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What's the over under on how many days it lasts??
Israel go one attack in before the truce was called and is still preparing for a major assault when the truce is broken by Hamas
They have said they can;t stop the rocket attacks- how will they stop them now?
True for N Korea, but I probably should have said successfully using a socialist economic model
China's recent boom is only due to their switching to a capitalistic economic model I guess you've missed the news about the boom there and the large number of new millionaires. Their new model is private enterprise
Venezuela's economy is based on oil and the government stealing ( privatizing ) industries
The point is that in recent history the vast majority of countries have recognized that the socialist model doesn't work and have moved to a capitalistic market economy
Well, show us one country, besides Cuba , that is still practicing socialist/communist economics
Thanks
Sic the Lawyers on 'Em
Yesterday, in an interview with ABC's Jake Tapper, Barack Obama reinforced the perception that as President he would return to the Clinton administration's policy of fighting terrorism only with law enforcement tools. I think that's a reasonably fair inference, as Obama held up the Clinton administration's response to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center as a model:
[L]et's take the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated.
And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of these folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law all around the world....
If Obama really meant to suggest that we should follow the criminal prosecution only policy in response to future terrorist attacks, it suggests an ignorance of history--very recent history--analogous to his holding up John Kennedy's 1961 summit with Nikita Khrushchev as a model of diplomacy. The McCain campaign was quick to pounce. Earlier today, they held a telephone press conference. Jim Woolsey, who was CIA Director at the time of the 1993 bombing, said:
I want to stress that the approach that Senator Obama is suggesting, that we do everything through the law enforcement system, is precisely what failed in the 1990s.
I was director of central intelligence for the first two years of the first Clinton administration. And, of course, just a few months into that, we had the first World Trade Center bombing.
And the administration proceeded with an almost complete law enforcement focus. It did not work.
We were able, after I left in '95, in '96, it was at least possible to indict Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, because of his involvement with the Bojinka plot to blow up American airliners over the Pacific, and actually it also included plans to assassinate President Clinton and Pope John Paul II. But he continued to, although under indictment, to plot murder and mayhem.
And then Osama bin Laden himself was indicted in '98. That was, however, before the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and before the bombing of the USS Cole, and before 9/11.
The criminal justice -- totally criminal justice approach to dealing with international terrorists, particularly when they are suicidal and are able to pull off plots like 9/11, has not worked. It was tried for essentially eight years, from the first year of the first Clinton administration up until 9/11, during the first year of the first Bush administration.
It was a miserable failure.
The McCain campaign also pointed out that one of the conclusions of the September 11 Commission--remember the Democrats' demands that all of the Commission's recommendations be implemented?--was that the crime-and-punishment model was inadequate to deal with an organization like al Qaeda.
Then there were these strong words from Woolsey and former Navy Secretary John Lehman, in response to a question:
QUESTION: Good morning. This is some of the most severe language I guess we've heard yet describing the difference on approaches that the two candidates would take towards national security.
I'm curious, just judging from what we've heard from you gentlemen this morning, should we -- ladies and gentlemen -- should we read this to believe that, if Senator Obama were to win the presidency and implement this approach, then we should expect another terrorist attack?
LEHMAN: Could I answer that? John Lehman here.
I can't believe that Senator Obama will not change his position on this, because it is a totally unsupportable position. It would provide such an opening for terrorism that, no matter how naive he is, he would not go forward with it, in my belief. If he did, it would certainly make it far more dangerous in the United States.
WOOLSEY: This is Jim Woolsey. I don't say this lightly: This is an extremely dangerous and extremely naive approach toward terrorism, international terrorism and toward dealing with prisoners captured overseas who have been engaged in terrorist attacks against the United States.
Obama does have one thing going for him when he talks about scaling back our efforts against Islamic terrorists--wishful thinking. No doubt many voters would find it comforting to be told that we can go back to letting the police and the courts worry about terrorism.
So, Obama was a "Constitutional Law Professor", huh?
Posted by: McQ
Barack Obama, while doing a fundraiser in 2007 claimed, "I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution..."
Yet this constitutional law professor establishes the following as his criteria for selecting judges:
"We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom," Obama told a Planned Parenthood conference in Washington, D.C., in 2007 "The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."
Of Justice Alito, Obama once said:
"I've seen an extraordinarily consistent attitude on the part of Judge Alito that does not uphold the traditional role of the Supreme Court as a bastion of equality and justice for United States citizens."
