SOMETHING'S UP IN LOUISIANA

By Michelle Malkin ·

Reader D.H. sends an interesting news item from WWLTW-TV in New Orleans:

The FBI temporarily shut down and raided a handful of local convenience stores Thursday, leading Arab store owners to decry the search-and-seizure operations as racial profiling.

Terrebonne Narcotics Task Force agents Steven Bergeron (foreground) and Shane Fletcher carry items confiscated by the FBI out of Smoke Plus in the 5500 block of West Main Street in Houma. FBI officials have not said what they confiscated or why they were at several Terrebonne stores Thursday.

The government agents targeted clothing and smoking materials during their searches, store owners said, but authorities did not reveal the reasons for the searches or whether any arrests were made by late Thursday afternoon.

Agents on the scene referred questions to the FBI field office in New Orleans, where FBI Agent John Rook said Thursday’s raids were part of a statewide sweep. Because they are based on sealed federal indictments, however, Rook said he could not discuss anything about them.

The indictments could be opened sometime today, Rook said, but had not been as of 9 a.m.

Assisting in the raids were agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Terrebonne Narcotics Task Force. A customs spokesman said that because his agency was only assisting the FBI, he could not answer any questions about the operation. Likewise, the local narcotics agents also said they had only been asked to assist and were not given any information about the operation.

Among the stores raided were Smoke Plus, at the corner of the Del Ray Bridge and West Main Street; the Amigo Mini-Mart, just on the west side of the Houma Tunnel; and NY Style and Beauty, just across the street. Other Terrebonne locations may have been raided as well, store owners said, but officials have not released a list of sites they searched.

Given how publicly averse the FBI is to charges of "racial profiling" and how politically incorrect many of its bureaucrats are, you know these raids mean business. The indictments are still sealed, but this flashback from 2002 sheds light:

Authorities are quietly investigating more than 500 Muslim and Arab small businesses across the United States to determine whether they are dispatching money raised through criminal activity in the United States to terrorist groups overseas.

The investigation into Arab businesses, many of them convenience stores, is part of a sprawling inquiry launched after Sept. 11, when law enforcement agents dramatically stepped up scrutiny of small-scale scams that they think are generating tens of millions of dollars a year for militant groups, federal officials said.

The criminal activity includes skimming the profits of drug sales, stealing and reselling baby formula, illegally redeeming huge quantities of grocery coupons, collecting fraudulent welfare payments, swiping credit card numbers and hawking unlicensed T-shirts.

Some of the criminal rings have operated in this country for decades. But until recently, law enforcement agencies paid only scant attention to the schemes because they are difficult to crack and time-consuming to prosecute. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, however, they have deployed hundreds of investigators to pursue the plots.

A number of law enforcement task forces involved in the crackdown are searching for similarities in the convenience stores' financial practices and money transfer methods to determine whether their activities are centrally directed.

As part of the overall effort, a U.S. Customs Service supercomputer program has been diverted from analyzing the flow of drug money to tracking terror funds. That effort has led to raids on Pakistani operators of jewelry kiosks in seven states, authorities said.

"It wasn't until after September 11th that we understood the magnitude of the [terrorist] fundraising from our own shores," said John Forbes, a former U.S. Customs Service official who directed a financial crimes task force in New York. "We were always looking to catch the big rats" in terror financing, he added. "But in looking for rats, thousands of ants got by."

Investigators suspect that some of the money has gone to Palestinian groups that use suicide bombings to kill Israeli civilians, including the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, federal officials said.

Senior U.S. officials said they are concerned that the inquiry might be seen as ethnic profiling but are simply going where leads take them.

"The fact is that al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Hamas are Middle Eastern groups that are financed from the Middle East, and groups here send money back to the Middle East. So of course we have to look at them," a senior official said.

And of course the boys who cry "Islamophobes" will protest and whine and sue.

Related:

Is black-market baby formula financing terror?
Cigarette smuggling linked to terrorism

WHO'S REALLY IN DENIAL?

It's not President Bush.
by William Kristol

"Americans face the choice between two parties with two different attitudes on this war on terror."
--George W. Bush, September 28, 2006

President Bush is right. It would be nice if he weren't. The country would be better off if there were bipartisan agreement on what is at stake in the struggle against jihadist Islam. But despite areas of consensus, there is still a fundamental difference between the parties. Bush and the Republicans know we are in a serious war. It's not the Bush administration that is in a "State of Denial" (as the new Bob Woodward book has it). It's the Democrats.

Consider developments over the last week. Democrats hyped last Sunday's news stories breathlessly reporting on one judgment from April's National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)--that the war in Iraq has created more terrorists. More than would otherwise have been created if Saddam were still in power? Who knows? The NIE seems not even to have contemplated how many terrorists might have been created by our backing down, by Saddam's remaining in power to sponsor and inspire terror, and the like. (To read the sections of the NIE subsequently released is to despair about the quality of our intelligence agencies. But that's another story.) In any case, the NIE also made the obvious points that, going forward, "perceived jihadist success [in Iraq] would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere," while jihadist failure in Iraq would inspire "fewer fighters . . . to carry on the fight."

What is the Democratic response to these latter judgments? Silence. The left wing of the party continues to insist on withdrawal now. The center of the party wants withdrawal on a vaguer timetable.

Bush, on other hand, understands that the only acceptable exit strategy is victory. (If, as Woodward reports, he's been bolstered in that view by Henry Kissinger, then good for Henry. Invite him to the Oval Office more often!) To that end, Bush should do more. He should send substantially more troops and insist on a change of strategy to allow a real counterinsurgency and prevent civil war. But at least he's staying and fighting. And the great majority of Republicans are standing with him. The Democrats, as Bush has put it, "offer nothing but criticism and obstruction, and endless second-guessing. The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut-and-run."

So there really is a profound difference between the parties, as Democrats are happy to acknowledge, since they think Iraq is a winning issue for them. The Democratic talking point is this: We're against Bush on Iraq, but we are as resolute as Bush in the real war on terror (understood by them to exclude Iraq). Except that they're not.

That's why last week's votes in Congress on the detainees legislation were so significant. The legislation had nothing to do with Iraq. It was a "pure" war-on-terror vote. And the parties split. Three-quarters of the Democrats in the House and Senate stood with the New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union for more rights for al Qaeda detainees, and against legislation supported by the Bush administration (as well as by John McCain and Joe Lieberman). Some Democrats in competitive races--such as Rep. Harold Ford, running for the Senate in Tennessee--supported the legislation. But it remains the case that a vote for Democrats is a vote for congressional leaders committed to kinder and gentler treatment of terrorists.

No wonder voters think the country will be safer from terrorism if the GOP retains control of Congress. And no wonder that focus groups--according to the Democratic polling firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner--show that "attacks on Democrats for opposing any effort to stop terrorists . . . were highly effective." The Democratic pollsters recommended countering the attacks forcefully. But how? There are votes, in black and white in the Congressional Record, ready to be used in campaign ads.

The most important front in the confrontation with terror-sponsoring, WMD-seeking Islamic jihadism in the next two years may well be Iran. Republicans are viewed by a 12-point margin as the party that would be more likely to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. We have been critical of the Bush administration's lassitude in attending to this task. But with sand in the diplomatic hourglass running out, voters can fairly be asked: Would Bush have more help in denying Ahmadinejad nuclear weapons from a Congress controlled by Republicans or by Democrats (whose main suggestion has been to cozy up to Iran without insisting that it verifiably suspend its nuclear program)?

Off-year elections--especially when one party controls the presidency and Congress--are almost always dominated by the expression of grievances with that party's performance. The Bush administration and the congressional leadership have given cause for grievance. But the choice is so stark this November that grievances should be put aside--if Republicans have the nerve to continue to clarify the choice over the next month. Last week was a good start.

--William Kristol

FOR THE CHILDREN, VOTE NO ON PROP. 86

Remember “California Kids First”, the state commission led by Rob Reiner. It received money from tobacco taxes especially geared to this Commission and its goals to “help” children. It has been several months and the Attorney General can’t even spell Reiners name or remember who is “investigating” the $23 million (that we know of) that was ripped off for purely political purposes. This was a theft larger than the one of the corner liquor store, where the culprit got 3-5 years in prison. Of course this was Rob Reiner and he did it for a “noble” cause.

