Category Archives: War On Terror

Media, Politics, War On Terror

Can You Trust President Obama?

If you believe what our President says, then you must be wondering now if you can trust what he says from now on. Never mind for now that all that he has said so far about the economy has not come to fruition. Things of that nature have lots of variables and, therefore, wiggle room to leave any discrepancies to chance and judgment, rather than trust.

But when it comes to turning loose Eric Holder, his Attorney General, to fire up a special prosecutor to investigate harsh interrogation techniques, after telling the CIA and its director Leon Panetta that that will not happen, goes completely and directly to his personal integrity, honesty, and trust.

I hate to say this about my president, but he is not the leader he professed to be and that the media has built him up to be. Nor can he be trusted. He is being led by the political base (the far left) of his party, and his teleprompter. And, unfortunately for us, they take priority over our enemy, al-Qaeda.

What we witnessed in April, when he visited the CIA to put out the fires started by the far left demanding he fulfill his campaign promise, and to answer the concerns of former Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA chief Leon Panetta, he said he wouldn’t go there. That was not only his ‘words, just words,’ but that of his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual too!

“Don’t be discouraged by what’s happened in the last few weeks,” he told employees. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes. That’s how we learn. But the fact that we are willing to acknowledge them and then move forward, that is precisely why I am proud to be president of the United States and that’s why you should be proud to be members of the CIA.”

As the debate escalated, Cheney weighed in, saying if the country is to judge the methods used in the interrogations, it should have information about what was obtained from the tough tactics. “I find it a little bit disturbing” that “they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort,” Cheney said on Fox News. He said, “There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity.”

On Sunday, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said on the ABC program “This Week” that “those who devised policy” also “should not be prosecuted.”

Since the AG is under the purview of the executive branch, ie. the President, he could keep his word and maybe even keep his CIA director Leon Panetta. To let this spectacle continue will only be to assuage the far left base while giving aide and comfort to the enemy. One could argue that it also serves as a distraction to the insurmountable and unsustainable debt that his policies are heaping upon this country as well as his imaginary health care plan that the folks do not want.

related links:

Economy, Politics, War On Terror

Who's Passing Bills Without Reading Them?

Listen how Obama characterizes the Bush administration’s reaction to keep the terrorists from killing our people and our economy with their quick reaction to the 9/11 attacks with the Patriot Act. Compare that to what the Obama administration is doing to merely kill the economy. The hypocrisy is priceless.

Wait. On second thought. Under his proposed government-run health care called the ‘public option,’ the rationing of health care will be giving a death sentence to senior citizens as well. Odd that the AARP supports his plan. I guess they’re liberals first, then senior citizens.

The results are the same, only with Obama’s plan, way more than 3000 people will die before their time.  Whew, talk about an inconvenient truth. . .

h/t National Center Blog

Politics, War On Terror

Homeland Security Secretary Attacks Patriot Act

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Consistent with what President Obama and others in his party ran on, Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security, is taking a valuable tool out of the war-on-terror toolbox.

Let’s try this again. The head of Homeland Security, that’s the new cabinet level position in The White House responsible for preventing terrorist attacks and keeping us as safe from terrorists as possible. That one.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano plans to kill a program begun by the Bush administration that would use U.S. spy satellites for domestic security and law enforcement, a government official said Monday.

Napolitano recently reached her decision after the program was discussed with law enforcement officials, and she was told it was not an urgent issue, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about it.

The program, called the National Applications Office, has been delayed because of privacy and civil liberty concerns.

Tearing up the Patriot Act by removing the tools from the toolbox means Obama is willing to take a gamble with your life where his predecessor would not.

link: AP, DHS to kill domestic satellite spying | Free, But Not Free To Kill, Patriot Act

Media, Politics, War On Terror

It's What Passes For Safe That Matters

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That the Obama administration has made America less safe in the war on terror isn’t even debatable, but you’re welcome to try.

Starting with

  • conferring constitutional protections afforded to US citizens to foreign terrorists
  • to trying to dismantle the most effective parts of the Patriot Act that the Left calls domestic spying
  • to the apology tour where the words terrorist and terrorism were not mentioned
  • to the revelation (whether or not they are ultimately released) of more 6 or 7 year old fun pictures of terrorists being uncomfortable
  • to closing Club Gitmo (11 months remaining) and trying to put the jihadists in the American prison system, where they can do some recruiting
  • to re-defining acts of terrorism as a ‘man made disaster’ for the purpose of not offending the enemy that wants us dead
  • to limiting missile defenses and halting development of missile defense systems while North Korea fires off ICBMs and nuclear bombs
  • to the seismic shift from fighting a war to a law enforcement task where the FBI will be mirandizing terrorists captured alive on the battlefield
  • to putting a lawyer/professor/politician in charge of the CIA.

Putting people with no experience in top positions seems to be a hallmark of this administration. Leon Panetta was Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff from 1994-1997. With change like this, hope is all that’s left.

