On Monday, both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post each published opinion articles attacking President Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

Obama and Venezuela;s Hugo Chavez. (Photo source: Huffington Post)

The LAT article, by former Dick Cheney adviser John Hannah, was entitled: “The U.S.: MIA in the Mideast.” It makes the case that despite Obama’s success in the war against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, overall his foreign policy of “retreat” has destabilized the region:

In private conversations I’ve had with Middle Eastern officials, the sense of unease and dread expressed are only more severe. Fairly or not, these leaders appear to have taken Obama’s measure and found him wanting. Their bill of indictment includes retreat from Iraq and, soon, Afghanistan; betrayal of longtime U.S. allies, especially Mubarak; indulgence of enemy regimes in Tehran and Damascus; overblown promises to end the Palestinian conflict; and a persistent failure to mount the type of credible military option that these leaders believe is necessary for addressing the region’s most urgent threat — Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

The hardening conviction that the U.S. is disengaging from the Middle East should be cause for real concern.

Hannah also attacks “the administration’s lack of strategic vision, its instinct for retreat and its complicity in the unraveling of a benevolent imperium that has for decades underwritten the region’s security.” He notes that a perception of U.S. weakness is “one that left unchecked will breed uncertainty, instability and even war.”

The Washington Post article, by columnist Jackson Diehl, declares: “Obama’s foreign initiatives have failed.” Like Hannah, Diehl questions the conventional political wisdom, which sees foreign policy as a strong card for Obama to play in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death. (more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid.

Al-Jazeera is spinning the newly released “Guantanamo files,” saying they show that dozens of enemy combatants detained at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay were innocent. But that’s not what the previously secret documents say about one high-profile detainee, Sami al-Hajj, an Al-Jazeera journalist released from Guantanamo after legal intervention by his Soros-funded lawyer and protests from human rights and press freedom groups.

The controversial allegations against this former “enemy combatant,” as detailed in this document, are being denounced by al-Hajj’s lawyer as “false and discredited allegations.”

But they show that U.S. officials suspected high-level cooperation between Al-Jazeera and al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The charges also raise serious questions about why officials of the Obama Administration are currently praising the channel and cooperating with it.

The document says about Sami Muheidine Mohamed al-Haj, known as Sami al-Hajj and Prisoner 345, “His involvement as a money courier, involvement in the transfer of weapons and leadership position within the Muslim Brotherhood, along with his numerous connections made through Al-Jazeera and his pro-jihadist propaganda activities, illustrates his intelligence value.”

The detailed Department of Defense document, posted by WikiLeaks, is designated, “SECRET / / NOFORN / / 20330404DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE HEADQUARTERS, JOINT TASK FORCE GUANTANAMO U.S. NAVAL STATION, GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA APO AE 09360” (more…)

Just who are these people in Libya trying to overthrow Qaddafi? Our government doesn’t know but Ed Schultz does. Maybe he has a secret line into the rebel camp because he knows exactly who they are: the Libyan rebels are Freedom Fighters. Last night on his show he decided that these unknown rebels are up there with George Washington and the other heroes of the American Revolution, or Martin Luther King Jr. They rank with people who have given their lives for the preservation of God-given freedoms. Schultz said:

The big question tonight that remains: will the United States or its allies arm these Libyan freedom fighters? “Reuters” also reports today U.S. officials have said that Saudi Arabia and Qatar, whose leaders despise Gadhafi, have indicated a willingness to supply Libyan rebels — I call them freedom fighters — with weapons.

Earlier this week during a press briefing Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, was asked a very simple question:

“Do you know who the opposition is, and does it matter to you?” “We’re not talking with the opposition,” Gortney responded. “We have — we would like a much better understanding of the opposition. We don’t have it. So yes, it does matter to us, and we’re trying to fill in those gaps, knowledge gaps.”

Knowledge gaps, that’s political double talk for ” I have no idea,” Maybe the Admiral should ask Ed Schultz, because he believes himself to be the expert.