Now the same people behind that tobacco tax have come up with a new “noble” cause. This noble cause will help the hospitals take care of the poor and needy–that is what they say it will do.

Instead it provides for legal cover for hospitals to do the following:

1. Allows the hospital to operate with a special exemption from anti-trust laws. Remember Tenet Healthcare–that was the hospital chain (which could have received money from this measure) that was found price gouging the poor. The exemption would help price gouging hospitals, protecting bad acts by hospitals.

Mother Jones: Pocket Protector
KB Forbes has become one of America’s most powerful advocates for the uninsured, chiefly by attacking hospitals’ practice of billing uninsured patients up …

2. It would amend the California constitution to include illegal aliens under 19 (who are under the poverty level) to get free health care. This is done by doing away with the proviso in the California Healthy Families Program that only citizens and legal immigrants qualify for this “service”.

3. Prop. 86 allows unlimited prices for services to the poor in emergency rooms–this then allows the hospitals to use tax dollars to subsidize their treatment (by calling it an emergency) of every illegal alien that walks in the door with a sniffle.

4. Government can’t monitor the political use of $23 million of tax money for political purposes from tobacco taxes, then how can it monitor two billion dollars a year?

5. Of course, this is a good program since it sets up “needed” mandates, that go on, regardless of the money available. As taxes on cigarettes go up, and as people stop smoking, the revenues will go down. But, the mandates will stay in place–try taking away a “needed” service, just try. That means the General Fund will either have to raise regular taxes or cut other services–since services are never cut–this is a tax increase down the road on businesses and families.

6. The hospitals have written this self-serving Initiative so that the taxes raised by it do not go to education. All other taxes in California, per Prop. 40, have 40% of the amount raised going to education. Not the hospitals–they wrote Prop. 86 so not a dime goes to education–it all goes to those that wrote it–nice of you can get away with it. The hospitals that will receive the money, with almost no oversite, have exempted themselves with a Constitutional Exemption (section 15). Don’t you wish you could pass a measure to assure that you get tax dollars, and only you?

7. Law enforcement is strongly against this measure–not because they don’t like taxes on cigarettes or want health care for the poor. The law enforcement organizations, such as the Deputies Sheriffs Association of San Diego and the Association of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, oppose this because of the experiences of New York and some other East Coast cities. The smuggling of truckloads of cigarettes into New York City is a scandal. The World Bank estimates that 30% of all cigarette exports wind up on the black market

A single truckload of stolen smokes could bring $2 million on the street. We are talking about BIG BUCKS. According to the San Diego folks mentioned above, California already loses hundreds of millions in tax revenues due to smuggling and tax evasion. Add $2.60 a packet and see that go to to billions.

8. If the purpose of this measure is to get kids to stop smoking, than why does only 10% of the taxes raised go to non-smoking programs for children?

9. Go to the Washington Post of June 22, 2002, the Post of June 8, 2004 and the Detroit News of March 30, 2004. Look for articles of how terrorists used the profits of black market cigarette sales to help finance terrorists groups. Will Prop. 86 bring this to California?

10. Vote NO, for the children. Don’t put more debt on their shoulders. Don’t put more crime on their shoulders. Don’t show them that money can buy government, through the Initiative process. Don’t let children see that for-profit hospitals promoting themselves like a bank selling home loans to illegal aliens–the hospitals will almost immediately upon passage promote themselves to illegal aliens as the place to get free health care. Let our children know the Rule of Law is to be upheld, even by hospitals.

Tell our children to stop smoking, don’t use smoking as an excuse to raise taxes so hospitals can be exempted from numerous laws.

—

Steve Frank is the publisher of California Political News and Views and a Senior Contributor to CaliforniaConservative.org. He is also a consultant currently working on gambling issues and advising other consultants on policy and coalition building.

Read more of his work here or at his blog.

ABOUT TIME

George Bush said what needed to be said yesterday ... finally. When it comes to fig hinting Islamic fascism the Democrats just simply don't have the right stuff. Period. End of sentence. End of story. End of us, if we make the wrong choice in our leadership.

Bush said: "Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland in our history, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing."

He's right. Dead on. Democrats have offered no real strategy for fighting Islamic fascism. Well, unless you call withdrawal a strategy. Cut and run. Pull our troops out of Iraq. Give the Islamists a stunning victory over the world's greatest military power. That's the strategy. Just how do you think that one would work out for us?

The Democrat's response? Well .. Bush hasn't caught Osama bin Laden yet. Well, guess what? The Allies never captured Adolf Hitler or Tojo during World War II. Does that mean we didn't prevail? After the Germans were routed did the "loyal" opposition in this country start screaming that we hadn't captured Hitler yet? Fact is, we never got him. He managed to take himself out before we could get to him. I guess that means we failed.

Of course the Democrats are still pounding on that National Intelligence Estimate .. .you remember, the one that says many radical Muslims got ticked off when we started killing radical Muslims .. and so they came to help out. Funny how the Democrats don't seem to mention the fact that that very same National Intelligence Estimate says that if the US prevails in Iraq it will mean a huge decrease in Islamic radicalism. The Democrats don't want to mention that because they don't want to prevail in Iraq.

See how easy this is when you just stop to noodle it all out?

No matter what, Republicans have one issue that they know the American people trust them on: national security. By allowing themselves to be drawn into a debate about terrorism, Democrats have taken the bait. They're being forced to debate an issue on which they cannot compete. Karl Rove also knows that the Democrats have no plan for Iraq. Their idea of cutting and running is about as popular as the war itself is. They have no solution because right now there is no better solution.

And just how is America less safe from terrorism in the last 5 years? How many terrorist attacks have there been on U.S. soil since 9/11? Oh, that's right...none.

TRAPPING THEMSELVES

Democrats walked into the trap that President Bush set for them yesterday by obstructing legislation that would create military tribunals and clarify interrogation techniques on the world’s worst terrorists. Here’s what Charles Hurt is reporting:

Senate Democrats are blocking Republicans from passing several of their top legislative priorities this week, including new border fencing, two of the Bush administration’s key counterterrorism programs and a drastic reduction in the estate tax. “The legislative corner they’ve painted themselves in is very difficult,” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, (D-NV), told reporters yesterday.

Let’s hope that Mr. Reid’s quote is his attempt to spin the subject rather than his belief. I’d hate to think that a US Senator would be stupid enough to think that border enforcement is a losing proposition. I refuse to believe that Reid believes that voters would view establishing military tribunals and codifying what is and isn’t torture as a negative.

Democrats, while accusing Republicans of presiding over a “do-nothing” Congress, are slow-walking legislation but appear unlikely to kill outright any of the security measures as elections approach. Asked yesterday whether Democrats will take advantage of Senate rules that allow lawmakers to demand 30 hours of debate on each bill, Mr. Reid replied: “Well, unless there’s some agreement, we’re going to go ahead and do the 30 hours.”

Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss the point. When they return home to their districts and their states, more people will ask them where they stand on the most important issues of the day than will cheer them for bemoaning a “do nothing congress.” I’d suspect that voters are far more concerned with knowing if a legislator would give the Commander-in-Chief everything he needs to prevent future terrorist attacks than anything else. I’d also bet a tidy sum of cash that more people would view a border fence as a positive than who view it as negative.

It must be nice for President Bush and Mr. Rove to be able to know that Democrats will say and do some really stupid things. Here’s Ms. Pelosi’s official ‘contribution’ to the national security debate:

“It’s been five years since 9/11, yet not one person who has been directly responsible for 9/11 has been prosecuted and punished. There’s something wrong with this picture. And this bill today, because it does violence to the Constitution of the United States, also could produce convictions that may well be overturned because the bill does not heed the instructions from the Supreme Court, a Supreme Court friendly to this Administration, which has directed it to go back to the drawing board.”

Ms. Pelosi’s omitting the most important details from the Supreme Court ruling, that the President couldn’t establish military tribunals without legislation. It didn’t mandate trials for terrorists.

UPDATE: The House just passed the Military Commissions Act.

