- Peaceful Taliban member kills reporter:

“The Taliban are not happy with our reporting,” said Hamidullah, the Voice of America coordinator for northwestern Pakistan, who uses only one name. “They consider it propaganda against them, and they are constantly giving threats against our stringers.” Asked about the military, he answered, “The pressure is always there.”

No word from MMfA on the “desecration” of the reporter’s body through death.

- The reason why MMfA manufactured fake antisemitic cartoon rage:

The Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank closely aligned with the White House, is embroiled in a dispute with several major Jewish organizations over statements on Israel and charges that some center staffers have used anti-Semitic language to attack pro-Israel Americans.

Propagandists stick together!

- Gingrich fires back at liberal media:

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Media Matters appears fixated on a mission to try and silence the free speech of Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch, while also engaging upon a campaign to somehow damage her with CNN. True to their Leftist origins, it never seems enough for them to disagree, or even take offense, at someone, or something, they invariably resort to attempting to silence them. Such thuggish tactics have no place in media, least of all in America. Perhaps they are mis-named.

Now, they’d like their readers to believe that somehow Rush Limbaugh has rejected Loesch’s comments. But that’s simply not true.

Dana Loesch’s comments, too extreme for Rush Limbaugh, put her out on the fringe where CNN should never go.

Certainly, Limbaugh has his own opinion, one that MMfA would likely desire to shut down every bit as much as they now seem intent on silencing Loesch. However, Limbaugh also took to task the very type of over-reaction in which Media Matters is now engaged, over-reaction that was Loesch’s original point. Evidently, MMfA is too blinded by their mission to realize Limbaugh may as well have been speaking directly to them, given their current misguided efforts aimed at Loesch. Emphasis mine.

Well, there’s a video, nobody knows how old it is, of some U.S. Marines urinating on the bodies of Taliban combatants in Afghanistan. Peed on them. And of course it’s Marines. It violated the rules. There’s no defense of this. The overreaction of this is nuts, but still it happened.

It’s worth noting that, while obsessively attacking Loesch in post after post, they’ve yet to acknowledge the comments of Representative Alan West (Fl).

I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.

MMfA also ignored the scores of other conservatives who’ve said the same, some beyond, Loesch’s original point on reaction.

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So, the other day on her local St. Louis radio talk show, our own Dana Loesch said the kind of thing that just a few years ago was celebrated by the mainstream media as the perfect example of “brave and edgy dissent” — “the highest form of patriotism,” and “the kind of free speech our men and women in uniform are fighting for!”

Then Barack Obama became president.

The real mistake Dana made, however, was two-fold. First, she forgot that she’s a conservative and second, she forgot that dissent is only applauded and defended in MSM circles when you defame the troops, not defend them.

Here’s what Dana said:

“Now we have a bunch of progressives that are talking smack about our military because there were marines caught urinating on corpses, Taliban corpses. Can someone explain to me if there’s supposed to be a scandal that someone pees on the corpse of a Taliban fighter? Someone who, as part of an organization, murdered over 3,000 Americans? I’d drop trou and do it too. That’s me though. I want a million cool points for these guys. Is that harsh to say? Come on people, this is a war. What do people think this is?”

As a response, a number of left-wing media outlets, most notably Politico, have drummed up more phony indignation than they’ve ever been able to summon against anything the monstrous Taliban have done to our troops or to innocent Afghans.

Here’s Politico’s Dylan Byers doing his passive-aggressive best to pretend that what Dana said is some kind of scandal or story and get her fired at CNN:

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The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has published a report accusing Twitter, the popular social media service, of failing to explain its “indirect support for online jihad” by providing communication services to international terror groups, in apparent violation of U.S. law.

The report, by MEMRI executive director Stephen Stalinsky, notes that several terror groups–including Hizbullah, the Taliban, and Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabaab Al-Mujahedeen–maintain accounts on Twitter. Members of Congress and the have encouraged Twitter to act against these accounts, and the State Department is reported to be investigating them, but Twitter has not acted and refuses to provide comment to the media.

Hizbullah's Al-Manar News on Twitter (Source: MEMRI)

Stalinsky writes:

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From the DC:

In an attempt to release the news of Osama bin Laden’s death quickly late Sunday night, MSNBC correspondent Norah O’Donnell accidentally reported on Twitter that “Obama” had been “killed” instead.

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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.

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Does anyone on the left understand right and wrong? Do any of them understand that some things humans do are morally reprehensible or is everything relative? If we could find one that understands it, it certainly won’t be Colman McCarthy. We can say this because this week the former Washington Post columnist and current director for the farcical Washington-based “Center for Teaching Peace” said that he “admires” people who “join armies” and, revealing his moral ignorance, he said he even admires those that join the Taliban’s “army.”

In a recent Washington Post piece meant to convince people that the U.S. Army is evil and that ROTC programs should be eliminated from our nation’s universities, McCarthy made the startling admission of his admiration for the Taliban’s murderous minions. And, like most leftists, he tried to dress up his admiration for immoral actions by cloaking it in the left’s favorite vehicle for misdirection: nuance.

