Archive for the ‘War on Terrorism’ Category
Cold feet
The peaceniks over on the left who thought electing Obama would finally bring relief to those poor terrorists at Gitmo aren’t going to pleased about this. It looks like Congressional Democrats have suddenly discovered that terrorists are dangerous people, and we really should be careful what we do with them. Glad to finally have you on board, Democrats.
President Barack Obama’s promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison suffered a blow Tuesday when his allies in the Senate said they would refuse to finance the move until the administration delivers a satisfactory plan for what to do with the detainees there.
As the Senate took up Obama’s request for money for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Democrats reversed course and said they would deny the request for $80 million for the Justice and Defense departments to relocate the 240 detainees at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They would also indefinitely bar the government from transferring of any of the facility’s prisoners into the United States, though the ban could be relaxed in subsequent legislation.
Going on offense, finally
For all her outrage over waterboarding techniques, Speaker of State Nancy Pelosi was apparently briefed on proposed waterboaring back in 2002. Back then, Democrats didn’t seem to be too concerned over using waterboarding on suspected terrorists in oreder to gain information that could save American lives.
But politics is what it is, and Democrats believe the politically expedient thing to do in 2009 is to make a show over stringing up Bush administration officials for using waterboarding (and other techniques) on suspected terrorists. The rest of us aren’t quite willing to ignore the blatant hypocrisy.
For Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), it’s a new week of old questions: What did she know about harsh Bush administration interrogation techniques, and when did she know it?
Usually a master of message discipline, Pelosi has been thrown off balance by a mounting firestorm over whether she or her staff learned six years ago that intelligence officials were using extreme tactics such as waterboarding.
For weeks, the Speaker has insisted she didn’t, though a declassified report last week suggested otherwise.
And Republicans, sensing a rare opportunity, are moving to keep the heat on the discrepancy over competing versions of what precisely was disclosed at the classified briefings in question. The GOP is demanding the CIA release more documents showing exactly what Pelosi was told in 2002, as they continue a wider offensive targeting Democrats on security issues like the planned closure of the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detainee prison.
So I guess the relevant question for the don’t-question-my-patriotism Democrats is, would you rather protect the rights of suspected terrorists, or would you rather save American lives by using interrogation techniques like waterboarding to extract relevant information? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is obvious.
At least one Republican isn’t afraid to speak out
That person just happens to be the greatest vice president of my lifetime, Richard Cheney, who yesterday came out hard against President Obama for his eagerness to take down Bush policies that have kept us safe for 7+ years.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday continued his verbal attack against President Obama, saying that the country is more vulnerable to a potential terrorist attack since the Obama administration took power.
Mr. Cheney said that administration’s dismantling of many of the policies and protections instituted by President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks — including the planned closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba and halting controversial prisoner interrogation techniques — have made the country more vulnerable to future attacks.
“That’s my belief,” Mr. Cheney said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “I think to the extent that those [Bush-era] policies were responsible for saving lives, that the administration is now trying to cancel those policies … means in the future we’re not going to have the same safeguards we’ve had for the last eight years.”
Thank you for your honesty
Andrew McCarthy was asked to participate in President Obama’s sham Task Force on Detention Policy, and he sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder explaining exactly why he wasn’t playing. This is golden, and it took a lot of guts.
The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight. Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year. The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules. Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried. Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy. It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if that’s what it takes to close Gitmo by January.
Fake outrage
Despite the fit of anger the left is having over waterboarding and other methods of interrogating suspected terrorists, Democrats knew what we were doing long before they decided to publicize their fake outrage.
Put together, that would be “30″ and “D”. As in that’s how many times the Ds were told about Enhanced Interrogation Techniques without any real objection. Or as another D famously put it, “I was for it before I was against it.” See my friend Steve Foley’s post “Interrogation Techniques Round Up” for the links to stories with the evidence.
Democrats Informed of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” Long Ago | Blue Collar Muse.
Gruesome terror-suspect interrogations?
President Obama is leaving the door open to prosecuting Bush administration officials for torturing suspected terrorists, which is odd given that we never tortured suspected terrorists, unless your definition of “torture” is watered down to the point that waterboarding is considered torture. The terrorists must be laughing their heads off at the gullibility of the American left and mainstream press.
President Barack Obama left the door open Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost “our moral bearings” with use of the tactics.
The question of whether to bring charges against those who devised justification for the methods “is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws and I don’t want to prejudge that,” Obama said. The president discussed the continuing issue of terrorism-era interrogation tactics with reporters as he finished an Oval Office meeting with visiting King Abdullah II of Jordan.
