August 26, 2004

Yemeni Poet Admits He's Al Qaeda Member

A Yemeni poet accused of crafting Al Qaeda propaganda defiantly admitted Thursday to a U.S. military commission that he is a member of Usama bin Laden's terror network.

Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al Bahlul, 33, is charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes.

"As God is my witness, and the United States did not put any pressure on me, I am an Al Qaeda member," the detainee said through an Arabic interpreter.
[...]
Bahlul is one of four Guantanamo detainees being arraigned at hearings this week as the first step toward trials by a five-member military commission — the first such proceedings since German saboteurs were tried secretly during World War II.

I'm sure the Left had ACLU lawyers at Camp X-Ray trying to get him off...and they probably had a poetry festival planned at Berzerkly with al Bahlul as the star, but that's not going to happen!
I sleep better at night knowing my government's got some real bad guys locked up on the island of Cuba and that our troops knew what they were doing when they rounded up jihadis like Bahlul!

Arrow-2 missile fails latest test

Israel and the US failed in latest attempts to launch an Arrow 2 missile against a Scud D like missile with a warhead that separates in flight in order to confuse the defending interceptor that took place at Point Mugu off the US West coast on Thursday.

The failed attempt came after the two countries launched a successful Arrow 2 missile test that intercepted and destroyed a live Scud B missile over the Pacific Ocean at then end of July. The Scud D missile considered to be the most sophisticated missile of its kind is in Syria's hands. Thursday's failed attempt was the thirteenth operational testing of the system since it was built and the eighth time its weapons system was tested.
[...]
Since 1998, the US has provided Israel with over a billion dollars in grants to research and develop the Arrow missile in addition it has also provided funding for two programs to compliment the Arrow, the Boost Phase Intercept Program and the Tactical High Energy Laser program.
[At least this was one thing the Clintoon Administration got right!--Jen]

Iran continues to develop more sophisticated long-range missiles such as the Shihab 3, which can be armed with chemical or nuclear warheads. Syria also maintains a sizeable ballistic missile arsenal and like Iran is keen on upgrading and expanding its capability. Syria already has stocks of chemical weapons. The Arrow missile is geared at intercepting such threats before they reach Israel.

...or our troops in Iraq!
Let's keep our fingers crossed and send our prayers up that this brilliant Arrow team can work the problem and make the system completely functional.
Not only do we have the safety and security of Israel and Iraq to worry about, but we need our SDI up and running in case Kim Jung-il of North Korea decides to use his nukes on us!
A vote for Bush on Nov. 2 is also a vote for Missile Defense, which Kerry's already said he would defund.
In one of the few busy moments of his 20-year long Senate career, Sen. Kerry actually sponsored an amendment in 1985 to end President Reagan's SDI program, which, mercifully, was defeated!
Kerry's defense(less) posture

[...]
In fact, Mr. Kerry always has vigorously opposed missile defense. In 1985, he sponsored an amendment that would have slashed the spending authorization for SDI by more than 50 percent. The Congressional Quarterly (CQ) 1985 almanac reports that Mr. Kerry's amendment "would have denied all funds for 11 projects within the [SDI] program." CQ added: "Like most of the liberal SDI critics, Kerry insisted such a defense never would work."

BTW, the Liberals (and this includes the Left both in America and in the EU) have 2 stock arguments they've used perpetually to argue against SDI: one is that it won't work and the other is that it will spur a "missile (or proliferation) race" by the Other Side, neither of which have proven to be valid.
Saddam was working feverishly to get the Arab Bomb when the IAF took out his Osirak site in 1981 and the mullahs, Kim and Bashir Assad could care less whether we have a president who backs SDI or not.
In fact, they'd prefer not!
10 out of 10 of our enemies would vote for sKeery!

Judge Stops Partial-Birth Abortion Ban

A federal judge declared the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act unconstitutional Thursday in the second such ruling in three months - even though he called the procedure "gruesome, brutal, barbaric and uncivilized."
[...]
The law, signed last November, banned a procedure known to doctors as intact dilation and extraction and called partial-birth abortion by abortion foes. The fetus is partially removed from the womb, and the skull is punctured or crushed.
[While the virtually fully-developed baby is still alive.--Jen]

Louise Melling, director of the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, said her group was thrilled by the ruling.
[How revolting!
"Thrilled" about baby murder?
Why don't they just call Scott Peterson to do the job?--J.T.]
[...]
The three verdicts are almost certain to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
[Fine!
As Hanoi John would say, "Bring it on!"]

