Sometimes It Takes A Kid

The "WHY" is constructed with the names of the U.S. Soldiers killed in Iraq. It was put on the refridgerator by the mother of an eleventh grade student.

The eleventh grade student is more conservative than mom. Her statement bothered him. He took the time and constructed "FREEDOM" with the names of the U.S. Soldiers killed in Iraq.

I bet consversations at dinner time are quite lively at the dinner table at that house.



Source: http://www.evilconservativeblog.com/2005/12/30/sometime-it-takes-a-kid/

Dana Priest lacks (support for) Intelligence

One of the most treasonous acts is when a government's own intelligence community sells out their Commander-in-Chief. That is what certain elements within the CIA has done to the Bush Administration's ability to combat Islamofascist terrorism. Below is a very lucid illustration of this premise:

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Dana Priest lacks (support for) Intelligence

I held a security clearance for 15+ years and the Washington Post's Dana Priest seems to have read more classified documents than I ever did. She is a one woman wrecking crew doing her level best to eviscerate our ability to conduct covert operations. The anti-W wing at CIA has used her as the tool they needed to ensure that no tactics that wouldn't be appropriate in Elementary School are used against the mass-murdering jihadis.
Fisk on!

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and administration sources.

The only outcry heard anywhere is the caterwauling by the media and the usual suspects on the far left. The rest of America thinks spying on people who destroy skyscrapers is wise.

"The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved."

Apparently far too many of these details are known to a WaPo reporter perfectly willing to sacrifice our collective security to salve her conscience, and maybe catch some glory too...eh?

"The administration's decisions to rely on a small circle of lawyers for legal interpretations that justify the CIA's covert programs and not to consult widely with Congress on them have also helped insulate the efforts from the growing furor, said several sources who have been involved."

Because whenever I'm planning a covert operation, the hyper-secure leak-proof US Congress is the first place I think of. Perhaps if we had some of the meetings on C-Span that would make Ms. Priest feel better.

"For example, after The Washington Post disclosed the existence of secret prisons in several Eastern European democracies, the CIA closed them down because of an uproar in Europe. But the detainees were moved elsewhere to similar CIA prisons, referred to as "black sites" in classified documents."

Since you ratted us out and in doing so soured our relations with several allies, we are scrambling to make sure the most evil rat bastards on earth have a safe and secluded hole to fester in once we have cleansed their minds of anything useful. Which brings us back to another fave of the "Intel is Icky" crowd Coercive Interrogation (CI).

"The authorized techniques include "waterboarding" and "water dousing," both meant to make prisoners think they are drowning; hard slapping; isolation; sleep deprivation; liquid diets; and stress positions -- often used, intelligence officials say, in combination to enhance the effect."

The debate has been terribly blurred by the inaccurate characterization of CI as torture. The need for headlines screaming US military runs torture training facility, leads to the demonization of extremely effective methods of gaining actionable intel as evidenced by songbird and waterboardee Khalid "sheikh Sheikh Sheikh" Mohamed.

Consider Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the 39-year-old former al-Qaida operative who was the Sept. 11 mastermind and bearer of many al-Qaida secrets.

If anyone had a motive for remaining silent it was the man known to terrorism investigators as "KSM." But not long after his capture in Pakistan, in March 2003, KSM began to talk.

He ultimately had so much to say that more than 100 footnoted references to the CIA's interrogations of KSM are contained in the final report of the commission that investigated Sept. 11.

The worst of it that all they had to do was start with the water and KSM was giving everyone he knew up. Undoubtedly planned terror acts were averted because we pretended to drown a rat. How 'bout someone who can find the clue bag.

"Gen. Michael V. Hayden, deputy director of national intelligence, has described the administration's philosophy in public and private meetings, including a session with human rights groups.

"We're going to live on the edge," Hayden told the groups, according to notes taken by Human Rights Watch and confirmed by Hayden's office. "My spikes will have chalk on them. . . . We're pretty aggressive within the law. As a professional, I'm troubled if I'm not using the full authority allowed by law."

Now this guy has the correct attitude, sounds like Gen. Honore from New Orleans. It is his obligation and duty to use every possible tool to scour the earth for Al-Qaeda. If Zarqawi pops his head up in Indochina, I want a shooter popping out of a rice bowl to bust a cap in his ass. I also love the fact that he didn't sugar coat it for the human rights groups. I wish most of those groups had as much concern for those killed by tyrants and terrorists these days as they do in dogging our every step as we delouse the globe.

It is easy to simply say that some people understand we are at war and some wish we would quit acting that way and get back to health care and abortion rights, but it's true. All this focus on the treacherous swine who have declared a jihad and are working fairly diligently to wrap the globe in a big ole burka, is making it tough to demonize W's new court appointee as an evil, racist, abortion banning extremist.

I don't know why Dana Priest feels her obligation to cripple our Intel capabilities, but I hope we track down the disloyal worms feeding her classified info. They could use a little Club Leavenworth time to reflect on their actions. It is easy to sit safe and warm here where no terrorists have hit us for four years and indulge your delicate sensibilities. But the jihadis, while severely beaten down by the very programs she helps destroy, are still trying their damndest to punish all of us. Whether she ever shuts her cakehole or not, those of us able to accurately assess the threat and spineful enough to act against it will keep trucking.

- Uncle J

Posted by Uncle Jimbo December 30, 2005
Black Five Blog
Source: http://www.blackfive.net/main/2005/12/dana_priest_lac.html#more

The Grey Lady predicts... UPDATED with a significant announcement

It is about time the NYT is investigated. I suspect they have taken that step across the line in their war to discredit the Bush Administration. The only wonderment I have is how far the old grey lady stepped into illegal activity to print their material. I also wonder if the Justice Department or Congressional Inquiry will take on the old grey girl. There are a huge amount of liberals in the bureaucracy of both Federal institutions. I also suspect the Enron document shredding and computer hard drive wiping is in process as we speak.

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By Roger L. Simon
December 30, 2005

... sounds a little like "Miss Otis Regrets," doesn't it? Anyway, TigerHawk does some graphing to show us the egregious failures of the NYT when it comes to economic prognostication, a fool's game for most of us, but for the Grey Lady nach ein ander opportunity to bash the Bush administration. What does Suzlberger care that they are dead wrong again? His niche market has no memory ... or does it?

And speaking of memory and the NYT, perhaps I missed something, but I'm still waiting for someone to enlighten me on the difference between the NSA's Echelon program of the 1990s and the current "misuse" of that intelligence agency recently posited by the Xenophons of Zabars. I guess the niche market isn't listening. There are sales at Bloomingdale's.

UPDATE: Now the Justice Department is weighing in on what could emerge as one of the most bloody government/press face-offs of our time:

The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program, Justice officials said Friday.

The officials, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe, said the inquiry will focus on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Times revealed the existence of the program two weeks ago in a front-page story that acknowledged the news had been withheld from publication for a year, partly at the request of the administration and partly because the newspaper wanted more time to confirm various aspects of the program.

Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said the paper will not comment on the investigation.

I'm betting it's the Times that has more to lose than the government in this one. They are going to have to explain why they held onto this story for a year and then suddenly decided it was okay to release it. New York Times stock has plummeted in the last quarter. How much lower can it go?

Source: http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/12/the_grey_lady_p.php

An Old-fashioned War

Mr. Day is gracious when he calls Mohammedan Islamofascism "Militant Islamism". However, he is correct in describing this Islamofascism as the new twenty-first century totalitarianism. The object of Islamofascism is a world subjugation under a Mohammedan Caliphate. All non-Mohammedans in this subjugation allowed to live would be second class citizens with few to no rights and liberties. This is the enemy America is fighting. This is the enemy that ostriche head liberals are hiding their brains in the sand of political correctness. This is an enemy to defeat not appease. Why? This enemy does not comprehend appeasement. Appeasement is a means to defeat freedom loving Americans. God bless America!

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By Clifford D. May
Scripps-Howard News Service
December 29, 2005

To be fair to our enemies, they are only doing what comes naturally. We are the historical oddballs.

Wars have been fought since time immemorial. The vast majority have been over power and resources, to defeat rival civilizations, to vanquish hated “others.”

Why did Spartans, Persians, Macedonians and Romans fight? What motivated Bonaparte to take on the Austrians, the Ottomans, the Russians and the English? What caused Imperial Japan to attempt to conquer Asia?

Almost a thousand years ago, Genghis Khan provided a candid and classic answer: “Man's highest joy is victory: to conquer his enemies; to pursue them; to deprive them of their possessions; to make their beloved weep; to ride on their horses; and to embrace their wives and daughters.”