I’d say we lost “our moral bearings” when we elected Obama.
The good guys
Michelle Malkin pays tribute to Navy SEAL snipers who recently helped an American ship captain escape his Somali pirate captors.
Why do we still call them “insurgents?”
Over here, we refer to terrorists as terrorists or Islamic militants. Reuters prefers the more politially correct “insurgents.” Well, Islamic militants in Somalia have fired on a U.S. congressman, Donald Payne, as he was leaving the country.
Somali insurgents fired mortars toward U.S. congressman Donald Payne as he left Somalia on Monday after a rare visit by a U.S. politician to the anarchic Horn of Africa nation, police said.
Somalia’s capital Mogadishu is one of the world’s most dangerous places. U.S. officials have shunned travel to the battle-scarred city due to constant violence.
Somali Internal Security Minister Omar Hashi Aden told Reuters Payne’s plane was airborne when the mortars fell. An African Union (AU) spokesman denied the attack on the airport — which is under AU control — had happened.
This is really remarkable, because the world was supposed to love us after electing Barack Obama. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen during the era of hope and change. But terrorists will be terrorists.
Reuters AlertNet – Somali insurgents fire mortars towards U.S. rep..
Pull out now!
Hey, Obama voters, I though the messiah was supposed to end the war and bring the troops home.
President Barack Obama plans to dispatch additional U.S. troops plus hundreds of civilian advisers in hopes of turning around a faltering war in Afghanistan and will recommend increasing aid to neighboring Pakistan so long as leaders there confront militancy, people familiar with the forthcoming plan said Thursday.
Obama plans to lay out his revamped strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan on Friday. Several sources told The Associated Press it includes 20 recommendations for countering a persistent insurgency that spans the two countries’ border.
USS New York
I do love it when we thumb our nose at the enemy, as we have done in building a Navy ship using scrap metal salvaged from the ruins of the World Trade Center.
USS New York • LPD-21 | A ship forged from the steel of the World Trade Center.
Today’s Lebanon Democrat column: “Thermostats, taxes, and terrorists”
During a campaign event in Oregon last May, Barack Obama said that we Americans have to “lead by example” on climate change. “We can’t drive our SUV’s and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times,” he said. “That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.”
It turns out that while lecturing the rest of us on energy conservation, President Obama likes things a little toasty in the Oval Office. He keeps it so warm that aides have likened the place to a tropical hot house. Chief of Staff David Axelrod says “he likes it warm” and that “you could grow orchids in there.”
President Obama may have ideas on how to fight the phantom issue of global warming, but, like a good liberal, his REAL climate change policy appears to be “do as I say, not as I do.”
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We all know that Democrats love taxes. The higher, the better. But they apparently reserve their affection only for the taxes that other people have to pay. They don’t necessarily like paying taxes themselves.
Last month, the U.S. Senate confirmed Timothy Geithner to head the Treasury Department. Before his confirmation, it was revealed that Geithner failed to pay $34,000 in payroll taxes from 2001 to 2004 while working for the International Monetary Fund. Said Geithner, “These were careless mistakes. They were avoidable mistakes.” But he further added that “I have paid what I owed.” He then apologized to Congress. Apparently, that was enough. The Senate confirmed him.
Honestly, do you think you or I could avoid paying our taxes, apologize for it eight years later, and have that be the end of it?
President Obama has tried to get at least three more tax cheats added to his Cabinet. So far, two of them have bowed out before their nominations could be considered by the Senate.
Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who had been nominated to chair Health and Human Services, failed to pay a whopping $128,000 in taxes. Daschle, too, publicly apologized, and President Obama remarked that he was “absolutely” sticking with his candidate, but Daschle, in the end, didn’t stick with Obama, and he withdrew.
Daschle once criticized President Bush’s “tax-cuts-for-the-rich” on the basis that wealthy taxpayers would save enough on their taxes to afford a Lexus, while working families would only save enough to buy a muffler. Well, Daschle one-upped President Bush by personally cutting his own taxes enough to afford about three Lexuses.
Just last Thursday, a Senate committee abruptly canceled a session to consider President Obama’s nomination of Congresswoman Hilda Solis to be labor secretary following the revelation that her husband, just the day before, had paid about $6,400 to settle tax liens against his business – including liens that had been outstanding for as long as 16 years.
And then there’s Nancy Killefer, who stood to be the first-ever chief performance officer for the federal government. She withdrew over a $946.69 tax lien placed on her home in 2005 by the District of Columbia for failure to pay unemployment compensation taxes on her household help. You almost have to feel sorry for her. That’s chump-change compared to the other, more prolific tax cheats President Obama has nominated.
