The New York Times, the intelligence wing of al-Qaeda, has again obtained known classified documents and made them public. Like I said before, there ought to be a law.
Disclaimer: this is a New York Times link, any supposition of truth should be weighed against what you believe to be true, or what you already know about the New York Times.
Once again, in a matter of only a few weeks since it’s publishing top secret government secrets, they do it again. The problem is the ‘administration official’ who purportedly offered up the document to the New York Times reporter. This is not just another secret document, this is a secret report which is an assessment of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s success in putting down the sectarian violence in Iraq, on the day that Maliki and Bush were to meet. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the 2-day meeting was cancelled in favor of a 1-day meeting.
An administration official made a copy of the document available to a New York Times reporter seeking information on the administration’s policy review. The Times read and transcribed the memo.
The leakers need to be sought and dealt with. And I don’t mean like Fitzgerald dealt with the Valerie Plame leaker, Richard Armitage. I think this time, we should think of the leaker as someone who commits a high crime.Â
And now that the SCOTUS has affirmed the government’s right to phone records on one of their earlier release of state secrets, they need to get on the stick today. While we’re at it, why doesn’t congress do something to protect state secrets? Good place to start is to make it a crime to publish that which is known to be government secrets. Protect them with the law and tell the ACLU to take a hike.
A federal judge issues an opinion 180 degrees from her initial opinion of a few months ago. Big win for the ‘terrorist-rights’ crowd. Same ones who would take a chance of losing their own head, and yours, and mine. The left is so fascinated with new ways to usurp Presidential powers, including the position of commander-in-chief. To wit . . .
A federal judge struck down President Bush’s authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutional and vague, according to a ruling released Tuesday.
Constitutionally speaking, I think a judicial smackdown is in order. They need to stay on their own side of the fence.  And only congress can do that.  Fat chance.Â
al-AP link; Federal Judge Rules Bush’s Post-Sept. 11 Terror Order Unconstitutional
How one can wage and win a war without taking out the main participants is beyond my understanding, and a formula for losing. There can be no repercussions worse than assassinations and coordinated terrorist bombings going on every day. The radical Muslim leaders of today need to go, permanently, from this earth.  They include Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq and Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon.Â
And I wouldn’t worry one bit about collateral damage.The human shields that these cowards hide behind are not innocent victims. They are participants The madrases that are used to train young terrorists are not schools of higher education, they are schools for terrorists and terrorists-in-training.
Up until now, the notion of taking these guys out had been tempered by the uncertainty of how the rest of the Muslim world would react. Meanwhile, more innocent Lebanese people and more innocent Iraqis and more innocent Israelis are getting blown up or assassinated at the direction of these two terrorists with turbans. I’d rather believe that the rest of the Muslim world, the ones who don’t preach by the sword, would not start rioting in the streets and would, in fact, breath a sigh of relief that the cancer has been removed.
al-Reuters link: Lebanon’s political crisis heading for showdown
Tony Blair, snap out of it.  The idea of a three-seat tea party isn’t going to work. These Muslims do democracy by the bullet, not ballot.Â
It doesn’t sound like good foreign policy to me, trying to ‘save face’ in ending Iran’s nuclear program, or to ‘save face’ in letting Iran continue to develop their nuclear capabilities beyond just electricity production, while keeping your fingers crossed that Iran won’t follow through on wiping Israel off the map, while fueling and funding the insurgency in Iraq.
We’ve tried the crossed-fingers diplomacy with North Korea under the Clinton-Albright administration in the 90’s. The results of that effort is a nuclear bomb wielding North Korea, exactly the opposite of their goal. Buttressing Bush’s label as one of the ‘axis of evil’, future leaders in Iran seem comfortable enough to wear that moniker proudly.