Taking all that into consideration, you’d have to be a fool to think that what vice president Cheney said was not true. He said the policies of this administration have made and will make America less safe. Fact is, Cheney didn’t say he hopes we get attacked again.  That is the Left’s spin of what he said which, the AP dutifully repeats as an unchallenged fact.

Which brings us to this article in the AP where CIA director Leon Panetta is doing what liberals are quick to do. Ignore the message, attack the messenger. Close debate, end of discussion.

CIA Director Leon Panetta says former Vice President Dick Cheney’s criticism of the Obama administration’s approach to terrorism almost suggests “he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point.”

The reason Cheney spoke up to call it as he sees it was because no other elected Republicans were. He loves this country and believes the people need to know what this administration is up to, including its attempt to re-write history. Which is especially important right now because the media will not. The Liberals in charge of Washington don’t like that inconvenient truth but, it is what it is.

Remember the infamous 911 Commission’s report that liberals were quick to pounce on in some areas, while ignoring other parts? The parts that the Left chose to ignore speak directly to Cheney’s remarks and our security at home and abroad.

They (the terrorists, al-Qaeda) were at war with us and we were not at war with them. And, it is not a matter of if but a matter of when another attack will come.

The same article quotes Vice President Biden on the NBC show ‘Meet the Press’ this morning who said ‘I think Dick Cheney’s judgment about how to secure America is faulty, I think our judgment is correct.’

What say you?

related links: CIA head says Cheney almost wishing US be attacked | Cheney Responds to Panetta

Immigration, War On Terror

More Illegals Returning Than Coming

The northward flow is down 13 percent for the first quarter of 2009. That should be good news for Californians, who are broke due in no small part to the impact of illegal immigrants and sanctuary cities.

The economic crisis, combined with a more fortified border, has led to what may be the first drop in the U.S. illegal-immigrant population in years.

There is nothing much to be optimistic about with a 13% decrease except for the direction it is going. Which is down. That’s a good thing. But it also means that there were 137,497 illegals that did enter the country in the first quarter. Down from 159,024 in 2008. I wonder how many of those were terrorists?

related link: Reverse migration

Politics, United Nations, War On Terror

I Object Very Strongly, 'With Teeth'

So goes the position of the United Nations, at least as far as the United States is concerned. Reacting to North Korea’s third nuclear bomb test after several missile tests including another missile test today, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said . . .

If North Korea’s leaders continue to act provocatively, “they’re going to find that they will pay a price, because the international community is very clear: This is not acceptable. It won’t be tolerated, and they won’t be intimidated,”

Rice said the United States would pursue within the U.N. Security Council a new resolution on North Korea, “a strong resolution with teeth.”

{emphasis added}

Well, it seems we are intimidated. Does this mean that the first three nuclear bombs are free? And when Kim Jong Il does it again, then what? Meanwhile the President wants to scale back our missile defense program. Is this the part that Vice President Joe Biden was talking about after the election, that Obama would be tested soon and hey, we might make the wrong decision. But hang in there will ya? We love you man. What?

Now, it gets better, or worse.

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea warned South Korea and the United States on Wednesday that Seoul’s participation in a U.S.-led program to intercept ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction is equal to a declaration of war.

Biden’s remarks made the transition from campaign promises and speeches to a bit of the real world before being sworn in. Planned or not. I don’t know about you but he didn’t do anything for me that said that either he or Obama had a clue in dealing with the world’s worst and most dangerous dictators. Take the U.S. World Apology Tour 2009 for example.

There’s two ways to look at this. Is no decision better than the wrong decision? And, how many ‘free lives’ do they get?

h/t Black & Right

Politics, War On Terror

Cheney: He Deserves An Answer

On May 21, 2009, former vice president Richard B. Cheney, a member of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research and a member of their Board of Trustees, spoke at AEI on the serious and ongoing threat terrorism poses to the United States. He also answers the criticism being levied upon the country and the Bush administration by President Obama over the prosecution of the war on terror. Even to the point of criminalizing the prosecution of it.

How history repeats itself. Didn’t we see what happens when political opposition becomes a criminal offense in the last century?

I haven’t seen his speech elsewhere in the media, outside of 10 second sound bites, so here it is below.

Transcript: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

‘It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness, and would make the American people less safe.’

‘Critics of our policies are given to lecturing on the theme of being consistent with American values. But no moral value held dear by the American people obliges public servants ever to sacrifice innocent lives to spare a captured terrorist from unpleasant things. And when an entire population is targeted by a terror network, nothing is more consistent with American values than to stop them.’

‘Some members of Congress are notorious for demanding they be briefed into the most sensitive intelligence programs. They support them in private, and then head for the hills at the first sign of controversy. As far as the interrogations are concerned, all that remains an official secret is the information we gained as a result. Some of his defenders say the unseen memos are inconclusive, which only raises the question why they won’t let the American people decide that for themselves.

I believe this information will confirm the value of interrogations–and I am not alone. President Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Blair, has put it this way: “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaeda organization that was attacking this country.” End quote. Admiral Blair put that conclusion in writing, only to see it mysteriously deleted in a later version released by the administration–the missing twenty-six words that tell an inconvenient truth. But they couldn’t change the words of George Tenet, the CIA Director under Presidents Clinton and Bush, who bluntly said: “I know that this program has saved lives. I know we’ve disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.”

