June 18, 2004

A REMINDER

Crockumentary filmmaker Michael Moore, on the terrorists who killed Nick Berg and, since they have identified themselves as the "Fallujah Detachment," most likely Paul Johnson:

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win.

His film, Fahrenheit 9-11, is intended to help them win. Michael Moore is the terrorists' propaganda mouthpiece, and Democrats Chris Lehane, Mario Cuomo and others are lining up to help get his film a less than R rating and into more theatres.

You be the judge of whose side these despicable people are on in this war.

Posted by B. Preston at 03:55 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack

PAUL JOHNSON, R.I.P.

The maniacs have beheaded another American. Paul Johnson's ordeal is over. Al Qaeda's had better be just beginning.

Posted by B. Preston at 02:01 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

WELL SAID

A Small Victory gives us a loud shout about the 9-11 Whitewash Commission and the idiots who believe in it.

Nick Schultz on the torture the media doesn't want you to see.

Even some leftwingers don't think much of Michael Moore's latest crockumentary.

Former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel says it's time to deal with Kim Jong-Il. And he's not proposing sending Jimmah Carter back to Pyongyang for another round of hide-the-nukes-while-we-pay-you-to-hide-them, which is more or less John Kerry's position. On that topic, how many stories have you read in the allegedly mainstream media about the Bush administration's signature effort to deal with North Korea, the Proliferation Security Initiative? I bet you never heard of it, unless you read about it here.

And by the way, Oh. My. God. Is it possible we invaded Iraq to prevent future terrorist attacks? How shocking!

MORE: Read this paragraph, from Schultz's story about the Saddam torture video:

In the final clip we see a blindfolded prisoner being led to his fate as the assembled men around him sing "Happy Birthday, long live the leader, eternal gift to the people." Again with arms tied behind his back he is shoved to the ground, bent over stuffed burlap sacks. A black-clad Fedayeen loosens the prisoner's shirt exposing his back and neck, while another stands two feet from him holding a long silver blade at its curved handle. He raises his arms and strikes, hacking the prisoner's head from his body, tumbling it to the ground. He picks up the severed head by the hair and places it ceremoniously on the dead man's back as the camera pans in closer and closer and you can make out the victim's now lifeless and bloodied face. (my emphasis)

Now go look at the photo linked on Drudge's site of Paul Johnson after the terrorists beheaded him, and tell me why we shouldn't have waged all possible war to destroy Saddam's regime. And tell me there was no connection between Saddam's regime and terrorism. Saddam's regime was terrorism. And we destroyed it. And we were right to do so.

Posted by B. Preston at 10:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

THE 9-11 COMMISH AND THE OLD GRAY LIAR

Andrew McCarthy isn't amused with the effects of McCain-Feingold, the media or the Kerry campaign's attempt to yet again politicize the war.

I sense another JYB Golden Bombbelt may be awarded soon...

Posted by B. Preston at 09:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 17, 2004

'SECRET' DETENTION CENTERS

The anti-war memes just keep on coming, don't they. So here's the latest one--some human rights group is chastising the US because our government is, according to this group, operation a couple dozen 'secret' detention centers that we use to hold terrorists.

Keep in mind that at this very moment, American Paul Johnson is being held in a secret location somewhere in the Middle East against his will by terrorists who are threatening to murder him. If they haven't already killed him, they probably will soon. His crime? He's an American. Before Johnson, American Nick Berg was kidnapped and held in a secret location somewhere in the Middle East by terrorists who never threatened to kill him--they just killed him and gave the world a new snuff film. His crime? He was an American Jew. Before that, some Italians were captured and held somewhere in Iraq against their will. Eventually one was shot in the head and the rest were released. Their crime? There are Italians, and Italy is our ally in the war. Before that, Daniel Pearl was captured by terrorists and held at a secret location somewhere in the Middle East against his will, until he was eventually beheaded. His crime? He was an American Jew. I could keep going on, all the way back to Bill Buckley, the CIA station chief murdered by terrorists in Lebanon in the 1980s. Terrorists have a long established pattern of capturing innocent Americans, Israelis or Europeans--or at any rate, non-Muslims--and holding them in secret locations until they either decide to release them or kill them. They usually kill. They're not the catch and release types.

Against that backdrop, this "human rights" group has the gall (gaul?) to scold us for holding actual terrorists in secret locations, terrorists captured in most cases either on actual battlefields or on information from terrorists already captured? And they don't say a word about the terrorists? What we have is yet another "human rights" group actively assisting the terrorists.

But let's step back and think for a second about the moral differences here, lest anyone get confused. Why would the US use secret detention centers? Here's why. We have learned a thing or two from the Israelis, who have a long experience with terrorism up close. They have in the past caught thousands of terrorists and put them in prison, only to have them freed when the prison itself was attacked by other terrorists. Or knowing where the prison was, the terrorists could plant operatives or bribe the guards there to get their peeps freed. Letting terrorists know where their fellow terrorists are being held tends to help terrorists figure out how to get their friends out of jail, and that's bad. You end up having to arrest the same terrorists over and over, and in between arrests they kill innocent men, women and children.