Sure, grievances may be a contributing factor. The Germans were angry over the way France and Britain treated them after the First World War. But it was to dominate the world -- not to redress insults and injuries -- that the Nazis left a trail of blood from one end of the continent to the other.

Similarly, while workers may have gotten a raw deal in the Industrial Revolution, Bolsheviks and Maoists had more in mind than raising wages and securing health care for those who labored on assembly lines.

Nazis attempted to establish the rule of the “Aryan race.” Communists attempted to unite a broader swath of humanity: workers of the world as well as those whose fingernails were clean but who proclaimed themselves the proletariat's vanguard.
Militant Islamism – the 21st century's most dynamic and dangerous form of totalitarianism -- is attempting to appeal to 1.2 billion Muslims living in more than a hundred countries. Non-Muslims are encouraged to convert. Indeed, Osama bin Laden expects many will once it becomes clear which side in this global struggle has the stronger will to power.

Again, there are grievances to cite as justification: For the poverty, unemployment and oppression that plague many Muslim societies, Militant Islamists blame Christians, Jews, Hindus and the “apostate” Muslims who collaborate with these “infidels.” They charge that “Crusaders and Zionists” are stealing Islam's resources.

The fact that a quarter century of rule by radical mullahs has left Iranians worse off than they were before the Islamist Revolution is elided. That Saudi and Gulf sheiks are among the wealthiest individuals in the world does not, in the radical mind, contradict these claims.

Bin Laden and his ideological brethren promise that the conflict that has begun will not end until Muslims have the lands, power and status they demand and deserve. Lesser peoples are to be annihilated or subjugated. The Caliphate, the ancient empire established by Mohammed in the 7th century, is to rise again – and mosques will be built where churches and synagogues now stand. Tolerance and mutual respect among the great religions are, in their view, ludicrous concepts. More than that: They are blasphemous because they put the true religion on an equal footing with false faiths.
Only one aspect of all this is new and novel: the Western conviction that it is passé to wage war in pursuit of such objectives. Most Americans and Europeans can not imagine fighting other than in self-defense or against severe oppression.

That is admirable; less so the lack of imagination that leads so many in the West to “mirror-image,” to delude themselves into believing that everyone sees the world as they do.

To win a war requires more than boots and bullets. It requires understanding the enemy's motives and goals, and perceiving how intensely he is committed to victory.
Postmodern Americans and Europeans may believe wars of conquest are obsolete, a discarded relic of the distant past. They may even see war itself as an aberration, an unnatural disruption of what they have convinced themselves is the “normal” state of peaceful coexistence. But our enemies view the world differently. Their perspective is of an older vintage.

“The ordinary theme and argument of all history is war,” observed Sir Walter Raleigh in the early 17th century. Wishing that were no longer true does not make it so. We infidels pretend otherwise at our peril.

Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

Source: The Foundation For The Defense Of Democracies

The Dishonest Reporter 'Award' 2005

The MSM is obviously slanted to the left. Their reporting reflects a liberal or left leaning agenda. Their agenda is so left their reporting often prejudicially leaves facts out to twist a scenario to the public. Very simply, there is a lack of honest reporting.

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The Dishonest Reporter 'Award' 2005Our fifth annual recognition of the most skewed and biased coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Big media was clearly on the defensive in 2005. Dan Rather left the CBS News anchor desk under a heavy cloud while other executives were fired in the wake of Memogate. The use of anonymous sources put journalists like Judith Miller and the NY Times in an uncomfortable spotlight. Newsweek's erroneous report that US Marines desecrated a Koran touched off a firestorm of deadly protests around the world. CNN news chief Eason Jordan was forced to resign over comments at an international forum. And an Al-Jazeera reporter was even convicted for his links to Al-Qaida. In each controversy, bloggers successfully pressured the news services for accuracy and accountability.
Unfortunately, problematic coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continued. We couldn't address all the news services or journalists who were nominated by HonestReporting subscribers, but we thank readers for sharing their thoughts about 2005 and for making our fight for honest reporting your fight too. So without further ado, we proceed with our Dishonest Reporter of the Year Award. We begin with the runner-ups:

Reuters
Of all the coverage we saw of the Gaza pullout, nothing stood out more than this odious comment by Reuters in the lead-up days:

The [Gaza] closure will give about 8,500 settlers a taste of some of the military restrictions and bureaucracy endured by Palestinians living under occupation.
The wire service also remained consistent to its warped principles during the London terror attacks too, refusing to describe the bombings as "terror." To understand the logic behind Reuters' vocabulary gymnastics, see here.

Palestinian Stringers
Western news services rely on Palestinian stringers for reporting, photographs and video footage. They also rely on "fixers" who provide all kinds of other support: arranging interviews, navigating through difficult areas, translating and more. But how reliable and objective are these stringers? The Jerusalem Post exposed a number of AP and AFP stringers who were also on the Palestinian Authority payroll, including Majida al-Batsh, who was a candidate for PA president. (Nobody protested the use of AFP office supplies for her candidacy.) The revelations brought to mind a related special report on the influence of Palestinian organizations on foreign news. But unlike a similar scandal in the White House press corps, the stringers' conflict of interest met deafening silence.

C-Span
C-Span executives took the idea of "balanced coverage" to an illogical extreme in March, deciding that a talk by Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt needed to be balanced out with a talk by Holocaust denier David Irving. Lipstadt told HonestReporting:
The notion that there are 'two sides to every story' is simplistic, fuzzy thinking at best, and far more dangerous than that at worst.

Now jailed in Austria, where Holocaust denial is a crime, Irving awaits a February trial.

The Guardian
The Guardian found itself red-faced by what became known as Sassygate: As exposed by blogger Scott Burgess, the Manchester-based paper hired trainee journalist Dilpazier Aslam, whose coverage of July's London terror attacks included a commentary sympathizing with the bombers. It turned out that Aslam was a member of Hizb Ut Tahrir, an Islamist organization which calls for the destruction of Israel and the rule of a world-wide caliphate. When the dust settled, Aslam was fired and the paper's executive editor for news, Albert Scardino resigned. Aslam is now suing The Guardian for "racial and religious discrimination."

Eric Margolis
The February assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri shocked even the most cynical Mideast experts. Syrian propaganda, predictably blaming Israel, was echoed by the North American syndicated columnist Eric Margolis. Ironically, the same week that the Mehlis report to the UN on Hariri's murder was released, Margolis gave a soapbox to unsubstantiated claims that Israel had a hand in the 1988 plane crash that killed Pakistani dictator Zia Ul-Haq.

* * *

But one news service's skewed coverage stood out the most, "winning" the award in a landslide. From the first day votes came in, it wasn't close, which may explain the dearth of nominations for perennial runner-ups like the NY Times, Associated Press and The Independent. The 2005 Dishonest Reporter of the Year Award goes to the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The impact of BBC coverage cannot be understated. A Google study found that for breaking news, internet users around the world were more likely to turn to the BBC than CNN. More than 270 million TV viewers around the world watch BBC World. Even more people listen to BBC World Service, which broadcasts in 42 languages.

Readers provided a full laundry list of complaints and we found the most effective way to condense the biggest offenses was in a simple list form. The examples of bias from the year past indicates a pattern of naiveté, dishonesty, forcing facts conform to a narrow worldview and, arguably, a desire to inappropriately influence events-all paid for by British television viewers through the TV License Fee, which costs the typical household £126.50 per year.

Here are the top 10 reasons (listed in chronological order) why the BBC is HonestReporting's Dishonest Reporter of the Year.

10. In January, Palestinian presidential candidate Dr. Mustafa Barghouti (not to be confused with his better-known distant relative, Marwan) tried to use Israel and the Western media to get some free publicity for his campaign by getting himself arrested at the Temple Mount. The Independent's Donald Macintyre saw straight through Barghouti's ploy, but the BBC's Martin Asser proved more gullible:

A large crowd of journalists has gathered at an East Jerusalem hotel to hear him, and there is some excitement because a rumour is going round he will go to the al-Aqsa mosque later for Friday prayers....

It is meant to be the photo-opportunity highlight of the day - but the Israeli security services have other ideas....

In truth, Mr Barghouti's programme was not unduly affected by the detention, because his next engagement was not scheduled until 1330.

I could be wrong, but that - rather conveniently - left ample time for his headline-grabbing brush with the Israelis before moving on to meet the voters.