On Tuesday Admiral James Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander, said in testimony before Congress that U.S. intelligence suggested there may be “flickers” of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah in the rebels.

(more…)

The Washington Post has published massive amounts of secret intelligence material in the interests, they say, of improving US national security. The two authors, Dana Priest and William Arkin, complain about a national security enterprise that has grown by leaps and bounds since 9/11. The reveal in detail the firms working for the US intelligence community including their location, contracts, and work subjects, whether border security, cyber-security or counter proliferation.

There are two common explanations for the story. First, it is juicy story. It has lots of secret information. And for two reporters, pursuing a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, well isn’t this what reporters do? The second explanation: their view is that the national security establishment represented by the $75 billion intelligence community and its network of firms, organizations and contractors is not serving the American people, that it is bloated, redundant and need of serious downsizing. But all, mind you, to make our security better.

There may be a third explanation. It may be they think little if any of this intelligence work is necessary. Nearly a decade ago, on October 12, 2002, William Arkin, the co-author of the article, spoke at the Naval War College. One key part of his talk is nearly identical to the thesis of the Post article.  He said: “More than 30 billion of our tax dollars each year go towards government generated intelligence information. We had, and have, a CIA and an intelligence community that has a fantastic history of failure, that is mostly blind to what is going on in the world, that seems to know nothing and at the same time is so bombarded and overwhelmed with stimuli from its millions of receptors it can hardly sense what is happening.”

Arkin goes on in his 2002 speech to blame America for the terrorist attacks of 9/11.  He says our military prowess forced our adversaries to use attacks against our vulnerable infrastructure, such as airplanes or trains because they could not successfully fight our military. And he says our support for Gulf autocracies and stationing troops there gave cause for the attacks of 9/11. The implied solution is very simple: stop supporting harsh regimes, withdraw our forces from the Gulf and terrorism disappears.

(more…)

Libya has apparently decided that, if they’re going to have a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, they’re going to own it. So in between using the UNHRC to spread antisemitic organ harvesting libels, they’ve dispatched a ship in the direction of Gaza. This is actually the second time in three years that they’ve tried to break the Israeli blockade, the intention being to establish a pipeline between Hamas and their Tehran sponsors and to build an Iranian port on the Mediterranean Sea. Because the Iranians, they’re humanitarians too.

When Israel intercepted the Turkish flotilla two months ago, it took five or six news cycles before the media’s beatific unarmed activists were proven to be lunatic death-worshiping jihadists. By then the anti-Israel narrative had already hardened, though Reuters gamely kept trying to hide the evidence and the New York Times continued hyperventilating about how “angry Israeli commandos” turned a “ship of protesters into a bloodbath” – just in case.

Now there’s this Libyan ship Amalthea, which may or may not end up reaching Israel. If it does, and if there’s a confrontation, the media coverage won’t exactly swing wildly in Israel’s direction. Instead you’ll see the same mostly lame attempts to whitewash the same mostly pathological jihadists. Except in this case there’s already tape on the whole lunatic death-worshiping thing, courtesy of an Al Jazeera interview with one of the passengers:

Here then, is the evidence that the media will be ignoring tomorrow, today: (more…)

As an American citizen who has spent seven years fighting against and promoting awareness of the threat of libel tourism to American free speech rights, I am writing in support of the S 3518, the “Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act,” or the “SPEECH Act,” now before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The SPEECH Act marks a critical step in the defense of American national security and the freedoms of expression that form the cornerstone of our democracy. The Act protects these First Amendment guarantees by guarding authors and publishers from enforcement of frivolous foreign libel judgments from countries that do not have the United States’ strong free speech protections. Such suits, which have been pressed with increasing frequency worldwide over the past several years, have been used as a weapon to silence American researchers, scientists, reporters, bloggers and others.

