Friday, January 27, 2006
We're winning the "unwinnable"
From Iraq the Model:
The Anbar tribes’ campaign to rid the province of Zarqawi’s terror organization, al-Qaeda in Iraq is in its 2nd day and so far, 270 Arab and foreign intruders have been arrested.
[…]
Usama Jad’aan, the leader of Karabila tribes in Qaim told al-Hayat that “the operation will continue to eliminate terror elements according to a quality plan” and added “270 Arab and foreign intruders have been arrested, in addition to some Iraqis who were providing them shelter”.
Sheikh Jad’aan added “the operation is conducted in coordination between the tribes and the minister of defense Sa’doun al-Dulaimi and since we arrested hundreds of terrorists, I don’t expect the operation to take a lot of time”.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Hide the WMD?
Another report that Iraq's WMD was moved to Syria:
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.
The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun.
"There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be found and returned to safe hands," Mr. Sada said. "I am confident they were taken over."
Mr. Sada's comments come just more than a month after Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Moshe Yaalon, told the Sun that Saddam "transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria."
...
Mr. Sada, 65, told the Sun that the pilots of the two airliners that transported the weapons of mass destruction to Syria from Iraq approached him in the middle of 2004, after Saddam was captured by American troops.
"I know them very well. They are very good friends of mine. We trust each other. We are friends as pilots," Mr. Sada said of the two pilots. He declined to disclose their names, saying they are concerned for their safety. But he said they are now employed by other airlines outside Iraq.
The pilots told Mr. Sada that two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, Mr. Sada said. Then Special Republican Guard brigades loaded materials onto the planes, he said, including "yellow barrels with skull and crossbones on each barrel." The pilots said there was also a ground convoy of trucks.
The flights - 56 in total, Mr. Sada said - attracted little notice because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in June of 2002.
"Saddam realized, this time, the Americans are coming," Mr. Sada said. "They handed over the weapons of mass destruction to the Syrians."
Friday, January 20, 2006
Beware the Hudna
Lest anyone be deceived, Osama's "Truce" = Reload.
Hudna has a distinct meaning to Islamic fundamentalists, well-versed in their history: The prophet Mohammad struck a legendary, ten-year hudna with the Quraysh tribe that controlled Mecca in the seventh century. Over the following two years, Mohammad rearmed and took advantage of a minor Quraysh infraction to break the hudna and launch the full conquest of Mecca, the holiest city in Islam.
When Yassir Arafat infamously invoked Mohammad's hudna in 1994 to describe his own Oslo commitments "on the road to Jerusalem," the implication was clear. As Mideast expert Daniel Pipes explained, Arafat was asserting to his Islamic brethren that he will, "when his circumstances change for the better, take advantage of some technicality to tear up existing accords and launch a military assault on Israel." Indeed, this is precisely what occurred in Sept. 2000 when Arafat & Co. launched a terror assault upon Israeli citizens. ...
What Westerners need to do is to read Islamic scripture and learn that in Islam there is no concept of permanent submission to any other power than God's. Treaties mean nothing. Beware the hudna.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
United We Stand?
Gateway Pundit has a summary of Clinton/Gore positions on warrantless searches -- they argued for much more expansive powers than even Bush.
...The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for "national security" purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." [51] According to Gorelick, the president (or his attorney general) need only satisfy himself that an American is working in conjunction with a foreign power before a search can take place.But strangely, now that American has voted in a Republican President, Democrats want much more restrictively policies -- in a post-9/11 world! Is this what they meant by United We Stand?
CNN apologizes to Iran
Seriously. Apparently CNN made a translation error which upset the poor dictators, for which CNN quickly grovelled and fired the person who made the mistake:
In a written statement, CNN said it "apologized on all its platforms which included the translation error, including CNN International, CNN/USA and CNN.com, and also expressed its regrets to the Iranian government and the Iranian ambassador to the U.N."No word yet on when CNN will apologize to the Bush administration, a legitimately elected democratic government, for continuing to refer to what is by definition INTERNATIONAL communications monitoring as "domestic surveillance".
...
"Obviously, we're taking it very, very seriously. We will never use him again," owner Lesley Howard said, referring to the interpreter.
She said the same interpreter, who like other interpreters is contracted for individual projects, has done good work in the past, including for CNN.
GONZALES: Well, again, as the president indicated, and I'm only talking about what the president described to the American people in his radio address, we're talking about communication where one end of the communication is outside the United States and where we have reason to believe that a party on that communication is a member of al Qaeda or is a member of an affiliate group with al Qaeda.
This ranks up there with the "unilateral" invasion of Iraq by a coalition of 30 countries.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
The Ironic Inquisition
Oh, people of the Left, I hope you are not proud of your Senators, as they conduct an Inquistion into the nature of a college club Alito joined decades ago:
When what should be a simple confirmation process reduces family members to tears, it shows that one party has degenerated into a secular Inquisition. And let me remind you that it was this party that, on more than one occasion, elected a former Klansman to the post of Majority Leader -- a man who as recently as three years ago defended the use of the "n-word".
In fact, most of the Senators from that caucus are responsible for that election of Byrd to his leadership posts.
Wiretaps prevented terrorist attack to "exceed" 9/11
Thank you to our Italian friends.
Italian authorities recently announced that they had used wiretaps to uncover the conspiracy to conduct a series of major attacks inside the U.S. Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said the planned attacks would have targeted stadiums, ships and railway stations, and the terrorists' goal, he said, was to exceed the devastation caused by 9/11.Have you read about this in your newspaper or seen a reference to this on CNN? I suspect not. This seems like a big story to me, no? I guess news that supports the arguments of our President and therefore the defense of our Country isn't newsworthy.
In this crazy day, "our" media seems to do a better job of supressing news than reporting it. Those who want to be informed citizens must find alternate sources on the internet. If you're not, don't you wonder what else you're missing?
And thank you to our President for continuing to pursue all legal means possible to keep America safe.
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Hire that Man!
On Judge Alito:
"I don't think it's appropriate or useful to look to foreign law in interpreting the provisions of our Constitution," Judge Alito said in response to questions from Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, in the third day of the judge's confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.Imagine that! At least now I can understand why the Left hates him.
"I think the Framers would be stunned by the idea that the Bill of Rights is to be interpreted by taking a poll of the countries of the world," Judge Alito said. "The purpose of the Bill of Rights was to give Americans rights that were recognized practically nowhere else in the world at the time. The Framers did not want Americans to have the rights of people in France or the rights of people in Russia or any of the other countries on the continent of Europe at the time; they wanted them to have the rights of Americans."
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
On Being Pro-Choice
John Stossel to address school-choice on Friday in "Stupid in America". Don't miss it!
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Documents confirm Saddam trained thousands of Islamic terrorists
One would think these reports would be big news, yet mysteriously seem absent from the major media:
THE FORMER IRAQI REGIME OF Saddam Hussein trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over the four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq. The existence and character of these documents has been confirmed to THE WEEKLY STANDARD by eleven U.S. government officials.
The secret training took place primarily at three camps--in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak--and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria's GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
The Suicide of Western Civilization
The best thing I've read in a while -- It's long, but worth reading the whole thing. By Steyn, of course.
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Is Al Qaeda calling you?
Bush wants to know. So would I.
Update: I should have been more clear: "If Al Qaeda is calling you, Bush wants to know why."