The ban, which President Clinton twice vetoed, was seen by abortion rights activists as a fundamental departure from the Supreme Court's 1973 precedent in Roe v. Wade. But the Bush administration has argued that the procedure is cruel and unnecessary and causes pain to the fetus.
[...]
Casey, who was appointed to the bench by President Clinton in 1997, was considered by some observers to be the best legal hope for the law's supporters.
[IOW, did the ACLU set up this case just so the ban could be struck down???
That would SO unlike them...NOT.]

"We were on pins and needles on this one," said Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
[Ah, yes. The folks who brought us the "I had an abortion" T-shirt at the Dim Convention.]
"The judge was very aggressive in his questioning and very transparent in his articulation of his personal views on the matter. Fortunately, he chose to uphold the law."
[Wrong. The ban was the law.]

During a hearing earlier this year, Casey repeatedly asked doctors whether they tell pregnant women prior before an abortion that they will rip the fetus apart and that it might feel pain.
[...and that they were killing a real, live, functioning baby!]

"Did you tell them you were sucking the brains out of the same baby they desired to hold?" the judge asked Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, who performs or supervises hundreds of abortions a year in Manhattan.

Lord, have mercy!
I can't argue with His Holiness the Pope when he says that America has a "culture of death" when we allow, and some such as these ACLU and Planned Parenthood representatives even promote and advocate, practices like this!
Remember that our vote on Nov. 2 is about the appointment of judges who are strict constructions and who don't legislate their Liberal agenda from the bench like Casey and it's also about values, those who value human life--that would be the GOP--and those who breezily choose to end it--that would be the Dimocrats, who have made "belief" in abortion-on-demand an article of faith.
John Kerry, a Catholic, has come very close to being either banned from communion or even excommunicated due to his unrepentant advocacy of abortion in the U.S. Senate.
Vote Republican to speak for the babies, who can't speak yet and save their own lives, if for no other reason!

MAX CLELAND'S MISSION

In one of the stranger photo-ops in an increasingly bizarre presidential season, former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland yesterday rode his wheelchair to the front gate of President Bush's Texas ranch to protest attacks on Democratic candidate John Kerry's Vietnam War record.

Cleland lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam — hence the wheelchair — but we won't patronize him by pretending he is anything other than what he became after losing his Senate re-election race two years ago: bitterly resentful, highly partisan and an effective deflector shield for Kerry whenever the latter's military bona fides are called into question.
[This was so terrible...guess Max doesn't mind his amputated limbs being used as visual props for Kerry's unconscionable political ambitions.
You know, this is the 21st Century and we live in the most modern and wealthy country in the history of the world, so why can't Mr. Cleland get some prosthetics?
We even got new false hands for those poor Iraqi men that Saddam had multilated so I know we have the medical know-how.--Jen]

There is some irony in this.

Cleland earned no Purple Heart for his grievous injuries (they were not suffered in combat), and he regularly is called on to defend Kerry — who received three Purple Hearts, but who seems not to have a scar on his lanky body to show for it.

Some veterans — including an impressively large number who served with Kerry in Vietnam — think not all of the senator's medals were earned.

Certainly the record is sufficiently ambiguous to suggest that there is some merit to these doubts.

And, for better or for worse, Kerry has made Vietnam service the centerpiece of his campaign — though it is not at all clear why Kerry & Co. are working so hard to keep this issue alive.
[My personal view is that Kerry is a confirmed Leftist--if not an out and out Marxist and Communist-- and has been all his life.
As such, it is mandatory to people of his political stripe to curb American power and to subjugate our sovereignity to the aegis of Socialist organizations like the U.N.
To that end, he was instrumental in getting our country to give up in Vietnam (we weren't losing and weren't going to), he has a Senate record of voting against every bill to strengthen our military, and he's warned us that if elected President, he would pull our troops out of the WOT and leave the problem of Islamist terrorism to the UN and the EU.]

As evidenced by Cleland's visit to the Crawford ranch.

"The question is where is George Bush's honor. The question is where is his shame," Cleland said after Secret Service agents at the Texas ranch refused to accept a letter calling on Bush to disavow the anti-Kerry veterans.
[Where's your shame, Mr. Cleland?
And he allows the press to perpetuate the lie that he wasn't returned to Congress because the "Republicans questioned his patriotism!" Wrong!
Your constituents didn't like your voting record and voted for your opponent!]