That's why we have secret detention centers. To keep terrorists off the street and to hopefully use what they tell us to catch or kill more terrorists. Not innocents, terrorists. Big difference between the two.

Now why would terrorists hold captives in secret locations? First, the captives are innocents. In most cases, they're just average people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In most cases, they're not soldiers or "mercenaries" or anything of the sort. Contractors, oil workers, in Pearl's case a reporter--you get the idea. Terrorists hold them in secret locations because first they know we'll come in after our people if we know where to look for them, and second because it gives them space to go through their killing rituals once they decide to kill their captives. Who are innocent, and are not and never were in most cases fighting the terrorists in any way. And even if the captive was in some way connected to the military or intelligence, such as Buckley was, the terrorists still have no excuse to murder them. But they do it anyway.

And where are the "human rights" groups to protest that? They're hounding us, that's where, for trying to keep terrorists off the streets.

Ugh. The decay of common sense seems to be moving at light speed.

Posted by B. Preston at 05:25 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack

CHANGING LEADERSHIP IN THE MIDST OF WAR

I tremble with disbelief as I write this, but the LA Times actually has a good article today. It wasn't written by anyone on the Times' staff, which explains why it's a good article. Michael Barone examines what it might mean to change leadership in the middle of the war. It's a must-read, so you know what to do:

About half of Democrats favor the Iraq war and about half are against. Pollster Scott Rasmussen recently reported that 62% of Americans agreed that the world would be a better place if other countries became more like the United States, while only 14% believed it would be a worse place. But there is a big difference between Republicans and Democrats. Fully 81% of Bush voters but only 48% of Kerry voters agreed with the statement.

Read that paragraph again. And one more time. Now stand on your head and whistle "Dixie." Just kidding.

But seriously, less than half of all Democrats think that if the world became more like the US, it would be a better place. Good God, they're worse off than I thought. If they get their guy in the White House in the middle of a war they don't support to defend a country they don't much like, it's very, very unlikely they will give him the political cover to prosecute that war to victory, supposing he even wanted to. It's that simple.

And it's also that simple that a slim majority of Democrats don't think the US should be emulated by other countries. But heaven forbid anyone question their patriotism.

Posted by B. Preston at 02:31 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

HAMID KARZAI TELLS IT LIKE IT IS

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai addressed a joint session of Congress earlier this week. His speech is too good to exerpt--go ahead and read it all.

Okay, I'll exerpt one short passage. With all the headlines about abuse and torture lately, Karzai noted the brave--unbelievably heroic--actions of two US soldiers in Afghanistan:

We honored two American soldiers who recently returned from Afghanistan, and who, a few months ago in Kandahar, were travelling in a vehicle.

Somebody, a terrorist, threw a grenade at them. The grenade landed in their vehicle. They took the grenade. Instead of throwing it into the street, where there were people around them, civilians, these heroic men stuck the grenade under their seat. The grenade exploded. Fortunately they survived, but they were badly injured.

To us, this is also the example of heroism and care for humanity, and we are proud of these two American soldiers.


Posted by B. Preston at 02:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

FIGHT THE LIE

I don't normally include action items in posts, but in this case I'm going to. Here's the thing--the persistent lie that Bush lied about Iraq's WMDs in order to get the American people to support the war has reached the status of Established Truth. It is, however, a lie. And there is a simple and effective way to counter it.

So, in order to counter it, I'm going to ask you to do two things, neither of which will take up much time. The first assignment is to bring up a Google search window and type in three words: Clinton Iraq 1998. Once you run that search, you will find a treasure trove of quotes from the ancien regime regarding Iraq and the reasons Saddam should be pushed off a cliff. Poke around in the stories you will find, and you will find yourself illuminated on the subject of Iraq's WMD programs like never before. You will read Madeline Albright arguing that the United States should attack Iraq, and you will read Sandy Berger and William Cohen--Clinton administration figures all--agreeing with her. You will read a tantalizing quote from Berger arguing that pre-emption is a proper doctrine in a world in which stateless terrorism has become the number one national security threat.

I want you to remember that search string--Clinton Iraq 1998. For good measure, you can add Ohio State to it and you'll zero in on an episode you've probably forgotten. In February of 1998, the Clinton administration tried and failed to take America to war in Iraq. The hard left denounced them at the time for running a racist war. The hard left always plays the race card, even when the action of ousting Saddam results in freeing millions of people with brown skin.

You will need this information in the coming months. Whenever you run across someone who maintains that Bush lied, give them the search string. If you can, sit down with them and run the search with them and make sure they read at least one or two of the stories it finds. You will impress your family and amaze your friends, and you just might change a mind or two.

Fight the lie!

Posted by B. Preston at 08:18 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

June 16, 2004

LOTSA LINKS

Andrew Sullivan--open-minded about President Bush on his blog, unequivocally anti-Bush in the gay media. That's kind of dishonest, if you ask me.

