This Sunday morning, on CNN’s State of the Union, Candy Crowley attempted to “fact-check” Sen. Rick Santorum for his statement to the Republican Jewish Coalition on Dec. 7 that President Barack Obama had pursued a foreign policy of “appeasement.”

Her apparent intent–as with other so-called “fact-checking” efforts–was to attack what has been, and remains, an accurate and effective summary of Obama’s approach to hostile regimes.

Crowley must have thought she had Santorum cornered. After all, President Obama’s stern response to Santorum on Dec. 8 had provided a frisson of delight to liberals like Chris Matthews of MSNBC, who declared: “President Obama’s fierce defense against Republican charges of appeasement proves once again that if you underestimate this president, you may do so at your peril.”

But Santorum stood his ground–and then some.

The video and full transcript of their exchange is below. What emerges is Crowley’s adherence to pro-Obama talking points and her eagerness–like much of the rest of the mainstream media–to be impressed when Obama talks tough against his opponents, regardless of whether or not his response is true or complete. She is surprised when Santorum turns the tables and “fact-checks” her false assertions about Obama’s record.

CROWLEY: Let me move you along to something that you said last Wednesday at a Republican Jewish conference, talking about the President, his foreign policy. I’m going to play that for our viewers as well as something that the President said in response.

SANTORUM (VIDEO): This president, for every thug and hooligan, for every radical Islamist, he has had nothing but appeasement.

OBAMA (VIDEO): Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top Al Qaeda leaders who have been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement.

CROWLEY: Appeasement? I mean this is a president who has killed more terrorists than were killed in the Bush administration. He took out Osama bin Laden. He has launched more drone attacks against terrorist targets than the Bush administration did, and yet you accuse him of appeasement–which is a very loaded word, as you know, toward terrorists.

SANTORUM: It’s a very accurate word. What President Obama was doing was continuing existing Bush policies with respect to Al Qaeda and respect to Afghanistan. I was talking about the new threats that have come up under his [Obama’s] administration. And at every single turn the President has appeased those who would do us harm. Let’s talk about President Ahmadinejad and the Iranians who are the biggest threat to Israel and to our national security. He has done nothing but appease the Iranians to say that he will negotiate, in fact did negotiate, tried to negotiate without preconditions–

CROWLEY: He imposed sanctions, did he not?

SANTORUM: He imposed weak sanctions. He opposed tough sanctions– (more…)

Oh…if you didn’t think this was an interesting story before, you can certainly see it now.

Two weeks ago Politico reported that vice president Joe Biden said tea party Republicans “acted like terrorists” in the debt talks. Since then, the activist old media has been relatively silent on the story.

This is a big ‘effing deal.

This White House, that preached civility, has shown it can be brutal and viscous towards average citizens. President Obama has called Republicans his “enemies” and suggested his supporters take guns to a knife fight. Representatives of the administration have suggested they “destroy” and “kill” Mitt Romney and “punch back twice as hard” against political opponents.

Barack Obama denied Biden used those words when he spoke with tea party activist Ryan Rhodes. Obama was not in the private meeting, but he has gone on the record and taken a position. He said it did not happen. Certainly, it’s interesting that the media has not asked Obama about this, a private citizen has to bring up this issue and pull a denial out of the media’s Dear Leader.

Politico is standing solidly behind its story and has now taken the time to explain how the story came together.

(more…)

What a waste of 60 Minutes. Actually, it was more like 42 minutes, but Kroft gave us nothin.’

I will say this was exactly as I predicted, but that would be way too easy. The activist old media is easier to predict these days than a Laker loss to the Mavericks.

Every question I said Kroft would not ask, was not asked.

Was it an assassination or capture mission?

Why all the different versions coming out of the White House?

Are you glad the CIA water boarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed to get the intel? You don’t get the intel, you don’t get bin Laden.

Secret prisons and Gitmo? Not asked.

(more…)

At least, it says as much in the headline:

Eleven people–including several officials of the United Nations–were killed in Afghanistan today, and ABC News is reporting the killings may have been motivated by the burning of a Koran by Florida pastor Terry Jones.

Jones is the Gainesville, Florida pastor who made headlines for his plans to burn a Koran last September in protest of the planned Muslim community center near Ground Zero.

Last month, Jones presided over a “trial” which found the Koran “guilty,” and another pastor soaked the book in kerosene and set it on fire. The Afghanistan killings followed a protest march against Jones in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. According to ABC News, “among the dead were U.N. staff and security guards who were trying to protect the staff.”

For his part, Jones has expressed no remorse …

ABC’s headline wasn’t much different.

Terry Jones must have the longest arms of anyone on the planet to have been able to reach all the way to Afghanistan from Florida. Dude apparently had his Wheaties that morning because after burning the Koran, he Go-Go-Gadgeted his arms halfway around the world and riled up a completely peaceful protest of totally peaceful people. His arms then apparently took knives from the peaceful protesters and thumbed it to the Afghan UN office where he stabbed and beheaded people. Why? What motive? Stop asking silly questions.

Is there a finder’s fee associated with turning stuff like this into the “Guinness Book of World Records?”

(more…)

On Friday night, in the Israeli town of Itamar, two Palestinian terrorists broke into a house and murdered five members of the family who lived there. We are talking about the slaughter, in cold blood, of a father, a mother, and three children, including slitting the throat of a three-month-old baby girl.

The Fogel family

In response Israelis did not take to the streets attacking Palestinian passersby. Nor did they burn cars, break windows, loot, or the usual response we see from the Arab street. No, what the Israeli government did is a thousand times worse. Or at least it is in the eyes of the vaunted New York Times.