Tough talk.

But the Bush people had a compelling counter:

"You can't have it both ways. You can't build your convention and much of your campaign around your service in Vietnam, and then try to say that only those veterans who agree with you have a right to speak up," said a Bush spokesman.

Quite so.

We suspect that anti-Kerry vets are more angry with what the senator said and did after returning from Vietnam than about whatever happened — or didn't happen — while he was there.

And it may be that Cleland and the others are trying to abort that debate before it begins.

If so, it won't work.

This campaign has only just begun.

But it may already be over because the Swifties are speaking truth to power about who John Kerry really is and has been for 30 years with their ads and their book "Unfit for Command," which is the Number #1 bestseller on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the New York Times!

Instead of dispatching bathetic, maimed Max Cleland out in the Texas heat to bug President Bush (who's a busy wartime President!), Kerry needs to sign Form 180 and disclose his military and medical records, so we can all see how he earned those medals in Vietnam and whether or not he was in Cambodia for Christmas '68.
Further, if he's upset about the Unfit for Command book, the author John O' Neill has invited Mr. Kerry to sue him for libel!
Kerry's a lawyer, Edwards is a lawyer, and they've got plenty of attorneys on their team--what's the problem?*
[*Speaking of lawyers, prominent attorney Ben Ginsburg resigned yesterday because he had been giving legal advise to both the Bush campaign and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.To avoid even the hint that there were any improprieties concerning either group, Mr. Ginsburg tendered his resignation.
As is our want, the GOP takes the example of "Caesar's wife," which is to be beyond reproach.
As is their want, the Leftist media, water carriers for the DNC, made much of this resignation and implied early and often that Ginsburg was guiltier of violating McCain-Feingold 527 laws than he would admit. *Sigh*]
But acting as the Swifties' initiative is Bush's fault and that he's responsible for the "scurrilous" ads against sKerry? Sheer grandstanding to try and deceive the American voting public yet again.

Click here to go to the links which access Kerry's Communist Manifesto "The New Soldier" which he used his wives' considerable fortunes to keep out of the hands of the American public:
[Warning: It may make your blood pressure rise and/or cause your acid reflux to act up!]
JOHN KERRY'S THE NEW SOLDIER
Here's the cover which mocks our Marines raising Old Glory over Iwo Jima in WWII:

Ricky also has links to details about Kerry's anti-war "Winter Soldier" fraud and the the transcript of his sworn Senate testimony about Vietnam war crimes.
Too bad that Kerry didn't forsee that his pal Algore would invent the Internet and make the suppression of this book's being available moot and irrelevant!
Hat tips to Lucianne and Ricky--Patriots all!

WSJ.com - A Rumsfeld Vindication
[WSJ Subscription required]

[...]
So notes Tuesday's report from the Independent Panel to Review DOD Detention Operations, empowered in May by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and chaired by former Pentagon chief James Schlesinger. The report offers invaluable perspective on the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib and is devastating to those who've sought to pin blame on an alleged culture of lawlessness going all the way to the top of the Bush Administration.
[You Dims and Leftists know who you are.--Jen]
John Kerry must be even more disoriented by the Swift boat story than he appears if he thinks now's the time to call for Mr. Rumsfeld's resignation.
[Kerry's desperate: he's in trouble from the Swifties for violating all kinds of rules of military conduct as embodied in the UCMJ and he decides to call for the top Pentagon chief's job, as if he would know military leadership?...pathetic and sad!--J.T.]

"The behavior of our troops is so much better than it was in World War II," Mr. Schlesinger told us yesterday, by way of comparison. Of the Abu Ghraib photos, he added, "It is preposterous that what these pictures show is we were prepared to use torture to get information," as Senator Ted Kennedy and others have alleged. Rather, Mr. Schlesinger characterized the photographed Abu Ghraib abuses as "free-lance activities on the part of the night shift," echoing the testimony we've heard so far during the courts martial for the accused.
[...]
Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, for one, would seem to owe some apologies. In a May hearing he accused Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Peter Pace, and the rest of the Pentagon of sanctioning war crimes. Also owing apologies are all those journalists who applauded his demagogy as some kind of gotcha moment, and who threw around words like "torture" so glibly.