UPDATE: Now he's come out and explained on the blog that he won't be supporting Bush this year. As usual, with Sullivan it's identity politics for me, but not for thee. He can smear all Christians with whom he disagrees as "theocrats" and "theocons," you name it. But if you go after him on anything, well you're just a bigot. The man's an emotional roller coaster, a fickle ally at best and a demagogue at worst. And try and actually engage him in a debate if you aren't already as famous as he is. Fahgeddaboudit. If you're not already employed by one of the majors or you aren't InstaPundit, you just don't rate in Sulli's world. He's content to write letters to himself, claim they're from some Special Forces troop or some other unlikely source that just happens to agree entirely with him and who writes in his exact style, and call that acknowledging the masses. Whatever. I for one am glad he's finally torn off the Band-Aid. Now we don't have to pretend to care what he thinks anymore. He's gone to the dark side. Fine. But pray tell, Mr. Sullivan, if you help Kerry win and Kerry then loses the war (which based on his long record is a near certainty), how long will your rights as a gay man last under sharia? If you think Pat Robertson is a theocrat, you ain't seen nothin' yet buddy.

Speaking of John Kerry--the Man from Mope (stole that from Kaus) tells us why he wants to be President, and Doug Payton is completely unimpressed. So are most Democrats, fwiw.

CBS is running Democrat spin as if it were fact. Like that's news? Funny thing, though--you'll never catch CBS or any other major outlet reporting on Saddam's torture videos. Reporting on them might actually remind people what the war is about, you see, and we can't have that.

Another interesting story on the discovery of some of Saddam's weapons cache in junkyards other than this blog. That this information is coming from Blix-free UNMOVIC is startling. UNMOVIC is mad at the US, yet is essentially making our case for war for us. And the Bush administration isn't seizing the moment for some bizarre reason. I just don't get that at all.

So let's get this straight--Saddam Hussein ran one of the most odious regimes on earth. He loved terrorists--kept several of them as pets in Baghdad. Yeah, he put one of them to sleep right before the war, but probably only to keep him from falling into our hands and ratting him out. Czech intelligence insists to this very day that 9-11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met an Iraqi intel agent in Prague in 2001 a few months before the attacks. The press has fabricated stories that try to knock down the Praque connection, but the Czechs still insist it's true. And there's a whole book on the subject of Saddam and al Qaeda. Yet the 9-11 Whitewash Commission's final report insists that Saddam and al Qaeda didn't tango. Sorry, not buying it. When that Commission gets testimony from one of the most relevant players in the intel/law enforcement scene--Jamie Gorelick--it will regain about 10% of its lost credibility. Until that time, I will consider that Commission to have been full of sound and fury, but signifying not a thing. Its final report is worse than useless as a national security document--it is counterproductive. And not just because it states a case it can't prove (the lack of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection), but because the Commission went out of its way to keep a tainted member of its little unity cult on board when she clearly had a conflict of interest.

There aren't any links I can give you to this, but watch out. Al Qaeda seems to have figured out that Saudi Arabia is ripe for the taking, and they're going to try and take it. It won't be hard for them to score some serious successes, either. It won't be hard for them to drive most non-Saudis out of the country, especially Western expats (Geostrategy Direct had a solid article on this a while back, but it's behind a subscription firewall). When the terrorists show the next beheading or execution of an American, watch for a quiet exodus from the country. Then we will be in a pretty nasty bind. If we let al Qaeda destabilize Saudi Arabia too far, the expats will leave, taking with them the brain trust of the oil industry, and that industry will become increasingly vulnerable. The Saudis could fall, but we won't let them. Not because we like them, but because the only thing waiting in the wings to take their place is one of two things: either Wahhabi-inspired cultists or actual al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers. Iraq had exiles who were liberal democrats and had some memory of life before Saddam. Try finding that in Saudi Arabia. So both sides of the coin are bad news. Just imagine al Qaeda in control of such a gigantic oil reserve, and within striking distance of another huge one in Iraq. Or imagine a bunch of Wahabbi clerics setting an even more extreme version of Iran's mullacracy. I am not here and now predicting US troops will have to be inserted into Saudi Arabia to keep it from going to the terrorists, but I do think it's more than an outside possibility. No matter who wins in November, Saudi Arabia is going to be a big problem. Who would you rather see deal with it? I know my answer to that question. Since 9-11 bloggers and blog readers have wondered why we didn't take down Saudi Arabia first. Your answer is the bleak prospect of turning that kingdom into anything better once the house of Saud is out of the way. For starters, half the country considers itself royalty and above labor of any kind. You think Afghanistan and Iraq have been difficult to reshape--try a kingdom that derives its legitimacy from an 18th Century splinter Islamic cult and nothing else, and has absolutely no tradition of democracy or anything other than a medieval take on the world and an absolute adherence to sharia, across several generations. Saudi Arabia is probably the least likely Middle Eastern sinkhole to be dragged semi-successfully into the 21st Century. It just has too far to go to make that trip. Yes, reforming Saudi Arabia will be harder than reforming both Iraq and Afghanistan, probably harder than the rest of the Middle East put together. Its government may be the next one to fall, but its culture has several centuries of catching up to do.