A constitutional law professor should, one would think, understand the role of the federal judiciary. As should be apparent to anyone with a clue, and I don't include Senator Obama in that particular group, what he is claiming isn't anywhere close to the traditional role of the federal judiciary. What he is advocating is legislation from the bench based on emotion and empathy, not the Constitution.
Here, in plain English, is the role, of the federal judiciary found in an introduction to the US Federal Court System for Judges and Judicial Administrators in Other Countries. It may be something a particular constitutional lawyer may wish to avail himself of:
The federal judiciary is a totally separate, selfgoverning branch of the government. The federal courts often are called the guardians of the Constitution because their rulings protect the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. Through fair and impartial judgments, they determine facts and interpret the law to resolve legal disputes.
The courts do not make the laws. That is the responsibility of the Congress. Nor do the courts have the power to enforce the laws. That is the role of the President and the many executive branch departments and agencies. But the judicial branch has the authority to interpret and decide the constitutionality of federal laws and to resolve other disputes over federal laws.
Not a thing in that brief description approaches the Obama criteria for federal judges.
And folks, given the fact he may win this election, that should scare you half to death.
Surprise: Charges dismissed against top-ranking Haditha Marine
posted at 2:13 pm on June 17, 2008 by Allahpundit
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Some bloggers are claiming this means Chessani’s been cleared. Not so. It might actually be more significant than that.
A military judge has dismissed charges against a Marine officer accused of failing to investigate the killings of 24 Iraqis.
Col. Steven Folsom dismissed charges Tuesday against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani after defense attorneys raised concerns that a four-star general overseeing the prosecution was improperly influenced by an investigator probing the November 2005 shootings by a Marine squad in Haditha.
The charges can be refiled but Marine central command is barred from further participation. To be clear: This doesn’t (necessarily) mean there’s insufficient evidence against Chessani to proceed, it means someone overstepped their bounds. What does that mean in this case, you ask? Read this AP story from two weeks ago. I don’t know the vagaries of military justice but it sounds like there’s supposed to be a wall of separation between the people investigating the incident and Gen. Mattis, who’s responsible for deciding whether to bring charges or not. Presumably that’s so Mattis can make up his mind based purely on the evidence and not the opinions of the investigators themselves. Did he?
The finding by Col. Stephen Folsom, the military judge, stemmed from Chessani’s claim there was a conflict of interest in the case because Col. John Ewers, a military lawyer who investigated the November 2005 killings and took Chessani’s statement, became Mattis’ top legal adviser and sat in on briefings despite military policy prohibiting him from offering advice.
Mattis testified he never had a conversation with Ewers about Hadithah, although Ewers was present during a number of legal meetings where Hadithah and Chessani were discussed.
I guess Folsom didn’t believe his testimony because today’s ruling appears to have been based on a presumption of “unlawful command influence” stemming from the Mattis/Ewers relationship. Any military readers willing and able to help clarify here? I could understand if Ewers was the higher ranking officer and was accused of pressuring Mattis to bring charges, an extreme danger in a case as politicized as that, but what exactly is the worry here about influence? Is it simply that, by having Mattis’s ear, Ewers may have introduced his lowly colonel’s opinion on the merits of the case into the charging process?
Blowback
That's 7 cleared with no convictions
Still waiting for Murtha to apologize
TIA
Obama promises that this time it will work
The magical power of Hope and Change
By Kevin Holtsberry Posted in 2008 | 2008 Presidential Campaign | B
Obama continues to insist that his plans to use government to solve our energy challenges will work despite a long history of failure. Bill Clinton tried and failed but Obama won't because things are different:
The overall Obama economic approach echoes the 1992 presidential platform of Bill Clinton, who also launched his bid for the White House seeking a big expansion in infrastructure spending. But those plans were quickly shelved once he reached the White House. Congress rejected a proposal to steeply increase energy taxes, which could have been used to pay for the spending.
Clinton deficit hawks, especially then-White House economic adviser Robert Rubin, successfully argued that slashing the deficit would have a bigger impact on growth than boosting spending because markets would react favorably to a shrinking deficit. "Rubinomics" became the reigning Clinton economic strategy, and many labor leaders backing Sen. Obama worry that the 46-year-old senator ultimately will turn to Mr. Rubin, as Mr. Clinton did.