The House approved an administration-backed system of questioning and prosecuting terrorism suspects yesterday, setting clearer limits on CIA interrogation techniques but denying access to courts for detainees seeking to challenge their imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere. The 253 to 168 vote was a victory for President Bush and fellow Republicans. Bush had yielded some ground during weeks of negotiations, but he fully embraced the language that the House approved with support from 34 Democrats and all but seven Republicans.

This is a stinging defeat for Democrats, who continue to whine about the legislation’s provisions:

The bill “is really more about who we are as a people than it is about those who seek to harm us,” said House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-MD). “Defending America requires us to marshal the full range of our power: diplomatic and military, economic and moral. And when our moral standing is eroded, our international credibility is diminished as well.”

This isn’t the first time Democrats have complained about how our fighting the GWOT with everything that’s available is ruining “our international credibility.” If our choice is acceptance in the ‘world community’ or using techniques that the timid UN finds objectional, then I’m all for letting the world whine. Protecting America is our first priority.

The right way of defeating the enemy is to be more ruthless and barbaric than the enemy. We should resolve that our least important consideration in wartime is what our warrior ways “say about us as a people.”

Frankly, it really bothers me that Democratic politicians put a higher priority on getting along with the world community than they put on protecting the US. When did they take an oath to agree with the world community? Have they forgotten that they swore to protect and defend the US? This isn’t difficult stuff; it’s pretty straightforward.

But Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said: “This is how a nation loses its moral compass, its identity, its values and, eventually, its freedom…We rebelled against King George III for less restrictions on liberty than this.”

I can’t believe that Jerry Nadler said something this stupid. He’s saying that our not granting terrorists the same rights that we give criminals is as heinous as King George’s oppression of free people? This is what passes for thinking on the Democratic side of the aisle? Figuring out the thought process of a liberal is downright torturous. He’s essentially saying that passing this legislation puts us on a slippery slope to anarchy. To say that the Democrats’ thinking on this is breathtakingly alarming isn’t hyperbole.

Follow this link to read the Roll Call vote.

THE NIE

By Michelle Malkin

***updated with my first read***

Here's the link to the PDF document of the NIE's key judgements at the DNI site. If the server is down, we've got it here.

Some of what you didn't read in the NYTimes:

We assess that the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives; perceived jihadist success there would inspire more fighters to continue the struggle elsewhere.

The Iraq conflict has become the “cause celebre” for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement. Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.

Andy Cochran writes: "I wish they could declassify more or, as I wrote on Sunday night, turn the whole report over to an independent body like the 9/11 Commission and let them do it. "

***

Update: A few of my first thoughts on reading the document...

Putting aside how the outdated portions still refers to Zarqawi in the present tense, the big thing that strikes me about the key judgements is that they reflect a dhimmi, historically ignorant view of jihad more suited for the moonbat Left than our premier intelligence agencies. Check out this paragraph:

Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq "jihad;" (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims--all of which jihadists exploit.

Not a word about the 1,400-year-plus history of Islamic hostility to the West or Islamic imperialism from time immemorial or the Koran-inspired war on infidels--long, long before there was a United States and "pervasive anti-US sentiment."

Remember what I said yesterday?

If our intelligence agencies are laboring under the moonbat illusion that Muslim hatred of the infidel West didn't really start bubbling until the year 2003, we are really in deep, deep doo-doo.

Well, it appears we are, in fact, in deep doo-doo.

***

Lots of folks writing in about the A(wt)P's biased news coverage of the NIE story. The reporter(s)? Jennifer Loven [and Katherine Shrader].

Jules Crittenden e-mails: "AP story leads with Iraq as 'cause celebre'" but fails to include conclusion/context of the same paragraph [ed. note: see above blockquote]... that they must be stopped in Iraq. The report is presented as negatively as possible, to the point of distortion."

Yup, that's the A(wt)P way.

***
Thank you, Andy McCarthy:

Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, jihadism is attractive to tens of millions of people in what is called the Muslim world. Out of a total population of about 1.3 billion, that may not be a very high percentage (although I daresay it is higher than we like to think). But it is the ideology that attracts recruits. Grievances are just rhetoric. If the bin Ladens did not have Iraq, or the Palestinians, or Lebanon, or Pope Benedict, or cartoons, or flushed Korans, or Dutch movies, or the Crusades, they’d figure out something else to beat the drums over. Or they’d make something up — there being lots of license to improvise when one purports to be executing Allah’s will.

It is bad enough when the Muslim charlatans opportunistically use American policies they don’t like for militant propaganda purposes. It is reprehensible when American politicians do it.

Jihadists hate us because they hate us, not because of Iraq.

***

Another update: Justin Hart helpfully reorganizes the messy NIE document. Cool!

TEARING CLINTON'S LIES TO SHRED

The Bush Administration sent Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the New York Post to meet with editors and reporters. The mission: shoot down every one of Bill Clinton's lies that the former president told on Fox News Sunday. Secretary Rice made several rebuttals.

In response to Clinton's claim that the Bush Administration did nothing to try and get Bin Laden, Rice shot back: "The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false and I think the 9/11 commission understood that. What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years." OK .. so now we have two sides to THAT story. Who to believe? The man disbarred from the practice of law because of perjury, or Condi Rice?

As for Bill Clinton's statement that he left behind a comprehensive terror strategy, that too was exposed as a lie. "We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda." She would know. And what about Bill Clinton's statement that George W. Bush demoted Richard Clarke...the country's best guy on terrorism? Rice shot that down, too: "Richard Clarke was the counterterrorism czar when 9/11 happened. And he left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security, some several months later." So there you have it.

Just as predicted, Bill Clinton may have looked all big and bad when he huffed and puffed on TV in front of Chris Wallace. But in doing so, he invited scrutiny...and his statements simply are not holding up.

It's nice to see the Bush Administration isn't taking Clinton's history revisionism lying down.

DEOMOCRATS UNLEASH REID, PELOSI, DEAN

There aren’t many press releases sent out on weekends as a rule. This Sunday was different, with the ‘Three-headed Democratic Monster’ each, issuing, statements. Here’s a taste of Harry Reid’s statement:

“Once again, the American people have learned that the Bush Administration has not been honest with them about the war in Iraq. Press reports say our nation’s intelligence services have confirmed that President Bush’s repeated missteps in Iraq and his stubborn refusal to change course have made America less safe. No election-year White House PR campaign can hide this truth. It is crystal clear that America’s security demands we change course in Iraq. The war in Iraq is now in its fourth year and Congress has yet to ask the tough questions and get the honest answers our nation’s security demands. Tomorrow, that will change. With the Democratic Policy Committee’s hearings into the conduct of the war in Iraq, we will finally take America in a new direction.”

Democrats insist that this NIE proves their case that the Bush administration’s policies have made us less safe than we should be but how credible is this information? Let’s consider that the NIE is a classified document, meaning that someone with an anti-Bush agenda leaked this information. It’s worth remembering another leak of NIE information claiming that the Bush administration cherry-picked intelligence to lie us into war. When that NIE was declassified, it was clear that the leaker was the one who cherry-picked the information.

Let’s next look at Reid’s statement that “It is crystal clear that America’s security demands we change course in Iraq.” Why is it “crystal clear” that present Bush administration policy must be changed to protect America? The fact that we’ve gone 5 years without getting attacked again by terrorists? Or has America’s being in Iraq prevented us from aggressively interrogating AQ terrorists which thwarted other terrorist attacks?

That’s all the attention that that statement deserves. Let’s next look at Pelosi’s brief statement:

“The news report on the National Intelligence Estimate is further proof that the war in Iraq is making it harder for America to fight and win the war on terror. Five years after 9/11 and Osama bin Laden is still free and not a single terrorist who planned 9/11 has been caught and brought to justice. President Bush should read the intelligence carefully before giving another misleading speech about progress in the war on terrorism.”

Let’s first establish that this wasn’t just a news report about the NIE; it was a leak by someone with an anti-Bush agenda. That alone should call into question the leak’s veracity. Second of all, Pelosi’s statement that President Bush “should read the intelligence carefully” won’t fly with the American people, who’ve known from the first days after 9/11 that President Bush has, to appropriate a Clinton phrase, focused like a laser beam on stopping all other terrorist attacks. In fact, most Americans recognized long ago that President Bush, Joe Lieberman and the Republican Party are the only ones who’ve been serious about fighting the GWOT.

