Terrorism

Gitmo: Obama’s First Fiasco

Tickler Leave a comment

During his first week as commander in chief, President Barack Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay and terminated the CIA’s special authority to interrogate terrorists.

[Commentary] AP

While these actions will certainly please his base — gone are the cries of an “imperial presidency” — they will also seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks. In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001. He’s also drying up the most valuable sources of intelligence on al Qaeda, which, according to CIA Director Michael Hayden, has come largely out of the tough interrogation of high-level operatives during the early years of the war.

The question Mr. Obama should have asked right after the inaugural parade was: What will happen after we capture the next Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah? Instead, he took action without a meeting of his full national security staff, and without a legal review of all the policy options available to meet the threats facing our country.

What such a review would have made clear is that the civilian law-enforcement system cannot prevent terrorist attacks. What is needed are the tools to gain vital intelligence, which is why, under President George W. Bush, the CIA could hold and interrogate high-value al Qaeda leaders. On the advice of his intelligence advisers, the president could have authorized coercive interrogation methods like those used by Israel and Great Britain in their antiterrorism campaigns. (He could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.)

Mr. Obama has also ordered that all military commission trials be stayed and that the case of Ali Saleh al-Marri, the only al Qaeda operative now held on U.S. soil, be reviewed. This seems a prelude to closing the military commissions down entirely and transferring the detainees’ cases to U.S. civilian courts for prosecution under ordinary criminal law. Military commission trials have been used in most American wars, and their rules and procedures are designed around the need to protect intelligence sources and methods from revelation in open court.

It’s also likely Mr. Obama will declare terrorists to be prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. The Bush administration classified terrorists — well supported by legal and historical precedent — like pirates, illegal combatants who do not fight on behalf of a nation and refuse to obey the laws of war.

…

Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured al Qaeda terrorists. Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial.

The first thing any lawyer will do is tell his clients to shut up. The KSMs or Abu Zubaydahs of the future will respond to no verbal questioning or trickery — which is precisely why the Bush administration felt compelled to use more coercive measures in the first place. Our soldiers and agents in the field will have to run more risks as they must secure physical evidence at the point of capture and maintain a chain of custody that will stand up to the standards of a civilian court.

Relying on the civilian justice system not only robs us of the most effective intelligence tool to avert future attacks, it provides an opportunity for our enemies to obtain intelligence on us. If terrorists are now to be treated as ordinary criminals, their defense lawyers will insist that the government produce in open court all U.S. intelligence on their client along with the methods used by the CIA and NSA to get it. A defendant’s constitutional right to demand the government’s files often forces prosecutors to offer plea bargains to spies rather than risk disclosure of intelligence secrets.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the only member of the 9/11 cell arrested before the attack, turned his trial into a circus by making such demands. He was convicted after four years of pretrial wrangling only because he chose to plead guilty. Expect more of this, but with far more valuable intelligence at stake.

It is naïve to say, as Mr. Obama did in his inaugural speech, that we can “reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” That high-flying rhetoric means that we must give al Qaeda — a hardened enemy committed to our destruction — the same rights as garden-variety criminals at the cost of losing critical intelligence about real, future threats.

Government policy choices are all about trade-offs, which cannot simply be wished away by rhetoric. Mr. Obama seems to have respected these realities in his hesitation to end the NSA’s electronic surveillance programs, or to stop the use of predator drones to target individual al Qaeda leaders.

But in his decisions taken so precipitously just two days after the inauguration, Mr. Obama may have opened the door to further terrorist acts on U.S. soil by shattering some of the nation’s most critical defenses.

Read the full article here

And the Liberal Press Actually Expect Us To Take Them Seriously?

Tickler Leave a comment

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

FROM THE MEDIA RESEARCH CENTER’S CYBERALERT.
File this one under “Deluded Expectations.” During MSNBC’s coverage of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, on Nov. 27, daytime anchor Alex Witt seemed frustrated that the election of Barack Obama 23 days earlier — and the accompanying “global outpouring of affection, respect, hope” — had not caused an end to terrorist violence.

Talking with correspondent John Yang, who was covering the Obama side of the story, Witt conceded that while “you certainly can’t expect things to change on a dime overnight….There had been such a global outpouring of affection, respect, hope, with the new administration coming in, that precisely these kinds of attacks, it was thought — at least hoped — would be dampered down. But in this case it looks like Barack Obama is getting a preview of things to come.”

