Are we at war – or not?

For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?

Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies – that he may not be guilty.

And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial.

When the Justice Department sets up a task force to wage war on a crime organization like the Mafia or MS-13, no U.S. official has a right to shoot Mafia or gang members on sight. No one has a right to bomb their homes. No one has a right to regard the possible death of their wives and children in an attack as acceptable collateral damage.

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar III:1

President Obama, we are at war. The Islamic Terrorists are not cooperating with your transformation of our society into a Politically Correct Utopia with nomenclature that neutralizes the ugliness of war. They do not chant Obama, Obama, they do not faint on cue, they pay no attention to subjective pandering by sexually mis-oriented news journalists like Chris Mathews. Their war is a fanaticism that welcomes death while destroying us, the Infidel. Although you may see yourself whispering Allahu Akbar during your death and accruing your place in heaven, the vast majority have no interest or sympathy with Islamic Terrorism, we seek to destroy it.

This war is no longer about your narcissistic view of yourself and your ratings; it is about us, the American people and the fanatic bastards who want to kill us. No they are not like Christian Fundamentalists or Conservatives or Jews or even Muslims, they are radical Islamic fascists or terrorists and they are at war with us and with you, whether you are your incompetent sycophants posing as advisors care to admit it or not.

At Fort Hood you related this purposely confusing message:

This is a time of war. And yet these Americans did not die on a foreign field of battle. They were killed here, on American soil, in the heart of this great American community. It is this fact that makes the tragedy even more painful and even more incomprehensible. Read the rest of this entry »

Time magazine:

Stresses at Fort Hood Were Likely Intense for Hasan

The Washington Post:

At Walter Reed, a palpable strain on mental-health system

And on and on.

Day after day since the terrorist acts of Hasan we have been inundated with calls from out MSM and the Democrats that this was all one man going crazy. Why did he go crazy? Well, because of the strain of treating those with PTSD.

Now even treating PTSD will give you PTSD. Nevermind the thousands of men and women who have listened to these horrors day in and day out as they treated our wounded soldiers….and they never picked up a gun to kill innocent life. Nevermind the thousands of soldiers who came back from war and did not murder 13 people.

No….it’s not because he wanted to terrorize the populace to effectively stop the “war against Islam.”

He just snapped. Read the rest of this entry »

Via ABC News:

A pharmacy college graduate made a defiant appearance in federal court Wednesday, hours after being charged with conspiring with two other men in a terror plot to kill two prominent U.S. politicians and carry out a holy war by attacking shoppers in U.S. malls and American troops in Iraq.

Authorities say the men’s plans — in which they used code words like “peanut butter and jelly” for fighting in Somalia and “culinary school” for terrorist camps — were thwarted in part when they could not find training and were unable to buy automatic weapons, authorities said.

Tarek Mehanna, 27, was arrested Wednesday morning at his parents’ home in Sudbury, an upscale suburb 20 miles west of Boston, and appeared for a brief hearing later in the day. When ordered by the judge to stand to hear the charge against him, he refused. He finally did stand — tossing his chair loudly to the floor — only after his father urged him to do so.

“This really, really is a show,” his father, Ahmed Mehanna, said afterward.

Uh…no. That would be balloon boy and his father. This is different…

Read the rest of this entry »

Nicolas Asfouri/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Interesting piece at Foreign Policy Small Wars Journal:

While Obama and his team deliberate, other developments are underway that will either support McChrystal’s request or perhaps create alternatives. On Sept. 20, the Los Angeles Times reported on another “surge” into Afghanistan, this one by the Central Intelligence Agency. According to the article, the CIA’s head count in Afghanistan will increase to 700, led by increases in paramilitary officers, intelligence analysts, and operatives tracking the behavior of Afghan government officials.

There is something to be said about the success of having a light footprint, utilizing Special Forces and CIA rather than a heavy military force (but wasn’t the Rumsfeld approach only temporarily successful?). We have such footprint operations going on all over the world, to great success (re: Robert Kaplan’s Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts)

We shouldn’t underestimate the power of viagra diplomacy to carry us to victory in Overseas Contingency Operations.