So when do we start drilling in the ANWR?

And finally, this year is starting to look a lot like 1992 to me. The left is lying through its teeth, the media is propagating the lies and the public is too indifferent to figure things out for themselves, and another President Bush just can't seem to get things going. Kerry is on a magical misery tour, calling the Bush economy that's creating millions of new jobs the "worst since Hoover," and the public seems to be buying it, or at least not calling it out for the lie it is. The "Bush lied about WMD" meme has gone from the loony left to the likes of Sullivan, even though I and countless other bloggers have proven that Bush did not and could not have lied about WMDs. What can we do about this? As depressing as it sounds, I think the psychosis of the Democrats is metastisizing in the general public now. The Bush administration left it unchallenged far too long, and now it's probably too late to correct it in the public consciousness. Nothing short of a detonated nuke in Times Square is likely to reverse it. And even that may not work, since you'd hear a grand chorus of "It's because we invaded Iraq that the terrorists did this!" The media will aid and abet.

Think I'm nuts? Just wait. Watch how the left behaves after the next major terror strike, wherever it may be.

(several links thanks to Hanks)

Posted by B. Preston at 10:14 PM | Comments (12) | TrackBack

NAILS IT

Once again, Michelle Malkin has a post up that just nails it to the wall. This time, the travesty we call our immigration service. A Somali writes Mrs. Malkin:

I am an American citizen of Somali [descent] who came to United States in 1989. I agree with your assessment of people coming to this country to do mischief, destroy properties to undermined our economy, and kill innocent lives and disrupt our way of live, under the banner of human rights and fear of prosecution.

---

The reason why I wrote to you is my frustration with the State Department's agency that handles refugee and asylum process. I am not angry with anyone but it is unfair to lot of people like me to do everything they suppose to do while refugees and asylees can simply jump the line ahead of everybody else.

I filed family reunion papers for my mother and siblings in 1998 with the immigration. They are still in the process, while refugees and asylees have the
first priority to reunite with their families before they become employable and can support themselves, the sad thing about the whole affair is American
taxpayers are footing the bill without really knowing about it...

Most of the JYB's long-time readers know that Mrs. JYB is an immigrant. She's Japanese by birth and by citizenship. Though I'm a full-blooded fifth-generation native of Texas transplanted to Maryland and therefore a citizen of these United States, though we married in Japan years before moving stateside and though I was in the Air Force at the time and she worked for the Japanese government at the time, we had one heck of a time getting through INS. Spotless backgrounds (I had a military clearance, fergoodnesssakes), nothing to suggest we were trouble in any way, shape or form--yet the officials at [unnamed city's] INS offices couldn't have been ruder, nastier or less helpful than those we encountered, up and down the chain. Being from Japan, of course, Mrs. JYB couldn't very well have claimed "political asylum" and jumped to the head of the line. What could she have been running from, the Tokugawa shogunate? They were notorious for persecuting Japanese Christians, but they haven't ruled in about 250 years. Then again, knowing the state of our educational system it just might have worked anyway. Wish I'd thought of it at the time. But I digress...

So we got a colossal runaround, yet some two-bit criminal from any terrorist hellhole could saunter up, claim "political asylum" and just get right in and start plotting away to blow up the Hoover Dam, and INS would probably help him find an apartment.

In. Sane. I would say that this is going to get Americans killed someday, but it already has.

Posted by B. Preston at 04:35 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

SHOEBOMBER FOUND GUILTY

Hey Krugman, chalk up another conviction for Ashcroft's goons. And then read what the judge had to say at Mr. Reid's sentencing:

You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice. So war talk is way out of line in this court. You are a big fellow. But you are not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders. In a very real sense, State Trooper Santiago had it right when you first were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were, and he said you're no big deal. You're no big deal.

---

What your counsel, what your able counsel and what
the equally able United States attorneys have
grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know
how tried to grapple with, is why you did something
so horrific. What was it that led you here to this courtroom today?

I have listened respectfully to what you have to
say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask
yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to
do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of
doing. And I have an answer for you. It may not
satisfy you. But as I search this entire record, it
comes as close to understanding as I know.
It seems to me you hate the one thing that is most
precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual
freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we
choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or
not believe as we individually choose. Here, in
this society, the very winds carry freedom. They
carry it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is
because we prize individual freedom so much that you
are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that
everyone can see, truly see that justice is
administered fairly, individually, and discretely.
It is for freedom's sake that your lawyers are
striving so vigorously on your behalf and have filed
appeals, will go on in their representation of you
before other judges.

We are about it. Because we all know that the way we
treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own
liberties. Make no mistake though. It is yet true
that we will bare any burden; pay any price, to
preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom.
Mark it well. The world is not going to long
remember what you or I say here. Day after tomorrow
it will be forgotten. But this, however, will long
endure Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all
across America, the American people will gather to
see that justice, individual justice, justice,not
war, individual justice is in fact being done. The
very President of the United States through his
officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay
out evidence on which specific matters can be
judged, and juries of citizens will gather to sit
and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and
shape and refine our sense of justice.
See that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the
United States of America. That flag will fly there
long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands
for freedom. You know it always will.
Mr. Custody Officer. Stand him down.

