite reporter for leaks because they were at last "in the clear."
As the NYSun notes, the 9/11 attacks were the "sad epitaph" for the corrupt Clinton people; they are a group of politicos who will take responsibility for nothing and even here, in this news story exposing yet more of their sleaziness, they can get their enablers in the media to blame someone else for their mistakes like Ken Starr.
I refuse to believe that Clinton couldn't deal with the real threat to this country that Al Queda presented because he was thinking of new ways to lie about his affair with Monica!
The man was unsuited for the Oval Office and should never have been there!
How we got through the 8 years of his "rule" I will never know, except that God really must bless America.
What we should wonder at is not that the 9/11 attacks happened and 3,000 civilians were killed in peacetime but that we weren't hit by far worse attacks killing many thousands, if not millions.
Thank you, Lord, for watching over us.
And America, please don't elect another power-hungry idiot to be Commander-in-Chief like John Kerry.

 

July 21, 2004

Jenna Bush, daughter of the President Bush, sticks her tongue out at the media Tuesday, July 20, 2004, as she departs Lambert International Airport in St. Louis for an appearance with her father in St. Charles, MO.

Jenna Bush pokes tongue at press
Jenna, sweetheart, there's a lot of us out here in the Heartland that would've loved to have done this same thing (and worse) to the Lying Liberal Left media who have been so awful to your father!
So, thanks, hon!
And don't change a thing: you are adorable!

Sloppy Berger

The image of Sandy Berger stuffing notes into his socks at the National Archives conveys the culture of carelessness and corruption under Bill Clinton far better than anything the 9/11 Commission will report. The Commission fails to see that the fundamental explanation for America's porous security before 9/11 is not structural but cultural. Eight years of Clintonian indiscipline exposed America to attack by disciplined terrorists.
[...]

Perhaps Sandy Berger can defend his stock-stuffing at the National Archives as normative behavior from the Clinton years. Recall when ex-bar bouncer Craig Livingstone, elevated to a security position in the Clinton White House by Hillary Clinton, "inadvertently"(Berger's word for cramming notes into his clothing) lifted 900 FBI files on political appointees from the Bush Sr. and Reagan administrations. This was mere "sloppiness," of course, as innocent and accidental as placing security information in one's tube sock.

The Clinton administration raised inadvertence to something of an art form. Berger's friends were particularly adept at it. When one of Clinton's CIA directors, John Deutch, inadvertently took home a CIA-issued computer with top secret information on it, Sandy Berger rushed to his defense, and succeeded in persuading Clinton to pardon him. "Berger and other senior White House officials believed Deutch deserved a pardon even though his home computer security violations were egregious. They cited his overall contributions to the government over many years and the fact that there is no evidence that any of the classified material he mishandled was ever obtained by unauthorized individuals," reported the Washington Post back then.
[...]
During the Clinton years, you could always count on a report about something missing, from laptops White House interns lifted to computers and documents untraceable at vital agencies. After the State Department lost a computer once, the Clinton administration explained it away merely as an official forgetting to close a door to a "secure" conference room. When White House officials walked off with hundreds of thousands of dollars of presidential souvenirs from Air Force One at the end of Clinton's term, that was explained away as precedent. When a spy placed an eavesdropping device in the State Department, that too was an accidental oversight. Apparently he just walked through the front door. The FBI reported after the incident that its officials had seen a Russian spy loitering near the Foggy Bottom entrance.

Hazel O'Leary, Clinton's Energy Secretary, had figured out his security ethos early on, and just dispensed with security badges for visitors to nuclear labs. Placing security badges on foreign visitors, she famously explained, was discriminatory. Then it was learned that nuclear secrets had been nabbed by Chinese Communists. Sandy Berger's response? "We're talking about breaches of security that happened in the mid-1980s."
[Actually, the U.S. is still having major problems with security at our nuclear labs in Los Alamos, NM;
as I type this, almost all work has been suspended there until their security breaches are fixed!
This while we are at war and our 2 biggest enemies, Iran and North Korea, are actively working to get nukes!--J.T.]

Berger was criticized at the time for being blasé about security lapses and failing to report Chinese espionage at nuclear labs to Congress, and for having gone out of his way to interfere with a Justice Department investigation of Loral Space & Communications Ltd. for an illegal transfer of missile technology to China. Berger's Loral lobbying (the press reported that Loral chairman Bernard Schwartz was one of the Democrats' largest soft-money contributors during 1995-1996, and had hired a former National Security Council spokesman) was successful.

Clinton granted a waiver to Loral for the technology transfer, just as Berger successfully pushed Clinton to pardon Deutch. Now Berger has placed himself in a position where it looks like he may need one.

