Rightank

It isn’t hard to understand why many Americans distrust government officials.  Take the recent case of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (”DIA”) stonewalling attempts by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, to obtain thousands of documents and tape recordings of the Hussein regime:

“WHERE WAS THE NUCLEAR material transported to?” asks an aide to Saddam Hussein, in a taped conversation released last week. He answers his own question: “A number of them were transported out of Iraq.” This provocative snippet is part of 12 hours of taped exchanges between Saddam Hussein and his advisers. The tapes were found in Iraq after the war and were released last week by their American translator. The tapes are authentic. And they are seemingly of little interest to the U.S. government. A spokesman for John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence (DNI), downplayed their importance: “Analysts from the CIA and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that, while fascinating from a historical perspective, the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq’s weapons programs.”

The Weekly Standard’s editorial scathingly decries the DCI’s intention to lock up the documents until further notice.  What good reason, particularly if the documents are stale, is there that would prevent the DCI handing over the documents to Rep. Hoekstra and in short course thereafter to the American public?

Two reasons come to mind: power and prewar not postwar analysis.  First, the DCI is trying to define its turf amongst the different Washington bureaucracies.  The DCI and Negroponte want to take credit for any big nugget of information obtained from the tapes or documents.  Because much of the information has not been looked at, they want to preserve their bureaucratic stamp on the Hussein documents and recordings before someone else takes their gold medal.

Second, while any post-war analysis in 2006 of Iraq’s weapons capability might not be gleaned from the documents and tapes (the assertion is a bit tenuous because much of the data has not been reviewed), the pre-war analysis is likely to be affected.  Why the DCI would rather hide the mere historical information is perplexing–is the DCI an agent of the Hussein regime or of the American people?  If the former, then keeping the documents and tapes under lock-and-key is understandable.  If the latter, the DCI’s current stance against releasing the Hussein regime information is disgustingly inept.

The mosque that housed the one-armed Islamofacist Abu Hamza–recently convicted in England of “inciting his followers to murder non-Muslms and Jews”–was home to a terror weapons cache (HT: Powerline). You know what they say, when emergency strikes always have your 72-hour terrorist kit handy. The items found in the mosque include:

• Chemical warfare protection suits (great for playing paintball)
• Three pistols (not so great for playing paintball)
• Stun gun
• Handcuffs
• Counter-strike spray
• Hunting knifes
• 100 stolen or forged passports

If mosques in England are home to weapons caches then what about American mosques?  How many guns or chemical warfare protection suits are being stored right now in preparation for a terror attack here?

The Department of Defense recently released yesterday its Quadrennial Defense Review Report. In a nutshell, it sets forth the strategic planning for the next four years and beyond for the War on Terror.

As I stridently support the War on Terror and would like nothing else than seeing the complete oblieration of Al Qaeda, I found the section entitled “Defeating the Terrorist Networks” particularly interesting. Terrorist networks, like Al-Qaeda, are described as having the following characteristics:

• Multi-national and multi-ethnic
• Use “intimidation, propaganda, and indiscriminate violence in an attempt to subjugate the Muslim world under a radical theocratic tyranny”
• Operate in 80 countries
• Seek biological, chemical, nuclear, and other weapons of mass destruction

From these characteristics alone, it is evident that destroying Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks will take many years. It will not be a quick fight, because of their use of technology to communicate in various continents and collocation in small, disparate pockets within terrorist-supporting states or unsecure nation-states incapable of preventing their presence. The Democratic litany, repeated continually, that the Bush Administration is losing the War on Terror because Osama is still out there misses the whole point of the Terror War. We have stabilized Afghanistan and Iraq is beginning to prosper democratically but more importantly, removed the two terrorist-supporting states from Al Qaeda’s operating table. We are squeezing Osama like a grape, stretching his network and capabilities thinner and thinner until he implodes. Unlike Hitler’s Germany, the death of Osama will not destroy Al Qaeda–its hateful ideology of radical Islam will exist until the entire network is destroyed. Strategically, the Bush Administration is fighting the War on Terror by going after the terrorist networks, not (as the John Kerry Democrats would have us fight) by allocating resources exclusively on individual manhunts.

I also found interesting the QDRR’s emphasis on developing, maintaining, and collaborating with allied governments and members of the international community to achieve victory:

Just as these [terrorist] enemies cannot defeat the United States militarily, they cannot be defeated solely by military force. The United States, its allies and partners, will not win this long war in a great battle of annihilation. Victory can only be acheived through the acculmulation of quiet successes and the orchestration of all elements of national and international power. U.S. military forces are contributing and will continue to contribute to wider government and international efforts to defend the homeland, attack and disrupt terrorist networks, and counter ideological support for terrorism over time. But broad cooperation, across the entire U.S. Government, society, and with NATO, and other allies, is essential.

Glaringly, the United Nations is not an explicit part of the broad cooperation of international allies. Good. Why attempt to plan for the security of the United States relying on a body composed of terror-havens like Iran and Syria? The military’s message seems to be that the United States will ally itself only with countries, organizations, and localities friendly to our mission. Encouragingly, this signifies that our military leaders desire that we act exclusively in our own self-interest in protecting our country. Nations who we seek as allies will support this interest while other nations who oppose us on the international level (e.g., Russia and China) will be prevented from hamstringing our efforts to combat terror.

President Bush has stated more than once that the United States does not need a permission slip to protect itself. The QDRR details that military is implementing the Commander-in-Chief’s message. Every American should read it.

The eminent director of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N.’s international agency responsible for overseeing Iran’s compliance with the NPT (Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons). In a recent interview with Newsweek, ElBaradei’s demonstrates why Iran is in a position to quickly develop a nuclear weapon.

Embarassingly, ElBaradei admits that he needs more time to verify Iran would produce nuclear material for peaceful purposes:

For the last three years we have been doing intensive verification in Iran, and even after three years I am not yet in a position to make a judgment on the peaceful nature of the [nuclear] program.

Three years is an awful long time to determine the “peacefulness” of the Iranian nuclear program. Maybe ElBaradei believes he can earn another Nobel Prize if he sits on his hands for another two years. Ultimately, ElBaradei gets at the rub of his pusillanimity:

I still would like to be able to avoid escalation, but at the same time I do not want the Agency to be cheated; I do not want the process to be abused. I think that is clear.

ElBaradei believes his monkeying around with the Iranian mullahs deserves international approbation. Granted, the Nobel Committee and others have not hesitated to throw their encomiums at ElBaradei’s feet. Yet, ElBaradei seems to imply that bureaucratic success (meaning the IAEA) trumphs nation-state concerns about Iran’s capability to swiftly compile and produce nuclear material to weaponize their own missile or to sell to Al Qaeda-type terrorist organizations. In other words, Israel and the United States should sit on their hands and wait until the IAEA bureaucrats resolve any questions regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions. ElBaradei wants the credit–this is his stage. He does not want to allow Israeli and U.S. concerns regarding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s intent to foil his diplomatic success.

The only reasonable conclusion for the lengthy inspection process is that ElBaradei wants the IAEA to clear Iran of any malignant intent. At what cost? ElBaradei laments:

[I]f I say that I am not able to confirm the peaceful nature of that program after three years of intensive work, well, that´s a conclusion that´s going to reverberate, I think, around the world.

Yeah, there will be a reverberation alright: a nuclear warhead courtesy of the Iranian mullahs. ElBaradei’s selfish quest imperils the security of the Middle East and any credibility left at the U.N.

This week, Iran decided to remove the seals at an Iranium enrichment plant publicly defying the International Atomic Energy Agency or the United Nations to stop them. Iran’s position is confirmatory step to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s capricious claim that Iran has a legitimate right to acquire nuclear power.

Victor Davis Hanson outlines the Iranian threat:

With nukes and an earned reputation for madness, [Iran] can dictate to the surrounding Arab world the proper policy of petroleum exportation; it can shakedown Europeans whose capitals are in easy missile range; it can take out Israel with a nuke or two; or it can bully the nascent democracies of the Middle East while targeting tens of thousands of US soldiers based from Afghanistan to the Persian Gulf.

And Iran can threaten to do all this under the aegis of a crazed Islamist regime more eager for the paradise of the next world than for the material present so dear to the affluent and decadent West. If Iran can play brinkmanship now on just the promise of nuclear weapons, imagine its roguery to come when it is replete with them.

The Iranian threat should be treated very seriously within the halls of the State Department–but diplomacy is not going to stop Iran’s mad mullahs or Ahmadinejad. In this age of Islamic terrorism, diplomacy merely works as a means of international bureacratic pacification. For example, the United States went to the U.N. Security Council and obtained Resolution 1441 in which the Bush Adminstration used as part of their war calculus in justifying the decision to go to war with Iraq. However, it was not the main reason for going to war nor was it constitutionally necessary. Rather, the move was made to create a buffer between the European and other world elites who opposed U.S. intervention. Iran should be no different. Try diplomacy, and if it works, yell “Hurrah!” However, pressure by the EU-3 (Great Britain, France, and Germany) and the United States is not going to stultify the Iranian nuclear physicists, chemists, and engineers from building their developing nuclear material for their dream nuke.

As such, we must prepare our Nation for another engagement of military force. This is not desirable, but, the reality is Iran is either going to be stopped by Israel bombing Iranian reactors (which could be a bit complicated) or us. There isn’t an international organization–including one headed by a certain nobel-prize winning Egyptian–that possesses the moral will to stop them. President Bush must begin to make the case to the American people why we cannot afford to have a nuclear Iran. The terrorism that Iran sponsors (including Hezbollah and Hamas) needs to be repeated ad nauseam when talking about Iran.

This is a critical time in the War on Terror, not only in Iran but in Iraq. A nuclear Iran has the potential of destabilizing the Iraqi coalition and the newly elected government. As VDH laments:

[T]he public must be warned that dealing with a nuclear Iran is not a matter of a good versus a bad choice, but between a very bad one now and something far, far worse to come.

Either we act now, or we roll the dice on Iranian mullahs with mushroom clouds dancing in their heads. Mr. President, it’s time to act.

Stephen Hayes reports that the Defense Department has discovered from documents seized during the conquest of Baghdad that Saddam’s thugish regime trained thousands, not 10 or 20, of radical Islamofacists to do what Allah called them to do–terrorize, kill, and murder infidels:

The secret training took place primarily at three camps–in Samarra, Ramadi, and Salman Pak–and was directed by elite Iraqi military units. Interviews by U.S. government interrogators with Iraqi regime officials and military leaders corroborate the documentary evidence. Many of the fighters were drawn from terrorist groups in northern Africa with close ties to al Qaeda, chief among them Algeria’s GSPC and the Sudanese Islamic Army. Some 2,000 terrorists were trained at these Iraqi camps each year from 1999 to 2002, putting the total number at or above 8,000. Intelligence officials believe that some of these terrorists returned to Iraq and are responsible for attacks against Americans and Iraqis. According to three officials with knowledge of the intelligence on Iraqi training camps, White House and National Security Council officials were briefed on these findings in May 2005; senior Defense Department officials subsequently received the same briefing.

Malkin’s right–this is BIG NEWS. Part of our preemptive rationale for overthrowing Saddam Hussein was his proclivity to finance, harbor, or covertly aid terrorist organizations, including Osama’s Al Qaeda. Evidence that Saddam conducted terror camps, especially if he signed off on any expenses or directed the training, should silence Democrats (e.g., John Kerry) who incessantly claimed that Iraq posed no terrorist threat:

[John Kerry]: And if we’d used smart diplomacy, we could have saved $200 billion and an invasion of Iraq. And right now, Osama bin Laden might be in jail or dead. That’s the war against terror.

Kerry was wrong then and very wrong now. The WMD might have made their way to a weapons oasis in Syria, but, this hard evidence of Iraqi terror camps will surely dampen the spirits of Democrats and radical leftists who opposed the Iraqi war because Saddam they believed he didn’t pose any terrorist threat.

Mark Steyn on the problem European demography and its Islamic transformation:

Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It’s not the HIV that kills you, it’s the pneumonia you get when your body’s too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose–as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there’s an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.

The collapse Steyn writes about is not a military collaspe, but a volatile societal collapse beckoning for eruption:

What will Europe be like at the end of this process? Who knows? On the one hand, there’s something to be said for the notion that America will find an Islamified Europe more straightforward to deal with than M. Chirac, Herr Schroeder & Co. On the other hand, given Europe’s track record, getting there could be very bloody. But either way this is the real battlefield. The al Qaeda nutters can never find enough suicidal pilots to fly enough planes into enough skyscrapers to topple America. But unlike us, the Islamists think long-term, and, given their demographic advantage in Europe and the tone of the emerging Muslim lobby groups there, much of what they’re flying planes into buildings for they’re likely to wind up with just by waiting a few more years. The skyscrapers will be theirs; why knock ‘em over? . . .

To avoid collapse, European nations will need to take in immigrants at a rate no stable society has ever attempted. The CIA is predicting the EU will collapse by 2020. Given that the CIA’s got pretty much everything wrong for half a century, that would suggest the EU is a shoo-in to be the colossus of the new millennium. But even a flop spook is right twice a generation. If anything, the date of EU collapse is rather a cautious estimate. It seems more likely that within the next couple of European election cycles, the internal contradictions of the EU will manifest themselves in the usual way, and that by 2010 we’ll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on American network news every night. Even if they avoid that, the idea of a childless Europe ever rivaling America militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans, and what’s left in Europe will either be very old or very Muslim. Japan faces the same problem: Its population is already in absolute decline, the first gentle slope of a death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an economic powerhouse if it’s populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Very possibly. Will Germany if it’s populated by Algerians? That’s a trickier proposition.

If you’re European, you have reason to fear. The amalgamation of “like-minded” states called the European Union won’t save you from the festering population deficiency and Muslim immigration boom influx are facing. The engendered socialism lauded and instilled by the Euro elite has sedated the masses from thinking about the future and what type of European (say Algerian Muslim) is supposed to be counted upon to provide welfare’s suckle thirty years down the road. More Steyn:

What does the Islamification of Europe heed for Americans, apart from the need to promote and reward stable families–two parent, male-female households–from raising children to sustain the American population?

What will London–or Paris, or Amsterdam–be like in the mid-’30s? If European politicians make no serious attempt this decade to wean the populace off their unsustainable 35-hour weeks, retirement at 60, etc., then to keep the present level of pensions and health benefits the EU will need to import so many workers from North Africa and the Middle East that it will be well on its way to majority Muslim by 2035. As things stand, Muslims are already the primary source of population growth in English cities. Can a society become increasingly Islamic in its demographic character without becoming increasingly Islamic in its political character?

Steyn’s last question answers itself (No!) and raises a good point for Americans to ponder: Can our society remain free if religion, particularly Christianity, is stripped from the public square? What will happen if America’s religious demographic is prevented from expressing itself politically?

To deny American’s political character is to deny its religiousity. The adulation of secularism in our law and in our law-making institutions will cripple our will and resolve. An unfettered and allegiant resolve is what we will need to confront the growing crawl of Islamofacism. Eurabia, I’m afraid, is only the beginning.

Michael Barone makes an excellent point regarding the Donkey Party’s loyalty to America, using their love affair with Michael Moore to illustrate:

Consider the case of Michael Moore. In June 2004, about half of the Democratic senators attended the Washington premiere of Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida emerged from the theater with a big smile and a thumbs up for photographers. At the Democratic National Convention, Moore was seated next to former President Jimmy Carter on Monday night.

This is the same Michael Moore who hailed the Iraqi insurgents as “Minute Men” and who said they will and should win. This is the same Michael Moore whose own website featured his statement that Americans are the stupidest people in the world. If that is not rooting for America’s enemies, I don’t know what is. Yet leading Democrats chose to associate themselves with him. . . .

[I]t is these Democrats [who support Michael Moore et al.], not George W. Bush or their Republican critics, who have raised the question of whether they are on America’s side.

Partly, the Democratic Party has yielded to the kookish leftish fringe that Moore represents, which has forced them to applaud approvingly for lying debauchery like Farenheit 9/11. Yet, their ideological surrender does not exculpate their behavior. Indeed, why should Americans trust congressional leaders who, for one reason or other, side with individuals who prefer socialism over constitutional democracy and surreptiously apologize for the 9/11 bombers or current Al Qaeda members fighting against the United States in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere?

It is now 2006. Almost 4 1/2 years since members of Al Qaeda viciously attacked our country, murdering 3,000 Americans. Yet, we’ve just recently approved the completion of a border fence to close up open transit for illegals at the Mexican border, the Democratic party is kicking and screaming about legally wiretapping suspected Islamofacists, and Granny is still being searched at our airport terminals. Our military is superbly handling the fight outside of borders, but what about the fight within? We are a nation of laws. Our Constitution empowered a people’s government—and that government should be enacting laws (like the Patriot Act) that aggressively protect us.

According to Daniel Pipes, the United States should begin “tagging” (i.e., electronic monitorization) suspected terrorists. Last week, German Interior Minister Uwe Schünemann proposed tagging three types or classes of terrorists: dangerous Islamists, hate preachers, and terrorist camp graduates. Pipes notes that tagging is permitted in the UK and Australia.

In my view, tagging is a fallback strategy. If the terrorist supporter cannot be deported or incarcerated for life, then tagging would at least temporarily keep the FBI and other law enforcement agencies apprised of his or her whereabouts. However, monitoring physical location would not necessarily translate in the prevention of terrorist attacks. For example, a radical imam who wears an electric bracelet who sits in his mosque 24-7 does not provide much information. In addition, it would still allow for the Islamic filth and perversion that he spews to filter throughout congregants and sift into unbridled minds of youth and adult alike. Pipes suggests coupling the locality monitoring with communication monitoring. Communication monitoring would include monitoring telephone, direct mail, and electronic mail correspondence. In the case of the radical imam, communication tagging might stem and curb the content from that one individual but likely would result in greater creativity by the terrorists and their confidants (who are not monitored) to enact their anti-American designs.

My solution would be to change our sedition laws to define a terrorist conviction or support of a monetary operation as a seditious or treasonous offense. In addition, the law should be amended to require immediate deportation to their country of origin. If the terrorist convincingly claims that he would be killed if deported, he could choose the option of incarceration for life without the possibility of parole. No other option would be given.

Whether by tagging terrorists or changing our sedition laws to expel or lock them down for life, our government needs to work proactively and aggresively to protect our Nation from within. It’s time to stop worrying about safeguarding the civil liberties of terrorists and start worrying about protecting the civil liberties of loyal American citizens.

A six-month extension to the Patriot Act was granted late last night by voice vote, which allowed the Democrats and skittish Republicans (e.g., Sununu) to support the Patriot Act unrecorded while behind-the-scenes undermining it.

President Bush emphasized the Patriot Act’s importance last week in his radio address:

One of the first actions we took to protect America after our nation was attacked was to ask Congress to pass the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act tore down the legal and bureaucratic wall that kept law enforcement and intelligence authorities from sharing vital information about terrorist threats. And the Patriot Act allowed federal investigators to pursue terrorists with tools they already used against other criminals. Congress passed this law with a large, bipartisan majority, including a vote of 98-1 in the United States Senate.

Since then, America’s law enforcement personnel have used this critical law to prosecute terrorist operatives and supporters, and to break up terrorist cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia, California, Texas and Ohio. The Patriot Act has accomplished exactly what it was designed to do: it has protected American liberty and saved American lives.

The bottom line is the Patriot Act works and is working to stop and prevent terrorist attacks. Those who oppose the Patriot Act gawk about “civil liberties” but fail to mention that the liberties they desire to protect are of those Americans and illegal aliens residing within our borders who have a fancy for communicating with Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. I haven’t heard opponents groveling about the lives of terrorist-hating Americans who have been unfairly abused by the government’s use of the Patriot Act. Rather, it’s been chest pump-and-huff fest aimed at embarrassing the President that gives Al Qaeda, not America, the advantage.