[This item, by the MRC’s Rich Noyes, was posted Monday morning on the MRC’s blog, Newsbusters.org]

It almost seems like a parody of liberals’ blind worship of Obama to actually expect that The One’s election would mean terrorists hanging up their bomb belts, peace around the world, lions lying down with lambs, and so forth. For his part, Yang delicately pointed out the more valid concern that “the enemies of the United States, those who don’t care for the United States no matter who’s leading it, would try and test the United States” during the transition from Bush to Obama.

Here’s the full exchange, that took place at about 2:55pm EST on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, after Yang reported on how Obama was being fully briefed by the Bush administration on the terrorist attacks:

ALEX WITT: You know, John, and it’s interesting because there are many who had such an optimstic and hopeful opinion of things, and you certainly can’t expect things to change [snaps fingers] on a dime overnight, but there are many who suggested that with the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama administration there would be something of a lull in terrorism attacks. There had been such a global outpouring of affection, respect, hope, with the new administration coming in, that precisely these kinds of attacks, it was thought — at least hoped — would be dampered down. But in this case it looks like Barack Obama is getting a preview of things to come.
JOHN YANG: He’s — it’s a rude awakening, a very, sort of, sober reminder of what he’s going to be facing in just a few weeks. And there is some concern also, there had been some concern, that during this period, during this, the transition period, between Election Day and Inauguration Day, that the enemies of the United States, those who don’t care for the United States no matter who’s leading it, would try and test the United States, would try to take advantage of this period, and I think that may be one thing that we’re seeing right now.
WITT: Okay, John Yang there in Chicago, following President-elect Barack Obama’s Thanksgiving Day dinner having been interrupted by all of this news from Mumbai. John, thank you very much.

Find the article on the Wall Street Journal’s website here.

WSJ: Obama Would Europeanize America

Tickler Leave a comment

Another must read from the WSJ today…

The only organization with a worse rating than the Republican president is the Democratic Congress—14% approval, 75% disapproval. But there, too, the Democrats will gain strength. They are expected to increase their majority in the House, and current polling shows that in Senate races Democrats will increase their members from the current 51 (including two independents who caucus with the Democrats) to at least 57. They may even achieve the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

So where is the new Obama administration likely to take us? Seven things seem certain:

  • The U.S. military will withdraw from Iraq quickly and substantially, regardless of conditions on the ground or the obvious consequence of emboldening terrorists there and around the globe.
  • Protectionism will become our national trade policy; free trade agreements with other nations will be reduced and limited.
  • Income taxes will rise on middle- and upper-income people and businesses, and individuals will pay much higher Social Security taxes, all to carry out the new president’s goals of “spreading the wealth around.”
  • Federal government spending will substantially increase. The new Obama proposals come to more than $300 billion annually, for education, health care, energy, environmental and many other programs, in addition to whatever is needed to meet our economic challenges. Mr. Obama proposes more than a 10% annual spending growth increase, considerably higher than under the first President Bush (6.7%), Bill Clinton (3.3%) or George W. Bush (6.4%).
  • Federal regulation of the economy will expand, on everything from financial management companies to electricity generation and personal energy use.
  • The power of labor unions will substantially increase, beginning with repeal of secret ballot voting to decide on union representation.
  • Free speech will be curtailed through the reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine to limit the conservative talk radio that so irritates the liberal establishment.

These policy changes will be the beginning of the Europeanization of America. There will be many more public policy changes with similar goals—nationalized health care, Kyoto-like global-warming policies, and increased education regulation and spending.

Additional tax advantages for lower and middle income people will be enacted: a 10% mortgage tax credit that would average about $500 per household per year, a $4,000 tax credit for college tuition, a tax credit covering half of child-care expenses up to $6,000 per year, and even a $7,000 credit for purchase of a clean car.

More important, all but the clean car credit would be “refundable,” meaning people will get a check for them if they owe no taxes, which is simply a transfer of income from the government to individuals. In reality this is the beginning of a new series of entitlements for middle-class families, the longer-term effect of which will be to make those families more dependant on (and so more supportive of) larger government. The Tax Policy Center estimates that these refundable tax credits would cost the government $648 billion over 10 years.