Iran continues to treat us like suckers because we behave like suckers born every minute:

“I made it quite clear that when they argue that their nuclear facilities are genuinely for peaceful purposes the burden of proof is on their side,” he said.

Ahmadinejad said Friday his country has complied with requirements to inform the IAEA six months before a new enrichment facility becomes operational, and was giving 18 months notice.

Iran has agreed to allow the IAEA to inspect the new facility. At the news conference Tuesday, Ban was asked why he didn’t wait for the U.N. nuclear agency to issue its report, as Ahmadinejad said.

“To be transparent and credible, when you have such an intent to build facilities, they should have informed _ notified the IAEA long time before, not just before everything would be completed,” Ban replied.

“That’s what I’m raising. So there is a question of transparency. That is why the world leaders have expressed their deep concern and that is why I have also expressed my concern,” he said.

“I urged him that Iran as (a) historically rich and proud country should take the constructive role in the international community by making very transparent and directly involvement and engagement in negotiations to prove all the pending issues,” Ban said.

The secretary-general said he was following up his meeting with Ahmadinejad with a meeting later Tuesday with Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

“I sincerely hope that all these questions pertaining this new facility and other facilities _ all the pending issues concerning nuclear development programs of Iran should be resolved through dialogue in a transparent and objective manner with (the) international atomic agency involved,” he said.

*Groan*…why do we insist on being played like a violin?

Last week in wake of the disclosure of Iran’s “secret” “semi-industrial enrichment fuel facility”, Curt linked to this sentence in the WaPo:

President Barack Obama reiterated that Iran may have some right to nuclear energy _ provided it takes steps to prove its aspirations are peaceful.

“Prove its aspirations are peaceful”?!

Nima Gerami and James M. Acton at Foreign Policy spell it out:

the evidence that the new facility is part of a military program is compelling. According to unclassified U.S. government talking points, the clandestine facility near Qom is “intended to hold approximately 3,000 centrifuges” of an unknown type. In 2007, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, then head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), said that Iran’s target was to have 50,000 centrifuges at its Natanz enrichment facility. This number was needed to make “meaningful amounts of nuclear fuel” for one or two commercial-scale power plants to generate electricity.

Thus, by Iran’s own admission, the Qom facility is too small for civilian purposes. It is not, however, too small to produce meaningful amounts of highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapons program.
Read the rest of this entry »

You know its bad when the French are tougher then the United States….what a change:

Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.

“Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.

“I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map,” he continued, referring to Israel.

The sharp-tongued French leader even implied that Mr Obama’s resolution 1887 had used up valuable diplomatic energy.

“If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce our own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons,” he said.

Mr Sarkozy has previously called the US president’s disarmament crusade “naive.”

Ouch.

This on top of The Telegraph calling him President Pantywaist last week in response to his roll back of the missile shield: Read the rest of this entry »

3 Provisions of the PATRIOT Act (”Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”) are set to expire at the end of the year.

NYTimes:

WASHINGTON — As Congress prepares to consider extending crucial provisions of the USA Patriot Act, civil liberties groups and some Democratic lawmakers are gearing up to press for sweeping changes to surveillance laws.

Both the House and the Senate are set to hold their first committee hearings this week on whether to reauthorize three sections of the Patriot Act that expire at the end of this year. The provisions expanded the power of the F.B.I. to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls in the course of a counterterrorism investigation.

Is this really an “expansion” of power? Or a matter of updating existing powers in order for the F.B.I. to effectively do its job of protecting American lives in wake of 21st century technological advancements?

Read the rest of this entry »

This one:

Not this one:

Congressman Joe Wilson (R-SC) appears to be a decent and honorable man. Part of his background includes military service (with four sons currently serving). The truth czar’s impassioned outburst during President Obama’s healthcare speech may seem out of step with his character and his military discipline, but he vented/channeled what many frustrated Americans were shouting into their tv sets, while provoking a million-mob strong march to turn out in D.C.: You LIE.