Can I get an Amen?

Posted by B. Preston at 12:50 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

PSYCHO DEMOCRATS--A JUNKYARDBLOG WEB AD

With all due apologies to the late Saul Bass, the JYB has a new web ad online:

Psycho Democrats

We have several formats to choose from:

QuickTime

Real Media

Windows Media

Enjoy!

MORE: By the way, here's the first JYB web ad, about the disaster that is Al Gore, for those who missed it the first time around.

UPDATE: I note that the folks over at "I feel nothing for them" Kos' site have seen our ad and the accompanying photo treatment, above. One commentor says Kerry looks like a "statesman" in the shot. Oh yeah, that John Kerry is a regular statesman, and as for that salute Kerry is lifting, well, it resembles one offered by a gentleman that the Kosites also no doubt view as a great statesman.

Posted by B. Preston at 09:49 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack

IRAQIS ANGRY AT U.S.

These poll results don't look good:

President Bush (news - web sites) is fond of telling Americans they have liberated Iraq (news - web sites) and that the country's future generations will be thankful. The current generation, however, overwhelmingly views U.S. forces as occupiers and wishes they would just leave, according to a poll commissioned by the administration.

The poll, requested by the Coalition Provisional Authority last month but not released to the American public, found more than half of Iraqis surveyed believed both that they'd be safer without U.S. forces and that all Americans behave like the military prison guards pictured in the Abu Ghraib abuse photos.

The survey, obtained by The Associated Press, also found radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is surging in popularity as he leads an insurrection against U.S.-led forces, but would still be a distant finisher in an election for Iraqi president.

"If you are sitting here as part of the coalition, it (the poll) is pretty grim," said Donald Hamilton, a career foreign service officer who is working for Ambassador Paul Bremer's interim government and helps oversee the CPA's polling of Iraqis.

Indeed, it is grim. The occupation of Iraq must be deemed a failure. We've evidently created another France.

MORE: Ok, I should've made it a little clearer that this post is sarcastic. If we have succeeded in creating another France in the midst of the Middle East, that would be a rousing success by any reasonable measure. And based on this poll, well, if Iraqi democracy takes hold yet the average Iraqi maintains the views expressed in the poll, we will have created another France. Bully for us! The frogs are annoying as can be, but when was the last time France was a military threat to us? We could probably sink their best ship, the Charles DeGaulle, with a couple of Coast Guard cutters. And if the French keep acting uppity, we just might. Give us a reason, Chirac. Just give us a reason.

But given the chance to succeed, what you might see happen is that once the occupation receedes in memory, the average Iraqi--mad at us today--might reconsider and like us a little more, probably a lot more, in a few years. The poll probably reflects as much as anything the fact that they're sick of the violence and aren't sure how or when it will end. Can't say I blame them on that. It must look pretty bleak to the average Iraqi mom or dad wondering what kind of world their kid is going to inherit. Before the war at least they knew who ran the place, as much of a tyrant as he was. Now anything's possible, and that's scary.

Posted by B. Preston at 07:21 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack

June 15, 2004

SEARCH EVERY SCRAP YARD IN EUROPE AND THE MIDDLE EAST

Because you're likely to find Saddam's WMDs if you do:

Equipment and material that could have been used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been emptied from Iraqi sites since the war started and shipped abroad, the head of the United Nations inspectors office told the Security Council on Wednesday.

Demetrius Perricos, deputy to the former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix and now the acting executive chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, told a closed session of the council that many of the items bear tags placed by United Nations inspectors as suspect dual-use materials having capabilities for creating harmless consumer products as well as unconventional weapons.

I know, I know...Bush lied, blah blah blah.

Mr. Perricos accompanied his briefing with a report showing satellite photos of a fully built-up missile site near Baghdad in May 2003 and the same site denuded in February 2004.

His spokesman, Ewen Buchanan, said that items removed from the site included fermenters, a freeze drier, distillation columns, parts of missiles and a reactor vessel - all tools suitable for making biological or chemical weapons.

"It raises the question of what happened to the dual-use equipment, where is it now and what is it being used for," Mr. Buchanan said.

He said that a fermenter was a good example of a dual-use item that was potentially dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. "You can make all kinds of pharmaceutical and medicinal products with a fermenter," he said. "You can also use it to breed anthrax."

Another photo showed an engine from a banned SA-2 surface-to-air missile that had been tagged by the United Nations in Iraq in 1996 and recently discovered in a scrap yard in Rotterdam, the port city in the Netherlands.