9. Every morning, listeners can tune into BBC for an uplifting "Thought of the Day." One February morning, Rev. Dr. John Bell used the feature to describe an Arab-Israeli acquaintance only identified as "Adam." According to Rev. Dr. Bell, this acquaintance was "conscripted" into the Israeli army, where "he was also imprisoned for refusing to shoot unarmed schoolchildren." See the full transcript here.

After HonestReporting pointed out that Israeli-Arabs aren't required to serve in the IDF and that the allegations that soldiers have orders to shoot unarmed kids are wholly unfounded, the BBC apologized-but only for not fact-checking Adam's age and the issue of conscription. We still await a retraction about the non-existent orders to shoot kids.
8. In March, the BBC apologized to Israel for reporter Simon Wilson's handling of an interview with Mordechai Vanunu. A former technician at the Dimona nuclear plant, Vanunu is prohibited from talking to foreign reporters, but Wilson, in 2004, was caught trying to smuggle tapes of his interview out of the country. Although the apology-which paved the way for Wilson to return to Israel-was supposed to remain confidential, it was inexplicably posted on the BBC's own web site for several hours. The BBC once intended to rent out a luxury apartment for Vanunu paid for by British television viewers.

7. He retired from the BBC, but former Mideast correspondent Tim Llewellyn (now an executive member of the Council for the Advancement of Arab British Understanding) makes this list for an interview he gave to Electronic Intifada. We are concerned Llewellyn's views are shared by colleagues within the BBC:
[BBC] are adopting what they see as an even handed attitude. To me this is a cowardly attitude, it is an attitude which confuses occupier with occupied....

6. In May, BBC correspondent Orla Guerin reported that construction linking Maale Adumim to Jerusalem would split the West Bank in two, destroying any possibility of a viable Palestinian state. HonestReporting noted that construction in the area known as E-1 doesn't take away territorial contiguity. A map produced by our colleagues at CAMERA highlights how the Palestinians would have continuous territory, which, at its narrowest, would be nine miles (or 15 km) wide-which also happens to be the width of Israel's "waistline" between the Green Line and the Mediterranean.

5. When members of the British Association of University Teachers considered a boycott of Israel's Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities, BBC radio tried to influence the vote with a report by correspondent John Reynolds from the College of Judea and Samaria. As Melanie Phillips wrote in May:
Not a word about the fact that more than 300 students at this college are Arabs, and that the Arab mayors of local towns have enthusiastically welcomed the opportunities it gives their students....

The BBC might as well have had a block vote at today's AUT conference. So much for its supposed objectivity, which once again stands exposed as a charade.

4. When terrorists linked to Al-Qaida struck the London transportation system in July, many thought the BBC would finally use the word "terror" to describe the wanton attacks on civilians. To their credit, a small handful of initial reports did. But appearances of the "t-word" in initial coverage were soon removed from the BBC's web site (but not before Tom Gross documented the inconsistencies). Yet Roger Mosey, the head of BBC's television news, contradicted BBC policy when he wrote in The Guardian that there was no ban in the first place!

Then there has been a controversy about our use of language - particularly the question of whether the BBC banned the word "terrorist". There is no ban. It's true the word is contentious in some contexts on our international services, hence the recommendation that it be employed with care. But we have used and will continue to use the words terror, terrorism and terrorist - as we did in all our flagship bulletins from Thursday.

Not surprisingly, subsequent coverage of the London bombings and their aftermath remained "terror free." At the end of the year, however, The Guardian reported that BBC journalists received new "guidance" discouraging-but not banning-the "t-word." Time will tell if this will have a positive impact in 2006.

3. Following the London terror attacks, the BBC admitted loading the studio audience with a disproportionate number of Muslims for Questions of Security: A BBC News Special. (See Biased BBC for links to video of the show.) Among the complaints, one viewer wrote angrily:
I do not pay my license fee to watch an unrepresentative Muslim audience like this.
The BBC's response?

In order to ensure a range of voices on these issues, the studio audience contained a higher proportion of Muslims in the audience than in the population as a whole - around 15% of the audience as opposed to 2.7% of the country as a whole....

This isn't the first time the BBC got in hot water for loading the audience. In 2001, anti-American invective from a Question Time audience discussing the 9/11 attacks got so out of hand that news director Greg Dyke had to apologize to US ambassador Philip Lader, who participated in the show.

Can anyone imagine a BBC program on Israel loaded with Israelis and Jews?

2. Within hours after Israel completed its pull-out from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians wasted no time desecrating synagogues and looting greenhouses. BBC's Orla Guerin was one of several journalists who actually justified the sad, senseless destruction:
Palestinians came streaming to the settlements that caused them so much pain, to sightsee and to loot. Israel stole thirty-eight years from them; today, many were ready to take back anything they could.

1. Whatever happened to Malcolm Balen, who was appointed to help improve the BBC's Mideast reporting? Back in November, 2003, the BBC hired him as a "senior editorial advisor," or, as some put it, "a Middle East policeman. " Some HonestReporting readers were hopeful when Haaretz reported that Balen was supposed to present a "conclusive and comprehensive report" to BBC executives. Balen even told Haaretz:
What I do is a long-term editorial review, and by definition, the review is retrospective, rather than a look at day-to-day output. The truth is, in any editorial job, you are so tied up with your program and deadline, that you simply do not have the time to stand back and look at the coverage as a whole," says Balen. "Nobody has the time in a journalistic job to trace the course of a single story in an organization as large as the BBC, which is what I was appointed to do. I can concentrate on a single story and look at all sorts of angles and aspects. I can join the dots together, [determine] what the coverage feels like, what the tone is like - crucially, what the content is like, what the balance is like."

Yet with all the resources of the BBC at his disposal, Balen, to our knowledge, has not presented any report. In contrast, Trevor Asserson, a British lawyer working on his own initiative, put together several exhaustive critiques. HonestReporting readers, who also chose the BBC as Dishonest Reporter of the Year in 2001, connected the dots.
Has Balen?

* * *

By October, the deteriorating coverage reached a point where the Board of Governors requested Sir Quentin Thomas to lead an independent panel to investigate its Mideast reporting. (See here for more details.) The panel is supposed to release its findings in the spring. When the Board of Governors released its Programme Complaints: Appeals to the Governors, the forward by the chairman of the complaints committee noted that the majority of the complaints (20 out of 27 in fact) dealt with Mideast coverage. Only one-against Barbara Plett-was upheld.

Yet even in December, former director-general Greg Dyke, a casualty of the Hutton Report, insists that the network's Mideast reporting continues to be fair:
We investigated many of the complaints and most of the time found our reporting had been totally fair. Of course the pro-Israeli lobby didn't accept that but then they had a different agenda.

The stakes are certainly high. News services skewing reports from the Mideast are just as capable of warping other important areas of coverage. For the BBC, that's most notably Iraq. The BBC's royal charter expires at the end of 2006 - one year from now -- and officials must explain how it spends income from the TV License Fee. In 2003, this TV tax brought the BBC nearly £2.4 billion in income. Simply put, the British public is subsidizing lousy news.

As far as we're concerned, the excuses and apologies have worn thin. The BBC must be held accountable.

We appreciate you, our readers for writing the media, alerting us to questionable reports and sharing your insights with us.

HonestReporting covered a lot of ground in 2005 and we'll continue monitoring the media in the coming year. We hope 2006 proves to be a better year of honest reporting.
Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle against media bias.

HonestReporting Source: This article can also be read at: http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/The_Dishonest_Reporter_Award_2005.asp Copyright © 2005 HonestReporting - http://www.honestreporting.com

So You Think America Should Not Have Taken Saddam Out?

President Bush had America invade Iraq for pretty good reasons. Some of those reasons are validated and some are not. If Saddam Hussein was more forth coming he probably could have force America not to invade, however the megalomaniac was too self-absorbed in his own Islamofascist importance to protect his detestable station as Iraq's leader.

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Year-End Review -- Iraq, UN Inspection Reports, etc.