Sen. Obama waved off that concern. "I've got Bob Rubin on one hand [as an adviser] and [former Labor Secretary] Bob Reich on the other....I tend to be eclectic." Mr. Reich, has long championed infrastructure spending to boost jobs and the economy, and is a favorite of labor. He frequently and famously feuded with Mr. Rubin early in Mr. Clinton's term over the administration's ideological direction.
The chances of pushing through an infrastructure spending program are greater now than they were in 1992, Sen. Obama said, because of new concern about energy prices. Many alternative-energy projects -- clean-coal technology, wind-power generators and the like -- could be packaged as infrastructure. "The difference I would suggest is that there is a strong recognition in the public mind that we can't continue on our current energy path," he said. That means "there's a bigger opening to bring about change."
Its the magic of Change, you see. Obama is for it and so is the public. Presto! Outdated industrial policy magically works!
What's that you say? Haven't we tried this before? Yes, in fact we have. For more on that read on.
Turns out Democrats have been promising big government solutions of this sort for a while now:
Sen. Obama regularly compares the energy effort to President Kennedy's project to rocket a man to the moon in the 1960s. But the record of using government funds to produce big breakthroughs in commercial technology is spotty at best. The few projects that have succeeded were often small and aimed at limited research goals.
Under President Carter, the U.S. tried and failed to build a synthetic-fuel industry in the 1970s. (Sen. McCain has taken to saying Sen. Obama would represent "Jimmy Carter's second term.") Plans to build commercial nuclear reactors that would produce more nuclear material than they consumed also failed, and a half-century of government investment in commercial hydrogen reactors haven't produced the necessary breakthroughs.
More recently the Clinton administration, at the urging of then-Vice President Al Gore, spent heavily on a project with the Big Three auto makers to build a higher-tech family car that produced three times the gas mileage of a conventional car. The car was never built and the Bush administration killed the project. At a rally in Detroit Monday night, Mr. Gore announced his endorsement of Sen. Obama.
That last sentence is a killer. Gore failed, but endorsed Obama to try again anyway.
Well, you can say this for Obama: he may lack Gore's experience but he makes up for it with a winning personality.
I guess Obama is going to charm his way to energy independence. Because his outdated policies sure aren't going to help
Iran: We’ll never suspend uranium enrichment
posted at 12:15 pm on June 17, 2008 by Allahpundit
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I trust you’ll have the same reaction to this story as I did. Namely, what would Winnie the Pooh do?
Iran said on Tuesday uranium enrichment was its “red line” and would continue, despite an enhanced offer of incentives from big powers to stop activity the West fears could yield nuclear bombs…
The incentive package agreed by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany last month and delivered by Solana is a revised version of one rejected by Iran in 2006…
The incentives package offers Iran the chance to develop a civilian nuclear program with light water reactors — seen as harder to divert into bomb-making than the technology Tehran is now developing — and legally binding fuel supply guarantees.
It also offers trade and other benefits, including the possibility of Iran buying civil aircraft from the West.
Read the whole piece and you’ll see that the offer’s even more generous than that, offering potential security guarantees and even the prospect of letting Iran continue its own nuclear R&D (er, why?) if enrichment is suspended and it keeps its nose clean. All of this, of course, is pursuant to an agonizing, protracted, years-long series of negotiations between Iran and the west of the sort that Senator Hopenchange would have us believe either hasn’t been happening on Bush’s watch or hasn’t been happening earnestly enough because Bush hasn’t deigned to engage in any “direct presidential diplomacy” with cretins like Ahmadinejad. In that sense, oddly enough, Obama takes a more exalted view of presidential prestige than even conservatives do: Somehow, the mere act of re-presenting this proposal to Iran with a whiff of White House legitimacy attached is going to melt their hearts and convince them to take the deal. Or maybe it’s not presidential prestige he’s banking on so much as his own personal prestige, as though being gladhanded by the Messiah is going to reduce them to stammering, Kmiec-esque fanboys.
The very first question at the very first debate between Obama and McCain should be: What would you do to improve upon this offer? And the second question should be: What would you do if they still refuse?
Wonder what prices would be if the libs hadn't blocked the building of ANY new nuke plants for decades
The libs loved Carter so much, they want to elect his clone- Barry=Carter II- building of vague hopes of change with absolutely no record his entire life of actually creating any
And you, who blast others for not connecting dots, can't see that any windfall tax will just be passed along to the consumer
The only valuable step the government can take is to mandate that all cars be able to flex fueled- at the cost of $100 per car
Then alt the market place determine who the winner in the new fuel race will be
Northern Approaches [John Derbyshire]
A reader from the Wolverine State wonders:
Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?
Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn't solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?
Why isn't the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago?
When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?
Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?
Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?
When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a "vanilla" Iowa, because that's the way God wants it?
Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?
Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?
How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again?
'It Will Almost Certainly Cause More Americans to Be Killed'
By Joel J. Sprayregen
The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling last week means that terrorism detainees captured overseas have the same rights as U.S. citizens facing shoplifting trials at home. This unprecedented expansion of habeas was not a victory, as liberal media smirked, over the President. It was a judicial nullification of procedures carefulyy crafted by both elected branches of Government of procedures carefully tailored to allow review of detentions while remaining mindful of the terrorist threat.
The smallest of majorities is disregarding judicial history and pretending we live in a world where captured deadly enemies can be granted an advantage, without it affecting the likelihood of victory. I can't say it better than Justice Scalia:
“America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole. On September 11, 2001, the enemy brought the battle to American soil, killing 2,749 at the Twin Towers in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon and 10 in Pennsylvania… It has threatened further attacks against our homeland; one need only walk about buttressed and barricaded Washington, or board a plane, to know the threat is serious… Last week, 13 of our countrymen in arms were killed.”
Scalia, the smartest justice, alone foresaw that the Special Counsel Law would lead to the embarrassment of the Clinton impeachment proceedings. In his dissent last Friday, he addressed a far more serious issue:
Congress Establishes Procedures; the Court Defines the Military’s Mission
In its 2004 Hamdi decision, the Court invited Congress to establish procedures for detainees. Laws, including the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), provide hearings on legality of detention before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), followed by review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. A bi-partisan Congress (by 65 to 34 in the Senate) mandated that the 270 Guantanamo detainees are not free to avoid these procedures by filing habeas petitions in whatever federal district court they choose. Centralizing court review of life-and-death cases to achieve consistency of rulings in one Appeals Court -- rather than letting leftist lawyers seek out friendly habeas judges in 50 states before a CSRT could review the evidence -- was the heart of the law.
The Court invalidated the law because it found
"…no credible arguments that the military mission would be compromised if habeas courts had jurisdiction to hear detainees' claims."
It is difficult to fault Scalia's riposte:
"What competence does the Court have to second-guess the judgment of Congress and President on such a point?"
Scalia detailed how prisoners released from Guantanamo -- because they were not considered combatants -- had returned to murder Americans and our allies. Scalia is foreseeably correct in concluding that the decision "will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."
The Court is basing its decision -- disregarding two centuries of decisions holding that habeas is unavailable to aliens captured abroad -- on the fact that Gitmo is "functionally" under U.S. control. But so are U.S. bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Terrorists captured there are now invited immediately to compel our military to reveal its basis for detentions; this is the meaning of habeas. It gets worse. Justice Kennedy explained in invalidating the DTA -- which provides wider access to Government evidence than the Geneva Convention – that
"the detainee’s ability to rebut the Government's evidence is limited by the circumstances of his confinement and his lack of counsel at this stage."
If you do not comprehend that the ACLU and its fellow revelers are preparing petitions in blank to seek -- on behalf of every terrorist captured overseas -- to compel the Government immediately to disclose its evidence, then you understand nothing.
Chief Justice Roberts pointed out in his dissent what the Court is opening the door to:
"free access to classified information ignores the risk the prisoner may convey what he learns to parties hostile to this country, with deadly consequences for those who helped apprehend the detainee."
Roberts noted that our troops are not equipped to handle subpoenas on the battlefield. Information given to defense lawyers in the first World Trade Towers trial on a restricted basis quickly appeared on al-Jazeera.
The alleged shoplifter at a suburban mall is entitled to see the prosecution's file because she needs it to defend herself. The terrorist wants his file so he can arrange to slit the throats of intelligence operatives and informants. The Court's decision undermines that result.
Our country is doing better against terrorists than against shoplifters: Commentators of varied persuasions are observing that the Islamists have been deterred form launching a second terror strike against our home front.