Good thing, Slick Willy isn't president anymore...for so many reasons!
Let's hope that Dubya doesn't pardon Burglar out of the goodness of his heart, either!
I want Sandy to do hard time for this, because he knew what he was doing BIG TIME.
In fact, I'm fairly certain that whatever documents he "disappeared" must have been fairly damning of the Clinton Administration and must surely expose the way they did NOT deal with the Al Queda threat and most probably knew how much of a threat OBL and AQ were long before 9/11!
(They may even outline the 9/11 attacks themselves...! We need to know!)
Sandy--for whatever reasons, including blackmail, I have no doubt--was put up to this by the Clintons.
In the best of all possible worlds, I'd love to see Bill and Hill go to prison for this, too.
But more importantly than their long deserved punishment and incarceration, the American people need to know what those documents said!
This also throws the critical findings of the soon-to-be-released-9/11 Commission report into limbo, if key information wasn't included.
What did Clinton know and when did he know it?

July 20, 2004

Blair dons Thatcher mantle to defend war on Saddam

A defiant Tony Blair refused to apologise for the Iraq war last night and sought to cloak himself in the mantle of Lady Thatcher by telling MPs to "rejoice" that Iraq had been liberated.
[...]
He refused to give ground to his critics, even though no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons have been found and Iraq is now the "front line of the war against terrorism".
[That's right, Tony! That's why we're there and 'preciate you being there with us, shoulder to shoulder!--Jen]

The "blessings from the fall of Saddam" were great. Removing him had not been a war crime, it was an act of liberation for the Iraqi people.

Facing interruptions from MPs who opposed the war, Mr Blair said: "Whatever mistakes have been made let us rejoice, let us be pleased Iraq has been liberated." His remarks echoed Lady Thatcher's declaration during the Falklands conflict in 1982 that the country should "rejoice" that the Marines had recaptured South Georgia from Argentina.

Call it hunch, but I think that Tony realized anew at President Reagan's funeral when he watched Baroness Thatcher's flawlessly moving eulogy to "Ronnie" how splendid a Prime Minister she had been and knew that if he followed in her footsteps, he would certainly not put a foot wrong!
Yes, Tony, I rejoice almost daily that the Coalition did liberate Iraq and so do the Iraqi people!

July 19, 2004

Schwarzenegger Stands by'Girlie Men' Line

Democrats aren't amused by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's use of the mocking term "girlie men" to describe some lawmakers, although a spokesman for the governor said no apology would be forthcoming.

Schwarzenegger dished out the insult at a rally Saturday as he claimed Democrats were delaying the budget by catering to special interests. Democrats protested that the remark was sexist and homophobic.
[The Dims have absolutely no sense of humor! Pity!--Jen]

"If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers ... if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men," Schwarzenegger said to the cheering crowd at a mall food court in Ontario.

The governor lifted the term from a long-running "Saturday Night Live" skit in which two pompous, Schwarzenegger-worshipping weightlifters repeatedly use it to mock those who don't meet their standards of physical perfection.

Too funny!
Go get 'em, Governator!
First VP Cheney told Leaky Leahy what he could do with himself, now Arnold calls out the obstructionist Dims in his state--I love it!
(I was also suprised to learn that Arnold had embraced the "Hans and Franz" jokes from SNL. That is fun, too.)
Don't apologize, Arnold and keep taking your case to the people of California--that's why they voted for you!

France: Sharon unwelcome after call on Jews to immigrate

France informed Israel Monday that Prime Minister Sharon, whose office has been planning a visit to France, is not welcome in light of his call to French Jews to immigrate to Israel.

Iraeli diplomatic officials said that Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, French President Jacques Chirac's personal diplomatic advisor, spoke to Israeli diplomat Jacques Revah and informed him that as a result of Sharon's call to French Jewry to leave France, "there is no reason to see Sharon."
...[...]
Sharon, during a speech to the leadership of the United Jewish Communities on Sunday, called on France's 600,000 Jews to immigrate to Israel "immediately."

"If I have to advocate to our brothers in France, I would tell them one thing: move to Israel, as early as possible," Sharon said, in response to a question about anti-Semitism in France and in Europe.

Sharon's comments came a week after a 23-year-old woman shocked France by first claiming she was the victim of an anti-Semitic incident on a train, and then admitting that she made the whole thing up.

Although this particular woman was not attacked, in the first six months of 2004 there were - according to French Foreign Ministry statistics - 135 physical attacks against Jews. By comparison, in all of 2003 there were 127 such attacks.

This French diplomatic slap follows the persistence of the French in having talks with the PA and Arafat, over the protestations of the Israeli government and her allies, like the US and Italy, and France's willingness to back anti-Israel and pro-Paleostinian resolutions in the UN and anti-Israeli and pro-PA judgements in the ICJ and EU.
Given the horrifying rise in attacks on French Jews and their property since the Intifada began in 2000, you can't blame PM Sharon for encouraging his fellow Jews to move to the Jewish homeland where they will be safer.
In the light of French bellicosity, rudeness and intransigence to both the USA and now Israel, I can only conclude that France is once again in bed with one or more of our enemies (I'm thinking Soddy Arabia or Iran or perhaps both.).
We do indeed live in interesting and terrible times.