1) "What Happened to Iraq's Biological Agent Storage Tanks or the Spray Dryer Used for Turning Liquid Agent into a Dried Form? Any Update on the Document that Indicated Iraq had Built a Fermentation Plant?" -- Here

2) "What did Hans Blix say in March 2003 about Saddam's Missile & WMD-Warhead Disarmament? Did UN Inspectors Conclude Saddam had Disarmed? NO" -- Here

3) "What did Charles Duelfer have to say about Saddam's Missile Programs? Did Iraq Comply with UN Resolutions Regarding these Programs? NO" -- Here

4) "It's Easy to Forget Just How Close Saddam Came to Having a Nuclear Weapon in 1991, Despite Regular Inspections by the IAEA & the Eyes of US Intelligence" -- Here

5) "Document Date: Feb-02, Title: ...Training Manual from Al Qaida Chemical Plant regarding Chem Warfare, Description: Contains papers concerning Iraqi officials, prices of equipment, training plans, and actions...all concerning chemical warfare" -- Here

6) "Did Saddam Hussein Account for the VX known to have been Produced? No. How about the 600 Tons of VX Precursors UNSCOM believed Iraq had Imported? No. Did it Matter? Yes. Just Ask Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen" -- Here

7) "Did Saddam Hussein Comply With the Provision of UN Resolution 687 Regarding Terrorism? No" -- Here

8) "Did Saddam Hussein Comply With the Provision of UN Resolution 687 Regarding Terrorism? No, Part II" -- Here

9) "With the apparent death of "Halabja" al-Douri, Let's Review Some Material from the Duelfer and UNMOVIC Reports that Won't Appear in a New York Times Editorial Anytime Soon" -- Here

10) "Trust in Saddam: What Hans Blix Doesn't Tell Audiences Nowadays" -- Here

11) "The Media Somehow Missed the Other News Powell Aide Made Yesterday" -- Here

12) "Who were Zawahiri's reported contacts in Iraq? Have members of the Iraqi Delegation that reportedly Traveled to Afghanistan to Meet the Taliban and Bin Ladin been Identified? Have Any Republicans Bothered to Ask?" -- Here

13) "Why did President Clinton Worry About a Terrorist Attack on the United States with Weapons Supplied by Iraq?" -- Here

14) "Why were U.S. Government Officials 'Deeply Worried' That Saddam Hussein Might Give 'Radical Islamist Groups' Biological Weapons to Attack the U.S. during the Clinton presidency?" -- Here

15) "Guess What Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State Had to Say about Saddam's Nuke Program in 2002?" -- Here

16) "What did U.S. intelligence tell the Clinton administration on the nuclear reconstitution issue?" -- Here

17) "Does the National Journal's 'Exclusive' Piece on Pre-War Intelligence Distort the Public Record?" -- Here

18) "More Distortion on Iraq & Niger" -- Here

19) "Another Media Distortion: Joe Wilson Didn't Uncover Forgeries and Didn't 'Debunk' Much of Anything" -- Here

20) "Another Washington Post Distortion" Here

21) "The Washington Post Continues the 'Imminent Threat' Myth" -- Here

22) "Paris v. The Wall Street Journal" -- Here 13)

Posted by Daniel McKivergan on December 26, 2005

Source: http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2005/12/yearend_review_iraq_un_inspect.html

No Link Between Saddam and Al Qaeda? Hardly

I am mystified that so many experts claim there is no relation to Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. There was a document found in captured Iraqi documents that implies Chem warfare training to the organisation that murdered over 3,000 Americans at the Twin Towers and Pentagon. That document may not be a link to Saddam Hussein helping Al Qaeda terrorize the American homeland, but certainly it is a link to the complicity of aiding Islamofascist terrorism on a global scale.

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Document Date: Feb-02, Title: ...Training Manual from Al Qaida Chemical Plant regarding Chem Warfare, Description: Contains papers concerning Iraqi officials, prices of equipment, training plans, and actions...all concerning chemical warfare
In the current Weekly Standard, Stephen F. Hayes has a piece on the enormous volume of documents captured in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion.

Hayes writes:
There are many such documents in a U.S. intelligence database known as HARMONY. One example: Document number ICSQ-2003-00025586 was captured by the U.S. military during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Here is the synopsis of that document that appears in the database:

Category: Al QaidaTitle: Letters, logbook, training manual from Al Qaida Chemical Plant regarding Chem WarfareShort Description: Contains papers concerning Iraqi officials, prices of equipment, training plans, and actions by high level officers all concerning chemical warfare Agency: DIA Document Date: Feb-02Document #: ICSQ-2003-00025586

What does it mean? I'm not sure. On the one hand, any document under the heading "Al Qaida" that mentions "chem warfare" and "Iraqi officials" is inherently interesting. On the other, we don't know what the document tells us. Just as it is possible that the document reveals Iraqi complicity in al Qaeda's efforts to secure WMD, it is conceivable that the "papers concerning Iraqi officials" include indications that Iraqis rejected al Qaeda overtures for assistance on chemical warfare.

Although some HARMONY documents are flagged as being of suspect authenticity, this one is not flagged. Still, it is possible that it is a fabrication and was entered into the database without an assessment of its authenticity.

I can't answer these questions. Someone probably can.

Posted by Daniel McKivergan at http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2005/11/document_date_feb02_title_trai.html.

Impeachment Nonsense

The calls for impeachment are the latest political ploy by Democrats to defeat the Bush Administration agenda at all costs. My god, if the Democrats do not like the Republican agenda they need to sell their own agenda to the electorate. It is in elections that the political agenda of the nation are set. The Democrats have decided another route, the way of political manipulation, the use of the MSM and left leaning judges in the Federal Justice System.

Krauthammer illustrates that the President did nothing illegal. Indeed, the Court System has upheld Presidential prerogatives of both Democratic and Republican Administrations over the years. The President needs to put the Democrats on public notice: put up or shut up! You know - absolutely - the Democrats will choose "shut up." America's leftists then will seek another political strand to twist as they weave deception and duplicity to the public. The Democratic Party problem is they have become a Party lacking ideas the voters can get behind. What the Democratic Party is genius at is twisting facts and utilizing their ally the MSM as a propaganda machine. Hmmm ... Goebbels would have admired that.

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By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, December 23, 2005; Page A21

2005 was already the year of the demagogue, having been dominated for months by the endlessly echoed falsehood that the president "lied us into war." But the year ends with yet another round of demagoguery.

Administration critics, political and media, charge that by ordering surveillance on communications of suspected al Qaeda agents in the United States, the president clearly violated the law. Some even suggest that Bush has thereby so trampled the Constitution that impeachment should now be considered. (Barbara Boxer, Jonathan Alter, John Dean and various luminaries of the left have already begun floating the idea.) The braying herds have already concluded, Tenet-like, that the president's actions were slam-dunk illegal. It takes a superior mix of partisanship, animus and ignorance to say that.

Does the president have the constitutional authority to conduct warrantless searches against suspected foreign agents in the United States? George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr (one critic calls him the man who "literally wrote the book on government seizure of electronic evidence") finds "pretty decent arguments" on both sides, but his own conclusion is that Bush's actions were "probably constitutional."

In 1972 the Supreme Court required the president to obtain warrants to eavesdrop on domestic groups but specifically declined to apply this requirement to snooping on foreign agents. Four appeals courts have since upheld presidential authority for such warrantless searches. Not surprisingly, the executive branch has agreed.

True, Congress tried to restrict this presidential authority with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. It requires that warrants for wiretapping of enemy agents in the United States be obtained from a secret court. But as John Schmidt, associate attorney general in the Clinton administration, wrote: "Every president since FISA's passage has asserted that he retained inherent power to go beyond the act's terms." Indeed, President Bill Clinton's own deputy attorney general testified to Congress that "the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes," then noted a few minutes later that "courts have made no distinction between electronic surveillances and physical searches."

Presidents always jealously guard executive authority. And Congress always wants to challenge the scope of that authority. This tug of war is a bipartisan and constant feature of the American system of separation of powers. President Bush's circumvention of FISA is a classic separation-of-powers dispute in the area in which these powers are most in dispute -- war powers.

Consider the War Powers Resolution passed over Richard Nixon's veto in 1973. It restricts, with very specific timetables, the president's authority to use force. Every president since Nixon, Democrat and Republican, has regarded himself not bound by this law, declaring it an unconstitutional invasion of his authority as commander in chief.
Nor will it do to argue that the Clinton administration ultimately accepted the strictures of the FISA law after a revision was passed. So what? For the past three decades, presidents have adhered to the War Powers Resolution for reasons of prudence, to avoid a constitutional fight with Congress. But they all maintained the inherent illegitimacy of the law and the right to ignore it. Similarly, Clinton's acquiescence to FISA in no way binds future executives to renounce Clinton's claim of "inherent authority" to conduct warrantless searches for purposes of foreign intelligence.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales chose a different justification for these wiretaps: They were covered by the congressional resolution passed shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the use of "all necessary and appropriate force" against al Qaeda. Gonzales's interpretation is based on a plurality Supreme Court opinion written by Sandra Day O'Connor that deemed legal the "executive detention" of U.S. citizen and enemy combatant Yaser Esam Hamdi. "Detention" is an obvious element of any authorization to use force. Gonzales argues that so is gathering intelligence about the enemy's plans by intercepting his communications.