Like most leftists McCarthy tries to split hairs saying that he isn’t “anti-soldier” by being anti-U.S. Army. He says he “admires soldiers” but just hates their work. Of course, it isn’t possible to love the troops and hate everything they do, but that is a leftist’s illogic writ large.

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Just in time for Christmas, Muslim terrorists deployed a new weapon: the Burqa.

But few in the American Make-Believe Media seem impressed. In fact, coverage of the Burqa Bomber by Reuters and CBS News was dwarfed by that of traditional media giants Tehran Times and Malaysia Sun.

Yes, this little story apparently has no legs, journalistically speaking - female and child suicide terrorists are so yesterday. Where it was buried (such as NY Times and Bloomberg’s Business section), reporting centered on the gender of the attacker and the interruption in food distribution at the UN food center — with only passing mention of what she was wearing. How fashionably gauche!

No, this is not a terrorist fashion commentary. What’s missing in the paucity of reporting or news commentary is the inevitable twist on terrorism. A burqa is purposefully an identity tent, obscuring the wearer’s body, face and hair, revealing only the eyes. Originally meant to shield women from lecherous Muslim men, it now serves officially as a weapon of war.

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The tragic death of Scottish aid worker Linda Norgrove has had one positive spin-off: it has given the British press a chance to dust off the old clichés about the US military, which have lain idle since the last good “incompetent gung-ho cowboy yanks shooting up our boys” incident during the opening days of the invasion of Iraq.  It’s especially timely since the high casualties expected to accompany the summer fighting season have failed to materialize, and continual editorials lamenting our seemingly endless commitment to an un-winnable war are redundant now that the new coalition government has announced that British troops won’t be there in strength beyond 2015 (stand by, however, for the “Why are we cutting and running/ Was it all in vain?” memes to be deployed as the situation, and reader appetite, require).

Some of the most interesting coverage of the failed – sorry “bungled” – Norgrove mission –has come from the schizophrenic Daily Telegraph.  While the more liberally-inclined sectors of the UK press take a consistently skeptical tone in their reporting on the US, the ostensibly conservative Telegraph finds itself in a difficult position: ideologically inclined to support the beacon of global capitalism, and enthusiastic in the championing of individual liberty over the nanny state, pro-Americanism should be a gut reflex to the Telegraph.  Yet stories  continue to appear which are apparently written by some grumpy hack in a basement who came of age in World War Two when the yanks were “overpaid, over-sexed and over here,” and cut his teeth reporting President Eisenhower supposedly stabbing British Prime Minister Anthony Eden in the back over the 1956 Suez fiasco.   And it is this latter tone that is wont to manifest itself when the US military screws up – sorry “cocks up, old chap” – and the Telegraph pounces. (more…)

In May, we exclusively broke the story that Taliban leader, Mullah Omar had been taken into the custody of Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Since that time, there has been multiple reporting that supports our exclusive, including Colonel Oliver North and Afghan Television.

And while Newsweek nibbled around the edges of the story two weeks after us, they have now come out with a new article stating:

Taliban sources say Pakistan uses catch-and-release tactics to keep insurgent leaders in line. All told, the ISI has picked up some 300 Taliban commanders and officials, the sources say. Before being freed, the detainees are subjected to indoctrination sessions to remind them that they owe their freedom and their absolute loyalty to Pakistan, no matter what. As one example, the sources mention Abdul Qayum Zakir, who spent five years at Guantánamo and is now the group’s top military commander. They say the Pakistanis detained him and about a dozen other Taliban commanders and shadow governors earlier this year, soon after having picked up the insurgency’s No. 2, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, only to set them free several days later after making sure their priorities meshed with Pakistan’s.

Some leading Taliban even suspect that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader and symbol of their jihad, may also be in ISI custody. He has appeared in no videos and issued no verifiable audio messages or written statements since he disappeared into the Kandahar mountains on the back of Baradar’s motorcycle in late 2001. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the ISI arrested us all in one day,” says a former cabinet minister. “We are like sheep the Pakistanis can round up whenever they want.

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*** Updated and clarified

In a recent post, respected milblogger Bill Roggio of The Long War Journal had this to say about Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s status, a story we have been discussing since May:

Mullah Omar is thought to be in a safehouse in Karachi, under the protection of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.

This comes more than two months after Mr. Roggio made the following statement on his Twitter account:

Since I have been asked this quite I (sic) bit, there is no indication that Taliban supremo Mullah Omar has been captured.

We believe we have a semantic difference with Roggio: “captured” or “protected,” why hasn’t the U.S. gotten access to Omar?   (more…)

DAVID GREGORY:  Our guest today on Meet the Press, CIA Director Leon Panetta.  Welcome, sir.

PANETTA:  Good Morning, Tim.  I heard you’d passed away. Glad you’re back.

