by Robert Farrow

I was watching the evening news because I was too lazy to change the channel tonight when again I was quickly reminded why I wrote sometime ago that “journalism today has all the integrity of used-car sales or sideshow performer.” I think in this case the journalistic failure was WJZ TV. Well, the newscast attempted to report on the Pledge of Allegiance “Debate” in our city schools. Here is how the article progressed.

A few seconds of children reciting the pledge.
audio of ONE parent objecting to the pledge
The freaking Christian hating ACLU doing what they do best:
THE SAME PARENT objecting further to the pledge
THE SAME ACLU witch again attacking the pledge
the end.

What?

This is journalism? And where was the other side of the story, like to represent the 95% of the population they choose to ignore?

And debate was in “”, because only a SMALL minority objects. So I ask you, as they talk of rights, why does 5% of the population have the right to dictate terms to 95% of the population?

So, in the spirit of WJZ’s commitment to accuracy, I will have WJZ cover Pearl Harbor.

A few seconds of the Pearl Harbor footage.
Japanese Admiral Yamamoto discussing how the attack on Pearl Harbor would protect Japanese access to oil and other raw materials needed for the Empire.
A Korean worker speaking grugingly how Japanese “influence” civilizes Korea as Japenese soldiers stand behind him.
Prime Minister Tojo discussed how the “Greater East–Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere will benefit all Asians.
fadeout on the image of the Emperor.

Powerline adds their two cents in with “Don’t Believe A Word of It!”

That’s the Associated Press’s admonition with regard to President Bush’s speech on Iraq today. AP reporter Calvin Woodward gets my nomination for the most ludicrously biased story of 2005. His article, headlined “Bush Attempts Hard Sell on Iraq Progress”, begins–and, no I’m not making this up:

WASHINGTON – President Bush’s depiction of Iraqi security forces as “helping to turn the tide” is difficult to square with persistent setbacks in handing control of the country back to its own people.
His suggestion that Americans are solidly behind the mission also understates opposition at home, and his hard sell on the rising quality of Iraqi forces overlooks complexities on the ground.

Bush on Wednesday declared the Iraqi army and police forces are “increasingly taking the lead in the fight against the terrorists,” even as recruits patrol Iraq’s most violent cities barely three months after learning how to use weapons and police forces struggle to get officers to come to work.

You might mistake that for a DNC press release authored by Howard Dean, but it really is an AP news story. Woodward continues:

[T]he White House paper cited a number of positive statistics on the recovery of the Iraq economy, asserting “our restore, reform, build strategy is achieving results.”
The International Monetary Fund, in its latest World Economic Outlook, in September, issued a more sobering view.

“The new government faces daunting medium-term challenges, including advancing the reconstruction of the country’s infrastructure, reducing macroeconomic instability and developing the institutions that can support a market-based economy,” the survey stated.

Bush tried to assure the cadets that the American people are behind them, but the Associated Press is having none of it:

Bush, making his remarks at the U.S. Naval Academy, spoke as if the debate about Iraq were limited to Washington and only politicians were questioning the mission.
“When you’re risking your life to accomplish a mission, the last thing you want to hear is that mission being questioned in our nation’s capital,” he told cadets. “I want you to know that, while there may be a lot of heated rhetoric in Washington, D.C., one thing is not in dispute: The American people stand behind you.”

Bush’s public standing and support for the war have declined. In an AP-Ipsos poll taken in November, 62 percent said they disapproved of his Iraq policy,and his overall job approval rating dropped to 37 percent, the lowest level of his presidency.

And this is how Woodward concludes his neutral, unbiased news report on the President’s speech:

As he did before the invasion, Bush tied Iraq to terrorism, to make the case that a stable Iraq would make for a safer America.
He declared, “The terrorists have made it clear that Iraq is the central front in their war against humanity. And so we must recognize Iraq as the central front in the war on terror.”

Iraq was not, however, the terrorists’ chosen battlefield until Saddam was defeated and extremists poured across unsecured borders.

Absolutely unbelievable.

Click here for the whole article.

This happens everyday guys. Journalism is dead. I don’t know how many examples I need to give. They are as fair and as partial as the Inquisition.

By the way

ACLU, I hate you, sue me!

By Claudia Rosett, Pajamas Media Editorial Advisory Board Member

Greetings, and a quick tip: Anyone in favor of censorship and internet taxes can skip the rest of this column.

OK. For those still with me, who probably agree it is not a good idea to have Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe editing your blog and then charging you for it, it’s time to talk about the great UN internet grab. Thanks to the U.S. just saying no, the UN bid to get its hands on our keyboards failed this month at the United Nations Internet conclave in Tunis. But don’t drop your guard. The UN will be back. The pickings are potentially too rich, and the stakes too high, for them to resist. In case anyone has any doubts, Secretary-General Kofi Annan himself (about whom you can read more by googling his name together with “Oil-for-Food,” “Rape-by-Peacekeepers” and “Bribes-for-Procurement”) appeared in Tunis to proclaim that while the U.S. had blocked a UN takeover of the internet this time, “I think you also acknowledge the need for more international participation in discussions of Internet governance issues. So let those discussions continue.” Then came Annan’s scariest line: “We in the United Nations will support this process in every way we can.”

You can bet your laptop they will. Any institution brazen enough to hold a “World Summit on the Information Society” in internet-censoring journalist-jailing Tunisia is obviously ready to try anything to get hold of the net. This initiative has been bubbling along since Tunisia first proposed it in 1998, and by now there have been enough conferences, theme papers, working groups and planning sessions so that this UN campaign has put down roots. The WSIS website is already an empire unto itself, packed with stocktaking questionnaires, press releases, a photo library and the outpourings of the Preparatory Committee, abbreviated UN-style as the Prepcom, which sounds like something out of George Orwell, because it is.