These are Mr. Obama’s plans. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats would increase spending for their own interests and favorite programs. More important, the Congress will consider itself more important than a freshman president who has never held an executive position, so they will do what they want and he will have to go along with most of it.

READ IT HERE

Washington Post’s Krauthammer: McCain for President

Tickler Leave a comment

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, October 24, 2008

Contrarian that I am, I’m voting for John McCain. I’m not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it’s over before it’s over. I’m talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they’re left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling “Stop!” I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I’d rather lose an election than lose my bearings.

First, I’ll have no truck with the phony case ginned up to rationalize voting for the most liberal and inexperienced presidential nominee in living memory. The “erratic” temperament issue, for example. As if McCain’s risky and unsuccessful but in no way irrational attempt to tactically maneuver his way through the economic tsunami that came crashing down a month ago renders unfit for office a man who demonstrated the most admirable equanimity and courage in the face of unimaginable pressures as a prisoner of war, and who later steadily navigated innumerable challenges and setbacks, not the least of which was the collapse of his campaign just a year ago.

McCain the “erratic” is a cheap Obama talking point. The 40-year record testifies to McCain the stalwart.

Nor will I countenance the “dirty campaign” pretense. The double standard here is stunning. Obama ran a scurrilous Spanish-language ad falsely associating McCain with anti-Hispanic slurs. Another ad falsely claimed that McCain supports “cutting Social Security benefits in half.” And for months Democrats insisted that McCain sought 100 years of war in Iraq.

McCain’s critics are offended that he raised the issue of William Ayers. What’s astonishing is that Obama was himself not offended by William Ayers.

Moreover, the most remarkable of all tactical choices of this election season is the attack that never was. Out of extreme (and unnecessary) conscientiousness, McCain refused to raise the legitimate issue of Obama’s most egregious association — with the race-baiting Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Dirty campaigning, indeed.

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the past year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

And how will he pass it? Well, how has he fared on the only two significant foreign policy tests he has faced since he’s been in the Senate? The first was the surge. Obama failed spectacularly. He not only opposed it. He tried to denigrate it, stop it and, finally, deny its success.

The second test was Georgia, to which Obama responded instinctively with evenhanded moral equivalence, urging restraint on both sides. McCain did not have to consult his advisers to instantly identify the aggressor.

Today’s economic crisis, like every other in our history, will in time pass. But the barbarians will still be at the gates. Whom do you want on the parapet? I’m for the guy who can tell the lion from the lamb.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

The Surge in Iraq by Barack Obama

Tickler Leave a comment

When President Bush ordered the surge in January 2007, Obama said:

“I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

This is a position he maintained throughout 2007. This year, long after proof and attacks forced him to comment, he acknowledged progress.

Biden Makes McCain’s Case against Obama

Tickler 1 Comment

Joe Biden, always reliable for betraying his shallow pool of savvy and power motives through a loose tongue, told his real feelings again, painting a second coat on his ticket-mate for being weak with world and terror leaders. As if it weren’t enough for him to claim Obama needs a second desk in the oval office where Biden will preside as co-president, now he puts another nail it Obama along the very same lines.

Biden’s quote froma speech last week…

“Within the first six months of this administration, if we win… we’re going to face a major international challenge. Because they’re going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy [who by the way largely failed]. They’re going to want to test him. And they’re going to find out this guy’s got steel in his spine.”

Not so much on the steel spine thing Joe.

But he was right on the fact that the rest of the world sees Obama as a media darling and a great motivational speaker (corporate training sessions and kid’s parties can be booked through the campaign), not as a strong leader or leaving certainly alone a strong defender. They know as well as we do that he’s naive and weak, despite his fightin’ words regarding Pakistan. Keep in mind, this is a pacifist at heart, as are all of the left of the left, and he’s saying what you want to hear to sucker your vote. He has no intention of doing anything but talking to our enemies, which has worked so well in the past, ask Carter.

The always candid and often wise John Bolton was on Fox, expanding on the issues that face us if Zero becomes president with this opening salvo “I think [Obama’s] very naive, I don’t think he understands how to represent or defend American interests. And I think we’re going to learn… to great pain if he’s elected how much at risk we really are.”