A missile fuselage here, and engine there, a fermenter over there, and pretty soon you're talking about a real WMD program. And that's where we are now: Add the above together with the missile engines recently found in Jordan, plus the WMDs al Qaeda tried to use to decapitate the Jordanian government a few weeks back, and you have pretty much found Saddam's WMD program. He shipped it to various locations for safe keeping, most likely believing he could wait Bush out and live to use those weapons another day. But back to the story:

The report said that workers there had told inspectors from the monitoring commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency that as many as 12 such engines may have passed through the yard in January and February this year and that additional items made of stainless steel and other corrosion-resistant metal alloys with the inscriptions "Iraq" and "Baghdad" had been observed since November 2003.

"This is only a snapshot," Mr. Buchanan said. Two inspectors, he said, acting on information from the Netherlands, went to scrap yards in Jordan last week and found 20 more such engines in addition to tagged processing equipment such as chemical reactors, heat exchangers and a solid propellent mixing bowl.

"The problem for us is that we don't know what may have passed through these yards and other yards elsewhere," he said. "We can't really assess the significance and don't know the full extent of activity that could be going on there or with others of Iraq's neighbors." Inspectors are hoping to check scrap yards in Turkey, he said.

Yup. Send every man you've got to every scrap yard in the region, and you might as well include Europe too. Hey, Saddam wasn't paying off members in half the governments on that corrupt continent for nothing.

(via Spoons, who insists he's on a blogging break)

Posted by B. Preston at 04:23 PM | Comments (8) | TrackBack

LETTER TO ERIC ALTERMAN

Leftwing journalist Eric Alterman is one of the many loudmouths consistenly accusing President Bush of lying America into war with Iraq. The biggest problem with their assessment is that it's entirely ahistorical. Bush did not--could not have--lied us into war, and those who say he did either don't know what they're talking about or are themselves liars of the first order. I've just sent the following missive to Alterman. I'm sure he'll ignore it.

You keep referring to the "lies" the Bush administration told to get us into the Iraq war, yet you consistently fail to offer any historical perspective. If Bush lied about WMDs, then so did every single member of the Clinton administration that had any foreign policy responsibility. In 1998, 1999 and 2000, Clinton, Gore, Berger, Albright, Cohen--all of them--cited Saddam's pursuit and possession of WMDs as pretext to bombing Iraq. Sens. Kerry, Kennedy, Biden, and many other prominent Democrats also went on the record as favoring a tough line against Saddam because of his pursuit and possession of WMDs and his connections to terrorists. They all favored making regime change in Iraq national policy. As late as 2002, Gore delivered a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in which he cited Saddam's regime as a special case for both its pursuit and possession of WMDs and its connection to terrorists as reasons to oust him. In fact, at that time Mr. Gore was one of the leading voices in favor of war with Iraq.

As a member of the press I have to assume you know all of this, and are either lying when you accuse Bush of lying or are simply shading the truth to suit your prejudices. Or perhaps you just don't know what you're talking about. Either way, you're not an honest broker of the facts.

Which is why I fully expect you to ignore this letter in its entirety.

We'll see if he runs it on Altercation. I think it's highly unlikely you see it anywhere other than here.

Posted by B. Preston at 02:44 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

WHO'S WINNING THE WAR IN IRAQ?

To listen to our press, not only are we losing the war, but because of Abu Ghraib we deserve to lose. To listen to terrorist Abu al Zarqawi, though, we're handily winning the war in Iraq:

Al Qaida's most dangerous operative, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, has personally warned terror kingpin Osama bin Laden that his troops are under intensifying pressure from U.S. forces in Iraq and prospects for a terrorist victory look bleak.

A purported letter from Zarqawi to bin Laden, posted to Islamic web sites Monday night, complains that al Qaida fighters in Iraq are being "squeezed" by U.S.-led coalition forces, the Associated Press said.

"The space of movement is starting to get smaller," Zarqawi warned. "The [U.S.] grip is starting to be tightened on the holy warriors' necks and, with the spread of soldiers and police, the future is becoming frightening."

I'll admit, my first thought on reading this story was that the letter was a disinformation plant designed to demoralize terrorists around the world. If I were running US psyops, it's what I'd do. I'd try and plant as much discouraging information as I could where I could be sure terrorists would read it and take it as genuine.

But. The letter appeared on an actual terrorist information site. It may be that our psyops agents are that good and can fool whoever runs the site into believing that the letter is real. I hope so. But it seems to me more likely that the terrorists who run the site have ways of discriminating between false messages and real ones, and between messages from imposters and from actual operatives. They believed the message was real, and posted it. And if it's real, then it's likely that the terrorists on the ground in Iraq believe they are losing the war. Good. They apparently don't read the New York Times to know any different.

But either way, it's good news for us. If it's real, we're demoralizing our enemy. If it's not, we're planting false messages into the terrorists' lexicon. Their communications are no longer secure and they will over a short time learn to distrust them until they find some new means to communicate, and then they can never be sure we aren't listening in and planting false messages there too. That's a good way to disrupt future operations and destroy their ability to coordinate and communicate globally.