On the WSIS site is a document issued November 18, at the end of the Tunis summit, containing 40 statements on building an Information Society, and among these, item number six contains some information that is truly alarming. It spells out that the delegates in Tunis have ‘established a coherent long-term link between the WSIS process and other relevant major United Nations Conferences and Summits.” The internet grab, in other words, has become part of the UN grand plan.

And what is that plan? The UN’s 1945 founding mandate was to promote peace. Sometime during the past six decades of dictator-packed voting blocks, diplomatic privileges, immunities and institutional secrecy, the UN instead got into the business of promoting mainly itself. At today’s UN, that involves the self-interest of two basic groups, and neither bodes well for the internet.

The first UN group is interested mainly in censorship, though they’re also partial to money where they can get it. That would be the General Assembly, made up of the UN’s 191 member states. Unfortunately, that membership includes dozens of repressive regimes, such as China, Cuba, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe and information-summit-hosting Tunisia; in other words, countries whose despots have a common interest in hating and fearing the kind of freedom the Internet might offer their subject fellow citizens. Under the guise of taking control of the net to bring orderly access to all, they hope to acquire control over exactly who gets what. It is telling that in the list of financial contributions for the Tunis summit, the third-largest donor state after Japan and Sweden (both jockeying for influence at the UN) was Saudi Arabia— whose rulers specialize in banning just about every freedom you can imagine, including free speech.

The second group is the UN Secretariat, which is mainly interested in money, though they’re also partial to censorship when they can get away with it – which, since they operate with diplomatic immunity, is most of the time. According to the UN charter, the Secretariat is simply supposed to function as the administrative arm of the UN, run by a Secretary-General whose job is basically to manage the shop. But for quite some time the Secretariat has been evolving into more or less a state unto itself, led by a Secretary-General whose ambitions– on the evidence of his various campaigns, programs and proposals over the past eight years– tend less toward managing the office than running the world.

For this, the billions paid in dues and contributions every year by member states, most substantially by the U.S., are still not ample enough. They also entail such headaches as having to periodically satisfy members of the U.S. Congress that the UN actually deserves funding. What the Secretary-General keeps angling for is a direct global tax base, to collect money directly from you and me, whether we like it or not. And though the Secretary-General of the moment, Kofi Annan, has been particularly lively in the pursuit of a global tax base to call his own, it is not just Annan who fits this description, but a whole bevy of aides and advisers who inhabit the upper reaches of the UN – many of them, like Annan, denizens of the place, or its sister multilateral institutions, for decades.

Of course, there are many areas in which the aims of the repressive regimes and self-aggrandizing Secretariat come together. The common interest, after all, is in telling other people what to do. And much in the manner of the Soviet central planners of the last century, the UN these days has gotten into the business of expanding its empire on any front left undefended. The UN portfolio of projects by now includes everything from the world economy to the weather. As you read this, an estimated 10,000 delegates and observers from 189 countries are meeting for 10 days in Montreal, Canada, to continue the UN discussions on climate change. It’s possible this meeting alone will generate enough hot air to melt the polar ice caps. But otherwise, this sort of jamboree has little to do with science, and everything to do with a UN-based bid to tax rich countries and fund UN-related climate-change initiatives (though one has to admire the creativity of UN personnel a few years back in commissioning a study of whether snow lines were receding at Alpine ski resorts).

The most notorious of the recent UN power grabs was Oil-for-Food, which began as a limited and somewhat ad hoc relief program, but turned into the biggest scam in history for the simple reason that the UN tapped right into the oil wells of Saddam Hussein’s UN-sanctioned Iraq – effectively dipping its cup right into the world oil market. Once that happened, getting relief to the Iraqi people became a sideshow to doing business with Saddam. The idea was that the UN would supervise Saddam, ensuring he sold oil only to buy relief goods for the Iraqi people. For its administrative pains, the UN Secretariat collected 2.2% of the revenue on every barrel of oil sold by Saddam, totaling $1.4 billion over the course of the seven year program. Member states that supported Saddam got lucrative business from him, with the eager but confidential approval of the Secretariat. What followed was oil-for-fraud, oil-for-palaces, oil-for-weapons, kickbacks for Saddam, payoffs to businesses and politicians, and, allegedly, bribes to assorted UN officials surrounding Kofi Annan. None of that was disclosed to the public at the time, and far too little has been disclosed since, by this same UN now proposing itself as the keeper of the Internet information society. We know it today only because President Bush finally put together a coalition outside the UN, and over UN protest, to topple Saddam — and in so doing, exposed a lot of dirty laundry, not only Saddam’s, but the UN’s.

Oil-for-Food was the kind of fiasco that should have humbled the UN. But with the Oil-for-Food scandal high in the headlines, Annan rolled out another proposal this year that has the potential to be even worse — unimaginable though that might seem. This one was his plan for global taxation, in which he wants the world’s wealthiest nations to pledge an automatic .7% of their annual gross national income for aid – much of that, presumably to be administered by the UN. Never mind that decades of UN-run aid programs have done more to prop up and bail out tyrants than to help the impoverished people living under them – since UN aid is generally funneled through governments, and it is basically despotic government that keeps people poor. For the UN, the big effect of Annan’s global tax plan would be to provide a steady gusher of billions straight into the coffers of the same UN Secretariat that administered Oil-for-Food. That plan was shot down by the U.S. at Annan’s “reform” summit this past September. But it is only down, not out. That number, the .7%, persists in UN rhetoric. It is the germ of a plan, and the UN has been playing with similar, smaller, and perhaps more feasible plans of similar kind. A tax on airlines. A tax on… well, that brings us back to the internet.