Finally, Ms. Pelosi’s lamenting that Khaled Sheikh Muhammed hasn’t been brought to trial is disingenuous. She’s aware that the CIA has been interrogating KSM all this time, with the CIA getting alot of information from those interrogations. This gives Ms. Pelosi a choice: Would Ms. Pelosi rather get additional information that prevents additional terrorist attacks or would she rather have sped KSM into a trial, after which his information would have likely remained secret.

Now let’s look at Gov. Dean’s statement:

“President Clinton did exactly what Democrats need to do in this election. Democrats need to stand up to the right-wing propaganda machine and tell the truth. Washington Republicans’ attempts to twist history and recast the truth do not help us win the war on terror or bring us closer to capturing Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. President Clinton stood up to the misleading tactics of the right-wing propaganda machine. As the NIE that was reported on today showed, the Iraq War and the Bush Administration’s failed policies have hurt our ability to win the war on terror. As President Clinton said, Democrats stand for policies that are both tough and smart and we remain committed to winning the war on terror.”

All that Clinton did was go ballistic on Chris Wallace because his track record on fighting terrorism was lackluster at best. Dean doesn’t do his party any favors by calling Chris Wallace, a very fair-minded journalist, part of “the right-wing propaganda machine…” That simply won’t fly with most people. Obviously, it’ll excite the Moonbat Kos Kidz but it won’t bring new voters into the Democratic Party, something that they’re badly in need of.

CLINTON RAGE; THE MORNING AFTER

By Michelle Malkin ·

Photoshop by David Lunde

On Fox and Friends this morning, Chris Wallace had some interesting comments about his interview with the Finger-Jabber:

His reaction to Clinton accusing him of having a "smirk:"

"What it was was sheer wonder at what I was witnessing."

Heh. On what happened after the interview:

"There was no making up with him. He was angry. And when he left, he chewed out his staff."

The Finger-Jabber. Always, always blaming someone else for his failures.

Noel Sheppard at The American Thinker weighs in on "Bill Clinton, Bin Laden, and Hysterical Revisions." Howard Kurtz does a brief take on Clinton's finger-wagging moment.

Our take on Slick Willie's Day of Rage is here.

Scott Johnson at Power Line:

The most striking feature of Bill Clinton's bloviations on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace yesterday was the incredibly low ratio of facts to whoppers. If Chris Wallace could prompt that red-faced response with such an innocuous question, I wonder if a few minutes with Richard Miniter (author of Losing bin Laden, interviewed by NRO here), might not send him to intensive care. I would love to hear Miniter ask Clinton a few questions about Clinton's treatment of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center -- an attack that Clinton shrugged off in a few paragraphs of his subsequent Saturday morning radio talk, never to return to the subject. (Miniter quotes the relevant paragraphs of the radio address at pages 28-30 of his book.)

Ronald Cass at RCP minces no words:

Presidents often find it hard to leave the stage. The day of Bush's first inauguration, Clinton lingered for hours at Andrews Air Force base trying to hang on to the attention he had so enjoyed as President. He still seeks the limelight.

But desperation to be noticed after leaving office, to have the respect and affection Clinton craves, isn't a substitute for doing the right thing when in office - any more than lies are a substitute for honesty, or indecision a suitable alternative to moral courage.

On the golf course, Bill Clinton is known for his dislike of playing his ball where it lies, scoring honestly, and taking his lumps as the rest of us duffers must. He makes his own score, always a good deal better than the real number.

Someone else should be trusted to do the scoring when it comes to Clinton's time in office. In the history books, he deserves to be counted as the President who did not protect us against al-Qaeda, who left the impression they could attack us without penalty, whose wasted opportunities contributed to the travesty of 9/11.

Tough talk now should not be allowed to obscure that fact. Lies now should not go unanswered.

***
Previous: He doth protest too much

BILL CLINTON UNHINGED

RCP just posted a rough transcript of Bill Clinton’s interview on FNS. It isn’t pretty. Let’s take a peek at the most noteworthy exchanges:

CLINTON: “OK, let’s talk about it. I will answer all of those things on the merits but I want to talk about the context of which this…arises. I’m being asked this on the FOX network…ABC just had a right wing conservative on the Path to 9/11 falsely claim that it was based on the 911 commission report with three things asserted against me that are directly contradicted by the 9/11 commission report. I think it’s very interesting that all the conservative Republicans who now say that I didn’t do enough, claimed that I was obsessed with Bin Laden.”

As LFR’s owner, I’m offering the first person to tell me when a Republican accused President Clinton of being obsessed with bin Laden a mystery prize of incredible worth. I’ve paid a fair amount of attention to Clinton and I’ve never heard anyone say he was obsessed with bin Laden while he was president. There isn’t a Republican that didn’t accuse him of having an obsession but it wasn’t about bin Laden.

“They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in Black Hawk Down and I refused to do it and stayed 6 months and had an orderly transfer to the UN.”

As I’ve talked about before, the ‘they’ he’s refering to is John Murtha. The last I looked, John Murtha wasn’t a member of the VWRC.

CLINTON: …If you can criticize me for one thing, you can criticize me for this, after the Cole I had battle plans drawn to go into Afghanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full scale attack search for Bin Laden. But we needed basing rights in Uzbekistan which we got after 9/11.

President Clinton, Why didn’t you have these plans drawn up after the Embassy Bombings? Why did you wait until a month before the 2000 election to draw up plans to invade Afghanistan and destroy al Qaida? Waiting 2+ years to figure out if we could take out al Qaida isn’t how I’d do it if he were my top foreign policy priority.

CLINTON: …So you did FOX’s bidding on this show. You did you nice little conservative hit job on me. But what I want to know..

Clinton is still the sniping, undignified person he always was and always will be. He’s also fast becoming a card-carrying member of the ‘Unhinged Left’. Chris Wallace isn’t a partisan pundit. He’s a pretty level-headed reporter. I’d defy anyone to prove that he’s a conservative or liberal based on how he interviews people.

I suspect that Clinton’s rant is partially motivated by his anger at having his foreign policy failures exposed and partially to make his tirade the Monday morning story, not his failure to capture bin Laden.

CLINTON: Did you ever ask that? You set this meeting up because you were going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers because Rupert Murdoch is going to get a lot of criticism from your viewers for supporting my work on Climate Change. And you came here under false pretenses and said that you’d spend half the time talking about…

This interview is a great example of why we don’t miss Bill Clinton. He’s a boor and he’s vindictive. He was well-suited for the 90’s but I’m glad that President Bush is Commander-in-Chief right now.

DON'T BUY GAS FROM THIS ASS; BOYCOTT CITGO

By Michelle Malkin ·

Tons of readers are asking me for information about boycotting CITGO to protest sulfur-sniffing Hugo Chavez. Movement growing here and here. More here and here.

Jim Hoft notes that CITGO held a Chavez pep rally in Harlem. Fox News reports:

Chavez, dressed in his signature red shirt, was introduced at the podium by activist actor Danny Glover.

At one point Chavez told the crowd, "sometimes the devil takes human form," a comment that drew some boos — and applause — from the crowd who interpreted the reference to mean President Bush.

Chavez was visiting the church as part of ceremonies to announce the sale of discounted home heating oil to qualified low-income families.

The appearance came after reports circulated early Thursday morning that the Venezuelan president had left the country overnight after delivering an insult-riddled speech at the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday in which he called President Bush the 'devil.'

The crowd chanted "Chavez, Chavez, the people are with you" in Spanish as he walked into the Mount Olivet Baptist Church on Lenox Ave. in Harlem.

The event, one of a series designed to boost the Venezuelan leader's popularity in the U.S., was organized by Citgo, a Houston-based energy company that is owned and controlled by the Venezuelan government. Under a Citgo program, and in partnership with Citizens Energy, a program started and run by former Congressman Joe Kennedy II, families from low-income neighborhoods in New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia have the ability to purchase discounted home heating oil over winter months.

Venezuelan officials and Citgo employees handed out T-shirts prior to the event with the name of the program — "From The Venezuelan Heart To The U.S. Hearths" — printed across the front.