If Americans do get the chance to learn what our country was spared, it’ll do more than clarify the urgency and the rightness of enhanced interrogations in the years after 9/11. It may help us to stay focused on dangers that have not gone away. Instead of idly debating which political opponents to prosecute and punish, our attention will return to where it belongs–on the continuing threat of terrorist violence, and on stopping the men who are planning it.’

VP Cheney’s daughter, Liz Cheney, speaks to the issue as raised by President Obama. ‘He has a Sept. 10th mentality.’

Related link: Don’t Pretend This Is a Debate about “Torture”

Media, Politics, War On Terror

Democrat Leaders On Waterboarding, Is It Enough?

More specifically, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va) were briefed on the extreme interrogation technique. Back then, it was fine. In fact, they wanted to know if there was anything more they could do to break the terrorists to give up information. Today it’s a different story. Today it is torture. Something we need to investigate.

For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Now, the Obama administration is in a quandary. Their far left base is still calling for the heads of Bush and Cheney.  How to investigate the Bush administration over waterboarding at GITMO without including leaders of his own party?

The media didn’t make much of it then either.

Media, Politics, War On Terror

Dems Briefed On Waterboarding in 2002

More specifically, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was briefed on the extreme interrogation technique. Back then, it was fine. In fact, they wanted to know if there was anything more they could do to break the terrorists to give up information. Today it’s a different story. Today it is torture. Today the disposing of two tapes that supposedly show the technique in practice is called obstruction. Something we need to investigate, according to Joe Biden.

Which is exactly what they are doing today. Both Nancy Pelosi and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va) had been fully briefed on what the CIA was doing in Guantanamo Bay and neither of them objected, much to the dismay of the far left. Then, doing what they felt was the proper thing to do, the CIA notified Jay Rockefeller a few years ago that there were tapes of interrogations and that they intended to destroy them. The CIA was doing a CYA in letting those in oversight responsibilities, like Jay Rockefeller, know of the steps they were taking. After all, keeping secrets secret is what they do. What did Rockefeller do with that news? Nothing. He let it happen, as would anyone else on the side of America.

Enter politics and an election, and now it’s a whole different story. In the absence of core beliefs, it makes politicizing the war and the war effort easy.

Thank goodness that videotapes of interrogations that happened to a couple key al Qaeda bad guys were destroyed. You know that the identities of the real covert operatives would have been splashed all over the New York Times if they still existed and if Jay Rockefeller’s staff ever got their hands on them. For purely political purposes, there seems to be no current of opinion in the media and key democrats to keep the actions secret, including the identities of the covert agents involved. Contrast that to all the fake outrage of exposing the identity of Valerie Plame, a desk clerk analyst, who, at the time, was not a covert CIA agent. Protecting the identities of CIA operatives seem to be a selective, political concept.

editor’s note: It’s funny how short the memories are in Washington. This article could have been written two years ago. The MSM made nothing of it two years ago, just like they are again today.

Economy, Media, Politics, War On Terror

Obama’s First Hundred Days

Who would have thought that we would have seen this much change in under 100 days?

March 20, 2009, administration and congress pass a law taking the wages of certain private citizens via a 90% tax. This was the confiscation of bonuses paid to AIG executives that were expressly approved by (Chris Dodd) this administration in the stimulus bill. This was also the day the U.S. Constitution died.

March 31, 2009, administration takes over a private company, GM. U.S. Constitution not protected or defended.

April 2, 2009, the repeal of the Declaration of Independence by subjugating our sovereignty to a Financial Stability Board (FSB) invented by the G20 states.

April 5, 2009, North Korea successfully tested a multi-stage missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. The missile went 2390 miles, 500 miles further than their last test. April 6, President Obama cuts the Pentagon’s missile defense program.

April 17, 2009, Obama administration declassifies memos detailing harsh interrogation techniques and the justification for it. Laying bare the program to our enemies. And at the same time does not release the memos showing that those techniques were successful in saving lives and preventing attacks. And at the same time announces that those techniques will be discontinued. Going forward, either Dr. Phil or Oprah will be interrogating the terrorists1. 1(terrorist: the ‘man’ part of a man-made disaster)

April 19, 2009, after pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking system, replacing CEO’s, confiscating salaries, trying to set maximum salaries for financial industry workers, the Obama administration is now considering converting the bailout loans into common shares, giving the government a large ownership stake. All the while refusing to let banks repay the bailout money they received.

After the longest campaign in history, and after distancing himself from his radical friends like William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright. It’s not hard to imagine the three of them giving a fist-bump to each other and Obama saying ‘How do you like me now America?’

Now that the election is over, what we are seeing is the fastest slide from freedom and free-market capitalism in history. Through legislation, this administration has trashed the very documents it is sworn to protect and defend. In less than 100 days, President Obama (the Constitutional lawyer) has managed to re-write the Constitution without laying a pen on it.


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