I am skeptical of Gonzales's argument -- it implies an almost limitless expansion of the idea of "use of force" -- while the distinguished liberal law professor Cass Sunstein finds it "entirely plausible" (so long as the wiretapping is limited to those reasonably believed to be associated with al Qaeda). Sunstein maintains that "surveillance, including wiretapping, is reasonably believed to be an incident of the use of force" that "standardly occurs during war."

Contrary to the administration, I also believe that as a matter of political prudence and comity with Congress, Bush should have tried to get the law changed rather than circumvent it. This was an error of political judgment. But that does not make it a crime. And only the most brazen and reckless partisan could pretend it is anything approaching a high crime and misdemeanor.

letters@ch arleskrauthammer.com
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/22/AR2005122201102.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns

God Polls Well On His Birthday

Overwhelmingly American's still believe in the Christian God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If you had any of my blogs in the past you may know what my next suggestion might be. Something has to be done to offset the attack on Christianity in American culture. Prayer has been removed from schools. Christian symbols on public property have been a battle for decades. Abortion as birth control is accepted when really it is murder.

America needs a Constitutional Amendment to offset this war on Christianity. America needs an Amendment that clarifies the 2nd Amendment. America still needs to stay away from establishing a state Church while simultaneously establishing Christianity in general as the foundational religion of America. The Amendment needs to still offer freedom of religion yet without fault or penalty toward another religion or atheist paradigm, Christianity is of primacy.

So without further ado, here are the poll numbers.

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December 25, 2005
God Polls Well On His Birthday

For Christmas Day, the Washington Times reports on a poll taken this week on religion. In a small surprise, the poll shows that traditional monotheism still ranks highly among Americans of all political stripes and that New Age and Eastern beliefs have not gained much of a toehold:

Traditional religion is still the bedrock of America, with "very large majorities" of the public steadfast in their belief in God and the birth and Resurrection of Jesus Christ -- with belief in astrology, ghosts and other New Age hallmarks lagging behind.

Overall, 82 percent of Americans believe in God, according to a recent Harris poll, which also revealed that 73 percent also believe in miracles, 70 percent in life after death, 70 percent in the existence of heaven, and 70 percent that Jesus is the Son of God. In addition, 68 percent believe in angels and 66 percent in the Resurrection of Christ.

Six out of 10 believe in the devil and the existence of hell.

The Times notes a "partisan divide", with a twelve-point difference between Republicans and Democrats on the existence of God. However, the figures run 93 percent for the GOP and 81 percent for the Democrats -- so rather than God being a partisan trophy, it appears that both sides overwhelmingly believe in one monotheistic God. In fact, the Times says that the Democrats edge Republicans in their belief in miracles -- which finally explains the John Kerry nomination last year. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans believe that the Devil and hell exist, while 61 percent of Democrats agree. (The only difference is that two-thirds of them believe that George W Bush is the Devil and that Suburbia is Hell.)

More women than men believe in ghosts, while more men than women believe in UFOs. This proves that men will believe almost anything if it comes with really great gadgetry.

When reached for comment, the Golden Calf reminded us that "God always polls well at his peaks -- his birthday and April 15th. I expect to do better at my traditional height, which is the the couple of weeks between Spring Break and the Oscars." He did express disappointment that Billy Crystal and Chris Rock won't be hosting the latter.

God, as always, could not be reached for direct comment, but various spokespeople noticed a decided rise in attendance at His celebrations this week to underscore the polling numbers. They assure us that God keeps a close eye on His metrics and delights when His supporters come to celebrate with Him. They also extended His appreciation for all the best wishes and thoughts He receives this time of year and hopes -- as always -- that His friends stay in touch all year round.

Source: http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/006007.php

The Real Reason for Christmas

Today is Christamas. Jesus Christ is the reason for the season. I know that it has almost become cliche to gripe about the comercialism that has emerged with Christmas, however since this is Christmas day I suspect that has already passed all my readers. I won't go there.

I have an article from the Reverend Rick Renner that discusses the purpose God can into the world in the flesh of a man. Rev. Renner is imminently qualified because of his knowledge of New Testament Greek. You will find this an interesting read even after Christmas day. Perhaps Christmas day can be a Christmas lifestyle - only believe.
Rick Renner's Website: http://www.renner.org/.

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The Real Reason for Christmas
By Rick Renner
12/24/05

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.- Philippians 2:8

Do you plan on taking the time this Christmas to tell your children or friends about the purpose of Christmas? If so, what will you tell them?
Although we usually meditate on the birth of Jesus at this time of the year, His purpose in coming to earth was not to give us the sweet picture of a baby in a Bethlehem manger. That little baby was born to die for you and for me and thus pay for the forgiveness of our sins. He was born to die on the Cross that we might be reconciled to God.

For this reason, I always told our sons when they were young, “Don’t just think of a baby in a manger at Christmastime. Christmas is about much more than that. It is about God coming to earth in human flesh so He could die on the Cross to pay for your salvation and destroy all the works of the devil in your lives! That is what Christmas is all about!”

People rarely think of the Cross at Christmastime because it is the time set aside to celebrate Jesus’ birth. But in Philippians 2, Paul connects the two thoughts. As Paul writes about God becom­ing a man, he goes on to express the ultimate reason God chose to take this amazing action. Paul says in verse 8, “And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Because today is Christmas Eve, I want to use this Sparkling Gem to discuss the real reason for Christmas, which is contained in the truths found in this verse.

Philippians 2:8 says that Jesus was “…found in fashion as a man….” That word “fashion” is the Greek word schema. This is extremely important, for this was precisely the same word that was used in ancient times to depict a king who exchanged his kingly garments for a brief period of time for the clothing of a beggar.

How wonderful that the Holy Spirit would inspire the apostle Paul to use this exact word! When Jesus came to earth, it really was a moment when God Almighty shed His glorious appear­ance and exchanged it for the clothing of human flesh. Although man is wonderfully made, his earthly frame is temporal dust and cannot be compared to the eternal and glorious appearance of God. However, for the sake of our redemption, God laid aside all of His radiant glory, took upon Himself human flesh, and was manifested in the very likeness of a human being.

This is the true story of a King who traded His kingly garments and took upon Himself the clothing of a servant. But the story doesn’t stop there. Jesus - our King who exchanged His royal robes for the clothing of flesh - loved us so much that He “…humbled himself, and became obe­dient unto death, even the death of the cross”!

The word “humbled” is the Greek word tapeinao, and it means to be humble, to be lowly, and to be willing to stoop to any measure that is needed. This describes the attitude God had when He took upon Himself human flesh. Think of how much humility would be required for God to shed His glory and lower Himself to become like a member of His creation. Consider the greatness of God’s love that drove Him to divest Himself of all His splendor and become like a man. This is amazing to me, particularly when I think of how often the flesh recoils at the thought of being humble or preferring someone else above itself. Yet Jesus humbled Himself “…and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

The word “obedient” tells me that this was not a pleasurable experience that Jesus looked for­ward to in anticipation. To humble Himself to this extent required Jesus’ deliberate obedience.

As preexistent God, Jesus came to earth for this purpose. But as man dressed in flesh, He despised the thought of the Cross (Hebrews 12:2) and could only endure its shame because He knew of the results that would follow. For Jesus to be obedient as a man, He had to choose to obey the eternal plan of God.

The word “obedient” that is used to describe Jesus is the Greek word hupakouo, from the word hupo, which means under, and the word akouo, which means I hear. When these two words are com­pounded together, they picture someone who is hupo - under someone else’s authority, and akouo - listening to what that superior is speaking to him. After listening and taking these instructions to heart, this person then carries out the orders of his superior.

Thus, the word hupakouo tells us that obedient people are 1) under authority, 2) listening to what their superior is saying, and 3) carrying out the orders that have been given to them. This is what the word “obedient” means in this verse, and this is what obedience means for you and me.
You see, even Jesus had to come to this place of obedience. Although He knew that He was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, that didn’t mean His flesh was excited about dying as the Lamb of God on the Cross. According to this verse in Philippians 2:8, Jesus had to humble Himself and become “obedient” in order to follow God’s plan. He wasn’t looking forward to the expe­rience of death on a Cross; He made a choice to humble Himself and to go to any measure in order to accomplish the Father’s plan.