BOLTON: Well, I think [Obama and Biden are] obviously eager to win, and that’s why Obama has changed his position so many times on key questions like how exactly is he going to get out of Iraq.

I must say my favorite Joe Biden line in that whole speech was when he said, I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than my colleague — most of my colleagues know, so he better win the vice presidency. I don’t think he can go back to the Senate after that.

HANNITY: Yes. Do you think, for example, that when you — when he said these things about Iran being a tiny country, not a serious threat, how do you think that is perceived?

I mean is that almost like when he talks about waiving — he would have left Iraq, we would have basically waved the white flag of surrender.

Is he an appeaser? Is that a fair word? I used that adjective about him?

BOLTON: Well, I think he’s a kind of a kumbaya guy. He can’t understand why somebody on the other side of the table may not be as reasonable as he is, and those people are prepared to take advantage of him.

Read it here

And here on MSNBC for Obama (the stealth campaign arm)…

Video: Escaped The Plantation, Voting McCain

Tickler Leave a comment

Perhaps the best speech given during this entire campaign cycle.

The O-Team
More genius by ZO. See more great clips here

Ayers-Style: Anti-Capitalist Education Reform

Tickler Leave a comment

A Manhattan Institute Fellow, Sol Stern, has written a piece about William Ayers and his “education reform” really means to the American education system…

I’ve studied Mr. Ayers’s work for years and read most of his books. His hatred of America is as virulent as when he planted a bomb at the Pentagon. And this hatred informs his educational “reform” efforts. Of course, Mr. Obama isn’t going to appoint him to run the education department. But the media mainstreaming of a figure like Mr. Ayers could have terrible consequences for the country’s politics and public schools…

Mr. Ayers was hired by the Chicago public schools to train teachers, and played a leading role in the $160 million Annenberg Challenge grant that distributed funds to a host of so-called school-reform projects, including some social-justice themed schools and schools organized by Acorn. Barack Obama became the first chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge organization in 1995…

In fact, as one of the leaders of a movement for bringing radical social-justice teaching into our public school classrooms, Mr. Ayers is not a school reformer. He is a school destroyer.

He still hopes for a revolutionary upheaval that will finally bring down American capitalism and imperialism, but this time around Mr. Ayers sows the seeds of resistance and rebellion in America’s future teachers. Thus, education students signing up for a course Mr. Ayers teaches at UIC, “On Urban Education,” can read these exhortations from the course description: “Homelessness, crime, racism, oppression — we have the resources and knowledge to fight and overcome these things. We need to look beyond our isolated situations, to define our problems globally. We cannot be child advocates . . . in Chicago or New York and ignore the web that links us with the children of India or Palestine.”

This kind of unrepentant terrorist needs to be ejected from the education system before he causes major damage.

In the world of the Ed schools, Mr. Ayers’s movement has established a sizeable beachhead — witness his election earlier this year as vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation’s largest organization of education professors and researchers.

If Barack Obama wins on Nov. 4, the “guy in the neighborhood” is not likely to get an invitation to the Lincoln bedroom. But with the Democrats controlling all three branches of government, there’s a real danger that Mr. Ayers’s social-justice movement in the schools will get even more room to maneuver and grow.

Horrifying.

“Just Bad Luck? All of Obama’s People Hate America…”

Tickler Leave a comment

Glenn Beck’s got a hilarious piece on the bad luck Obama’s had in being surrounded by those who hate, or at the very least aren’t proud of America.

Then Barack is like, “Hey, I want to be a state senator. Where should I have it? I mean, I could launch it from a park, you know, I could go to like a cool podium some place, maybe I can go to Pizza Hut. Where could I possibly — and somebody says, hey, I know, you can go do it at my house. And he’s like, really? Now, you would think to yourself, well, that’s lucky. And I’m sure that’s what Barack Obama was thinking, “I don’t know if I have a place to do it, I don’t know if I can get a park and a podium, I don’t know if I can get into Pizza Hut and we’ll have room for all the cameras. And this guy seems to have a big house. I mean, I don’t know him, we live in the same neighborhood but we don’t really talk.” Okay, so he launches at his house, and it’s this beautiful house. Turns out — ready for this one? Turns out the guy is a home grown terrorist.

Check it out…