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!