GREGORY:  Uh, thanks.  How do you see the Afghan struggle playing out?

PANETTA:  Well, my wife insists on a wall covering, but I prefer a rug, say a Turkestan Kunduz in the Persian style.  We may need a mediator.

GREGORY:  Sir, would you embed journalists in CIA special ops teams?

PANETTA:  I resent that question, Tim.  I’m a happily married man.

GREGORY:  Sorry.  Do you employ Muslims at Langley, sir?

PANETTA:  I do, Tim.  I chose muslin with cheery Wide Ruffles® for my office windows.  I also ordered muslin backdrops for videographic contrast in our interrogation rooms.

GREGORY:  The ”ticking time bomb” scenario, sir. You capture a terrorist after he’s hidden a nuke in New York.  Now what? (more…)

Counterinsurgency – “COIN” – is the military term for nation-building.  The media throw it around like loose political change.  But it’s useful not only in describing President Obama’s wavering policy in Afghanistan.  As General McChrystal’s experience with Rolling Stone proves, the politically-activist media are an insurgent force that has to be dealt with in order to enable American voters to understand what is going on in the war.

Let us belabor a metaphor.  If the liberal media are the Taliban, how shall the counterinsurgency be conducted?

The Pentagon’s strategy has to gel around the classic anti-guerilla tactic taught at the JFK Special Forces School at Fort Bragg.

General Stanley McChrystal and his “Team America” staff apparently forgot the lessons many of them were taught there.  They apparently believed, to predictable result, that if you’re the coolest spec ops guys, everyone will automatically treat you as such no matter what you say or do.

A few years ago, I observed a part of the Green Beret school’s graduation exercise.  For reasons long forgotten, it’s called “Robin Sage.” The principal objective, for “A-teams” of would-be grads, is to be inserted into the “Peoples Republic of Pineland,” find a designated guerrilla group (comprised of former SEALs, Green Beanies and such), earn their confidence and begin to “train” them.  The “guerrillas” don’t make it easy on them. (more…)

One month ago we broke the exclusive story of Mullah Omar’s capture.

Additional confirmations have come from The Jawa Report, Oliver North, Milblogger Baba Tim, Blackfive.net, and even The Nation.

Then, two weeks ago, Newsweek published a report that the Taliban is in serious turmoil because Mullah Omar is MIA.

Today, Iranian State Television reports that the Pakistanis are indeed harboring Mullah Omar.

Mullah Abdul Salam Hanafi, a former senior member of the Taliban and governor of central Urozgan Province under the Taliban regime, is quoted as saying:

Pakistani security forces are harboring the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Omar in Karachi.

As the tempo of Omar stories increases, so does the pressure on Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), as well as the Obama administration and the CIA to deal with the Omar issue.

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On Tuesday, May 18, in busy rush hour traffic, a suicide bomber drove his Toyota minivan, packed with 1650 lbs. of explosives, alongside a NATO convoy in Kabul, Afghanistan and detonated.  Eighteen people were killed, including five American soldiers and one Canadian.  Forty-seven others were wounded.

According to an NYPD Shield Intelligence brief, it was the deadliest attack on foreign forces operating in Kabul this year. The Taliban claimed responsibility.

2010-05-18-NYPD-SuicideBombingInKabul –

The very next day, an estimated thirty to forty Taliban fighters launched a brazen, pre-dawn assault on U.S.-run Bagram Airbase, thirty miles north of Kabul.  Though sixteen Taliban insurgents (four of whom were intended to be used as suicide bombers) were killed, at the end of the spectacular attack one U.S. contractor had been left dead and nine to twelve service members were wounded.

The Taliban took credit once again and claimed that seven suicide bombers had detonated at Bagram’s gates while thirty other fighters slipped inside; a report the U.S. military flatly denies.  But did the U.S. military have advance information that the suicide bombing attacks were imminent?  According to sources in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the answer appears to be yes.

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The Power Line blog has a post this morning on a surprising honest review in the Washington Post of the new book, Necessary Secrets. From the Power Line post:

The review is by Leonard Downie, Jr., who was the Post’s executive editor until 2008. Downie is obviously uneasy with Schoenfeld’s view that editors and reporters at the New York Times should be prosecuted and imprisoned for revealing two of the Bush administration’s antiterrorism programs – the warrantless intercept program for monitoring calls to the U.S. by foreign terrorists and the program though which the international financial transactions of terrorists were secretly tracked.

The exposure of these programs by the fearless reporters and editors at the Times unquestionably contributed to the prolonged detention of its reporter, David Rohde, because we lost the tools for finding to a kidnap victim in the tribal areas of Pakistan.  For that very reason the Times was forced to find “outside the box” options to try and gain Rohde’s freedom and apparently one of those options involved hiring civilian contractors who had contacts and access into the denied areas of the North West Frontier. Here is a quote from the first story the Times published on the subject: (more…)