Part of the Father’s plan was for Jesus to humble Himself “…unto death, even the death of the cross.” The word “unto” is from the Greek word mechri, which is a Greek word that really means to such an extent. The Greek word mechri is sufficient in itself to dramatize the point, but the verse goes on to say that Jesus humbled Himself unto death, “…even the death of the cross.” The word “even” is the Greek word de, which emphatically means EVEN! The Greek carries this idea: “Can you imag­ine it! Jesus humbled Himself to such a lowly position and became so obedient that He even stooped low enough to die the miserable death of a Cross!”
I heartily recommend that you take the time today to read the April 24 Sparkling Gem order to refresh your memory on the full process of crucifixion. It was genuinely the worst death a person could ever endure. For Jesus to humble Himself to the point of death, EVEN the death of the Cross, demonstrates how much He was willing to humble Himself to redeem you and me.

Just think of it - Almighty God, clothed in radiant glory from eternity past, came to this earth formed as a human being in the womb of a human mother for one purpose: so that He could one day die a miserable death on a Cross to purchase our salvation! All of this required humility on a level far beyond anything we could ever comprehend or anything that has ever been requested of any of us. Yet this was the reason Jesus came; therefore, He chose to be obedient to the very end, humbling Himself to the point of dying a humiliating death on a Cross and thereby purchasing our eternal salvation.

So as you celebrate Christmas tonight and tomorrow, be sure to remember the real purpose of Christmas. It isn’t just a time to reflect on the baby boy who was born in Bethlehem so long ago. That baby was God manifest in the flesh. He was born to die for you and for me. Jesus was so will­ing to do whatever was required in order to redeem us from Satan and sin that He humbled Himself even unto death on a Cross! That is what Christmas is all about!
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Reverend Renner always finishes with a prayer and a confession of faith for his readers:

MY PRAYER FOR TODAY

Lord, I thank You for coming to earth so You could redeem me. When I think of the extent to which You were willing to go in order to save me, it makes me want to shout, to celebrate, and to cry with thankfulness. You love me so much, and I am so grateful for that love. Without You, I would still be lost and in sin. But because of everything You have done for me, today I am free; my life is blessed; Jesus is my Lord; Heaven is my home; and Satan has no right to control me. I will be eternally thankful to You for everything You did to save me!
I pray this in Jesus’ name!


MY CONFESSION FOR TODAY

I confess that Jesus Christ loves me! He demonstrated His love to me by leaving behind Heaven’s glory and taking upon Himself human flesh. And He did it for one purpose: so that one day He could go to the Cross and die for me and thus reconcile me unto God. There is no need for me to ever feel unloved or unwanted, because Jesus went the ultimate distance to prove that He loves me!
I declare this by faith in Jesus’ name!

Source: http://www.renner.org/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/applogic+ftcontentserver?pagename=faithhighway/10000/4000/320RI/ql_this_weeks_sparkling_gem

Munich remembered: the British Arabists

There is a Spielberg movie coming out soon called Munich. To be honest I have not read any reviews and have only seen one trailer on TV. I am not certain what angle Spielberg is going to follow, however the incident the movie is based on is something I still remember. In the Summer Olympics on September 1972 in the city of Munich Germany, Islamofascist Palestinians slaughtered 11 members of the Israeli team.

What has bothered me is that there was a good deal of justification in secret from European sources in favor the Islamofascists. That past sympathy somewhat explains the current anti-Semitism that is currently filtering throughout Europe. Many Europeans and their governments view the Palestinians as a group displaced by European Jews.

The bigger picture is actually the Jews have continually been displaced due to their passionate love for the Land Israel. It is not only Holy to them it is where the Presence of God has dwelt on Mount Zion on the what is known today as the Temple Mount.
Until European Jews began repatriating (long before WWII started by the way), the land dubbed Palestine by the Romans had become a barren land barely even inhabited by Arabs. Jews began coming back and to valiantly reclaim the land to make it fertile. See http://198.173.255.220/pipeline_of_hatred.html and also see http://www.levitt.com/essays/dh.html.

However Spielberg portrays Munich remember Islamofascists are self-deluded whose only purpose is to embrace world domination under Mohammedanism and the annihilation of Jews, Israelis and Americans.

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Judith Weiss
December 23, 2005
Munich remembered: the British Arabists

This entry is part of a series on the Munich Massacre and “Munich” the movie, to provide factual background to accompany the movie's release. The authoritative documentary on the massacre is One Day in September.

Some dusty papers in the vaults of the British Foreign Office were recently declassified. In these papers, Britain's finest diplomats fall all over themselves justifying the coldblooded murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games.

Gayford Woodrow, the consul general in Jerusalem, sent a dispatch to the Foreign Office on Sept 12, six days after the attack, saying: "Before we reproach the Arabs too much, perhaps we might try to put ourselves in their shoes. They are, after all, human beings with normal human failings. The Palestinians in particular have seen their land taken away from them by a group of mainly European invaders equipped with superior armed force and modern technology.

Sound familiar? Tell you what, Mr. Woodrow, old chappie, if those pitiable Palestinians had murdered 11 British athletes (no, it would have to be more to be proportionate to the British population . . . ) would you be quite so sanguine, old thing? (Right ho, then, yes, you probably would. I'm sure after 9-11 you expressed similar sentiments to your fellow Foreign Office retirees in the hushed musty halls of your club . . . .)

Whatever one's moral criticism, it must be agreed that the Munich operation was well planned and that the Arabs there carried it out to the bitter end.

Of course, the fact that it was done well trumps all moral criticism, doesn't it? Didn't we all secretly admire Hitler's extermination plan for being so damnably efficient, eh what?
It is said that lives were really lost because of Israel and West German bungling incompetence."

[No, actually the bungling incompetence was all on the German side. Israel's mistake was in allowing those highly efficient Germans to take over the rescue attempt.]
Mr Woodrow's head of department, James Craig, wrote on his letter: "Not bad but he goes just a little too far."

Too far. Oh quite. Won't hit quite the right note with the American cousins, what, old Craig, old thing?

David Gore-Booth, a first secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "Before we shed too many tears about the Lufthansa hijacking, decide to boycott airlines like the trade unionists at Heathrow or feel obliged to express our concern to the German government, it would be as well to ask ourselves what the implications are so far as the Arab/Israel dispute is concerned. It is self-evident that the hijacking is a manifestation of the Palestine problem. . . . What the hijacking does is to remind the international community that the Palestine problem exists: in one sense this is unwelcome to the Israelis as it shows their pretence for what it is, but in another it provides them with an excellent opportunity to enlist the aid of the international community in erasing the problem.

Hence their apoplectic reaction to the hijacking, which is of course calculated to produce the desired attitude in airline workers at Heathrow. It also provides them with an excellent opportunity to slip into Syria, bomb a few more bases and kill a few more innocent people with impunity. Deplorable though the hijacking may be it caused the loss of no lives whereas . . . casualties in Syria may be as many as 45 or even more.

So who's worse, the British or the French or the Germans? I think it's a tie.

Source: http://www.keshertalk.com/archives/2005/12/munich_remember_6.php

Ann Coulter Takes A Shot:Live and let spy

Well it is Ann Coulter. What more of an introduction can I give.

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Posted: December 21, 20056:38 p.m. Eastern
© 2005 Ann Coulter

Apart from the day the New York Times goes out of business – and the stellar work Paul Krugman's column does twice a week helping people house-train their puppies – the newspaper has done the greatest thing it will ever do in its entire existence. (Calm down: No, the Times didn't hold an intervention for Frank Rich.)

Monday's Times carried a major expose on child molesters who use the Internet to lure their adolescent prey into performing sex acts for webcams. In the course of investigating the story, reporter Kurt Eichenwald broke open a massive network of pedophiles, rescued a young man who had been abused for years and led the Department of Justice to hundreds of child molesters.

I kept waiting for the catch, but apparently the Times does not yet believe pedophilia is covered by the "privacy right." They should stop covering politics and start covering more stories like this.

In order to report the story, the Times said it obtained:

copies of online conversations and e-mail messages between minors and the creepy adults;

records of payments to the minors;

membership lists for webcam sites;

defunct sites stored in online archives;

files retained on a victim's computer over several years;

financial records, credit card processing data and other information;

The Neverland Ranch's mailing list. (OK, I made that last one up.)