The danger by now is that the UN has two powerfully motivated interest groups, the censors and the taxers, both gunning for control of the net. And the UN has already sprouted a bureaucracy, complete with Prepcoms, to organize the next summit, and the next. The takeover bid failed in Tunis, but with enough time and persistence, it could very well happen.

So, what’s a blogger to do? For people who care about freedom and value the internet for all the right reasons, the best answer I can see is to fight back with the best weapon you’ve got— the truth. It helped air out CBS. Indeed, it is on blogs that much of the best UN coverage can be found already. We need more. If it’s information the UN wants to talk about, let’s start with a lot more information about the UN itself. Find it, post it, The more daylight, the better the chance that the UN will have to either shut itself down, or clean up its act—and back away from the internet.
Click here for the whole article.

Misplaced Moonbat Anger : The four Westerners kidnapped by an Iraqi terrorist gang belong to an anti-war group that calls itself Christian Peacemaker Teams.

Today, Christian Peacemaker Teams released a statement about the kidnappings. They’re angry. Very angry.

At the United States and Britain.

In a statement, Christian Peacemaker Teams said it strongly opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and blamed the kidnapping on coalition forces.

“We are angry because what has happened to our teammates is the result of the actions of the U.S. and U.K. government due to the illegal attack on Iraq and the continuing occupation and oppression of its people,” the group said.

Christian Peacemaker Teams does not consider itself a fundamentalist organization, a spokeswoman said.

“We are very strict about this: We do not do any evangelism, we are not missionaries,” Jessica Phillips told The Associated Press in Chicago. “Our interest is to bring an end to the violence and destruction of civilian life in Iraq.”

The group’s first activists went to Iraq in 2002, six months before the U.S.-led invasion, Phillips said, adding that a main mission since the invasion has been documenting alleged human rights abuses by U.S. forces.

Click here for the whole article at LGF.

from Haider Ajina

The following is my translation of a headline and news from the November 30th edition of the Iraqi Arabic newspaper “Iraq Ulged”

“Iraqi national security advisor Mowafek Al-Ruba’ai announced, that U.S. forces will fully turn over security responsibility for a number of Iraqi cities and areas to Iraqi forces. Al-Ruba’ai said that soon the Iraqi president will sign an agreement to transfer control of many Iraqi cities from the U.S. forces to the Iraqi ones. Al-Ruba’ai said that he hoped that it would happen before the elections in Mid December. Al-Ruba’ai added that transferring security and authority to Iraqi forces will weaken insurgents pretext that they are fighting an occupying force”.

His comments:

News is pouring out of Iraq about Iraqi civilian and military stepping up and taking responsibility for running and securing their country. Iraqis are increasingly ready willing and able to gradually take over (as they should). This could only have happened with our training and instilling confidence in the Iraqis that they are capable. Iraqis also know now that they are protected by rule of law and do not live at the whim of a dictator.

Sparks from Specter in the T.O. case

The senator says the NFL and the Eagles may have violated antitrust laws in punishing the wide receiver.

By Amy Worden and Larry Eichel

Sen. Arlen Specter, ardent Eagles fan and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, yesterday accused the NFL and its Philadelphia franchise of potentially violating antitrust laws in their treatment of Terrell Owens.

Speaking at a news conference in Harrisburg, Specter (R., Pa.) said he was investigating the matter and might refer it to the Senate panel’s antitrust subcommittee.

The senator said the league and the Eagles had effectively blacklisted the all-pro wide receiver by forbidding him from playing and by banning other teams from talking to him. He called such treatment “vindictive and inappropriate.”

“It’s a restraint of trade for them to do that, and the thought crosses my mind, it might be a violation of antitrust laws,” Specter said. “The NFL can have whatever rules it wants on authorizing suspension or keeping you on the team for the balance of the year, but they can’t violate the law.”

Several legal experts consulted yesterday didn’t see it that way. They noted that courts generally have held that collective-bargaining agreements – such as the one under which Owens was disciplined – take precedence over antitrust laws on terms of employment.

“As much as I hate to disagree with the esteemed senator, I don’t see an antitrust claim here,” said Matthew J. Mitten, director of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University. “We’re in the labor arena, not antitrust.”

On Nov. 5, the Eagles suspended Owens for four games without pay for conduct “detrimental to the team.” The team also made clear its intention to deactivate him with pay after the suspension ended, as it did this past Sunday.

Last week, arbitrator Richard Bloch upheld the team’s right to do all of that, saying those steps were in keeping with the labor agreement between the league and the NFL Players Association.

An NFL spokesman commented yesterday that it was “difficult to see” how antitrust laws might have been violated.

Said league spokesman Greg Aiello: “The arbitrator’s decision is consistent with our collective-bargaining agreement, and it simply enforced the terms of the player’s contract.”
Click here for the whole article.

Collective bargining is not anti-trust. And why does Specter have time for this but has been rather quieter when it comes to the Supreme Court fight?

from Dave at the HedgeHog<

I had just about forgotten about this story, but The Baltimore Sun reports that it is still going on.

Lawyers for The Sun will argue today in a Richmond, Va., courtroom that Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. had no constitutional right to forbid state officials from speaking with two of the paper’s journalists, and that the ban was a violation of the First Amendment.
….
The Sun lost the first round in the case last February, when U.S. District Judge William D. Quarles Jr. rejected its request that he lift Ehrlich’s ban and granted the governor’s motion to dismiss the case.

Quarles said The Sun was seeking “the declaration of a constitutional right that neither the Supreme Court nor the 4th Circuit has recognized - and, in fact, seeks more access than that accorded a private citizen.”