American writers and media outlets have been sued for libel in England, Ireland, Canada, Australia, Brazil, France, Singapore, and others. They were forced into expensive lawsuits abroad, staining their reputations, discouraging research in their fields, and depriving the American public of vital information. (more…)

The important issue prompted by the Rolling Stone article isn’t Gen. McChrystal’s defiance or rank insubordination. It’s the announced deadline for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, an insane move that guarantees defeat, as well as other war-losing moves. Would you ally yourself with foreign forces that you know are going to exit, and the day they do, you know you and your family will be beheaded?

All the talk about whether Obama firing McChrystal is a sideshow important to the Leftist media because they want Obama to look tough. But bad war-running from the oval office will continue a path to defeat. The real question is whether we are going to stop telegraphing our intentions to the enemy and get serious about the enemy.

The administration won’t even define the enemy beyond saying al Qaeda. Al Qaeda? What’s al Qaeda? A bunch of guys in caves who drill in the desert? Is that our only enemy? If we eliminate them, the war is won? Who does the administration think they are kidding? The real enemy is a religious philosophy held by extremist Muslims which says anyone who doesn’t believe as they do should yield or die. Yes, not every Moslem believes that. But so what? (more…)

After more than 20 agonizing months in exile at an undisclosed location, Mayor Ed Koch’s runaway mind made a daring escape from its captor, Obama-mania, this week and has at last come home safe and sound. At 85, the former New York mayor’s mind—a little haggard, a little road-weary—nevertheless appeared to be in full control of its former lucidity after a long stint in captivity to the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s New World Order.

Before discussing their safe reunion with the Mayor’s body, let’s recall the day the Kochian faculties took their abrupt and surprising leave of absence, stunning New Yorkers who still harbored fond memories of their Greenwich Village bachelor mayor. It was September 9, 2008 when Mayor Koch—after supporting Hillary Clinton throughout her failed primary—wrote this:

So the issue for me is who will best protect and defend America. I have concluded that the country is safer in the hands of Barack Obama, leader of the Democratic Party and protector of the philosophy of that party.

That was Day One of captivity for the mayoral mind. The Koch endorsement of Obama was not solely founded on defending America from the threat of terrorism, as it had been, for example, when he endorsed George W. Bush in 2004, stating then “the overwhelming issue for me was international Islamic terrorism, including al-Qaeda.”

No, on September 9, 2008 Koch’s mind already displayed significant traces of Stockholm Syndrome support for Obama’s full-fledged progressive agenda, along with what would become the liberal’s fail-safe prescription, a strong injection of Sarah-phobia: (more…)

Judging by the exceptions he recently proposed for altering the Miranda warnings, even Attorney General Eric Holder believes that “the Constitution is not a suicide pact,” a truth first stated in 1949 by Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, and made new again in our time.

Meanwhile over in Britain, this week they have a new Prime Minister.  They also have a Queen.  They have Big Ben.  The have, in Chelsea, a world-class soccer club owned by a Russian oligarch.  They have an honorable tradition of tolerance, free speech and fair play.  But they do not have a constitution.

Recently, though, a British judge, John Mitting, signed a suicide pact between his nation and violent Islamic extremists when he ruled that two Pakistani men, one a known al-Qaeda operative, could not be deported due to the possibility of their being harmed if they were sent home.

The private reaction of many British citizens has been fury and dismay.  From the right-wing newspapers, the same. Let us for this story turn instead to the left-wing, “insurgent”-accommodating Guardian newspaper, just to assure readers new to Big Journalism that this is not a “stretcher”: (more…)

Over a month ago, I warned that the New York Times was about to go public with a list of American operatives covertly working in Afghanistan and Pakistan providing Force Protection for our troops.  Yesterday, in a front page article the New York Times admitted that it did in fact have said list in their possession.

The Times is withholding some information about the contractor network, including some of the names of agents working in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I believe in giving credit where credit is due.  For not releasing those names, I commend the New York Times.  Even more heartening is the fact that it appears that the Times is warming to what I have dubbed, the “Petreaus Perspective.”  It is General Petraeus’s unique view of the battlespace melded with a combination of traditional military and outside-the-box approaches to securing victory in Afghanistan.  In short, General Petraeus appreciates that there is a lot more to winning against al-Qaeda and the Taliban than just bombs and bullets.