Hope these fine men and women at the Pentagon don't hold their breath waiting for an apology from virtually all the 4th estate/5th column. Swine!
And the American people shouldn't either.
The Lying Liberal Left Mainstream Media owe a lot of us a huge apology--and not just for this story--but we won't get it.
The "journos" who gave us this "story," and "Bush lied" and the "Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame scandal," and the Swift Boat "smear" on Kerry and...and....and...etc, etc., etc. have so much to answer for it's staggering, but the only satisfaction we may get is when their "news" is replaced with cartoons and travelogues.
But there's an even bigger issue than the fact that the American people have been short-shrifted on the truth about the war here at home:

[...]
Worse than being wrong, these accusations have endangered the lives of soldiers by forcing a retreat in interrogation techniques so severe that it's hampering the U.S. ability to fight the counterinsurgency in Iraq. "We can't even use basic police interrogations tactics that they use in the States," a Marine officer is quoted as saying in a Journal news article yesterday by Greg Jaffe and David S. Cloud.

And the good old International Red Cross meddled in the mess, too:

[...]
In particular, the ICRC is rapped for insisting that the U.S. adhere to a controversial document known as Protocol 1, which the U.S. long ago explicitly rejected and which would grant terrorists and other non-uniformed combatants all the privileges of normal prisoners of war. The ICRC, the report says, promulgates this standard dishonestly "under the guise of customary international law."

"At the end of the day,"(I hate that clich้d phrase!) the conclusions of both the report and this op ed are damning--not to Rumsfeld and our top brass--but to the Dimocrats and their media enablers:

[...]...
While the Abu Ghraib abuses deserve to be punished, like other wartime excesses, the allegations that they had anything to do with so-called "torture memos" and a Pentagon "culture of permissiveness" are nothing but a political smear.

Which is what "far right wing" cheerleaders like myself and Rush Limbaugh have been saying all along!
Now if only we could do the same for our Vietnam experience and get John Kerry to explain what he meant in his sworn testimony before Congress in 1971 about war crimes being committed by all our soldiers including himself and being sanctioned up and down the chain of command!
What did you do in country, Sen. Kerry?
Who else did you see commit abuses and war crimes?
Why didn't you report it, as an officer of the U.S. Navy?
I want an answer to these questions before November 2 but there are tens of thousands of our Vietnam viets who've been waiting for 30 years to be cleared of these smears!
(A weirder question that needs an answer are these: Why didn't Congress press Kerry for details at that time and launch a similar investigation?
Why did they just take Kerry's word for it?
And why wasn't he prosecuted for his war crimes back then?)

August 24, 2004

Iraqi arms scientists killed before they talk

Anti-coalition forces have killed a prominent Iraqi chemical-weapons scientist whom U.S. investigators were questioning at Abu Ghraib prison, in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of Saddam Hussein's arsenal.
    
The scientist's death is not the first such killing, and it has some U.S. analysts wondering whether there is a pattern and also whether the Iraqi insurgents had incredibly good intelligence and a deadly aim — or were just lucky.
[...]
The death is at least the fourth hostile-fire killing of Iraqi scientists who had been talking to the ISG [Iraqi Survey Group]. There have been press reports that as many as nine have been slain.

 One of the country's most prominent nuclear scientists, Majid Hussein Ali, was found dead earlier this year, shot twice in the back. He had been questioned by the ISG.
[Wasn't this "Chemical Ali?" I didn't realize he'd been offed with all the whirl of war news!--Jen]

David Kay, who led the weapons search until he resigned in December, said in October that two scientists, whom he did not name, cooperating with the ISG were killed.
    
"We think it was because, in fact, he was engaged in discussion with us," Mr. Kay said of one of the killings.
[...]

Rep. Steve Buyer, Indiana Republican, has called on the Bush administration to better publicize the killings as proof that Saddam loyalists are still hiding something.

"I want the world to be informed that these individuals are being assassinated, and it's not because they have a new cooking recipe," Mr. Buyer said.
    
The ISG has yet to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam once possessed and had used on Iranian soldiers and his own citizens. But some Bush officials suspect that the weapons are hidden in Iraq or were moved across the border to Syria.

...or maybe even moved into Iran, I would add.
We know Saddam had them and we know we've found very few WMDs since we took control of Iraq, so the mystery remains, Where are they???
I'll sleep a little easier when they're found and acounted for not just because it will exonerate President Bush, but because I'll know they can't be used on our troops in country or on us here at home!