Would that the Times allowed the Bush administration similar investigative powers for Islamofacists in America!

Which brings me to this week's scandal about No Such Agency spying on "Americans." I have difficulty ginning up much interest in this story inasmuch as I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.
But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures: After 9-11, any president who was not spying on people calling phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for being an inept commander in chief.

With a huge gaping hole in lower Manhattan, I'm not sure why we have to keep reminding people, but we are at war. (Perhaps it's because of the media blackout on images of the 9-11 attack. We're not allowed to see those because seeing planes plowing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon might make us feel angry and jingoistic.)
Among the things that war entails are: killing people (sometimes innocent), destroying buildings (sometimes innocent) and spying on people (sometimes innocent).

That is why war is a bad thing. But once a war starts, it is going to be finished one way or another, and I have a preference for it coming out one way rather than the other.

In previous wars, the country has done far worse than monitor telephone calls placed to jihad headquarters. FDR rounded up Japanese – many of them loyal American citizens – and threw them in internment camps. Most appallingly, at the same time, he let New York Times editors wander free.

Note the following about the Japanese internment:

The Supreme Court upheld the president's authority to intern the Japanese during wartime;

That case, Korematsu v. United States, is still good law;

There are no Japanese internment camps today. (Although the no-limit blackjack section at Caesar's Palace on a Saturday night comes pretty close.)

It's one or the other: Either we take the politically correct, scattershot approach and violate everyone's civil liberties, or we focus on the group threatening us and – in the worst-case scenario – run the risk of briefly violating the civil liberties of 1,000 people in a country of 300 million.

Of course, this is assuming I'm talking to people from the world of the normal. In the Democrats' world, there are two more options. Violate no one's civil liberties and get used to a lot more 9-11s, or the modified third option, preferred by Sen. John D. Rockefeller:

Let the president do all the work and take all the heat for preventing another terrorist attack while you place a letter expressing your objections in a file cabinet as a small parchment tribute to your exquisite conscience.

Ann Coulter, well-known for her TV appearances as a political analyst, is an attorney and author. Want to know what she is really like? Check out these hot products!
Source: http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48024

Ruling Against Intelligent Design

I know I am moving in kind of late in the action on the ruling on ID in Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, the blogger Imago Dei has some powerful insight on ID. It is evenhanded and positive toward ID, yet Imago Dei does not call for the abandonment of evolution either. In the realm of science both are theories, one is secular evolving to an atheistic conclusion and the other is theistic evolving to an original design - hence a Designer.

The Designer concept is what upset Federal District Judge John Jones. The liberalness of this is filtered through the eyes of separation of Church and State rather than a potential rival scientific theory. I challenge any liberal in or out of the Court system to show me the words "separation of Church and State" in the U.S. Constitution. I even challenge them to find the words "a wall of separation" in the U.S. Constitution. The liberal cannot find it because it does not exist. It is a concept contrived from a Jefferson speech at a Church in his day. Activist judges and liberals have used this speech to interpret something that is not there. The teaching of ID is actually the most intelligent way of teaching an alternative scientific theory that leads to the conclusion of a Creator. Why? ID is general enough to not insult any religion except atheism.

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Posted by John Roberts
Imago-dei.net
December 20, 2005

I was approached several months ago by a Lobbyist in Washington State who was seeking to create legislation that would make teaching Evolution against the law in Washington State schools. I haven't heard of a worse idea in a while, and I said just that to him. Evolution is a theory that has been taught in most schools for many years. As a scientific theory it ought to be taught. Plutarch wrote, "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." We ought to do whatever we can to teach our students critical thinking about their world. Apparently U.S. District Judge John Jones disagrees with me. (http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/12/21/evolution.debate.ap/index.html) I think he's wrong. What do you think?

Judge Jones writes, "We have concluded that it is not [science] and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents." That is an pretty amazing statement... "we have concluded that it's not science?" How does one conclude that? What are the ID guys saying?

To illustrate perhaps: Let's pretend that I'm visiting the United States from Sweden, and know very little of US History, and virtually nothing of its geography. I decide to tour America from west to east. On my trip I am driving through South Dakota and see Mount Rushmore. I'm going to say... "That is the most amazingly precise naturally occurring rock formation that I have ever seen! It actually looks like people... old guys with really funny haircuts!" Of course that's absurd. I will inherently think, without prompting, or ask the question out loud if I'm with someone, "I wonder who did that?" I would like to know if there is anyone who would think, "Imagine that coming about by purely natural causes."

Intelligent Design suggests that when we have "contingency", which means that if I see something occurring that isn't necessarily there due to its connection with something else. "Complexity" if it is sufficiently complex as to make it unlikely to be random. If it has "specification", which Bill Dembski describes as, "to count as specifications, patterns must be suitably independent of events. I refer to this relation of independence as detachability and say that a pattern is detachable just in case it satisfies that event.
Simply put, when you look at Mount Rushmore it self-evidently suggests design. Those scientists who are supporting ID are simply saying it "seems like" there is design in the universe. A strand of DNA is multitudinously more complex than Mt. Rushmore! And yet to suggest that Mt. Rushmore happened apart from design... and... a designer... would be scoffed at in the extreme.

Judge Jones suggests that, "To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect." That is a kind and generous statement of the problem really. There has been no success thus far to get near bio genesis. That is... starting life from non-life, which is, to be fair, the crux of the matter. How does Darwinian evolution account for the beginning of life? (I am not in any way shape or form conceding the rest of the theory by the way). Dean Kenyon, for years a distinguished senior biology professor at San Francisco State University, and co-author of Biochemical Predestination, says, "Gary Steinmen and I thought that if we could pull together all of the lines of empirical evidence that had accumulated by the mid to late 60's in one continuous argument we were very enthusiastic about explaining the origins of the main life-building elements." (Quotes by Kenyon from "Unlocking the Mystery of Life"). Kenyon goes on to say, "About the time that biochemical predestination came out, I and my co-author were totally convinced that we have the scientific explanation for origins"

Kenyon began to seriously doubt that they in fact had the answer within five years of the publishing his book. He says, "It's an enormous problem how you can get together in one tiny submicroscopic volume of the primitive ocean all of the elements of the molecular components that you would need in order for a self-replicating cycle to begin."

"It just reached, for me, the intellectual breaking point sometime near the end of the decade of the 70's. The more I conducted my own studies, including a period at the NASA/Aims Research Center, the more it became apparent that there were multiple difficulties with the chemical evolution account."

To say that Darwian Evolution is imperfect is perhaps an understatement. Antony Flew is another case to cite. Flew, a leading atheist philosopher for many decades in Britain, has recently announced his turn to theism. One of the key turning arguments for Flew? Intelligent Design.

The point I am making here, and the ID people are making, is not to get rid of evolutionary theory willy nilly. I am not in favor of Christians, or theists, seeking to burn books and stomp out thinking. However, it seems amazing to me that proponents of Evolutionary Theory are so unwilling to allow the controversy to be taught. That is the hope of ID supporters... that the controversy will be taught. It seems that the fear is in teaching the controversy and having students see, not just that there are large gaps in Evolutionary Theory, but that there may in fact be another alternative. If such noted scientists as Kenyon and Flew are being convinced, perhaps it is worth taking a look at.

Does Intelligent Design have metaphysical implications? Certainly, but if that's where the evidence leads, as Scott Minick of the University of Idaho says, then we have to go with the evidence. ID is not prescribing any certain theistic position specifically, but certainly if the evidence leads to design, it will ultimately have to lead to a designer. That's another argument, but isn't it worth at least thinking about?

Posted by John Roberts December 20, 2005 in Current Affairs
Source: http://www.imago-dei.net/imago_dei/2005/12/ruling_against_.html

Congress Temporarily Extends Patriot Act 6 Months

Well it looks like the Dems in the Senate know some form of the Patriot Act needs to exist to combat are enemies in War. What hypocrisy to accuse the President of violating civil rights and then extending the Patriot Act for six months. I ran into the story on a New Zealand news feed of all places.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3520505a12,00.html

When is Torture Acceptable?

What prevents terrorism? Information! If a terrorist is captured and he has information about immanent death and destruction pertaining to the military or the civilian population, is torture viable? If it protects my family it is extremely viable!
Here are a few excerpts of respected theorists and their corresponding links if you wish to follow up postulation.
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“Death: Suppose a terrorist has hidden an atomic bomb on Manhattan Island which will detonate at noon on July 4 unless ... here follow the usual demands for money and release of his friends from jail. Suppose, further, that he is caught at 10 a.m on the fateful day, but preferring death to failure, won't disclose where the bomb is. What do we do? If we follow due process, wait for his lawyer, arraign him, millions of people will die. If the only way to save those lives is to subject the terrorist to the most excruciating possible pain, what grounds can there be for not doing so? I suggest there are none. In any case, I ask you to face the question with an open mind.