WHY DO WE PUT UP WITH THIS

Yesterday the president of Venezuela Hugo Chavez took to the podium at the United Nations and spoke to the General Assembly. In his speech, he slammed President Bush, calling him "The Devil" and talked about the Noam Chomsky book he's been reading. That should be enough to tell you everything this crazy leftist stands for...but there was more to the story.

Sounding like he was reading a script prepared by the Democrat Party and Moveon.org, Chavez ranted on and on about how the United States was an imperialist nation that didn't really want peace. He criticized Bush for thinking he owned the world and called him an imperialist, fascist and an assassin. Not much of a surprise. But in making his remarks, Chavez made Bush's point.

One by one, these supposedly elected tinhorn dictators are making the Bush Administration's point. Hugo Chavez is an America-hating socialist that cavorts with the world's thugs. He is an enemy of the United States, just like the president of Iran is. He would be saying what he is saying no matter who was in charge in the Oval Office. He hates George W. Bush because Bush doesn't give people like himself much wiggle room.

By the way, anyone notice the lack of response from the Democrats on these speeches by Chavez and the president of Iran? Do they agree with what they're saying? How about it, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Hillary Clinton? Are you going to not disagree with these crazies? It sure seems to be the case. Wouldn't you think that when some foreign footstool calls our president the "devil" that at least some of the loyal opposition would have something to say? Evidently not.

Why do we have to put up with this? Why do we have to open our arms to voids surrounded by a sphincter muscle like Hugo Chavez; allowing them to come to this country to demean our institutions? Why? The United nations, that's why.

but then .. Chavez had one fabulous idea in all of his rantings. He proposed moving the United Nations to Venezuela. That is a fabulous idea....get the whole sham of an organization completely out of here. He can have it.

THE WONDERFUL, PEACE-LOVING RELIGION OF ISLAM, PART XIVIII

We have to wake up, my friends. We have the leader of the Catholic Church frankly acting like he's afraid of the Muslim world. Perhaps he should be? After all, these wonderful, peace-loving Muslims have already called for his beheading, and they shot a Catholic Nun in the back in Somalia.

Come on, folks. Wake up and smell the cordite.

A Danish newspapers prints a cartoon that depicts Mohammed as violent ... and Muslims erupt in violence.

The Pope quotes the last Byzantine Emperor -- dead for 600 years -- who felt that Islam was a violent religion ... and Muslims erupt in violence.

Is this registering with you?

Muslims shoot school children in the back in Chechnya. Muslims behead school girls in Indonesia just because these girls are attending a Christian school. Muslims shoot a Catholic nun in the back in Somalia. Muslims kill 3,000 innocents in New York and Washington D.C. Muslims fire rockets into civilian areas of Israel. This list goes on and on and on ... and it's been going on for hundreds of years.

Again ... the Pope reads a 600 year-old transcript of a conversation between a Persian scholar and a Byzantine emperor where in the emperor says that Islam is a violent religion ... and what do we get? More violence?

Now we have the Pope and other western leaders jumping through hoops to convince these violent Muslims that we really don't believe that they're all that violent .. and how sorry we are that the Byzantine emperor disagreed.

We had better wake up here ... while we can.

BUSH SPEAKS AT THE U.N.

Today's the day....President Bush will take to the podium at the United Nations this morning to discuss his administration's plan for democracy throughout the world. Unbelievably, in the audience will be Iran's Crazy Little Man, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He will speak later in the day.

President Bush says he will not meet with Ahmadinejad..saying the United States won't meet with Iran until it agrees to stop enriching uranium. So this sets up an interesting series of events. There will be the president of the United States, speaking at the podium at the United Nations. In the audience will be the president of the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, Iran. And it will all be in New York, where Al-Qaeda slaughtered 3,000 innocent people 5 years ago. Unreal, isn't it?

And watch the media coverage of the two speeches. Bush will get up, tout democracy gains in places like Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and so on. But expect Ahmadinejad's speech to get better press. After all, he will be criticizing the United States...a prospect the media loves. And where does this leave the Democrats?

They have a problem. They're expected to win the mid-term elections coming up with national security becoming increasingly important. Will the Democrats, who hate George W. Bush and his policies, really come out in support of the President of Iran? Keep your eye on Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid on this one.

And just what is the President of Iran doing in this country anyway? How on Earth did that happen? Talk about ridiculous.

THE RELIGION OF....

By Michelle Malkin

...Fill In The Blank.

***

After you're done watching that, watch Dan Riehl's take. Read the latest death threats from members of The Religion of Fill-in-the-blank here and here and here:

The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, issued a statement on a Web forum vowing to continue its holy war against the West. The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified.

The group said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as "the worshipper of the cross" saying "you and the West are doomed as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. ... We will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (killed by) the sword."

Islam forbids drinking alcohol and requires non-Muslims to pay a head tax to safeguard their lives if conquered by Muslims. They are exempt if they convert to Islam.

***

And check out a few more anti-Pope Internet photoshops (first one is here) making the rounds of jihadi websites (thanks much to Lorenzo Vidino and Hamza Boccolini):

NOW...IS ISLAM A PEACEFUL RELIGION

Perhaps it would be instructive to look at what is happening to Pope Benedict over the past few days for an answer.

First ... just what did the Pope do? You can read the Pope's entire speech by clicking on this link. If' your not into reading Pope's speeches, I'll lift out the part that has started all of this controversy.

Pope Benedict moves into the area of his speech that has sparked the controversy with this paragraph:

"I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (Münster) of part of the dialogue carried on-- perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara-- by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian."

Pope Benedict then goes on to quote one particular. This is something the Byzantine emperor said to the Persian on the subject of Islam and jihad, or holy war.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Now remember ... these were not the words of the Pope. These were the words of some emperor over 600 years ago. The emperor evidently thought that Islam was a violent religion, and that it was the commands of Mohammed that made it so.

So ... how do Muslims react to the Pope's revelation that a Byzantine emperor 600 years ago thought that Islam was a violent religion? Why, with violence, of course? Muslims murder a nun in Somalia. They burn churches in Gaza, and they go on their grand marches and demonstrations reminiscent of the violence they spread after that Danish cartoon mess.

And so what is the inescapable conclusion that we're left with? Islam is a violent religion. Don't take Empereor Paleologus' word for it ... just watch Muslims!

Is it just me, or does it make sense to you that if Muslims didn't want the rest of the world to consider Islam a violent religion, they wouldn't get so violent every time someone say's they're violent? Come on, folks! How hard is all this?

THE POPE'S REAL THREAT

Many people have written about the controversy over Pope Benedict's recent remarks at the University of Regensburg, where he quoted a medieval emperor about the barbarity of forced religious conversions. In a replay of the Prophet Cartoon madness, Muslims only escalated their rhetoric after the Vatican apologized for any offense the quotation may have given followers of Islam. Despite apologizing Wednesday for quoting Manuel II's words from 1391 (but not for its argument against violence in religion), Muslims burnt effigies of the Roman Catholic leader and staged demonstrations around the world:

Protesters took to the streets in a series of countries with large Muslim populations, including India and Iraq. The ruling party in Turkey likened Pope Benedict XVI to Hitler and Mussolini and accused him of reviving the mentality of the Crusades. In Kashmir, an effigy of the pontiff was burnt.

At Friday prayers in the Iranian capital, Teheran, a leading ayatollah described the Pope as "rude and weak-minded". Pakistan's parliament passed a motion condemning the head of the Roman Catholic Church. Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, criticised him hours after a grenade attack on a church in the Gaza Strip. ...

The head of Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, said the remarks "aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world".

Similar comments were made in other Muslim capitals, raising fears of a repetition of the anger that followed the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper earlier this year.

All this has shown is that Muslims missed the point of the speech, and in fact have endeavored to fulfill Benedict's warnings rather than prove him wrong. If one reads the speech at Regensburg, the entire speech, one understands that the entire point was to reject violence in pursuing religion in any form, be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism, or Bahai. The focal point of the speech was not the recounting of the debate between Manuel II and the unnamed Persian, but rather the rejection of reason and of God that violence brings (emphasis mine):

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

This is really the crux of the argument, which is that argument, debate, and rhetoric are absolutely essential in forming any kind of philosophy, including religious doctrine. The words of sacred text do not cover all situations in the world, and therefore development of a solid philosophical body of thought is critical to growth and wisdom. That requires the ability to challenge and to criticize without fear of retribution, a difficulty that most faiths struggle to overcome.