Jackson’s Warning: Don’t Convert the Bill of Rights into a Suicide Pact
The late Justice Robert H. Jackson -- who grew up in Frewsburg and lawyered in Jamestown -- exemplified the patriotic canniness found in rural New York since the days of Fort Ticonderoga. His worldview was shaped by experience as Chief War Crimes Prosecutor at Nuremburg. In a 1950 opinion -- tossed into the dustbin of history last week -- Jackson denied habeas to a Nazi prisoner because there had been
"no instance where a court has issued habeas corpus to an alien enemy who...has never been within its territorial jurisdiction."
Ponder Jackson's admonition in a free speech case:
"If the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the Bill of Rights into a suicide pact."
Joel Sprayregen was General Counsel of the Illinois ACLU until the late 1960s. Today, dedicates his pro bono time to think tanks protecting our national security.
Typical pegbot response to a reasoned, substantive argument:
"Hooray for my side"
The Supreme Court Goes to War
By JOHN YOO
June 17, 2008; Page A23
Last week's Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush has been painted as a stinging rebuke of the administration's antiterrorism policies. From the celebrations on most U.S. editorial pages, one might think that the court had stopped a dictator from trampling civil liberties. Boumediene did anything but. The 5-4 ruling is judicial imperialism of the highest order.
Boumediene should finally put to rest the popular myth that right-wing conservatives dominate the Supreme Court. Academics used to complain about the Rehnquist Court's "activism" for striking down minor federal laws on issues such as whether states are immune from damage lawsuits, or if Congress could ban handguns in school. Justice Anthony Kennedy -- joined by the liberal bloc of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer -- saves his claims of judicial supremacy for the truly momentous: striking down a wartime statute, agreed upon by the president and large majorities of Congress, while hostilities are ongoing, no less.
[The Supreme Court Goes to War]
First out the window went precedent. Under the writ of habeas corpus, Americans (and aliens on our territory) can challenge the legality of their detentions before a federal judge. Until Boumediene, the Supreme Court had never allowed an alien who was captured fighting against the U.S. to use our courts to challenge his detention.
In World War II, no civilian court reviewed the thousands of German prisoners housed in the U.S. Federal judges never heard cases from the Confederate prisoners of war held during the Civil War. In a trilogy of cases decided at the end of World War II, the Supreme Court agreed that the writ did not benefit enemy aliens held outside the U.S. In the months after the 9/11 attacks, we in the Justice Department relied on the Supreme Court's word when we evaluated Guantanamo Bay as a place to hold al Qaeda terrorists.
The Boumediene five also ignored the Constitution's structure, which grants all war decisions to the president and Congress. In 2004 and 2006, the Court tried to extend its reach to al Qaeda terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay. It was overruled twice by Congress, which has the power to define the jurisdiction of the federal courts. Congress established its own procedures for the appeal of detentions.
Incredibly, these five Justices have now defied the considered judgment of the president and Congress for a third time, all to grant captured al Qaeda terrorists the exact same rights as American citizens to a day in civilian court.
Judicial modesty, respect for the executive and legislative branches, and pure common sense weren't concerns here either. The Court refused to wait and see how Congress's 2006 procedures for the review of enemy combatant cases work. Congress gave Guantanamo Bay prisoners more rights than any prisoners of war, in any war, ever. The justices violated the classic rule of self-restraint by deciding an issue not yet before them.
Judicial micromanagement will now intrude into the conduct of war. Federal courts will jury-rig a process whose every rule second-guesses our soldiers and intelligence agents in the field. A judge's view on how much "proof" is needed to find that a "suspect" is a terrorist will become the standard applied on the battlefield. Soldiers will have to gather "evidence," which will have to be safeguarded until a court hearing, take statements from "witnesses," and probably provide some kind of Miranda-style warning upon capture. No doubt lawyers will swarm to provide representation for new prisoners.
So our fighting men and women now must add C.S.I. duties to that of capturing or killing the enemy. Nor will this be the end of it. Under Boumediene's claim of judicial supremacy, it is only a hop, skip and a jump from judges second-guessing whether someone is an enemy to second-guessing whether a soldier should have aimed and fired at him.
President Bush has declared, rightly, that the government will abide by the decision. No American lives are yet imperiled, as the courts will have to wrestle with the cases for months, if not years. But the upshot of Boumediene is that courts will release detainees from Guantanamo Bay, or the Defense Department will do so voluntarily, in the near future.
Just as there is always the chance of a mistaken detention, there is also the probability that we will release the wrong man. As Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion notes, at least 30 detainees released from Guantanamo Bay -- with the military, not the courts, making the call -- have returned to Afghanistan and Iraq battlefields.