MORE: So it turns out that the new memo probably isn't new at all. The media is just re-reporting it, or in some cases reporting it for the first time. What we have here, then, is a lesson in media bias. The first time the Zarqawi memo surfaced, a few months back, the media reported it with a couple of pounds of skepticism piled on. There was much insinuation in the air that since the memo had been in the hands of the Bush administration by way of the military, it might not be legit. It might be a put-up job meant to silence critics, justify present strategy, etc. But now that we have it showing up on a bona fide terrorist web site, the media is reporting it as genuine. So what does that say?

It says that the Western media is more likely to believe terrorists than the US government. That's what this recycled story says. That the US government is led by GASP! a Republican and GASP! a Christian just makes anything it says all the more unbelievable, as far as the media is concerned.

To sum up: US government=not credible, terrorist web site=instant credibilty. If you're in the media, that is.

Posted by B. Preston at 09:31 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 14, 2004

THE ABU GHRAIB BAIT AND SWITCH

As I predicted weeks ago, the Abu Ghraib scandal is the one line of attack available to everyone who opposed the Iraq war--the Western left, Democrat demagogues the likes of Ted Kennedy and Joe Biden, the press, and most obviously the terrorists themselves--that has any chance of succeeding. And because it has a chance of succeeding, it is being pursued with untrammeled vigor. I'm sure Biden and Kennedy and their allies can see the top of the hill they're climbing now, unmindful or uncaring that their possession of that hill all but dictates that we lose the war in Iraq and on terrorism itself. That's fine with them, as long as anybody but Bush is in the White House this time next year.

The latest round of the Abu Ghraib abuse-a-thon has to do with the Justice Department memos written up presumably for the Attorney General and President's consideration in the wake of 9-11. Gleeful Democrat Senators have adopted a slashing tecnique of demanding the Attorney General's testimony before their committees, then mocking each of his answers to all of their questions. They are also, in the process, pulling a bait and switch. They are holding up Justice memos that suggest, correctly, that al Qaeda terrorists are not subject to treatment under the Geneva Conventions because in their techniques, their tactics and their mode of dress have taken themselves outside Geneva's strictures and therefore its protections. Those memos are then being used to suggest that they created policy that became the abuse in Abu Ghraib.

Geneva works like this: If you sign on to it, you pledge to treat enemies on the battlefield and those you subsequently capture under its guidelines. The benefit you are supposed to receive from this is the assurance that any enemy you happen to fight who is also a Geneva signatory will likewise treat your soldiers in battle and in confinement. That's all fine and nice if we, say, fight a war with England, a nation that shares more than just a language with us. But it all gets blurry the further you get from solid and recognized nation-state conflict, and it is downright incomprehensible once you get to a situation in which a nation-state finds itself at war with a loose confederation of criminal gangs operating across several international borders. When those gangs target civilians (which is not encouraged in Geneva), and when those gangs do not wear regular uniforms, do not answer to any national government, operate within several nations which sometimes provide them succor but not in all cases direct command authority, Geneva becomes more than difficult--it becomes counterproductive. And in such a case, even Geneva signatories are under no obligation to follow it.

That's the situation we have found ourselves in since 9-11. We are fighting a multi-national criminal enterprise that has as its goal the eradication of our way of life and the imposition of its own on us. That criminal enterprise isn't using tanks and ships and military aircraft to target our military bases, materiel and personnel--it's using subterfuge to target us as citizens in order to sap our will and bring us down gradually.

When captured, the plans an individual terrorist may carry around in his head could be invaluable. Jose Padilla, for instance, was arrested in the progress of his "dirty bomb" plot based on information obtained from terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay. Had we followed the Geneva Conventions, which require captors only to obtain name, rank and serial number of detainees, we would likely never have known of Padilla's plots, which included blowing up several apartment buildings full of innocent people. And what good is demanding name, rank and serial numbers of terrorists anyway, when they use multiple aliases and operate without specific rank and without any kind serial number? We would have allowed the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent Americans in order to rigorously follow a set of laws that end up handcuffing our operations while expanding those of the terrorists. Surely that isn't what Senate Democrats have in mind?

I end that with a question mark, because I honestly no longer understand just what it is the Democrats want to prove or what they want to accomplish. We are in Iraq now, having toppled Saddam Hussein a year ago. Do they really want to undermine our moral authority in Iraq to the point that no matter what happens there--civil war or peaceful transition to sovereignty--the US ends up the loser? Do they really want our military and law enforcement personnel so restricted in their operations that innocent Americans die in terrorist plots that could have been prevented? Would they applaud total adherence to Geneva even if it led directly to more 9-11s? Of course not. They would castigate the administration for not doing more, not doing everything it could to stop attacks. They constantly play games with the war, creating gotchas that expose our interrogation techniques and further restrict the tools we can use to fight the war. But that's a discussion for another time.

For now, I want to return to Abu Ghraib and the bait and switch. The memos about which Attorney General John Ashcroft was grilled last week are suggestions based on a changing and chaotic atmosphere. Andrew McCarthy does a very nice job out outlining the circumstances in which they were drafted--we had no idea when the next strike or wave of strikes would come. We had little idea how to fight a war against an enemy like al Qaeda, a war that for all we knew would take place right on our streets. In that climate, Justice lawyers drafted a series of recommendations, and those recommendations have found their way to the demagogues who did nothing about terrorism during the 1990s and apparently want nothing done about it now. And those demagogues--Democrats--are attempting to draw a line from those memos to that prison in Iraq.