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As expected, one of President Obama’s first acts was to sign an order closing Guantanamo Bay with in a year. The obvious question immediately became, “Great, now what are we going to do with all those jihadists?”
Congressman John Murtha, famous for besmirching U.S. Marines serving in Iraq, decided his constituents in Pennsylvania would step up and take one for the team. “Sure, I’d take ‘em,” said Murtha. “They’re no more dangerous in my district than in Guantanamo.” Murtha then assured us that there’s “no reason not to put ‘em in prisons in the United States and handle them the way they would handle any other prisoners.”
It’s hard to say whether Congressman Murtha would extend the same red-carpet treatment to the U.S. Marines.
We have since learned that eleven of the Saudis currently on the Saudi Arabian government’s most wanted list are former Guantanamo detainees who had passed through Saudi government-sponsored rehabilitation programs. (Really, how does one go about reforming jihadists?)
This came after we learned that 61 former detainees from the soon-to-be former military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay appear to have returned to terrorism since their release from custody. A Pentagon spokesman said 18 former detainees are confirmed as “returning to the fight” and 43 are suspected of having done so in a report issued late in December by the Defense Intelligence Agency.
President Obama knew this before issuing his order. And so, we can assume that he, along with those on the left who were demanding that we close Guantanamo, are more concerned with protecting the rights of jihadists than protecting Americans from jihadists. Detained jihadists are not victims, they are not nice people, they commit barbaric acts of evil, and they absolutely do not deserve protection under the U.S. Constitution.
If this is how President Obama plans to pursue the War on Terrorism, then jihadists across the world must be rubbing their hands and smiling with approval.
Rehabilitated jihadists
A Saudi government spokesman says 11 of the Saudis on its recently issued most wanted list are former Guantanamo detainees.
Another great reason why we should shut the place down.
Michelle Malkin » 11 Gitmo recidivists on Saudi’s Most Wanted List.
Where’s the love?
I was under the impression that the rest of the world was going to pour out its love for the U.S. with the election of Barack Obama, since President Bush had driven our reputation into the ground. But I’m just not feeling the love yet.
President Hamid Karzai condemned a U.S. operation he said killed 16 Afghan civilians, while hundreds of villagers denounced the American military during an angry demonstration Sunday.
Karzai said the killing of innocent Afghans during U.S. military operations “is strengthening the terrorists.”
He also announced that his Ministry of Defense sent Washington a draft technical agreement that seeks to give Afghanistan more oversight over U.S. military operations. The same letter has also been sent to NATO headquarters.
Afghan president: US forces killed 16 civilians – Yahoo News.
Red carpet treatment
In the wake of President Obama’s order to close Guantanamo Bay within a year, the obvious question became what we would do with all those jihadists. Congressman John Murtha says he would welcome them to his Pennsylvania district. I wonder if he would extend the same invitation to the U.S. Marines?
Michelle Malkin » The John Murtha Jihadi Correctional Facility.
What happened to the peaceniks?
Let me preface this post by stating that if Barack Obama wants to prosecute the War on Terrorism as George W. Bush prosecuted it, I’m all for it. I will not criticize President Obama for pursuing terrorists and defending the United States, because I praised President Bush for doing those things.
That said, President Obama’s first air strike this past week has been met with silence from the left. To quote Michelle Malkin quoting one of her readers, “Where are the anti-war liberals? Where are the baby-killer signs? Why [aren't] the major media networks showing pictures of dead children as a result of Pres. Obama’s air strike?”
Michelle Malkin » A few questions about President Obama’s first airstrike.
And Barack Obama wants to shut down Gitmo?
As I’ve said before, the Democrat Party is more concerned about protecting the rights of al Qaeda than the lives of Americans.
Pentagon: 61 ex-Guantanamo inmates return to terrorism | Reuters.
Today’s Lebanon Democrat column: “A tribute to the man that is George W. Bush”
One week from today will mark the end of George W. Bush’s eight-year presidency. He will leave office with historically low approval numbers, and a significant percentage of Americans would today define the Bush presidency as a failure.
History will judge President Bush differently. Make no mistake, George W. Bush did not govern as a true conservative. He often infuriated conservatives with profligate spending and unrestrained growth of government, such as the Medicare prescription drug program, signing onto campaign finance reform, and embracing the Democrats’ multi-trillion bailout during the final weeks of his presidency. And his unwillingness to tackle illegal immigration produced much consternation on the right.
But on three political fronts, George W. Bush hit a home run.