In that spirit, General Petraeus signed off on a new program in January of 2009.  It comprised  former Central Intelligence Agency employees and former Special Operations personnel willing to risk their lives in Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to secure intelligence that could protect the lives of American and Coalition troops. (more…)

The media’s reaction to the Faisal Shahzad story was quite telling.  It began with many clamoring for the idea that the would-be bomber had to be a rightwing nutjob.  It ended with many  drawing a curiously sympathetic picture of an enemy of everything we believe in.

As the narrative went, Shahzad fell on tough times due to the recession and grew ever more insular.  So he picked up the Koran and devoted himself to Islam, and then up and left for Pakistan to train with al-Qaeda.  Surely this is the natural reaction to being short the month’s mortgage payment.  I find it more plausible that it was the plight of the New York Mets that drove him to attempt to blow up a car bomb in Times Square.

Which is to say that the rationalization by the MSM for why Muslims are driven to carry out terrorist attacks is utterly incoherent.  Equally as dumbfounding is the MSM’s tortuous attempt to humanize those who would carry out the most inhuman of acts. (more…)

Late this afternoon,  Lt. Colonel Oliver North confirmed that Taliban leader and Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Mohammed Omar has been captured. The exclusive news of Omar’s capture was broken by Big Government and Big Journalism Monday evening.

According to Colonel North, Omar was picked up in Karachi on March 27th by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) who placed him under house arrest in what they call “community care.”

Per North’s sources, “[Omar] has since been transferred to a secret ISI lock-up under the Pakistani euphemism: “institutional care.”

North goes on to state, “According to several reports, all of this information was confirmed to U.S. officials by a senior Pakistani military officer ‘several weeks ago.’” A fact also broken in Monday’s Big Government exclusive.

Last weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton created a “diplomatic firestorm” when she indicted Pakistani cooperation with the U.S. in the hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives. Said Clinton, “I believe somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda is (sic), where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is (sic)…”

North hopes the Secretary was “dissembling,” because intelligence sources here in the U.S. and Afghanistan have informed him that Pakistani officials “know exactly where Mullah Omar is: in the hands of the ISI.” Driving the point home, North added, “This should not be news to the U.S. Secretary of State.”

(more…)

Common Sense: Obama, Karzai & the Stench

Washington, DC – The two presidents – Karzai and Obama – were on stage together in the East Room of the White House for forty minutes on May 12. They each talked about how they had differed in the past and how committed they are to going forward together. Both leaders expressed great hope in their mutual “quest for peace” and the forthcoming “Peace Jirga” or “reconciliation talks” to be held in Kabul at the end of this month. Neither leader – nor any of the journalists present – mentioned a “cease fire” or the unseen skunk at their picnic: Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, secretive head of Afghanistan’s Taliban movement, is one of the most wanted men on Earth. His sanguinary regime sheltered Osama bin-Laden’s Al Qaeda as it prepared for the 9-11-01 attacks. The U.S. government’s “Rewards for Justice” program has a standing offer of “up to 10 million dollars” for information resulting in his capture or confirmed death because he “represents a continuing threat to America and her allies.” Now, thanks to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Mullah Omar may be a key factor in the upcoming “Peace Talks” trumpeted by Messer’s Obama and Karzai at their joint White House press conference. (more…)

Kandahar Province, Afghanistan
25 March 2010

Dogs have been trained to carry bombs to attack enemies for decades.  The Soviets and others have used dogs as low-tech smart bombs.  Yet canine platoons likely would rebel if they caught scent they were being duped to die.

Today, more sophisticated people employ men (mostly) to deliver bombs in Afghanistan.  Gullible souls are selected, conditioned, trained and deployed.  Malleable minds are identified then loaded with psychic software that uses their minds to create a vision.  Evil persons of superior intellect identify the raw material—that raw material might be an engineer from a stable family—and trains them to fetch myths. (more…)