An ultra-conservative Iranian cleric who opposes all dialogue with the West is a frontrunner to become the country’s next supreme spiritual leader.Â
In a move that would push Iran even further into the diplomatic wilderness, Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi, 71, who publicly backs the use of suicide bombers against Israel, is campaigning to succeed Grand Ayatollah Ali Khameini, 67, as the head of the Islamic state.
‘How do you save face while losing your head’ might be something to explore, since that’s what the current geopolitical environment seems to suggest. In an atmosphere where ‘trust but verify’ is viewed as radical, what else could be expected from an Ayatollah who backs suicide bombers and other extreme Muslim acts of ‘peace?’
The great issues of today are not being addressed by the new democrats’ ‘new direction.’  Increasing the minimum wage and spending more on education are neither of them. The obvious ones are winning the war-on-terror, economic policies like making the tax cut permanent, fixing Social Security, educational policies like allowing school choice via the school voucher program (No child left behind), real tort reform, earmark removal just to name a few.  The party has nothing to say about the issues they just ran on. Oh that’s right, it was ‘Bush sucks.’ What is happening now is the party has nothing to say. The minimum wage issue is a standard election issue for every election. The fact that there never was a plan beyond ‘Bush is a liar’ is becoming evident as democrats are being seen as in some state of disarray.Â
I don’t know how this ever got passed the editorial board, but this New York Times headline is an example. After Win, Democrats Revert to Finger-Pointing
In trying to comprehend the mass kidnapping in Iraq a few days ago, where educators were rounded up by terrorists wearing police uniforms, the apparent helplessness of the victims struck me. Haven’t the Iraqi people seen enough of this kind of stuff to know when they’re in danger of becoming a victim? When will they, or will they, have their Todd Beamer moment and say, no, you’re not doing that to us and fight back?
Debbie Schlussel has found the lost questions from the US citizenship test. These are the questions that should be asked. Here’s number one for example.
1. If a woman doesn’t want to cover her hair with a headscarf, she should be:
a) allowed to do as she pleases.
b) stoned to death, after being buried up to the neck in dirt. The woman exposed her sexy hair to men who are not her husband, so she is clearly a whore unworthy of life.
c) forced to watch PBS specials and the “ladies” of “The View.” Wearing a do-rag on my head is like way totally cool. Means I don’t have to wash or do my hair.
Coming direct from Fantasyland comes a Christian Science Monitor story entitled ‘Can Iran help stabilize Iraq?‘  Only if Tinkerbell will wave her magic wand. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has his own mission, which he has made crystal clear many times.Â
Stuff like . . . ‘Death to the Great Satan’ comes to mind, and, oh yeah, Israel ought to be wiped off the map, and we’re a nuclear nation so get over it, I need a nuclear bomb to protect myself from the Great Satan, and I’ll train, fund, and supply al Qaeda so they can do their deeds in Iraq, and, Hezbollah, my shadow army, is showing those Jews what bombs and missiles and explosive vests can do with some help from my buds in Syria and Lebanon, and make way for the twelfth Imam, the end is near.
Yeah, Ahmadinejad, that’s the guy who will voluntarily stop all those things from happening. He’ll just give up everything he has been ranting about for years if we’ll only offer him a cup of coffee and a basketball signed by Michael Jordan. Maybe a one on one with Oprah would tilt the balance in our favor? All that speculation is not only fantasy, it is ignoring all that Mahmoud has done and is currently doing. The tip-off is this ridiculous goal. . .
Bringing Iran – and Syria – into a regional process to stabilize Iraq is being touted both by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Iraq Study Group, the US commission studying options that both Republicans and Democrats hope will provide a framework for facesaving change in Iraq. (emphasis added)
Iran and Syria are part of the problem in Iraq and in the region. This apparent goal for a face-saving anything is a haunt from the Vietnam war. It’s political-speak for surrender. It means we will ‘leave’ if you ‘say’ you will help. They have it bass ackwards. It’s the Iranian terrorist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that needs a face job rather than face saving. Scott (Peterson), take your head out of the sand man.