NY TIMES TAKES ANOTHER LEAK ON IRAQ

The highly anticipated trilateral meeting between President Bush, the Jordanian King and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan, took an odd turn today. The Iraqi PM was a no-show, meeting earlier with the Jordanian King and apparently snubbing the President. The President and Prime Minister will meet tomorrow. The official White House explanation is this:

“Since the King of Jordan and the prime minister had a bilateral themselves earlier today, everyone believed that it negated the purpose of the three of them to meet tonight together in a trilateral setting,” White House adviser Dan Bartlett told reporters traveling with Bush.

However, such a meeting would still have been beneficial, so what really happened?

Earlier today the infamous leakers at the New York Times posted a classified memo by Bush National Security Advisor Stephen J. Hadley which was critical of al-Maliki’s ability to control the sectarian violence in Iraq. (the memo in its entirety can be read HERE) In part, the leaked memo said:

-Do we (U.S.) and Prime Minister Maliki share the same vision for Iraq?

-In my one-on-one meeting with him, he impressed me as a leader who wanted to be strong but was having difficulty figuring out how to do so.

-Despite Maliki’s reassuring words, repeated reports from our commanders on the ground contributed to our concerns about Maliki’s government.

-His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans, and sensitive reporting suggests he is trying to stand up to the Shia hierarchy and force positive change. But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.

Ouch, that’s gotta hurt. While this memo is a totally legitimate critique of the Prime Minister, it must embarrass and perhaps anger the good PM. This appears to be another attempt in a string of many by the communistic New York Times to purposely thwart the Bush administration. Why leak a private classified memo? Why now? Why at all? The answer is obvious: to continue to chip away at the war effort in Iraq. This time, however, the angle was to divide and conquer by placing the U.S. and Iraq at an awkward and difficult juncture.

Another possibility for the Iraqi Prime Minister’s no-show to the three way meeting could be due to the 30 parliamentarians loyal to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who vowed to leave their positions altogether, threatening the stability of the Iraqi government. The original condition was that if al-Maliki, whose constituency has a large portion from al-Sadr followers, met with Bush in Jordan for the summit, they would boycott the government. Now it appears the boycott may not be permanent, but significant nonetheless.

“We are sticking to our position…. The boycott is still valid,” Falih Hassan, a Sadrist legislator, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Bush is a criminal who killed a lot of Iraqis and we do not want him to interfere in Iraq’s affairs. The Iraqi government should negotiate with the U.N. Security Council, not with the leader of the country that is occupying Iraq.”

This of course puts PM al-Maliki in a difficult position.

My sources in Baghdad, Iraq, who are Christian and therefore neither Shia nor Sunni, believe al-Maliki is a good man, but that he is surrounded by “evil and selfish” people in the parliament, and that they are the problem. “They” are the members of the government who are involved in the boycott.

If al-Maliki indeed skipped the trilateral meeting with President Bush today because he deemed it redundant, so be it. If it is because he is offended by the contents of the memo, damned be the New York Times. If it is because of the parliamentary walkout, this will work itself out. Just as with the first round of elections in Iraq back in 2004-05, the participants who sat it out realized they were more empowered through the political process than by foregoing their representation. If this current parliament needs to be reestablished, that could also be positive.

To be continued…….

PLEASE READ THIS

There's a story today that Islamic Sharia law is starting to spread in Great Britain. There are unofficial Islamic courts sitting in various parts of London. Here's how it works. Some Muslim commits a crime. The Muslim community tries him before one of their "unofficial" Islamic courts. Punishment is meted out, and the victim of the crime then refuses to file a criminal complaint with the legal British courts. Some British lawyers are even supporting the system, calling it "legal pluralism." Nobody seems concerned. Some officials are suggesting that there will be a formal system of Muslim courts in Britain within ten years.

And so the Islamic invasion of Europe proceeds at a rather brisk pace ... Eurabia is on the way.

Now ... this all leads up to an article by Victor Davis Hanson I really want you to read. You can find it in today's Wall Street Journal or click to read it right here. The title? "Losing the Enlightenment. A civilization that has lost confidence in itself cannot confront the Islamists." Here's one paragraph:

Just imagine in our present year, 2006: plan an opera in today's Germany, and then shut it down. Again, this surrender was not done last month by the Nazis, the Communists, or kings, but by the producers themselves in simple fear of Islamic fanatics who objected to purported bad taste. Or write a novel deemed unflattering to the Prophet Mohammed. That is what did Salman Rushdie did, and for his daring, he faced years of solitude, ostracism, and death threats--and in the heart of Europe no less. Or compose a documentary film, as did the often obnoxious Theo Van Gogh, and you may well have your throat cut in "liberal" Holland. Or better yet, sketch a simple cartoon in postmodern Denmark of legendary easy tolerance, and then go into hiding to save yourself from the gruesome fate of a Van Gogh. Or quote an ancient treatise, as did Pope Benedict, and then learn that all of Christendom may come under assault, and even the magnificent stones of the Vatican may offer no refuge--although their costumed Swiss Guard would prove a better bulwark than the European police. Or write a book critical of Islam, and then go into hiding in fear of your life, as did French philosophy teacher Robert Redeker.

Can you accept the possibility that Europe may be lost to Islam? Spain is surely doomed ... and nobody anywhere else seems willing to take a stand. Look at your children, and wonder just what type of world they're going to grow up in. We in America spend more time condemning ourselves than we do looking at the threat from abroad. A certain recipe for disaster.

SUPREME COURT TO NY TIMES: BUZZ OFF

By Michelle Malkin

I noted the NYTimes' attempt this weekend to seek protection from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for two accused blabbermouth reporters, whom the feds believe tipped off two Muslim charities fronting for terror.

Well, wonders never cease. The Times reports this afternoon that the court rebuffed the leak-dependent paper:

The United States Supreme Court refused today to stop a federal prosecutor from reviewing the telephone records of two reporters for The New York Times. The records, the paper said, include information about many of the reporters’ confidential sources.

In a one-sentence order offering no reasoning and noting no dissenting votes, the Supreme Court rejected a request from The Times to stay a lower court’s decision while the paper tried to persuade the high court to review the case.

Today’s order effectively allows the United States attorney in Chicago, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, to begin reviewing the records, which he has already obtained from phone companies, as early as this week.

The Justice Department told the Supreme Court on Friday that Mr. Fitzgerald is under enormous time pressure. “The statute of limitations,” the government said, “will imminently expire on December 3 and 13, 2006, on certain substantive offenses that the grand jury is investigating.”

The grand jury, in Chicago, is looking into who told the two reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, about actions the government was planning to take in December 2001 against two Islamic charities in Illinois and Texas. The disclosures to the reporters, the government lawyers wrote Friday, may have amounted to obstruction of justice.

Message to blabbermouths: You are not above the law, no matter how ostentatiously you wrap yourselves in the First Amendment.

John Stephenson: "I have to wonder if Ginsburg was sleeping again for this ruling."

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Previous:

Terrorist-tipping NYTimes wants Ruth Ginsburg's help

NO LIBERAL AGENDA? THINK AGAIN

It's always been puzzling that when Democrats are running for office or when they're explaining their victory, they always have to try and convince people they're not who they say they are. They simply cannot let the public know who they really are or what they really stand for. To do so would be political suicide. The general electorate simply does not swing as far to the left as they do.

At any rate, there was John Dingell, Charlie Rangel and Barney Frank on TV over the weekend saying that they wouldn't pursue a liberal agenda in the next Congress. They want to government from the middle, we were told. They'd like to prove that they can govern. So just what sort of proposals are going to be part of their mainstream agenda?

One of the first thing will be raising the minimum wage. Yeah...that's not a liberal agenda. Then there's the issue of the deficit. Democrats absolutely cannot wait to raise taxes on "the rich" to "pay for" the extra government spending. Any other supposed mainstream ideas they have will be just as liberal.

Perhaps what they're trying to do here is change the terms ... create a new political language where tax increases and government interference in business decisions isn't considered "liberal."

The more likely explanation is that they know they don't have the votes to deliver the true liberal goals of socialized medicine, eliminating the wage cap on Social Security taxes, more power to unions, killing talk radio, and destroying what we have of school choice. So ... lay low until after 2008 when they have even more power! Then stand back!

Democrats have been out of power for a dozen years. They haven't waited on the sidelines all that time just so they could win and then govern just like Republicans. Democrats have a leftist agenda and they intend to pursue it fully. It's all in the timing.

FORMER KGB SPY LITVINENKO DIES

It’s obvious that the Russians wanted former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko silenced. Today, they got their wish:

Mr Litvinenko fell ill after meeting a contact, an Italian journalist, in a sushi restaurant in central London. Dramatic photographs released this week showed him lying in intensive care. His hair had fallen out and his complexion was jaundiced. Last night he suffered a heart attack and doctors said his condition had worsened. Friends and relatives were said to be rushing to his bedside fearing the worst.