Islam, on the other hand, doesn't bother to try. Benedict never says this explicitly, but Islam's demands that all criticism be silenced turns doctrine into dictatorship, which rejects God on a very basic level. A central tenet of most religions is that humans lack the divine perfection to claim knowledge of the totality of the Divine wisdom. Islam practices a form of supremacy that insists on unquestioned obedience or at least silence of all criticism, especially from outsiders, and creates a violent reaction against it when it occurs.

Islam bullies people into silence, and then obedience. We saw this with the Prophet Cartoons, a series of editorial criticisms that pale into insignificance when seen against similar cartoons from the Muslim media regarding Christians and especially Jews. It is precisely this impulse about which Benedict warns can occur in any religion, but modern Muslims show that they are by far the widest purveyors of this impulse.

Unfortunately, the Muslims are not the only people who missed the point. The New York Times editorial board joins Muslims in demanding an apology and an end to criticism of Islam:

There is more than enough religious anger in the world. So it is particularly disturbing that Pope Benedict XVI has insulted Muslims, quoting a 14th-century description of Islam as “evil and inhuman.” ...

Muslim leaders the world over have demanded apologies and threatened to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican, warning that the pope’s words dangerously reinforce a false and biased view of Islam. For many Muslims, holy war — jihad — is a spiritual struggle, and not a call to violence. And they denounce its perversion by extremists, who use jihad to justify murder and terrorism.

The Vatican issued a statement saying that Benedict meant no offense and in fact desired dialogue.

The Times missed the point, too. They aren't satisfied with the explanation offered by the Vatican. They want a "deep and persuasive apology" for Benedict's temerity in criticizing the use of violence and rejection of reason in religion, and specifically using a six-hundred-year-old quote that insulted people who regularly insult everyone else, including other Muslims. The Times counsels surrender to the threats and the violence.

Benedict opposes both. That's the real threat behind the Pope's speech, and don't think the radical Muslims don't understand it.

I SUPPORT THE POPE

By Michelle Malkin

Target of jihad

It all seems so familiar, doesn't it (via Yahoo.com):

A Palestinian from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade attends a rally in Gaza to protest against remarks regarding Islam made by Pope Benedict XVI September 15, 2006. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem (GAZA)

Pakistani Muslims chant slogans to condemn Pope Benedict XVI for making what they regard as 'derogatory' comments about Islam, during a rally in Multan September 15, 2006. (Asim Tanveer/Reuters)

Muslim students burn an effigy of Pope Benedict XVI at a protest rally in Allahabad, India, Friday, Sept. 15, 2006. A growing chorus of Muslim leaders has called on the Pope to apologize for the alleged derogatory comments made by him about Islam. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

There is always an insult to be manufactured. There are always fists and machetes and rifles to be raised. There are always flags and effigies and embassies to be burned. There are always throats and heads to be claimed:

Reader S. writes:

I'm a grad student in Theology at a Catholic seminary here in the U.S. and a long-time reader of your blog.

The media is ignoring the substance of Pope Benedict's remark while letting Muslims appear to be victims. Islam was indeed spread by violence. Denying that is like denying the holocaust. That wasn't the point of what the Pope was saying. In the address scientists on the role of faith and reason in human experience, the Pope recounts a debate between a Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an "educated Persian." Here I quote directly from his address :

Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. "God", he [the Byzantine emperor] says, "is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death...".

The Muslims clearly have no response to this, because their religion was spread by the sword, and we can see it is spread so still by the forced conversions of Steve Centani and his camera operator. But underlying this is a theological point about the nature of God and his relationship with mankind that the Muslims also have no appropriate response for. The Pope continues:

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor [of the text where this debate appears], Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality. Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practise idolatry.

God can't be God if he is unreasonable, because if He is unreasonable then he has some kind of deficiency or imperfection. Imperfection is incompatible with His divine nature. He can't transcend reason because perfect reason is also integral to His nature as God. God can't command us to practice idolatry, as the Muslim theologian Ibn Hazn said, because this would be totally incompatible with His nature. God can't be untrue to Himself - He doesn't have such human failings!

The Muslims can't justify the unreasonableness of violence by saying God transcends reason. The result of their beliefs is to make God in the image of their own leaders who spread Islam by any means possible in order to subjugate as many as possible under their brutal power.

But just as the Cartoon Rage wasn't merely about the cartoons, the jihadists' new Pope Rage isn't merely about his comments. It's a continuation of "unfinished business." The jihadists have had it in for the papacy for years. From a 2002 London Times article on the plot to assassinate the late Pope John Paul II:

The Pope has been told that the al-Qaeda terrorists who masterminded the September 11 attacks in the United States planned to assassinate him during his tour of the Philippines.

The attack never took place because the Pope called off the visit in 1999 through ill-health.

...Vatican officials declined to comment yesterday on reports of the latest plan to kill the Pope, but anti- terrorism experts in Italy said that there had been “repeated warnings” of an al-Qaeda attack on the Pope or on a “symbolic Vatican target” and that security had been intensified in and around St Peter’s Square, with metal detectors introduced for mass gatherings such as the Pope’s weekly audience.

Vatican-watchers said that although an abortive plot in 1995 in the Philippines against the Pope’s life was known about, the 1999 attempt had not been made public before.

[Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's] plan to kill the Pope was put together at the same time as he was enlisting al-Qaeda recruits around South-East Asia, many of whom were sent to Afghanistan for training in specialist techniques, including explosives and assassination.

The first attempt on the Pope’s life was to have been made in January 1995 as he addressed a crowd of several hundred thousand in a park in Manila. Documents show how Mohammed considered planting a pipe bomb and using snipers near the altar where the Pope was to say Mass. The idea was not only to kill the Pope and those standing closest to him, but also to cause pandemonium in the park by then ordering snipers to shoot randomly at those fleeing the carnage.

To fanatics such as Mohammed, the Pope is as great an enemy and obstacle to their vision of a global jihad as the US President.

This assassination plot had, though, to be scrapped after a clumsy accident by Ramzi Youssef, his nephew, who prematurely detonated an explosive device in his flat in Manila. These two men are said by the FBI to have been instrumental in planning the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. They had the idea of hijacking aircraft and turning them into flying bombs. Both were also involved in the lorry bomb attack on the World Trade Centre in 1993.

Although his nephew was arrested soon after the abortive papal bomb plot in 1995, Mohammed escaped.

He returned to the Philippines intent on reviving the assassination plot against the Pope, but the Pope cancelled his trip to Manila at the last minute.

Security experts say that there is a danger that Mohammed [ed.: since captured and now at Gitmo] will try again. Dr Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert and author of the book Inside al- Qaeda, is quoted as saying: “They (al-Qaeda) often return to complete unfinished business. When they didn’t destroy the World Trade Centre first time around, they came back to finish it off. That is how it was with the Pope in the Philippines.”

Pope Benedict's November trip to Turkey is now in jeopardy, but calling it off will neither make him or Catholics any safer nor end the new manufactured outrage by the jihadists. Via Time:

Pope Benedict XIV's controversial comments about Islam have already ignited a firestorm of criticism in the Muslim world, but it may end up costing the Vatican more than just its reputation. A top Catholic Church official inside Turkey says the polemics following Benedict XVI's comments about Islam may cause the cancellation of his November visit to the majority Muslim country, which is nevertheless governed on secular principles.

"At this point, I don't know if the trip will happen," Mons. Luigi Padovese, the Vicar Apostolic in Anatolia, the Church's representative for what amounts to the eastern half of Turkey, told TIME. "There are leading politicians, members of the ruling parties, a top minister and others who have expressed a negative opinion on the visit." Padovese blamed the outcry on voices in the Turkish press whom he described as "nationalist, Islamist and anti-Christian," and said the Pope's intention was not to offend anyone. "I don't know if anyone even read the Pope's discourse," Padovese said. "These elements tossed out the bait, and others took it."