The Boumediene majority has two hopes for getting away with its brazen power grab. It assumes that we have accepted judicial control over virtually every important policy in our society, from abortion and affirmative action to religion. Boumediene simply adds war to the list. The justices act like we are no longer really at war. Our homeland has not suffered another 9/11 attack for seven years, and our military and intelligence agencies have killed or captured much of al Qaeda's original leadership. What's left is on the run, due to the very terrorism policies under judicial attack.
Justice Kennedy and his majority assume that terrorism is some long-term social problem, like crime, so the standard methods of law enforcement can be used to deal with al Qaeda. Boumediene reflects a judicial desire to return to the comfortable, business-as-usual attitude that characterized U.S. antiterrorism policy up to Sept. 10, 2001.
The only real hope of returning the Supreme Court to its normal wartime role rests in the November elections. Sometimes it is difficult to tell Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain apart on issues like campaign finance or global warming. But they have real differences on Supreme Court appointments. Mr. Obama had nothing but praise for Boumediene, while Mr. McCain attacked it and promised to choose judges like Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both dissenters.
Because of the advancing age of several justices (Justice Stevens is 88, and several others are above 70), the next president will be in a position to appoint a new Court that can reverse the damage done to the nation's security.
Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He was an official in the Justice Department from 2001-03.
Typical pegbot analysis.
We know you don't read links. A lot easier to dismiss unfavorable reality based on a byline. Are there any facts there you can contest? Did YOU spend time in Chicage talking to peopl who had actually worked with Barry?
Please list Barry's accomplishment's in fostering change
TIATIATIA
PS
Interesting how the initiator of the " vast conspiracy " theories- Billary was complaining how THIS year the conspiracy was against HER- ie MoveOn and the media in general- too funny
McCain has long been considered a maverick by the dems. Tyring to paint his as the same as Bush won't work. He has a legislative history of going his own way- Barry has nothing to back up his change mantra and his ability to reach across the aisle
McCain will continue the progress being made in Iraq and his judgement about the effectiveness of the surge has been shown to be better than Barry's
The reality si that no matter who is elected, the "out of Iraq w/in the year " is n NOT gonna happen
Obama the Organizer [Byron York]
The new issue of NR came out Friday, and the cover is my story on Barack Obama's years as a community organizer in Chicago. Obama often cites his time as an organizer, from 1985 to 1988, as part of the experience that qualifies him to be president. But many people, including me, have wondered what that means. What did Obama do as a community organizer? And what in that experience helps qualify him to be president?
I spent some time in Chicago last month talking to the people who worked with Obama there. Everyone I interviewed, from the man who hired him, to a fellow organizer, to a pastor allied with Obama, to the women Obama trained to be "leaders" in his group — they all told me they have high regard for Obama and support him for president.
But when it comes to lasting accomplishments, Obama's list isn't very long. His greatest hits seem to have been a successful effort to convince the city of Chicago to locate a jobs placement office on the far South Side and his part in a drive to push the city to clean asbestos out of a housing project in the same area.
What else? A few other things; nothing big. As I looked around, I got the sense that Obama's greatest talent was his ability to convince people to believe that it was possible to change things, not to actually bring about much change himself. The whole idea of change lay at the heart of Obama's decision to go to Chicago, as he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father:
When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in the Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.
Substitute "Bush" for "Reagan" and you'll get a pretty good picture of Obama's campaign today, which suggests that Obama has been selling the message of change since his organizer days. His gift, then and now, was to convince people to believe in him, something that came through quite clearly when I talked to a woman named Loretta Augustine-Herron, who worked closely with Obama during his time in Chicago and who very kindly drove me around the Altgeld Gardens housing project on the far South Side. Augustine-Herron told me how the man who hired Obama, an organizer named Jerry Kellman, brought Obama to meet her before he was officially hired. Obama, not long out of college, didn't have much experience to qualify him to be an organizer. But he was black — a threshold qualification for this particular job — and he seemed able almost to work magic on those he encountered. "He didn't have experience," Augustine-Herron told me, "but he had a sensitivity that allowed us to believe that he could do that job."
The whole story is out on NR Digital now, which means, of course, if you don't already subscribe in one way or another, you should.
06/16 06:43 AM
Barry's problem isn't' lack of experience, it's lack of judgement
as his recent foreign policy gaffes and choices of campaign staff ( VP search ) has shown.