Not only is former ambassador Joe Wilson a liar; but the current president of the United States is one, too.

Read the rest of this entry »

History-like hindsight-is supposed to be 20:20, but the deliberate partisan, political divide regarding the invasion of Iraq makes that hard.

It’s not a new phenomenon. Long ago it was said that the true story of a war can’t be told until the last of its veterans has passed away, and only a few months ago did the last World War One veteran go to his great reward. For decades after the Civil War (and some would argue even today) the debate raged on, and the healing of Southern Reconstruction didn’t really start culturally until the unity of the Spanish-American War turned foes into brothers-in-arms.

Conspiracy theories-often fueled by politics-still rage over the 911 attacks, the invasion of Iraq, whether or not Roosevelt deliberately allowed the Pearl Harbor attack to happen, whether or not the U.S. Navy knew the U.S.S. Maine had a boiler explosion and wasn’t sunk by a mine. People still think that the Lusitania was set on a suicide mission to get the United States into World War One. These myths will always remain, and it’s good that they do because they spark investigation and a search for understanding of these world changing events. The relationship between the 911 attacks and the invasion of Iraq is interesting in that both have a long list of conspiracy theories attacked to each, and yet the abstract, more indirect relationship between the two events is dismissed out of hand. To that end, even if one believes the relationship between Iraq War and 911 attacks is a conspiracy theory, it’s worthwhile to examine if for no other reason than harvesting a better understanding. Read the rest of this entry »

Vindication of the effectiveness of Warfare over Lawfare, and a triumph for the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

The ambivelent news is that The UK recently managed to convict a group of three terrorists for attempted terrorism:

Airline terror trial: The bomb plot to kill 10,000 people
Three British Muslims have been convicted of planning a series of co-ordinated suicide bomb attacks on transatlantic airliners, which could have killed up to 10,000 people.
By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Telegraph.co.uk

The al-Qaeda cell plotted to cause mass murder by detonating home-made liquid explosives on board at least seven passenger flights bound for the US and Canada. The plot had the potential to be three times as deadly as the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

The convictions followed Britain’s largest counter-terrorism operation and two criminal trials which, in total, cost an estimated £60million.

All three men convicted on Monday had been found guilty at an earlier trial last year of conspiracy to murder, but prosecutors said it was vital to secure a conviction on another charge of conspiring to blow up the aircraft in order to prove that the threat to air traffic was genuine.

How, you ask, is this ambivalent news? It took two trials. Read the rest of this entry »

The Obama administration told a judge late Monday that it will continue to withhold information regarding past detainee policies for national security reasons, a decision assailed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had been seeking Bush-era documents “including a presidential directive authorizing CIA ‘black sites,’” CIA inspector general records, Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel documents about the CIA’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

In the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuits, U.S. District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York had ordered the Obama administration to either turn over various documents pertaining to detainee policies by August 31 or provide justification for withholding them.

Coming on the heels of Cheney’s FOX News Sunday interview, in which the former Vice President leveled criticism toward the current President that he is increasing America’s vulnerability to terrorism, is an interview by Jake Tapper with the president’s National Security Adviser, Gen. Jim Jones (Ret.). Jones claims that under the Obama Administration, we have been more successful in putting terrorists out of business and in improving international relations:

“This type of radical fundamentalism or terrorism is a threat not only to the United States but to the global community,” Jones said. “The world is coming together on this matter now that President Obama has taken the leadership on it and is approaching it in a slightly different way – actually a radically different way – to discuss things with other rulers to enhance the working relationships with law enforcement agencies – both national and international.”

Jones said that “we are seeing results that indicate more captures, more deaths of radical leaders and a kind of a global coming-together by the fact that this is a threat to not only the United States but to the world at-large and the world is moving toward doing something about it.”

The former Marine General didn’t provide any specific numbers to back up his claim, but he said “there is an increasing trend and I think we seen that in different parts of the world over the last few months for sure.” He added that he was not “making a tally sheet saying we are killing more people, capturing more people than they did — that is not the issue.”

Read the rest of this entry »