The sharpest rebuke inside Turkey came from Salih Kapusuz, the deputy leader of the ruling Justice and Development, or AK Party, who said that Benedict would go down in history "in the same category as leaders such as (Benito) Mussolini and (Adolf) Hitler." He told the state-owned Anatolia news agency that Benedict's comments were a deliberate attempt to "revive the mentality of the Crusades: He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages." He added that Benedict "is a poor thing that has not benefitted from the spirit of reform in the Christian world..."

Asked if the Turkish authorities had made any specific requests of the Holy See, Padovese said that the only demands have come from the press. "There is a request that the Pope apologizes for what he said," says Padovese. "But I read into this request a kind of triumphalism — to see the Church and Christians and the Pope say out loud that they were wrong." Padovese spoke by phone from the parish in the Black Sea coastal city of Trebizond, where in February Father Andrea Santoro was killed by a young Muslim man in an apparently religiously-motivated attack. Two other Catholic clergy members have been the victims of attacks in Turkey over the past several months.

And there will be more.

Guess what's on the best-seller list in "moderate" Turkey right now? Via AllahPundit and Gerald Augustinus:

It's a hot-selling novel titled Papa’ya suikast (”Attack on the Pope”) which predicts that Pope Benedict will be assassinated in Istanbul.

Which side will the West--and moderate Muslims--stand on?

Who will stand up and say without equivocation:

"I support the Pope."

SENATOR POODLE SHOULD STOP YAPPING!

Kerry Accuses Bush of Cutting & Running in Afghanistan

Jean Francois Kerry made another totally dippy statement today, accusing the Bush administration of cutting and running in Afghanistan. Here’s a portion of his statement:

“The administration’s Afghanistan policy defines cut and run,” Kerry said in remarks prepared for delivery at Howard University on Thursday. “Cut and run while the Taliban-led insurgency is running amok across entire regions of the country. Cut and run while Osama bin Laden and his henchmen hide and plot in a lawless no-man’s land.”

Sen. Kerry should read the newspapers before making such a stupid comment. The Taliban are trying to mount a comeback of sorts but NATO troops (aka the Allies) keep killing them, according to this CBS article:

An Associated Press reporter who traveled to Pashmul saw warplanes drop five bombs within about 20 minutes on orchards where militants were believed to be hiding. Explosions echoed across grape and pomegranate fields and clouds of dust rose amid the greenery and dried-mud houses of the Panjwayi district, which is about 12 miles from Kandahar city.
Operation Medusa was launched Saturday to flush out Taliban fighters from Panjwayi and neighboring Zhari district. NATO spokesman Maj. Scott Lundy said alliance and Afghan troops had gained ground and disrupted the militants’ command system so guerrillas were moving in confusion. Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak said Taliban casualties were high, but could not confirm the NATO report of more than 200 dead.
A NATO statement said its figure was derived from “surveillance and reconnaissance assets operating in Panjwayi and Zhari districts, as well as information reported by various Afghan officials and citizens living nearby.” About 80 other suspected Taliban were arrested by Afghan police and a further 180 fled the area, it said.

I’m betting that the Taliban are wishing that the allies would cut and run. They’re SOL, though, because Democrats don’t occupy the White House.

It’s also worth noting that his statement today is a signal that Kerry wants to run for president again. Couple that statement with his interview with the Washington Examiner, where he said that he was “prepared to kick [the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth] ass from one end of America to the other” and you get the impression that he’s running again.

What this means to me is that Kerry still thinks of himself in presidential terms even though most people don’t take him seriously. How can you take him seriously when he makes statements like that? How can people take him seriously when he can’t even get the most elemental facts right?

ONE ARAB'S APOLOGY

Finally!

Five years after 9/11, an Arab American speaks openly about Islamic Fascism and his silence. In One Arab’s Apology, Emilio Dabul posts a heartfelt apology worth reading:

“The only time I raised my voice in protest against these men who killed thousands of innocents in the name of Allah was behind closed doors, among the safety of friends and family. I did at one point write a very vitriolic essay condemning their actions, but fear of becoming another Salman Rushdie kept me from ever trying to publish it.

Well, I’m sick of saying the truth only in private - that Arabs around the world, including Arab-Americans like myself, need to start holding our own culture accountable for the insane, violent actions that our extremists have perpetrated on the world at large.

Yes, our extremists and our culture.”

At one point, Dabul mentions Christian bombers of abortion clinics:

“A Christian who bombs an abortion clinic in the name of God is still a Christian, at least in his interpretation, and saying otherwise doesn’t negate the fact that he has spent a goodly amount of time figuring out his version of the one true and right thing to do.”

I’d add one more difference — the Christian bombers of abortion clinics are often pursued, charged, prosecuted, and imprisoned by Christian witnesses, police, prosecutors, and jailers; while many Arab countries teach murder and pay families when their children blow themselves up killing others.

Dabul’s comments are late, but gladly accepted. I know it wasn’t easy, but the risks he takes places him among other Americans who risked to make America a better place.

—

Clark Baker is a senior contributor to CaliforniaConservative.org. He is an author, filmaker, father and retired LAPD officer. You may read more of his work here and here.

ARABS INCREASINGLY SEE LEBANON AS A LOSS

At the imposition of the UN Security Council cease-fire resolution, the West almost unanimously considered the war in Lebanon a disaster for Israel. Most analysts insisted that Israel's failure to destroy Hezbollah amounted to a humiliation and worried about the energizing effect Hassan Nasrallah's victory would have on radical Islam's popularity in the region. These analysts would be surprised to learn that Arabs increasingly view Hezbollah's war as a disaster as well -- but a disaster for Arabs:

At the height of the war, as Hizbullah rockets regularly sent hundreds of thousands of Israelis scurrying to the shelters like "rabbits and mice," as some of the Arab media noted with undisguised gratification, the mood tended to be militantly euphoric, buoyed by the widely broadcast images of Israeli suffering and humiliation. But as the war came to its conclusion and life in Israel returned pretty much to normal, opinion in the Arab world has shifted to more sober analysis, as Lebanon, Hizbullah and the Shi'ites face the daunting task of what will probably be years of multi-billion dollar reconstruction.

Even a cursory perusal of the Arab press, will reveal that Hizbullah's status in Lebanon has changed for the worse, as many Lebanese come to the rather shocking realization that the south of their country, unknown to them, had in fact been transformed into an Iranian and Syrian launching pad against Israel posing an existential threat to their own livelihoods and to their entire country. Hizbullah is now on the defensive, trying to protect its political assets against a more assertive Lebanese domestic majority, that seems more determined than ever to contain Hizbullah's "state within a state," so that they are not drawn again into a destructive war with Israel, without as much as a word of consultation.

Many in Lebanon, especially non-Shi'ites, but also some important Shi'ite spokespersons, are calling for an end to the armed phase of Hizbullah's development and its integration into the Lebanese political system, like all other political parties, lest further provocation of Israel will expose Lebanon to even greater devastation in the future. In other words, they are demanding the disarming of Hizbullah.

Muna Fayyad, a Shi'ite professor at the University of Lebanon, and the Mufti of Tyre, Sayyid Ali al-Amin, for example, both questioned the right of Hizbullah to bring disaster on the Shi'ites of Lebanon, by dragging them into an ill considered adventure they never wanted, in the interests of a foreign power like Iran, about whom they were never consulted.

The war stripped more than a few masks from the players in the region. Nasrallah now has to contend with the fallout from his impatient attack on Israel, from the Lebanese and also from the Iranians who had wanted Hezbollah and their rockets as a threat to be feared, not an attack to be weathered and then discounted. His image as the protector of Lebanon has been shattered, and the Lebanese now see him as a threat instead of a savior. After years of Syrian control, they now have to recognize that a large portion of their country is under de facto Iranian occupation, and they're not happy about it.

This has eroded the veneer of victory that Nasrallah placed on the cease-fire. Western commentators and no shortage of Israeli pundits pointed to Nasrallah's claims to have prevailed as a devastating propaganda offensive that would make Israel and the West look weaker than ever. Arabs have taken a more realistic view of the war's results, including the fact that Nasrallah has to make those claims from undisclosed locations to this day. They scoff at his bravado, noting that Nasrallah's vaunted rocket attacks killed more Israeli Arabs than anyone else and proved singularly ineffective as a deterrent to the Israeli incursion.