Torturing the terrorist is unconstitutional? Probably. But millions of lives surely outweigh constitutionality. Torture is barbaric? Mass murder is far more barbaric. Indeed, letting millions of innocents die in deference to one who flaunts his guilt is moral cowardice, an unwillingness to dirty one's hands. If you caught the terrorist, could you sleep nights knowing that millions died because you couldn't bring yourself to apply the electrodes?”

Excerpted from “The Case For Torture,” By Michael Levin Link:
http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/torture.html

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“To understand what difference a ban on torture will make, I spoke this week with British sources about the interrogation techniques used against the Irish Republican Army in the early 1970s. The British were facing a hideous IRA bombing campaign, and to stop the bombers, the British army and police in Northern Ireland tried to squeeze information from their IRA prisoners.

The British recognized what every cop knows -- that interrogation is much easier if the prisoner is disoriented. So the British put hoods on their IRA prisoners, just as U.S. interrogators have done in Iraq. The British approved other, harsher methods: depriving IRA prisoners of sleep, making them lean against a wall for long periods, using "white noise" that would confuse them.

The clincher for British interrogators was mock execution. The preferred method in the mid-1970s was to take hooded IRA prisoners up in helicopters over the lakes near Belfast and threaten to throw them out if they didn't talk. Sometimes, they actually were thrown out. The prisoners didn't know that the helicopter was only a few yards above the water. I'm told that technique nearly always worked. (So, too, with the "waterboarding" that U.S. interrogators used to break al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed.) The British eventually had to give up their extreme techniques because of public outcry, and I'm told they got less information. But they eventually prevailed against the IRA.”

Excerpted from “Stepping Back From Torture,” by David Ignatius December 16, 2005; link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/15/AR2005121501438.html.
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“Banning torture categorically by federal legislation takes on a new dimension in an era of international terrorist networks that may, within the lifetime of this generation, have nuclear weapons.

If a captured terrorist knows where a nuclear bomb has been planted in some American city, and when it is timed to go off, are millions of Americans to be allowed to be incinerated because we have become too squeamish to get that information out of him by whatever means are necessary?

What a price to pay for moral exhibitionism or political grandstanding!
Even in less extreme circumstances, and even if we don't intend to torture the captured terrorist, does that mean that we need to reduce our leverage by informing all terrorists around the world in advance that they can stonewall indefinitely when captured, without fear of that fate?

This is not only an era of international terrorist networks but also an era of runaway litigation and runaway judges. Do we really want a federal law that will enable captured terrorists to be able to take their cases to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals?”

Excerpted from “Tortured reason,” by Thomas Sowell 11/22/05; link: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/2005/11/22/176427.html. ------------------------------

“The International Committee of the Red Cross has accused the United States of torturing enemy combatant prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to documents leaked to The New York Times this week. Does that mean U.S. interrogators are sticking needles under inmates' fingernails and attaching electrodes to sensitive body parts? Or are they merely beating prisoners senseless? Hardly.

The ICRC report itself hasn't been made public, but a memorandum summarizing its contents describes far less egregious behavior. Among the tactics the ICRC portrayed as "tantamount to torture" were solitary confinement, temperature extremes, and using "forced positions" to obtain information from some of the approximately 500 men held at Guantanamo.

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," the Times quotes the ICRC report as alleging. But is it? And if such methods are "torture," is the United States justified in using them anyway?”
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“McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney, led the prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. As McCarthy makes clear, we are forced into debating the moral parameters of torture because of the very nature of our current enemy. The United States is not at war with a conventional army but with men whose aim is to kill innocent civilians in the most horrific manner possible. When the Geneva Conventions and other international norms prohibiting torture were developed, McCarthy notes, they were designed to promote the humane treatment of captured soldiers who operated on behalf of nation-states or intra-state liberation movements. "They did not contemplate a core methodology -- targeting civilians, randomly torturing and killing prisoners -- that grossly and willfully violates the very premises of humanitarian law," writes McCarthy.

Starting on Sept. 11, 2001, we have witnessed the most heinous acts committed by Islamist fanatics: 3,000 civilians killed when 19 men flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon; some 200 tourists killed when Islamist terrorists bombed a Bali resort; the bombing of train stations in Spain, killing 200 persons; the videotaped beheadings of Nick Berg, Paul Johnson, Kim Sun-il, and others; and countless other acts of violence aimed at terrorizing the civilian population of the West. The only possible way to prevent such horrors is to obtain information that might interrupt future terrorist plots. And some of those who might lead us to other terrorists are now sitting in cells in Guantanamo.”

Excerpted from “Its time for a rational debate,” by Linda Chavez 12/1/04 link: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/lindachavez/2004/12/01/13816.html.
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“The war by terrorists against democracies has changed all this. Terrorists who do not care about the laws of warfare target innocent noncombatants. Indeed, their goal is to maximize the number of deaths and injuries among the most vulnerable civilians, such as children, women and the elderly. They employ suicide bombers who cannot be deterred by the threat of death or imprisonment because they are brainwashed to believe that their reward awaits them in another world. They have no "return address."
The terrorist leaders -- who do not wear military uniforms -- deliberately hide among noncombatants. They have also used ambulances, women pretending to be sick or pregnant, and even children as carriers of lethal explosives.

By employing these tactics, terrorists put the democracies to difficult choices: Either allow those who plan and coordinate terrorist attacks to escape justice and continue their victimization of civilians, or attack them in their enclaves, thereby risking death or injury to the civilians they are using as human shields.
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The time has come to revisit the laws of war and to make them relevant to new realities. If their ultimate purpose was to serve as a shield to protect innocent civilians, they are failing miserably, since they are being used as a sword by terrorists who target such innocent civilians. Several changes should be considered:

· First, democracies must be legally empowered to attack terrorists who hide among civilians, so long as proportional force is employed. Civilians who are killed while being used as human shields by terrorists must be deemed the victims of the terrorists who have chosen to hide among them, rather than those of the democracies who may have fired the fatal shot.

· Second, a new category of prisoner should be recognized for captured terrorists and those who support them. They are not "prisoners of war," neither are they "ordinary criminals." They are suspected terrorists who operate outside the laws of war, and a new status should be designated for them - a status that affords them certain humanitarian rights, but does not treat them as traditional combatants.

· Third, the law must come to realize that the traditional sharp line between combatants and civilians has been replaced by a continuum of civilian-ness. At the innocent end are those who do not support terrorism in any way. In the middle are those who applaud the terrorism, encourage it, but do not actively facilitate it. At the guilty end are those who help finance it, who make martyrs of the suicide bombers, who help the terrorists hide among them, and who fail to report imminent attacks of which they are aware. The law should recognize this continuum in dealing with those who are complicit, to some degree, in terrorism.

· Fourth, the treaties against all forms of torture must begin to recognize differences in degree among varying forms of rough interrogation, ranging from trickery and humiliation, on the one hand, to lethal torture on the other. They must also recognize that any country faced with a ticking-time-bomb terrorist would resort to some forms of interrogation that are today prohibited by the treaty.”

Excerpted from “Rules of War Enable Terror,” by Alan Dershowitz 12/21/05 link: http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/middleeast/Rules_of_War_Enable_Terror.asp

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“In a summary of Israel's policies, Glenn Frankel of the Washington Post noted that the 1999 Supreme Court ruling struck down secret guidelines established 12 years earlier that allowed interrogators to use the kind of physical and psychological pressure I described in imagining how KSM might be treated in America's "black sites."

‘But after the second Palestinian uprising broke out a year later, and especially after a devastating series of suicide bombings of passenger buses, cafes and other civilian targets," writes Frankel, citing human rights lawyers and detainees, "Israel's internal security service, known as the Shin Bet or the Shabak, returned to physical coercion as a standard practice."
Not only do the techniques used "command widespread support from the Israeli public," but "Israeli prime ministers and justice ministers with a variety of political views," including the most conciliatory and liberal, have defended these techniques "as a last resort in preventing terrorist attacks.’”

Excerpted from “The Truth about Torture,” by Charles Krauthammer 12/5/05 link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/400rhqav.asp.