Apparently the Sun continues to believe they have a right to fabricate stories about Governor Ehrlich and other public officials and Governor Ehrlich should be forced to just sit there and take it just because The Sun claims the First Amendment gives them that right to fabricate stories. Frankly, the fact that those two journalists even still have jobs says a lot about the credibiluty of The Baltimore Sun….

from Curt in Flopping Aces.

AJStrata and Macranger both wrote some excellent posts that illustrate the ties between the 9/11 hijackers, specifically Atta, and the Able Danger operation. AJ first points to this article printed in 2004:
Epstein and other Prague-Connection proponents believe Mohamed Atta met on April 8, 2001 with Ahmad Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, Consul and Second Secretary at Iraq’s Czech embassy between March 1999 and April 22, 2001. Al-Ani, a suspected intelligence officer, allegedly handled several agents, possibly including Atta.
According to his May 26, 2000 Czech visa application — submitted in Bonn, Germany — Atta called himself a “Hamburg student.” He had studied urban planning for seven years at Hamburg-Harburg Technical University and launched an Islamic club there in 1999.
Atta apparently had pressing business in Prague. With his visa application pending until May 31, Atta nonetheless flew to Prague International Airport on May 30 and remained in its transit lounge for about six hours before flying back to Germany. Czech officials suspect he may have met someone there. Two days later, on June 2, he returned to Prague by bus on Czech visa number BONN200005260024. He stayed there for some 20 hours, and then flew to Newark, New Jersey, on June 3.
…
While skeptics dismiss this encounter, Czech intelligence found Al-Ani’s appointment calendar in Iraq’s Prague embassy, presumably after Saddam Hussein’s defeat. Al-Ani’s diary lists an April 8, 2001, meeting with “Hamburg student.” Maybe, in a massive coincidence, Al-Ani dined with a young scholar and traversed the nuances of Nietzsche. Or perhaps Al-Ani saw Mohamed Atta and discussed more practical matters.
And then he proceeds to skewer the 9/11 Commissions finding that Atta was in Virginia Beach during the time period where he met with Iraqi agents in Prague:
The 9-11 commission would leave you to believe there is evidence of Atta in Virginia Beach (my native beach hang out BTW). But in reality there isn’t:
On April 4, 2001, the FBI says, Atta departed Virginia Beach’s Diplomat Inn with Al-Shehhi and cashed a SunTrust check for $8,000. No American eyewitness saw Atta again until April 11.
Gone. Disappeared. After years of investigation and tracing purchase, hotels, etc all they have is someone using Atta’s cell phone ( a phone which is most likely useless in Europe due to the different mobile phone protocols). One last item:
As is well known, on June 18, 2002, CIA Director George Tenet told the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 that his agency could not “establish that Atta left the US or entered Europe in April 2001.” But Tenet also admitted: “It is possible that Atta traveled under an unknown alias.”
That means there are a number of international travelers that the CIA found during that time period that they cannot clearly identify with a person they could track down. They knew who flew in and out of the country on the days that could support Atta being in Prague. But obviously there is some name or names which have defied scrutiny and been eliminated as being Atta under an assumed name.
Again, are we to believe the mastermind of 9-11 over leaders from a western nation?
Hynek Kmonicek booted Al-Ani from Prague. He was then the Czech Republic’s deputy foreign minister, and today is its United Nations ambassador. As Kmonicek tersely insisted in the Prague Post in June 2002: “The meeting took place.”
He then points us to a recent article that describes an interesting apartment in Germany:
There was nothing in outward appearance to draw attention to the four-bedroom apartment at 54 Marienstrasse. Nonetheless, the attention of the intelligence services of Germany, the U.S., Israel, and other Middle Eastern and European countries had been drawn to the nondescript flat in Hamburg, Germany, as early as 1998. That was when Mohammed Atta signed the lease and he and Ramzi bin al Shibh moved in. Soon thereafter, it was identified by intelligence agencies as a target of interest. It became known as the hub of al-Qaeda’s “Hamburg Cell.”
Over the next two and a half years, dozens of al-Qaeda operatives, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the reputed 9/11 “mastermind,” passed through the 54 Marienstrasse apartment. Twenty-nine al-Qaeda recruits from the Middle East or Northern Africa listed it as their registered address. Mohammed Atta would later be labeled, after the fact, as the “ringleader” of the 9/11 terrorists who hijacked four jetliners to use as missiles against targets in New York City and Washington, D.C. Atta is believed to have been the suicide pilot who flew American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower of the World Trade Center. His Hamburg roommate, Ramzi bin al Shibh, captured in Pakistan in 2002, has been described by U.S. officials as the al-Qaeda “coordinator and paymaster” for 9/11. In the months leading up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terror network were under intense scrutiny by intelligence services worldwide.
From 1998 until mid 2000 this apartment had “dozens” of Al-Qaeda members as residents. What AJ points out is that this time period corresponds pretty well to the shelf life of Able Danger:
But notice the timeframe nicely overlaps the Able Danger timeframe and all that traffic is exactly the kind of signature a data mining analysis would pick up. And you know what, that kind of traffic is impossible to miss (given the US Embassy bombings in 1998 and the millennium scare in 2000).
The same article that highlighted the Al-Qaeda apartment also makes this observation:
This much we do know: first, the Clinton administration in 2000 and then the Bush administration in 2001 failed to heed the Able Danger warnings on al-Qaeda. Moreover, Clinton administration officials ordered the main Able Danger files destroyed in 2000; Bush administration officials ordered Lt. Col. Schaffer’s duplicate Able Danger files destroyed in 2004.
AJ points out that the officials who ordered Shaffer’s files destroyed, specifically the DIA Deputy Director is a Clinton appointee. With the ongoing misinformation campaign being waged by rogue CIA agents it’s not too difficult to believe that there are some Clinton protectors in the DIA.
AJ then ties it all together:
Able Danger had Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi in their sites in January 2000. That is the same time as the Malaysia meeting was being held. Atta and Shehhi could have been tracked back to Hamburg and to all the subsequent meetings with the other Al Qaeda key players like Khalid Sheikh Mohamed. But more importantly, had the Able Danger warnings been dispersed to law enforcement, then the names of Mihdar and Hazmi would never have been missed in the US.
[…]But Able Danger had identified the four key highjackers at the most critical juncture of their planning! So I agree with former FBI Director Freeh: had Able Danger been paid attention to 9-11 could have probably been averted.
For some time I had chalked up ignoring Able Danger to the fact it was using cutting edge technology in a novel way which had not been validated yet. Therefore its results would rightfully be suspect, initially. But now I see that the FBI was tracking these folks and find it disturbing that even questionable information was not passed on when it pertained to terrorists.
Again, back to the article from New American:
Phoenix Cell. FBI informant Aukai Collins, who monitored Middle East terrorist suspects for the FBI for four years in Phoenix, claims to have told the FBI about 9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour while Hanjour was in flight training in Phoenix. Collins said the FBI knew Hanjour lived in Phoenix, knew his exact address, his phone number, and even what car he drove. “They knew everything about the guy,” Collins claims. In July 2001, Phoenix FBI agent Ken Williams sent an electronic memo to FBI headquarters in Washington outlining his investigation into area flight schools that led him to believe al-Qaeda may be using U.S. flight schools to train terrorists as pilots.
What does Hanjour have to do with all of this? Again, back to Wikipedia and Hamzi:
In June of 2000, al-Mihdhar returned to Yemen, his birthplace, leaving al-Hazmi to take care of himself. This move was not authorized by al-Qaida. Another al-Qaida operative and future 9/11 hijacker named Hani Hanjour moved in with him. In 2001, al-Hazmi and Hanjour moved to Falls Church, Virginia. Eventually two other hijackers, Ahmed al-Ghamdi and Majed Moqed, moved in with them.
Yep. The killer FBI memo that was ignored probably would not have been if Hamzi’s AQ connection from Able Danger had been distributed into the law enforcement community. Once the flight school link was seen the 9-11 plan would have crumbled into the open.
This could be more damning than I originally suspected. The Able Danger find was right on top of (and maybe due to) key planning meetings on the final stages of 9-11. The four people identified could have easily led to the unraveling of the plot members, and the warning signs that were missed would have been obvious with the four names associated with the events. Able Danger could have been the tipping point for detecting 9-11 in the early stages.
As usual AJ has done an excellent job tying all this information together.
The Star Tribune also had an article today which just goes to show that Weldon isn’t letting all this go quietly:
WASHINGTON – A top-secret military program set up six years ago to probe the Al-Qaida terrorist network is provoking fierce new debate about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Military intelligence officers and contractors who ran the clandestine mission, named Able Danger, say that more than a year before the attacks, the operation identified four of the plot’s 19 hijackers and produced a chart that fingered ringleader Mohamed Atta.
Those claims contradict findings of the 9/11 commission set up by Congress. In its final report last year, the commission spread wide blame for the attacks but concluded that none of the hijackers, some of whom lived in the United States before Sept. 11, had been identified before the tragedy.
Now many in Congress want more answers.
On Friday, Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a letter signed by a bipartisan group of 246 lawmakers demanding that the program’s officers and contractors be allowed to testify in open congressional hearings.
“Further refusal … can only lead us to conclude that the Department of Defense is uncomfortable with the prospect of members of Congress questioning these individuals about the circumstances surrounding Able Danger,” the letter said. “This would suggest not a concern for national security, but rather an attempt to prevent potentially embarrassing facts from coming to light.”
[…]In a speech on the House floor last month, Weldon suggested that information is being covered up. “I am not a conspiracy theorist,” he said, “but there is something desperately wrong.”
Weldon also accuses the Pentagon of engaging in a smear campaign against Shaffer, 42, since the colonel went public — by revoking his security clearance, suspending him and leaking alleged details from his personnel file to reporters and congressional aides.
Among the slurs, Weldon says, are claims that Shaffer was having an affair with a Weldon aide, which Shaffer’s lawyer vehemently denies.
In response to a request by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R.-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, the Defense Department’s inspector general is investigating the alleged smear campaign against Shaffer.
In the Senate, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, accused the Pentagon of possible “obstruction of the committee’s activities” after the Defense Department forbade Shaffer, Philpott and other Able Danger analysts from testifying before the panel. Specter and Pentagon officials are negotiating conditions for an open hearing.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, meanwhile, has heard closed-door testimony from Able Danger members and Pentagon employees and is nearing completion of a report.
Weldon is an unlikely Pentagon antagonist. Since he joined the House in 1986 he has been a defense hawk, consistently pushing for larger Pentagon budgets. He speaks Russian and has led dozens of congressional delegations to Russia.
But Weldon’s concerns about Able Danger is puzzling some current and former lawmakers.
Lee Hamilton, a former Indiana Democrat in the House who was cochairman of the 9/11 panel, said he worked closely with and respects Weldon because they share interests in defense and intelligence matters. But he said the commission investigated the Able Danger officers’ claims exhaustively and could not find evidence to support them.
“We’ve asked for that chart repeatedly,” Hamilton said in an interview. “The Pentagon cannot produce it, the White House cannot produce it, and Weldon cannot produce it.”
This last line is just so uncomprehensibly stupid. There are multiple witnesses who have verified that this group identified Atta and his 3 cohorts. From Civilian to Military. Is he saying that in a court of law there better be a videotape depicting the suspect committing the crime or he walks without a trial?

To tolerate everything means to believe in nothing. Thus, is intolerance always a bad thing?

Are you tired of the Sun’s bias? Can you write well?

Understand that it is the Main Stream Media (the Sun and local TV networks) that keep this state a blue state. How the news is presented affects the mindset of everybody in it. Don’t allow the media to continue to demonize you and your beliefs. Interested?

knowing HTML is a help…..

drop me a line at the email on this webpage in the upper left corner…..

Click here for details.

Capitol “Holiday Tree” Once Again Called “Christmas Tree”

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert has told federal officials that the lighted, decorated tree on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol — known in recent years as the “Holiday Tree” — should be renamed the “Capitol Christmas Tree,” as it was called until the late 1990s.

The Capitol’s senior landscape architect confirmed the name switch yesterday for The Washington Times.

“It was known as the ‘Holiday Tree’ for several years and just recently was changed back to the ‘Capitol Christmas Tree.’ This was a directive from the speaker,” said Capitol architect Matthew Evans.

“The speaker believes a Christmas tree is a Christmas tree, and it is as simple as that,” said Ron Bonjean, spokesman for the Illinois Republican.

The Capitol tree, traditionally overshadowed by the White House’s “National Christmas Tree,” was renamed a “holiday tree” several years ago, according to the Capitol Architect’s offices, in an effort to acknowledge the other holidays of Kwanzaa and Hanukkah — although no one seemed to know exactly when the name was changed or by whom.

Calling a Christmas tree a Christmas tree has become a politically charged prospect in jurisdictions across the country — from Boston to Sacramento and in dozens of communities in between.

“It’s a growing problem,” said Jared N. Leland, spokesman and legal counsel for the Becket Fund, a District-based legal and educational institute. “Celebrating the season with Christmas trees … and leaving them named ‘Christmas’ is simply recognizing the religious nature of people. Christmas should be able to be called Christmas.”

Mr. Staver of the Liberty Counsel went on to say that to rename a Christmas Tree a Holiday tree was just as offensive as renaming a Jewish menorah a candlestick. I think that makes a lot of sense. The political correctness in America has gone too far, and America is speaking up….and we are being heard. Worldnet Daily is reporting that Lowes has dumped the “holiday” reference in favor of calling the traditional trees what they are, Christmas trees. AFA President Tim Wildmon said companies that choose to abandon the national observance of Christmas are finding Americans are not afraid to speak out with their pocketbooks.
from Stop the ACLU

TORONTO – A corruption scandal forced a vote of no-confidence Monday that toppled Prime Minister Paul Martin’s minority government, triggering an unusual election campaign during the Christmas holidays.

Canada’s three opposition parties, which control a majority in Parliament, voted against Martin’s government, claiming his Liberal Party no longer has the moral authority to lead the nation.

The loss means an election for all 308 seats in the lower House of Commons, likely on Jan. 23. Martin and his Cabinet would continue to govern until then.

Opposition leaders last week called for the no-confidence vote after Martin rejected their demands to dissolve Parliament in January and hold early elections in February. Monday’s vote follows a flurry of spending announcements in Ottawa last week, with the government trying to advance its agenda ahead of its demise.

Martin is expected to dissolve the House of Commons on Tuesday and set a firm date for the elections. Under Canadian law, elections must be held on a Monday — unless it falls on a holiday — and the campaign period is sharply restricted.

“The vote in the House of Commons did not go our way,” Martin said. “But the decision of the future of our government will be made by Canadians. They will judge us.”

The Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper joined with the New Democratic and Bloc Quebecois parties to bring down the government — prompting the first Christmas and winter campaign in mostly Christian Canada in 26 years. Recent polls have given the Liberals a slight lead over the Conservatives, with the New Democrats in third place.

from Yahoo News

“We were not strong enough to drive out a half-million American troops, but that wasn’t our aim. Our intention was to break the will of the American government to continue the war.”

North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap, in a 1990 interview with historian Stanley Karnow.

from Flopping Aces

Okay, lets go through the logic.

If you want the US to loose a war like many did in Vietnam and today in Iraq, how is that not at best disloyalty, and at worst Treason? The media knowingly destroyed public opinion in a war we were winning, and consequently, allowed the North Vietnamese to kill hundreds of thousands, maybe a million, in South Vietnam. Also, what does it say about a party that hates a president so much they are willing to deny freedom to millions and also to hurt the security and safety of the country thet pretend to love. If we loose, not only will thousands have died in vain, but millions will be denied Democracy that the liberals thrive in but are unwilling to fight for. Also, Iraq will become a haven for terrorists and our enemies. Finally, none of these enemies will take us seriously again. So what does it say about them?

It says they are vile and despicable.

Surrendering to terrorists is not patriotic.

Millions of pounds donated by British and other European charities to help the Palestinian poor were unwittingly diverted to fund terror and support the families of suicide bombers, Israeli prosecutors claimed yesterday.

Ahmed Salatna, 43, a Hamas activist from the West Bank town of Jenin, was remanded in custody by a military court charged with distributing €9m (£6.2m) for such purposes over the past nine years. The recipients are alleged to have included the family of a young man who blew himself up at the Sbarro pizza restaurant in Jerusalem in August 2001, killing 15 people and wounding 107. Hamas and Islamic Jihad acknowledged responsibility.

The charge sheet names two British charities, Human Appeal International and Interpal. Human Appeal is a broadly based fundraising organisation, currently helping victims of the Pakistani earthquake. Interpal describes itself as “a non-political, non-profit-making charity that focuses solely on the provision of relief and development aid to the poor and needy of Palestine”. No one was available for comment at its London office yesterday. Other charities mentioned were the French CBST, the Italian ABSPT and the Al-Aqsa Foundation, which operates in Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Sweden.
from LGF

And who does the moronic Green Liberals support…..? Well the suicide bombers, of course! LGF reports that the Green Party of the United States has endorsed a statement calling for a comprehensive strategy of boycott and divestment that would pressure the government of Israel to guarantee human rights for Palestinians. Of course, the Greens don’t care that the Palestinians don’t want peace and already rejected getting their terroritory back and living side by side with Israel. Even worse, The Greens support the right of return, which guarantees Israel would cease to exist.

Really, the liberals siding with radical Muslims, how stupid can you get? There is a zero percent chance Muslim radicals will tolerate liberal values. If they continue this alliance and together, manage to defeat us, then they too are doomed.

Morons!

And why don’t the Iraqi people deserve Democracy?

by Dave Wissing

And the Media is not biased, Yeah Right!

CNN has been forced to fire a switchboard operator over it’s supposed “technical glitch” of placing an “X” over Vice President Cheney. From Drudge.

A CNN switchboard operator was fired over the holiday — after the operator claimed the ‘X’ placed over Vice President’s Dick Cheney’s face was “free speech!”

“We did it just to make a point. Tell them to stop lying, Bush and Cheney,” the CNN operator said to a caller. “Bring our soldiers home.”

Nope, no bias at CNN…. from the HedgeHog

from Haider Ajina

“Iraqi forces now implement 70% of the security operations.“

“Iraqi vice president Adel Abdulmehdi revealed that 90% of Iraq’s commercial debt has been extinguished reduced to 20 billion U.S. Dollars by the end of this year. He announced this in a press conference after his visit to Washington DC, London and his meetings with the World Bank. He added that Iraq has requested of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to eliminate the burden of reparations Iraq is paying for the Kuwaiti war. Which are 5% of all oil revenues and came to 1.5 billion U.S. Dollars.

“As to the effect of the Iraqi national reconciliation meeting in Cairo on the Iraqi street. Abdulmehdi said that the results will be constructive and will reflect positively on the security and political process of Iraq. He refers to the final statement which cam out of Cairo. The statement condemned terrorism and accepts opposition as being legitimate in and through a political process.

“As for the departure of the multi national forces from Iraq. Dr. Abdulmehdi clarified that during his visit to Washington DC he met with U.S. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He talked with him about handing over the security of Iraqi cities to the Iraqi national forces, as had happened in Nejaf and certain areas of Baghdad. They also agreed that the mission of the multi national forces in Iraq will not be complete until qualified Iraq forces are ready to fill the security roll. He also pointed out that a fundamental agreement wit the multi national forces does not contain a withdrawal time table. This agreement also acknowledges the larger roll of the Iraqi armed forces are taking. Over 70% of security operations are now done by Iraqi forces; this has grown from just 30%”.

His comments:

Progress in Iraq is quite measurable and noticeable on weekly bases. Security is improving in the last two provinces. Iraqi security forces are taking a much larger roll in the security of their country. Sunni & Baathists are talking about laying down their arms and joining the political process, and some have already done so. All this is possible because of our & the Iraqis hard work sacrifices and tenacity.

I am beginning to view the whole MSM almost as an occupying enemy presence on our land. Except for the extreme liberals and the ACLU, I have not see a group of people more eager to embrace our enemies and damage our country. At least Bin Laden lets you know where he stands. Rarely do I see a piece from the MSM that is not filled with some bias. For instance, take today’s post from the AP on Saddam’s trial.

here is the link.

If you look closely and bother to drag the mouse over the picture, you will find the group burning a Saddam effigy also has a banner that reads “We promise the Iraqi people we will smash terrorism.” So, there was an anti-terror rally in Iraq. But it is difficult to tall that from the text because if you read the text you will see the same old liberal crap like “the trial has unleashed passions in an Iraqi society deeply divided in its judgment of Saddam and his rule.” Also, I have not seen any mention in the press yet that Wafieq Al-Sameraai, national security advisor to Iraq’s president Al-Talebani announced Saturday that the president received a number communiqués from armed groups. It seems some are Islamists and others Baathist, who operate in western and northern Baghdad, are requesting dialog and to enter the political process. I do not expect to see this reported heavily, if at all. Why, because they are baised and want us to loose.

There is nothing wrong with critiques, if one is objective and fair. For instance, Bush made a mistake when he disbanded the Iraqi Army. But to report only negative news and ignore good news (and yes, there is a lot of good news) hurts our fighting forces and is supporting the enemy.

Because of constant articles such as this one, I consider the MSM terrorist enablers and providers of aid and comfort to the enemies of the US. The media was better then this once.

It’s about time a liberal came out and admitted that they will say anything to get elected: (via Newsbusters)

It was a classic “gotcha” moment.

Ellen Ratner, the short, liberal side of The Long & the Short of It on Fox & Friends Weekend, just let the liberal cat out of the bag. Discussing the Democrats’ approach to Iraq withdrawal proposals, Ratner admitted:

“If you got [Dem leaders] in a room off camera everyone agrees, but people are trying to look tough on security so the Democrats can win the House back in 2006.”

Jim Pinkerton, the long, conservative side of the equation, pounced on this rare bit of Dem candor:

“Viewers should note that Ellen basically said that Democrats will think one thing and say another.”

Host Julian Phillips, who moderated the debate and is hardly a Bush administration shill, scored the point for Pinkerton:

“Ellen, Jim has something on you on that one.”

Continued Phillips: “I’ve got to agree with [Pinkerton] on this. I’ve been talking about this for the last month or so: the Democrats really don’t have a viable plan for what to do with Iraq.”

So typical of these liberals. No backbone to stick with a argument, instead they will pander to any motto that gets them into office. Let’s take a look at the timeline of the left’s arguments so far:

First there was: “Bush’s father should have kicked Saddams ass in 1991″
Then there was: “Clinton’s military was responsible for the early successes in Iraq and Afghanistan ”
Then: “Bush sent our troops into Iraq without body armor”
Then: “Nigergate”
Then: “Bush Lied”
Then: “The Democrats did not see the same intelligence that the Administration saw”
And finally: “Pull out Now!”

Sound about right?
from Flopping Aces

Anyone that really thinks the Democrats are tough on defence needs to remember Carter’s failure to confront Lybia, the Soviet Union, or Iran and Clinton’s failure to respond in any meaningful way to Bin Laden multiple attacks on the United States. We were attacked 5 times by him, and he only lobbed a few cruise missiles back (only after the Monica affair came to light in what I believe was a way to divert attention to the growing scandal.)

If you think the present day Democratic Party is tough on security, then you are a fool!

One of the foundation blocks of anti-war protest against the United States in Iraq is civilian casualties, which viscerally represents a country in ruin, a tragic human face on Bush’s warmongering. This perspective, of course, ignores the civilian carnage during the reign of Saddam Hussein (see Fuzzy Moral Math) and instead focuses on the perceived chaos in Iraq today. And this newfound concern for Iraqi civilian life is not only a staple of the anti-war Left, it is a convenient club wielded by mainstream Democrats in Washington, who argue that chaos in Iraq represents failed policy.

With so much emphasis on Iraqi civilian death, one would expect the casualty statistics to be very well understood. An uncritical audience, for example, might be inclined to accept at face value the Lancet (a British medical journal) analysis estimating 100,000 civilian casualties, a “study” that has been widely discredited by credible groups on both sides of the debate. Yet the public is still inundated with high casualty numbers, and anti-war protesters continue to carry signs tallying up the massive numbers of civilian dead.

There is indeed a mind-blowing story about collateral damage that needs to be told, but that story is one in which we honor the extraordinary achievement of the United States military: two years of combat since the fall of Baghdad, much of it urban warfare, with less than 1,000 civilians killed as a result of U.S. action:

What is the source for these numbers? The most comprehensive study of civilian casualties is available from a group opposed to the Coalition intervention in Iraq called Iraq Body Count. This summer, the Iraq Body Count project published an analysis of casualties in the Iraq War that must be admired for its meticulous documentation.

This study reports 24,865 civilian deaths in the first two years of the Iraq War, an apparent ringing endorsement of the “Iraq in chaos” position. But a curious statistical anomaly jumps right off page one: over 81% of the civilian casualties are men. Even stranger, over 90% of civilian casualties are adults in a country with a disproportionate percentage of the population under 18 (44.5%). This contradicts a basic tenet of the civilian casualty argument, namely that we are describing collateral damage during a time of war. Collateral damage does not differentiate between male and female, between child and adult. A defective smart bomb falling in a marketplace, stray bullets ripping through bedroom walls, city warfare in Fallujah – all these activities should produce casualties that reflect the ratio of men to women or adults to children that prevail in Iraq as a whole.

This question is particularly relevant when one side in the conflict does not wear uniforms, is predominantly adult and of one gender, and engages in a practice of concealing its combatants within the civilian population. The statistics are further distorted if the Iraqi security forces – essentially the free Iraqi military on the side of the U.S. coalition – are classified as civilians, as they are in this study.
Consider the reported vs. expected gender and age distribution in the Iraq Body Count analysis:

If the death of innocent civilians is at issue, then the gender/age data can be used to estimate the percentage of actual civilians killed. Below, the data for female and underage casualties provides the basis for determining a true, pure civilian “body count” figure of 7,976.

Before any additional analysis, it must be noted that this figure is breathtaking in its limited scope; a nation of 26 million people enduring two years of warfare, much of it urban, has a civilian survival rate of 99.97%. Consider that in one day, September 11, 2001, the United States incurred almost 40% of this number. Also consider that, in the United States of America, you have the exact same risk of dying if you drive a car (survival rate = [1 - two-year car fatality totals/population] or [1 - ((42,815+42,643)/291,000,000)] = 99.97%).

There is further risk of distortion in the Iraq Body Count report related to the timing of casualties. Casualties that arise from the initial invasion of Iraq, for example when the 3rd Army swept into Baghdad in April of 2003, are an expected and tragic consequence of major military action, which had near universal American support at the time. The subsequent focus on civilian casualty counts over the ensuing months is an exercise of a different nature, one designed to portray a ruthless or disorganized army of occupation that is inflicting devastating collateral damage on the civilian population in its hunt for terrorists and non-uniformed combatants. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the fatality distribution over time reveals:

The only way to describe the actions of the U.S. Military in its role of “occupier” is a compassionate and careful army that avoids collateral damage despite its dangerous mandate to hunt for terrorists and non-uniformed combatants hidden within the civilian population. It is nothing short of miraculous that our Armed Forces have been able to eliminate as many terrorists and enemy combatants as they have with so little actual collateral damage. Many seasoned military men, in fact, bemoan the increased danger such modern warfare represents. A cogent argument can be made that mixing warfare and compassion is not wise, but under no circumstances can American warriors be faulted for lacking compassion.

The low level of actual casualties, developed and explained in the Appendix below, is stunning. Over the course of the Iraq invasion and “occupation,” only 14.8% of reported fatalities represent actual civilian fatalities caused by U.S. action. Even more remarkable, since the fall of Baghdad the U.S. has been directly responsible for only 3.8% of fatalities reported, as many deaths over almost two years as Saddam averaged in 10 days. the link is here!

For those who claim the United States is indirectly responsible for the several hundred deaths a month caused by insurgents and criminals, they would do well to note two facts: 1) just over 32% of the fatalities in the chronological table represent civilians, and 2) that this figure is a 93% decline from the monthly average piled up by Saddam Hussein over 24 years (see Fuzzy Moral Math).