First, President Bush won two rounds of tax cuts that allowed all taxpayers, rich and poor, to keep more of their own money, brought in better-than-expected revenue to the federal government, and sparked years of burgeoning economic growth that was only stopped by the Democrat-induced mortgage crisis late last year.
Second, George W. Bush seated two conservatives on the Supreme Court: John Roberts and Samuel Alito. The high court ended up preserving, for example, the partial-birth abortion ban that was passed by the U.S. Congress.
But the defining moment of George W. Bush’s presidency came on September 11, 2001, when the U.S. was savagely attacked by Islamic terrorists who claimed nearly 3,000 American lives, brought down a symbol of American economic power, and took a temporary toll on our economy. After years of ignoring terrorism by his predecessor, George W. Bush’s response with swift and decisive. He resolved that the United States would defeat terrorists and countries that harbored them. What resulted was an overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and an overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the latter being tried by his own people, convicted, and executed.
Thus, two formerly oppressive, terrorist-friendly nations were converted into democracies by the U.S. and its allies.
But, most importantly, in the seven-plus years since 9/11, the U.S. has not suffered another terrorist attack on its own soil. The War on Terrorism was effectively taken overseas and fought on the soil of those who had supported terrorists and their evil mission.
For this, George W. Bush has been savagely maligned by the American left. Liberals have consistently proclaimed military defeat in the presence of actual victory. They have accused the President of war crimes, calling the war illegal, and accusing the U.S. military of torture. They have demanded that we shut down Guantanamo Bay, where we have held militant Islamists as prisoners. In other words, the left has demonstrated greater concern for the rights of terrorists than the rights of Americans.
Thank goodness we have had a President more committed to preserving the lives of Americans than the rights of al Qaeda.
President Clinton proved that you cannot defeat terrorists through diplomacy and appeasement. Terrorists only understand violence and force. And President Bush, armed with the superior might of the U.S. military, has crippled the Taliban and al Qaeda by the aggressive use of force. George W. Bush is the one leader who has given the world a template on how to defeat terrorists. Other leaders and President Bush’s successor would do well to follow that model.
Defeating terrorism was never going to be quick and easy. Fighting terrorists is not the same as fighting another nation. Terrorist cells are scattered, hidden, and transient. Yet President Bush has been stuck with approval ratings in the 20’s and 30’s for much of his second term, owing partly to an impatient electorate, and partly to a media and opposition party determined to ignore our successes, amplify our setbacks, and portray victory as defeat.
But those who shape public opinion today won’t be writing the history of the Bush presidency. That will be left to others, years from now, who will have no vested interest in the success or failure of the Bush presidency, but who will instead be able to clearly see the results of the War on Terrorism. This is why George W. Bush will be ultimately considered far more favorably than he is today. Those who spread freedom usually are. Like it or not, those who dismiss George W. Bush as a bumbling idiot, those who have called for his impeachment, and those who have attempted to orchestrate his political demise owe their safety from Islamic militants to our 43rd President.
The REAL President Bush and Vice President Cheney
There aren’t many politicians who are willing to make gestures such as this outside the camera eye, which illustrates the genuine characters of our current President and Vice President.
For much of the past seven years, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have waged a clandestine operation inside the White House. It has involved thousands of military personnel, private presidential letters and meetings that were kept off their public calendars or sometimes left the news media in the dark.
Their mission: to comfort the families of soldiers who died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to lift the spirits of those wounded in the service of their country.
Compare this to our soon-to-be president, who shunned our wounded troops while visiting Germany back in July because the press couldn’t take pictures of the Obamessiah paying his respects.
Washington Times – EXCLUSIVE: Bush, Cheney comforted troops privately.
Ayman al-Zawahiri commits the unpardonable sin
Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s second-in-command, must not know American liberals very well, as he has committed the mother of all sins. Liberals will tolerate all sorts of shenanigans, such as killing the unborn, infanticide, adulterous affairs by their own politicians, same-sex marriages, all sorts of debauchery. Even a terrorist attack doesn’t get them too excited. But al-Zawahiri has done the one thing that DOES get the left’s hackles up. He directed a racial epithet at Barack Obama. It’s something you just don’t do. Bloggers have been fired for things like that. I’m not one for uttering racial epithets myself, but it’s not my #1. The left, however, is so obsessed with race that this may be the one thing that actually gets them on board the War on Terrorism.
Obama’s hunt for Osama
The media are speculating on what Barack Obama will do with Osama bin Laden, whether to continue the hunt or assume that he is either dead or untraceable. My own belief is that bin Laden assumed cave temperature long ago. At any rate, the last reliable sighting of bin Laden was sometime around 9/11, and that was 7 years ago.