The problem with that is, thus far there is no evidence to connect them. The Bush administration didn't enact the more exotic recommendations in those memos, and there was no memo that outlined stacking naked terrorists in pyramids for photographs. The bulk of the Abu Ghraib abuses took place on a single night, and it's still apparent that the participants in them were not acting under orders from Washington. And in any case, abuse and torture are not the same things, and what went on in Abu Ghraib looks more like abuse than outright torture.

But let's take the extreme case and explore it a bit. If the abuses turn out to have come directly from a Bush directive, what are we to make of that? At the risk of sounding incredibly crass, I hope the average American makes very little of it. Wars are terrible things. You kill people, break their things, overrun their country and destroy their government if you're successful at it. If you're not successful at it, all those things and more are done to you and your country. Given the great range of possible crimes committed in war, from massacres to genocides and the like, the Abu Ghraid abuses are not great crimes. They pale in comparison to the kidnapping and beheading of civilian non-combattants, as the terrorists have done, and they even pale in comparison to the internment of Japanese Americans and the theft of their property during World War II. That last crime didn't cause us to lose the war, and we don't look back today and say we should have lost that war because Roosevelt was too heavy-handed with loyal Americans who happened to have blood links to the enemy at the time. Abu Ghraib should similarly not cause us to lose this war, but if the press and Democrats get their way, it just might.

Abu Ghraib, awful as it is, does not put us on the same moral plane as the terrorists any more than Japanese internment put us on the same moral plane as the Nazis. Terrorists killed 3,000 in a single morning, those killed just going about their workaday lives or flying off to Disneyland or going to visit kin. To fall to that moral level, we would have to do far worse than what was done in Abu Ghraib.

MORE: Thanks to Michelle Malkin for making this post the must-read of the day yesterday. She has a great Paul Krugman take-down up today. It's a take-down that the Times' editors should read--if they care at all about facts and their columnists manufacture of them.

Posted by B. Preston at 12:40 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack

IF YOU LIVE IN COLUMBUS, OHIO

This Somali terrorist-to-be was trying to kill you.

The Cincinnati Division of the FBI says a Somali national has been arrested, accused of plotting to blow up a Columbus mall.

The United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio unsealed a Federal grand jury indictment charging Somali national Nuradin M. Abdi, 32, with violations of Title 18 US Code 2339A and 2339B, related to terrorism activity and Title 18 US Code 15469(a) fraud and misuse of immigration travel documents.

Abdi was arrested on immigration charges and has been in the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials since November 28, 2003.

The charges against Abdi are:

Conspiracy to provide materials and support to terrorists
Conspiracy to provide material support to Al-Qaeda
Two counts of fraud and misuse of government documents
The indictment alleges that on April 27, 1999, Abdi applied to immigration officials for a travel document allowing him to leave the United States and later return. Abdi indicated in the application that he intended to visit Germany and Saudi Arabia.

It is alleged that Abdi's true intention was to attend a military-style terrorist training camp overseas. According to the detention motion, Abdi sought training in radio usage, weapons, guerilla warfare and explosives.

So he wanted to help al Qaeda's jihad against us by blowing up a shopping mall. He applied, in 1999, to leave the US and receive training in the ways of terrorism. He apparently did so, leaving in April 1999 and returning using forged documents in June of that same year. He was nabbed on immigration violations in 2003 and has been in custody since. What did he do in the intervening four years? Hopefully the trial will shed some light on that.

A couple of points from this story seem relevant. First, in 1999 it was possible for a Somali living here to slip out and attend any of Osama bin Laden's various training camps in Afghanistan. Those camps dotted the landscape, and though they were occassionally invaded by Tomahawk cruise missiles, they stood for years with open arms for any jihadi who could reach them. The Clinton administration had good information where they were--how else aim missiles at them?--but allowed them to stand.

All that changed in 2001, of course. Those camps don't exist anymore, thanks to the US military led by President Bush. Today's jihadi wannabe will have a harder time linking up with his likeminded killers for training of any kind.

Second, he was nabbed by immigration officials. We often wonder aloud why the terrorists haven't struck here yet in the manner the Somali fellow wanted: a blown up shopping mall, movie theatre, crowded train, etc. Maybe for all our hand-wringing about the state of our immigration services, somebody within them is doing something right after all.

Then again, the Somali did have four years in which to work in secret...

Posted by B. Preston at 11:39 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

THE PLEDGE SURVIVES, BY A WHISKER

The "under God" clause of the Pledge of Allegiance has survived, but only because the Supreme Court ruled that idiot atheist Michael Newdow has no legal standing to sue on behalf of his daughter.

Which means that some other legal challenge with greater legal standing may also work its way to SCOTUS and to a different outcome.

Posted by B. Preston at 11:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack