Berman's Finale

clipped from docs.google.com During the Rushdie affair, courage was saluted. Today it is likened to fascism. How did this happen? The equanimity on the part of some well-known intellectuals and journalists in the face of Islamist death threats so numerous as to constitute a campaign; the equanimity in regard to stoning women to death; the journalistic inability even to acknowledge that women's rights have been at stake in the debates over Islamism; the inability to recall the problems faced by Muslim women in European hospitals; the inability to acknowledge how large has been the role of a revived anti-Semitism; the striking number of errors of understanding and even of fact that have entered into the journalistic presentations of Tariq Ramadan and his ideas; the refusal to discuss with any frankness the role of Ramadan's family over the years; Two developments account for it. The first development is the unimaginable rise of Islamism since the time of the Rushdie fatwa. The second is terrorism.

A whole lot of misogyny going on, no?

Dwarfs?

clipped from washingtontimes.com In Gaza, Islamic Jihad plans to send waves of female suicide bombers into action against the Zionist Entity. Asked by an Israeli reporter whether self-detonating ladies enjoy the same 72-virgin deal as the lads, an Arab scholar explained that no, but the gals will be served in Paradise by "dwarfs." Snow White got seven dwarfs, but it's unclear whether Blow White will get the full 72: Sleepy, Grumpy, Bashful, etc, all the way down to Incendiary, Non-Alcoholic and Anti-Zionist.

Dementia is a harsh mistress.

The Growing Beating

clipped from powerlineblog.com Unidentified gunmen shot dead a local Al-Qaeda leader in the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Saturday, police said, as fighting between rival Sunni factions undermined the insurgency. The apparent assassination of the militant kingpin came as the US military announced that marines and Iraqi security forces had killed seven Al-Qaeda fighters during an assault on a truck bomb factory. Both incidents appeared to be linked to increased cooperation between Sunni factions, once sympathetic to the Iraqi resistance, and the US military, which is encouraging nationalist factions to fight Al-Qaeda. Fallujah is the focus of a large-scale security operation in which Iraqi police and tribal levies, backed by US forces, are trying to drive out Al-Qaeda Islamist militants. Saturday's killing came after the Anbar Salvation Council, the armed wing of the province's tribal coalition, announced that it was sending plainclothes "secret police" to Baghdad to kill Al-Qaeda leaders.

Speaking Of Misogyny ...

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com All throughout the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Pakistan’s impoverished western border with Afghanistan, lie the ruins of barbershops and music and video stores – symbols of Western-oriented life that religious extremists have destroyed in a growing wave of violence. Now Islamist militants have a new target, and if they are successful, observers say their campaign could be disastrous for Pakistan’s future. In what appears to be an escalating spree over the last year, extremists have bombed at least four girls’ schools and circulated violent threats warning girls to stay at home.

... Libs seem to be deathly silent about unfolding disasters like this. Too busy attacking W I guess. I'm sorry, but misplaced priorities doesn't explain this. It's something far worse.

Raymond calls it suicidalism. Dr. Sanity is harsher. They're both right unfortunately.

Lurch's Legacy

clipped from neoneocon.com Our abandonment of South Vietnam in 1974/1975 was driven by ideas such as Kerry’s that the war there was both a moral error and unwinnable. Note the last paragraph of Kerry’s 1971 statement, in which he imagines that people thirty years into the future might look back on American’s part in the Vietnam War as a “filthy obscene memory,” and that a pullout would be the way to reverse that tide. …during [1973-1975, when US combat forces had withdrawn], South Vietnam held its own courageously and respectably against a better-bankrolled enemy. Peace talks continued between the North and the South until the day in 1975 when Congress cut off U.S. funding. The Communists walked out of the talks and never returned. Without U.S. funding, South Vietnam was quickly overrun. We saved a mere $297 million a year and in the process doomed South Vietnam, which had been ably fighting the war without our troops since 1973….

Seems Clear Enough To Me...

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com The Swords of Truth issued the statement Friday in an e-mail to news organizations. “We will cut throats, and from vein to vein, if needed to protect the spirit and moral of this nation,” the statement said. The group also accused the women broadcasters of being “without any ... shame or morals.” Prior to the statement, some women broadcasters said they had received personal threats through their mobile phones. It was not clear if the threats were from the same group.

... where the threats came from. And "Swords of Truth" seems a clear enough self designation of dementia as well. But don't worry -- they were driven to their dementia by those nasty Israelis.

And don't forget that brutal Israeli occupation of Iran and Pakistan to explain their insanity problems as well. No, wait. ...

I seem to have gone nuttier than a cuckoo clock, haven't I?

The Church Of Relative Reality And Global Warming Caused By Man

clipped from pajamasmedia.com I looked at the couple who held their hastily signed copies of An Assault on Reason as close to their hearts as they did their hopes for their prophet and his mentor, Jimmy Carter. They’d just, with their purchases, sent about eight dollars straight into the pockets of a man who’d burn their tithe up in about three seconds of flight in his private jet. They were in a state of bliss just about the same as a couple that has a ‘come-to-Jesus moment,’ picks up the phone and gives money to a television evangelist. I wisely decided to say nothing about either Al or the man I considered to be the worst American president in history. It’s not polite to criticize another’s religion in America. I smiled and wished them well. I walked up the stairs and back out into the parking lot. I wished them no harm. I even understood their devotion. I had once been a liberal and feasted in the Church of Relative Reality and Global Warming caused by man.

OK. Still not as good as Iowahawk but too good not to post...

The Bees (Are Not On Their) Knees

clipped from www.straightdope.com Sixth, it's never a good idea to trust what the media are telling you. At least once in the present case the media got something completely wrong and created a huge mess: The story about cell phones was basically a misrepresentation of what one pair of reporters wrote about a study that they misinterpreted. In a nutshell, the original research didn't involve cell phones, and the researchers never said their research was related to honey bee colony die-offs. Even details like the alleged Einstein quote are dubious. No one has yet found proof that Einstein said anything about bees dying off – the earliest documented appearance of the "quote" is 1994 and, yes, Albert was dead at the time. If the same thing keeps happening every winter for another decade or so, then we might really start worrying. But for now, classifying this as a "problem with potentially severe economic impact should it persist" would be a more realistic assessment.

Never Mind

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com In the revolt of the Anbar tribes and the internecine fighting that has become a feature of any space where "militant" groups start to form, we see the strengths and weaknesses of the terrorist mode of warfare. As I argued in the Three Conjectures, once nuclear weapons become available to this battlefield an extremely unstable situation will arise because deterrence has no point of leverage. It will just go on and on. There is no stable plateau where an exchange of nuclear car bombs will level off. There is no one to even negotiate surrender with. Not even a sure way to know who is attacking who. The only thing left to do under those circumstances is to finish off anything which might remotely be a threat. And therefore -- therefore -- we should do everything possible to keep things from deteriorating to this point. Calling Mohammed El Baradei, Mohammed El Baradei. Never mind.

OK, I did forget that Wretchard wouldn't be intimidated

Skip To 7

clipped from iowahawk.typepad.com 6c. All Americans are concerned about Iraq and the ongoing War on Terror, and whether we are making sufficent progress against the terrorist threat both here and abroad. Thankfully, President Bush and his administration have remained steadfast and resolute, compared to the cut-and-run Congress who would rather negotiate with evil-doers than face them head on. Even today, administration envoys are coordinating with Iraq peace partners like the Madhi Army and the government of Iran to develop a steadfast, resolute plan to identify and confront the terror threat. Domestically, the new Department of Homeland Security has instituted tough random anti-terrorism rules, to give you the peace of mind of knowing that no passengers on your flight - regardless of ethnic, religious, or citizenship status - are carrying more than 3 ounces of liquids or gels. Did I mention the Adminstration's proposed New Mexico-Oklahoma fence?

It's going to be really hard to top Iowahawk this weekend...

Just Like The Last Time We Faced The Suicidalists

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com The Counterterrorism Blog reports a video message announcing that al-Qaeda has set up a command for Greater Syria and warns the Patriarch of the Christian Maronite church in Lebanon: "pull back your dogs from our people, and cease your artillery fire—or else, from today onwards, there will be no safe place for any crusader in Lebanon ... we give you this final warning that from now on, an ocean of blood will be spilled. That kind of persistence will continue until the culture which generates these forces is discredited or changes, as happened with Imperial Japan. It should be remembered that even in late 1945, despite a total superiority in land, air and sea weapons, the US was in near paralytic dread of invading Japan because it understood how fiercely it would be resisted.

Except somehow defense cuts of all things have become part of the scenery of denial. And this time it may just end in an actual last time it appears. At least the masochistic Iranian police academy women and their misogynist leaders will surely attempt to make it so...

Maybe There Are Books Worthy Of The Fireman After All

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com Still, there are books even these people read, and they need burning. One thinks for instance of the book entitled, All I Really Know I Learned in Kindergarten, by Robert Fulghum, published two decades ago. It is a book of breathtaking banality, that exactly expresses not only the beliefs of its author, but those of his unlettered charges. Among the articles of Mr Fulghum’s credo: share everything; play fair; don’t hit people; say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody; hold hands and stick together; wash your hands before you eat. Or to paraphrase, life is just a huge playing field, in which everything that is good or beautiful or true, must be brought down to the level of the tiniest moral and intellectual toddler, and bureaucratically organized so that the feelings of this imbecile will never be hurt.

Today's Iran Quote

clipped from "Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock." -- Will Rogers

Now Certainly You Wouldn't Be Cruising A River In Egypt -- Would You?

clipped from pajamasmedia.com From today’s Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, comes an interesting report: IRANIAN GOTCHA: U.S. reconnaissance spacecraft have spotted a training center in Iran that duplicates the layout of the governor’s compound in Karbala, Iraq, that was attacked in January by a special unit that killed American and Iraqi solders. The U.S. bel ieves the discovery indicates that Iran was heavily involved in the strike, which used a fake motorcade to gain entrance to the compound. The duplicate layout in Iran allowed the attackers to practice the exact procedures they would use at the real compound, the Defense Department believes. This is SOP for bigtime terrorist operations. As far back as the assault on the Marine Barracks in Lebanon in the 1980s, we found (as, apparently, in this case, after the event) that the terrorists had built models of their targets, and practiced on them.

Insurgency? Really?

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Meanwhile, the great military blogger Bill Roggio reports on the latest developments in Iraq in the Weekly Standard. Lots of interesting developments—we are obviously getting better intelligence from the Iraqi citizenry, since we’re rounding up terrorists by the score—and you will want to read it all. I just want to flag one paragraph. It will not surprise regular readers of this blog, but it ought to be memorized by all of our leaders: …Coalition forces captured a “liaison to al-Qaeda in Iraq senior leaders, who assists in the movement of information and documents from al-Qaeda in Iraq leadership in Baghdad to al-Qaeda senior leaders in Iran.” Al Qaeda leaders such as Saif al Adel and Said bin Laden, Osama’s son, are being sheltered in Iran along with an estimated 100 al Qaeda senior operatives. So al Qaeda in Iraq’s headquarters are in Tehran. Can we stop talking about “insurgency” yet?

You Too Will Be Mugged By The Police

clipped from www.americanthinker.com "When was public virtue to be found when private was not?" Benjamin Franklin stated, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Truth be known, I could probably fill a book with the words of wise ones who have spoken in kind.  But, you know, I understand this principle well.  I know that people get the government they deserve; what bothers me is that I'm going to get the government they deserve. You should be bothered, too.  With the "people" changing radically through Third World immigration (Ted Kennedy's 1965 immigration act ensures that 85 percent of immigrants come from the Third World and Asia), it's legitimate to wonder how demographics influence democracy.  And it's not hard to understand how these folks will shape government, for they have done so before - in their own lands.

Count on it.

The New New Eugenics

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com Film maker Brooke Goldstein traveled to the West Bank and filmed more than five hours of interviews with terrorists and their brainwashed children. She went into it believing the situation had been exaggerated—but found it was worse than she could have imagined: Recruited To Die. The children were more fanatical than their parents. “When we interviewed Hussam’s family for the film, his parents were distraught. They don’t believe in this whole child suicide bomber concept,” Ms. Goldstein said. “Then I interviewed his sister, who was like, ‘I’m so proud of my brother. Hamas says he’s a hero.’ At one point she had a loser, dwarf, mentally handicapped brother. Now she’s the coolest girl in class, and very proud.”

Margaret Sanger is smiling somewhere...

Something New?

clipped from blogs.news.com.au IF there is an intellectual establishment, and I suppose there is, the attacks on Ayaan Hirsi Ali radiate from its centre. And this, the campaign against Hirsi Ali - this, like the anti-Semitic mob assault during the Paris peace march of 2003, or like the spectacle of millions of Britons marching under the leadership of an Islamist organisation, or like the calm discussions in The New York Times of why it would be wrong to condemn with any vigour the stoning of women to death - this does represent something new. Something like a campaign against Hirsi Ali could never have taken place a few years ago. A sustained attack on an authentic liberal dissident crying out against injustices in remote parts of the world and even in the back streets of western Europe, a sustained attack that appears nearly to have erased the mention of women’s oppression and the struggle for women’s rights from discussion - no, this could not have happened yesterday, except on the extreme Right.

How I wish it were...

Quintuple Ouch

clipped from article.nationalreview.com Alas, not even that celebrated warmonger, George W. Bush, has the will to support democratic revolution in Iran, or even to say the simple words “we want regime change in Tehran.” His secretary of State insists that we do not want regime change, but only a change in the behavior of the regime. Which is rather like saying that the best way to fight evil is by reading the Psalms. Instead of vigorously defending the Americans outrageously arrested and incarcerated in Iran, we opened a new round of negotiations with their captors, and the killers of our troops in Iraq, on Memorial Day. Yes, there are American warships in the Gulf, but no one in his right mind expects them to do anything other than show the flag. But then, nobody even seems to have noticed the existence of a hostage crisis. Why would anyone expect the American government to do anything about it?

See No Evil... (Continued)

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com US mainstream media ran over 6000 stories on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, and they’re still coming up with new ones. But nine days after pictures from an Al Qaeda torture manual were released, the silence is deafening. To their credit, CNN and Fox News Channel ran stories on the declassified material. Yet nine days since the material was released, neither ABC, CBS, NBC, The New York Times nor The Washington Post has run a story with the photos of this shocking evidence of al-Qaeda’s barbarism.

No One Told You

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com For some reason, no one told you that just 5 days before Monday’s talks, an entire floating army, with nearly 20,000 men, comprising the world’s largest naval strike force, led by the USS Nimitz and the USS Stennis, and also comprising the largest U.S. Naval armada in the Persian Gulf since 2003, came floating up unnanounced through the Straight of Hormuz, and rested right on Iran’s back doorstep, guns pointed at them. The demonstration of leverage was clear. And it also came on the exact date of the expiration of the 60 day grace period the U.N. had granted Iran. And it came just a few weeks after Vice President Dick Cheney had swept through the region and delivered a very clear and pointed message to the Saudi King Abdullah and others: George Bush has unequivocally decided to attack Iran’s nuclear, military and economic infrastructure if they do not abandon their drive for military nuclear capability.

The Stage

clipped from article.nationalreview.com The Palestinian strategy is to purposely target and kill Israeli civilians. Then, when Israel goes after those launching the attacks, Palestinians claim to be the victims. If Palestinian civilians aren’t hurt in the Israeli attacks, they stage injuries and deaths. Too often, they garner sympathy and support from a gullible or anti-Semitic media in the international community. Israelis, themselves, are often incapable of facing the damage they inflict in self-defense. Knowing this, Islamic extremists are using their own populations as human shields.

Insert Bad Words Here

clipped from www.breitbart.com Sen. Clinton, who complained about corporate America's largesse and skyrocketing executive pay during campaign events Wednesday, said she did not believe her message was undermined by her acceptance of the private flights. In line with Senate rules then in effect, Clinton's campaign has said she reimbursed Gupta at the cost of a first-class flight, typically a significant discount off the expense of a private jet. "Those were the rules. You'll have to ask somebody else whether that's good policy," she said.

Yes, of course. Policy is out of the purview of Senators...

The Father's Son Next To The Father's Author

clipped from docs.google.com All of this makes perfect sense, given that salafi reformism does constitute a movement broad enough to stretch from al-Banna to his son-in-law to Mawdudi and Qutb and, ultimately, to Tariq Ramadan. The Islamic Foundation, from its British campus with its Al-Banna Hall, has done nothing at all peculiar in publishing Mawdudi, Qutb, and Ramadan, these several intellectual stars in a single constellation. Only why did none of this, not even a trace, appear in the portrait of Ramadan in the Times magazine? It's not as if Buruma skipped over the issue of Ramadan's relation, via his grandfather, to Qutb. Buruma did pose the question, even if he satisfied himself by publishing Ramadan's remark about Grandfather al-Banna and Qutb not having known each other. Nor did Buruma lack for information of his own. In Occidentalism he discusses Qutb. He points out the Nazi influence on Qutb's thinking.

And who could miss Rousseau in the mix?

Who Could Be Against Uniting Nuclear Families?

clipped from article.nationalreview.com On the other hand, Clinton’s amendment extending the unlimited reunification of spouses and children from American citizens to green-card holders, could very well pass (perhaps with a slight delay on processing backlogged claims). The Clinton amendment is politically difficult to oppose. Who could be against uniting nuclear families? But combine unlimited spousal unification with Muslim in-marriage, and the stage is set for a future immigration and assimilation disaster. With Asian and Middle Eastern family values now in play, best let our green card holders adjust to American life, perhaps form a family here in the United States, and gain American citizenship, before extending to them a privilege heretofore reserved for American citizens alone. As they say nowadays in Norway, “integration before immigration.” Otherwise, a decade or so down the road we may find ourselves where Norway, Britain, and Israel are today.

For one, Norway of all places is starting to figure it out...

Yes, You Read That Right -- $60 Trillion

clipped from usatoday.printthis.clickability.com The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year — far more than the official $248 billion deficit — when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows. The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss — equal to $11,434 per household — is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006. Bottom line: Taxpayers are now on the hook for a record $59.1 trillion in liabilities, a 2.3% increase from 2006. That amount is equal to $516,348 for every U.S. household. By comparison, U.S. households owe an average of $112,043 for mortgages, car loans, credit cards and all other debt combined.

When W brought up the idea of Social Security and Medicare reform a while back he was hooted down by the Dems claiming we don't need to deal with it. Wow.

Hamas And The CW

clipped from www.michaeltotten.com Many observers of Hamas’ rise to power have noted that the U.S. wishes for the Hamas government to collapse under the weight of its own narcissistic radicalism and unrestrained ambition. But the U.S., UN, and EU are pumping so much money into the Palestinian territories that they’re preventing that collapse, and the ensuing recognition among Palestinians that their votes were perhaps cast unwisely. With its prolific foreign aid, the West is not just infantilizing the Palestinian people and continuing to thwart any possibility, however implausible, of a Palestinian state. It is now underwriting the emerging Palestinian-Iranian alliance.

The Cutting Edge Of (Crazed) Clarity

clipped from azure.org.il At the center of all this, of course, is Iran. A once-friendly state has embarked on an unflinching campaign, at considerable cost to its own economy, to attain the status of a global power: Through the massive infusion of money, materiel, training, and personnel to the anti-Western forces in Lebanon (Hezbollah), the Palestinian Authority (Hamas and Islamic Jihad), and the Sunni and Shi’ite insurgencies of Iraq; through its relentless pursuit of nuclear arms, long-range missiles, and a space program; through its outsized armed forces and huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons; through its diplomatic initiatives around the world; and through its ideological battle against democracy, Zionism, and the memory of the Holocaust. For the forces of Islamic extremism and political jihad, Iran has become the cutting edge of clarity.

The Insanity

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com It's not hard to guess where all the insanity must ultimately have originated: by looking at a fellow human and seeing an abstraction called "The Jew." That fantasy displaced reality when, in Friedländer's account, a charismatic demagogue met a traditionally anti-Semitic culture that was ripe for an enemy. After that, everything else became thinkable, then doable. Before the sane and the innocent understood what had happened, the real world had disappeared and Zalman Gradowski found himself shoveling out its ashes. All he could do was refuse to avert his eyes.

Bibi's Back

clipped from www.nysun.com And not only was he right, he was right for the right reasons — which is to say, not because he was ideologically opposed to any Israeli retreat from any part of "the land of Israel" (he wasn't and isn't), and not because he thought Israel should remain in Gaza forever (he didn't and doesn't), but because he thought the timing and manner of Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan was misconceived. What sensible person, two years later, can quarrel with that? The facts speak for themselves. At great economic cost and at the price of a deep inner rift in Israeli society that still has not healed, 8,000 Jewish settlers were uprooted from their homes in return for supposed benefits, none of which has materialized.

Engagement Alright

clipped from www.nytimes.com Iran’s American-educated longtime ambassador to the United Nations, Javad Zarif, has tirelessly suggested that the administration missed opportunities for improving relations and is tone-deaf to his country’s peaceful intentions. Yet it ought to be clear that just the opposite is the case. The clerical regime today is no more interested in reaching a peaceful modus vivendi with the United States than it was in the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright all but begged President Mohammad Khatami of Iran to just talk to them. Case in point: Haleh Esfandiari, an American citizen and the director of the Middle Eastern program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, has been jailed in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison since May 8. For years, she has been an articulate and determined advocate of better relations between her homeland, Iran, and her adopted country.

Fools On Junket

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Anyone who says they can speak with definitive knowledge about all of Iraq is a fool or a liar or both. A person with definitive knowledge of Iraq would have to discuss the situation in terms of 4 or more general areas of operation and then break those down even more to Battalion by Battalion areas. But even if a person was to circulate to every battalion in Iraq, by they time he finished, the situation would have changed at the battalions he visited first. This is the nature of warfare. But many members of Congress think after a five-day-junket and a few power point presentations they can make sweeping pronouncements that they understand Iraq. Which makes them fools and possibly liars.

The Delight Of Intellectuals

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com the delight of intellectuals with revolutionary movements diminishes in direct proportion to the proximity of their contact with operations. Professors of political science at the University of the Philippines, for example, may wax poetic about the Communist Party. But speak to one of the founding members of Communist urban guerilla opreations and he will drily tell you how he was ordered into a safehouse to rescue the Penthouse magazine collection of members of the central committe. One man I knew was tortured to death by the New People's Army in mountain province. They sliced the flesh off his legs until he died. His clothes and personal belongings were returned to his widow by a very high ranking party representative who claimed to have no idea what happened to the victim. How that reminds me of Hamad when he says "Alan Johnston is my friend ... I promise that we are doing our best efforts to save him". I'll bet if something happens to Johnston, Hamad will have no idea what happened

Contact

clipped from fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com I think history will judge the decision to go after the enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq as fundamentally correct because it compelled a direct contact between the opposing forces. And as is so often forgotten, one of the principal outputs of combat, aside from losses on both sides, is information. Information about how the enemy acts; his strengths and weaknesses. Information about how our own forces perform; its strengths and weaknesses. Information we would never have gotten without going after them bare-headed. The enemy has long been at war with us, watching and waiting; learning and scheming. Only lately have we declared ourselves against them -- and even so, with qualification. In Afghanistan and Iraq and in theaters all over the world we have at last begun to learn how to fight them. There's a long way to go, but the principal decision -- to take to the highway -- has been made.

Oh Brother

clipped from www.captainsquartersblog.com They were? Plame drove into the office in Langley. She traveled abroad under her own name. She helped arrange for her husband to do some fact-checking on a sensitive intelligence matter. Her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, then came home and leaked his observations to two nationally-known journalists, and then wrote his own op-ed in the New York Times under his byline. And her husband managed to list her in Who's Who, where any journalist could look up the entry -- and where Robert Novak did just that. If that's keeping an agent covert, it speaks volumes about the agency's competence during the George Tenet years. So now we have confirmation that Plame did get her cover blown. I suppose the only reason that Fitzgerald didn't bother to indict Richard Armitage for the crime was that it would have meant explaining how the CIA tried to hide its NOC asset in plain sight.

Another Red Cross Shocka

clipped from littlegreenfootballs.com International non-governmental organizations, helping mass murderers and genocidal fanatics escape justice for more than 50 years: Nazi Eichmann’s passport found in Argentina. The passport used by notorious Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann to enter Argentina in 1950 has been found by accident in an archive in Buenos Aires. The passport, still in good condition, was issued by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. Eichmann was one of the main executors of Adolf Hitler’s ‘final solution’, the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II.

The New European "Colonization"

clipped from www.frontpagemagazine.com However, I happen to think that another possibility is that Islam not only will lose the battle for Europe, but could become destroyed as a global force during this century. Maybe in some strange way, Europe needs to go through a period of colonization and de-colonization herself, to get rid of her post-colonial guilt complex? This war by Islam against Europe, the West and indeed mankind has been going on for more than 1300 years. This is the third major Jihad, the third Islamic attempt to subdue the heartland of the West. Although I cannot prove this, I have a very strong feeling that this will also be the last attempt. There will be no fourth Jihad. Either Muslims will win this time, or Islam itself will be handed a defeat and a blow so powerful that it may never recover from it. This is perhaps the longest, continuous war in human history. And it's about to be decided within the coming decades.

"Special Interests"

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Iran had also facilitated Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s flight from Afghanistan, across Iran, and guiding him to the al Qaeda camp in northern Iraq. Why would avowedly secular Iraq help an affiliate of al Qaeda? “These relations with al Qaeda started after the Kuwait invasion in 1991 because of special interests between Iraqi and al Qaeda organization.” By “Kuwaiti invasion,” he does not mean Saddam’s illegal annexation in August 1990, but the American liberation of that oil kingdom in 1991. His other phrase—“special interests”—lingers in the air. I wonder if it is simply an artifact of translation. Special interests? I ask. He smiles, then exhales smoke. “Fighting against Americans.” How did Iraq help? “We helped them by building military camps in Salman Pak, in Khos, Khalis, Yusafiya. Iraq is expert in chemical weapons. We trained them in chemical weapons. We trained them about ground fighting, too.” Apparently, they learned well.

I See Nothing!

clipped from www.frontpagemagazine.com Moreover, and contrary to the popular refrain that Iraq is a “distraction” from the true fight against terrorism, al-Qaeda has in recent years suffered serious defeats. Consider that of the operatives that bin Laden hoped to involve in his plot to attack the United States, al-Libi was captured and is now out of commission in much-maligned Guantanamo Bay; al-Rabia was killed in 2005 in Pakistan; and al-Zarqawi met his unlamented end in a June 2006 strike by the U.S. military in Diyala province. For a distraction from al-Qaeda, Iraq is proving to be remarkably on-target. Iraqis are more forthright. Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, the Iraqi commander overseeing the security plan, told the Washington Post this week that while sectarian violence is the leading problem in the country, it cannot be understood apart from al-Qaeda‘s involvement.