The Jerusalem Post notes several indicators that the Arabs now discuss that hardly supports the idea that Nasrallah triumphed over Israel:

* Hezbollah lost almost a quarter of its ground forces and had to flee the sub-Litani region; Israel lost 100 men.

* The war left multibillion-dollar damage throughout Lebanon; Hezbollah barely dented Israeli infrastructure.

* Hezbollah lost a number of command-and-control centers that Israel destroyed during its incursion, and will not likely be allowed to rebuild them.

* Almost all of its long- and medium-range rocketry and launch materiel has been destroyed, and the short-range rockets that they have in large numbers proved completely ineffective, both militarily and as a political/terror deterrent. In fact, the failure of the rocketry to force Israel out of the war has severely damaged Hezbollah's main purpose for the Iranians, which wanted Hezbollah and its rockets to serve as a psychological weapon and deterrent against any military action. Now that the Israelis have weathered the worst of Nasrallah's attacks, no one fears them any more.

Instead of manipulating a cowed Lebanon, Nasrallah now must watch as the Lebanese Army marches into what had been Hezbollah's exclusive domain for the past twenty years. Only the Shi'ites still support him, and even that appears tenuous. The rest of Lebanon, looking around the ruins of their nation that came from a war they never wanted, have a much clearer perspective than anyone credited for the calculations of victory and defeat, and Nasrallah's underground boastings have not convinced anyone except Nasrallah.

As I wrote at the time, Nasrallah can claim anything he wants. As the smoke clears, people will understand the real results of his war, and they have begun to do so -- to his detriment.

TAPEGATE IN CALIFORNIA

By Michelle Malkin ·

This is a stunning story, and I'm sorry I haven't gotten to it sooner. Drudge and California media have been all over it and now the police are involved. Via AP:

The campaign of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Democratic rival acknowledged Tuesday that it downloaded - and leaked to the media - a recording of a private meeting in which the governor described a Hispanic legislator as having a "very hot" personality.

But Cathy Calfo, campaign manager for Democrat Phil Angelides, said the campaign had done nothing wrong because the file was available publicly on the governor's Web site.

"No one hacked," Calfo said at a news conference to address the role played by the Angelides campaign, first reported by The Sacramento Bee. "They accessed information that was available to the public."

Schwarzenegger spokesman Adam Mendelsohn said someone would have had to snoop to find the audio file.

"The file that was leaked to the Los Angeles Times was in a private area of the governor's server not accessible to the public without manipulation of information," he said.

Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said the sound file was stored in a password-protected area. She said she forwarded the Internet Protocol address used to download the file to the California Highway Patrol, which is investigating.

The chutzpah of the Dems is flabbergasting. Watch as they try to turn this around and blame Schwarzenegger. Via the SFChronicle:

The acknowledgement Tuesday that the campaign of Democrat Phil Angelides leaked an embarrassing tape of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to the news media set off a new clash between the warring camps over the standards of political ethics in a world dominated by the Internet.

Although a criminal investigation continues into allegations of computer hacking, the manager of Angelides' gubernatorial campaign said members of her staff found four hours of Schwarzenegger's private tapes while perusing the governor's Web site and turned a small snippet over to the Los Angeles Times.

The six-minute section of the tape included comments by the governor attributing the passionate temperament of Cubans and Puerto Ricans to a combination of "black blood" and "Latino blood" -- comments that Schwarzenegger has apologized for.

Cathy Calfo, Angelides' campaign manager, said the actions by her staff members were not sanctioned by her or by Angelides. But she also insisted that the private tapes had been left unsecured on a public section of the governor's Web site and that no laws were broken when staffers downloaded the audio file.

"The Schwarzenegger campaign's continued contention that someone hacked into their computer system is a blatant attempt to mislead the public, and they should stop the cover-up, admit that their office made a mistake and stop the finger-pointing," she said.

The Democrats' p.c. privacy-invading attempt to embarrass Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has blown up in their faces. Good. My feelings about Arnie are lukewarm, but this was a gobsmackingly stupid attack by the Dems on two levels--not only from an ethics and legal standpoint, but also on the substance. Trying to play "gotcha" over the governor's harmless private comments? State Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, the subject of the governor's comments, had the right attitude:

State Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, R-Cathedral City, says the leaked comments Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made about her were not offensive and the leak was clearly politically motivated.

"It's eight weeks from an election; I'm not surprised," Garcia said Saturday in an interview with The Desert Sun.

"I absolutely see it as an attempt by a fledging (Phil) Angelides campaign on its last leg trying to gain political traction from this."

The Angelides' campaign could not be reached for comment Saturday evening. The Democratic gubernatorial candidate and state treasurer, however, described Schwarzenegger's comments on his campaign Web site as "deeply offensive and embarrassing."

Garcia was swept up in a national political firestorm after taped, private comments referring to her "hot'' personality produced by the mixing of "black blood'' and "Latino blood'' were published, prompting an apology.

A Los Angeles Times story disclosed the remarks Friday setting off a day of finger-pointing from opponents and words of support for the governor by lawmakers from both parties.

On the tape, Schwarzenegger and chief of staff Susan Kennedy spoke affectionately about Garcia and speculated about her nationality.

Kennedy asked if Garcia is Puerto Rican. Schwarzenegger responded, "It seems to me a Cuban." Whether Cuban or Puerto Rican, "they all are very hot," the governor says on the recording. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."

Garcia said Schwarzenegger's comments were taken out of context and does not believe him to be discriminatory or disrespectful.

"I think if you were a fly in my house for two minutes you can make anyone of us look like Archie Bunker," she said.

***

You know who else looks stupid here? The Los Angeles Times. Nice going, tools.

Can you imagine the LATimes editors accepting a leaked tape from GOP operatives and splashing its contents all over the front page in a last-ditch attempt to humiliate a Democrat governor?

Bias? What liberal bias?

***

Reader Tim e-mails:

So the Dems are against phone tapping and bank transaction surveillance of suspected terrorists but it’s OK to hack the Governor of California’s web site?

DEMOCRATS WHINE ABOUT PRESIDENT'S SPEECH

It was predictable, maybe even inevitable. You knew that Democrats would start whining about the president’s speech. This AP article catalogs some of the Democrats’ whining:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said Tuesday that Bush was “more consumed by staying the course in Iraq and playing election-year politics.” “The American people deserved better last night,” Reid said in a statement. “They deserved a chance to reclaim that sense of unity, purpose and patriotism that swept through our country five years ago.”

Sen. Reid would have you believe that Democrats are united in the war on jidadists with global ambitions. Nothing is further from the truth. The only thing that they’re united on is that President Bush is wrong. After that, they’re all over the map, from the original Kerry position, the Murtha position, the second Kerry position. Unfortunately, they’re ignoring the only sane Democratic position, the position espoused by Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller.

“The president should be ashamed of using a national day of mourning to commandeer the airwaves to give a speech that was designed not to unite the country and commemorate the fallen but to seek support for a war in Iraq that he has admitted had nothing to do with 9/11,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, (D-MA), said in a statement. “There will be time to debate this president’s policies in Iraq. September 11th is not that time.”

Shame on Sen. Kennedy. Why doesn’t Kennedy think that Saddam posed a serious risk to the U.S.? Does he think that Saddam’s support of terrorists was something to be ignored? Whether Sen. Kennedy admits it or not, the truth is that Iraq is part of the President’s plan in fighting Islamic extremists. Here’s what the PResident said about it in last night’s speech:

Osama bin Laden calls this fight “the Third World War”, and he says that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America’s “defeat and disgrace forever.” If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden, our enemies will be emboldened; they will gain a new safe haven; they will use Iraq’s resources to fuel their extremist movement. We will not allow this to happen. America will stay in the fight. Iraq will be a free nation, and a strong ally in the war on terror.

What specifically makes Sen. Kennedy think that President Bush’s Iraq policy is wrong? It seems to me that 9/11 is the perfect time to remind the nation of who we’re facing. Why does Sen. Kennedy think that the President shouldn’t remind us of the benefits of President Bush’s policies? Is it because Kennedy thinks that Democrats will suffer in the comparison? That’s my guess.