Doctors still do not know what caused his illness, although they have said he was poisoned. Initial reports suggested he had been poisoned with thallium, or with a radioactive material, but doctors have now said this was not the case. His friend Oleg Gordievsky, a former high-ranking KGB agent who defected to Britain, said Mr Litvinenko had been killed by two Russian secret agents who poisoned his tea during a meeting at a London hotel. Mr Gordievsky told Sky News: “He was fighting against the evil forces in Russia, against the authorities which are depressing democracy and liberal freedoms in Russia.”

Based on what I’ve read, the Kremlin’s love of control and secrecy played a major role in their poisoning him after they killed Russian reporter Anna Politkovskaya. What’s ironic is that Litvinenko was looking into her murder:

Mr Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, was probing the murder of Ms Politkovskaya, who had become famous for exposing Russian atrocities in Chechnya. Thirteen journalists have been murdered in Russia since Mr Putin came to power in 2000. None of the cases has been solved.
Two years ago the Russian government denied any part in the poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-Western presidential candidate in neighbouring Ukraine. He won the presidency after his pro-Russian rival was accused of trying to rig the elections.

It seems that people that don’t agree with Mr. Putin wind up getting poisoned, which is something that the old Soviet KGB specialized in. Here’s a little glimpse of Ms. Politkovskaya’s view of Putin’s tactics:

She has harsh words for what she sees as the west’s kid-glove treatment of Putin and Russia. “Most of the time they forget the word Chechnya. They only remember it when there’s a terrorist act. And then it’s, ‘Oh!’ And they start their full coverage up again. But virtually nobody reports on what is really going on in that zone, in Chechnya, and the growth of terrorism. The truth is that the methods employed in Putin’s anti-terrorist operation are generating a wave of terrorism the like of which we have never experienced.”
The Bush-Blair “war on terror” has been of enormous help to Putin, Politkovskaya says. Many people in Russia gained perverse comfort from the pictures of US abuses in Abu Ghraib prison. “I’ve heard it many times. In Russia you hear people talking about it with pride: that, ‘We treated the blacks like this before the Americans did, and we were right, because they are international terrorists.’
“Putin’s begun to try to prove on the world stage that he’s also fighting international terrorists, that he’s just a part of this fashionable war. And he’s been successful. He was Blair’s best friend for a while. When, after Beslan, he began to state that we were seeing virtually the hand of Bin Laden, it was appalling. What’s Bin Laden got to do with it? The Russian government created these beasts, brought them up, and they came to Beslan and behaved like beasts.”

Much has been written about President Bush’s consternation at Putin’s attempt to de-democratize Russia and it’s former Soviet bloc countries. This Guardian article simply gives details about how Putin tried exerting his will on neighboring countries. It seems a forgone conclusion that he’d want Ms. Politkovskaya, Mr. Litvinenko dead just like he wanted Viktor Yushchenko dead when Yushchenko chanllenged Putin’s candidate Yanukovych in Ukraine’s elections in 2004.

The Orange Revolution is the first big news event I wrote about when I started blogging. Putin and Ukrainian President Kuchma pronounced Yanukovych the winner even though the voters knew that was utter nonsense. Orange-clad Ukrainians swarmed the Independence Square in Kiev, forcing another election, with Yuschchenko winning handily.

The bottom line to all this information is that Putin’s heavyhandedness is so obvious that it’s impossible not to notice that he deals with adversaries in an old school Soviet KGB way. I don’t know what the solution to his heavyhandedness is but it’s something that must be stopped soon.

EVERBODY NEEDS A PASSPORT

Beginning January 23, just about everybody is going to be required to have a passport, including those traveling to Mexico and Canada. No more heading over the border with just your driver's license and birth certificate for a lost weekend. Now can we just get a little border enforcement? Because nobody seems to be asking all of the illegals streaming across the border for their passport.

There will be those that protest this policy change, but really...is it going to make that much of a difference in who makes it into this country or out? Those who are smuggling illegal aliens in aren't going to show up at the border crossing with their fancy new passport. No...they're going to come in the same way they always have....right across the border at places were there is no protection. By the way...did you know miles of the U.S-Canadian border is actually unguarded? No passport needed.

We were going to get a fence built along the border with Mexico. No more. Count on the Democrats to kill that idea. The border is 2,000 miles long...and 700 miles that was recently authorized may not even get built. So all this new rule is going to do is result in long lines at the post office and lots of increased revenue for the passport office.

Oh...and will George W. Bush's amnesty program for illegals require a passport? I doubt it.