Israel has decided in the face of barbarism to build. Yes, that’s right. Build. Not concentration camps or torture rooms, not even military bases, but houses.

In the eyes of the New York Times this is a sin of gargantuan proportions. A newspaper that isn’t even able to describe the act of killing innocent children as terror sees the building of houses as the main impetus to the non-existent “Peace Process.”

“Israel said Sunday it has approved building hundreds of settler homes after five members of an Israeli family — including three children — were knifed to death as they slept in a West Bank settlement over the weekend.

The attack and the government’s response threatened to drive Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking even further out of reach. Israel, which blames the attack on Palestinian militants, is liable to set aside an emerging peace initiative it planned to propose, while the planned construction of new settler homes deepened Palestinian mistrust.”

Of course, killing children doesn’t deepen Israeli mistrust, or shouldn’t because clearly Israel is the only side culpable in the ongoing conflict.

That isn’t enough, of course, for the New York Times; it has to go out of its way to demonize those killed while absolving the killers of guilt. The family killed is referred to as “some of Israel’s most radical settlers,” yet the animals who killed them are members of a mostly defunct militant group that sometimes takes credit for attacks they didn’t commit.

(more…)

Kandahar, Afghanistan
15 March 2010

In David Galula’s 1964 book, Counterinsurgency Warfare, THEORY AND PRACTICE, he states:

“The ideal situation for the insurgent would be a large, land-locked country, shaped like a blunt-tipped star, with jungle-covered mountains along the borders and scattered swamps along the plains, in a temperate zone with a large and dispersed rural population and a primitive economy.”

Mr. Galula described Afghanistan almost perfectly.  Instead of jungle-covered mountains are some of the most extreme folds on Planet Earth: The “abode of snow,” the Himalaya.  Afghan elevations dwarf Mount Rainier, and make the great Colorado Rockies look like the Pygmy Snow Hills. Meanwhile, down in Kandahar and Helmand Provinces, Galula’s “swamps” are the “Green Zones,” where most of the current fighting occurs.

Yet the experienced Mr. Galula omitted a crucial factor describing the Afghan war: A heavily armed, warring amalgam of peoples, some of whose national sport and pastime is guerrilla war. British officer John Masters variously described in “Bugles and a Tiger: My life in the Gurkhas” that life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for Afghans includes vendettas, guerrilla warfare and lots of guns. (more…)

No one fully understood how corrupted the American military had become by the corrosive influence of “political correctness” — which more properly should be call “fascism of the mind,” since it seeks to control thought by controlling speech — until the “Soldier of Allah,” Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, pulled a gun and killed thirteen American soldiers at Ft. Hood in Texas last fall.

And how did the Army react?  With the same supine, spineless cowardice that characterizes most contemporary government institutions, including those tasked with protecting Americans.  In the immediate aftermath of the murders, a disgraceful general named George Casey publicly fretted:

And frankly, I am worried — not worried, not worried, but I’m concerned — that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers and I’ve asked our army leaders to be on the look out for that. it would be a shame — as great a tragedy as this was — it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.

Well, yes — think of how much more effective a fighting force we would have had in World War II if, when Germany declared war on the U.S. four days after Pearl Harbor, had we reached out to the National Socialist German Workers Party community here at home and affirmatively made them officers in the Third Army.  Think of the crack, Bund-approved German translators we would have had!

Well, General Casey: how do you like your precious “diversity” now?  From Fox News: (more…)

I’ve interviewed many celebrities, politicians and sports stars over the years. I’ve grilled George Soros, been threatened by Mike Tyson and had fun with Jason Alexander. I’ve never interviewed a President of the United States, but I’d welcome the opportunity and the responsibility. Who wouldn’t? During his first year in office, Barack Obama did 158 “exclusive” interviews. I don’t know how you do 158 “exclusives,” but basically that means he sat down, one-on-one with everybody from Katie Couric to Al Jazeera. Al Roker never got an exclusive, but there’s plenty of time this new year to make that happen.

Since many people have gotten on that “exclusive” list, I’d like to give it a shot. We can do it when he comes to Las Vegas, or I’d foot the bill to fly to his place in D.C. to make it happen. If the President wants the questions in advance, I’d tell him to read this column, I’ll put some of them here. I’ve never been one to put questions in writing before I do an interview, certainly not for the person I’m interviewing, and I’ve never really even done it for myself, so this is rather unique for me to put this much planning into an interview.

But if I had fifteen minutes with the President, I’d ask him some question that he’s probably never been asked by my friends in the activist old media who have actually gotten the opportunity to talk to him and pretty much wasted it. So, here goes, my questions for the President: (more…)

One of the first things that Barack Obama did after being swept into office on the wings of “hopenchange” was to sign an executive order that would close the terrorist detainee facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Obama gave a one-year deadline after which, he triumphantly promised us, the facility would be closed. Well, we are at one year plus ten days after the signing of the order and Gitmo is still open. Yet few stories expressing outrage about this lapsed promise have made the rounds in the Old Media.

On January 22, 2009, Obama signed the Executive Order that gravely asserted that Gitmo would be closed “no later than 1 year from the date of this order.” That was January 22, 2009. It is now February 3, 2010. I’d say a year and ten days after the order was signed just might constitute more than “no later than one year,” wouldn’t you?

Naturally, last year when Obama signed this order the Old Media covered it quite heavily. It was big news and was represented as an example of Obama’s fulfilling a campaign promise. All one need do is type “close Guantanamo executive order” into Google and page after page of Old Media coverage of the signing of the EO will be discovered. (more…)