When you don't have experience and viewed with great scepticism outside of liberal elistes and blacks, you're in trouble
The more he gets exposed, the clearer it will be that eh's in over his head
Forget the McCain = Bush II mantra, Barry will be Jimmy Carter II
The impeach Bush fantasy has now given way to the " war crimes trial after he leaves office fantasy"
Pathetic
IF you actually knew anything abut the Constitution you'd realize that a clear distinction is made between the rights of citizens and non citizens
It's the creator that endows those rights- and surprise, surprise, they don't include habeas corpus
Acoording to your analysis, we would have no right to control immigration into this country- without that right any country would cease to exist
Other than that, great analysis
Yeah, like we and Europe haven't been talking seriously to Iran for decades
If we can just wait to elect Jimmy CarterII- oops Barry Obama, everything will be just fine
Advanced nuclear designs already in Iran?
posted at 8:24 am on June 16, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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The AQ Khan network had advanced nuclear-weapons designs that could fit on ballistic missiles, the Washington Post reported yesterday. The intelligence community has an analysis that determined that Iran, North Korea, and other clients of Khan could have everything they need besides fissile material to build nuclear warheads, a much graver situation than originally thought when the Khan network got exposed. In fact, Khan’s clients may not just have included nations:
An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.
The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.
The computer contents — among more than 1,000 gigabytes of data seized — were recently destroyed by Swiss authorities under the supervision of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, which is investigating the now-defunct smuggling ring previously led by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.
But U.N. officials cannot rule out the possibility that the blueprints were shared with others before their discovery, said the report’s author, David Albright, a prominent nuclear weapons expert who spent four years researching the smuggling network.
Earlier analyses of the AQ Khan product suggested that the types of device designs it produced would have little practical value as end products themselves. The devices were too heavy and too awkward for ballistic missiles or for terrorist sneak attacks. However, the Swiss discovery shows that Khan also had more compact and efficient design available — and now no one knows how many copies got into how many hands.
The Pakistanis officially forgave Khan a few years ago, but they have now found out that his sins went beyond what they imagined. According to the report, the Musharraf government confirmed that the designs represented their most classified work and modern weapons in their arsenal. They realized that Khan sold out their most critical work to foreigners for profit and left them exposed to hostile powers, and apparently they still felt some surprise about it. They had claimed that Khan never stole Pakistan’s own designs.
This makes it even more critical to keep uranium enrichment out of the hands of nations with ballistic missile capability as well as terrorist connections. Iran qualifies on both counts. If they acquired the plans discovered on the computer of Khan’s Swiss colleagues, the only part they don’t have is the weapons-grade uranium or plutonium.
Blowback
Iraq starts to fix itself
Jun 12th 2008
From The Economist print edition
Its people are still suffering monstrously, but Iraq is doing far better than it was only a few months ago
Eyevine
AFTER all the blood and blunders, people are right to be sceptical when good news is announced from Iraq. Yet it is now plain that over the past several months, while Americans have been distracted by their presidential primaries, many things in Iraq have at long last started to go right.
This improvement goes beyond the fall in killing that followed General David Petraeus's “surge”. Iraq's government has gained in stature and confidence. Thanks to soaring oil prices it is flush with money. It is standing up to Iraq's assorted militias and asserting its independence from both America and Iran. The overlapping wars—Sunni against American, Sunni against Shia and Shia against Shia—that harrowed Iraq after the invasion of 2003 have abated. The country no longer looks in imminent danger of flying apart or falling into everlasting anarchy. In September 2007 this newspaper supported the surge not because we had faith in Iraq but only in the desperate hope that the surge might stop what was already a bloodbath from becoming even worse (see article). The situation now is different: Iraq is still a mess, but something approaching a normal future for its people is beginning to look achievable.
The guns begin to fall silent
As General Petraeus himself admits, and our briefing this week argues, the change is fragile, and reversible (see article). But it is real. Only a few months ago, Iraq was in the grip not only of a fierce anti-American insurgency but also of a dense tangle of sectarian wars, which America seemed powerless to stop. Those who thought it was just making matters worse by staying on could point to the bloody facts on the ground as evidence. But now it is time to look again. Each of those overlapping conflicts has lately begun to peter out.
A few Sunnis, motivated by Islam or simple resentment of foreign military occupation, continue to attack American forces. But many Sunni tribes, repelled by the atrocities committed by their former and often foreign allies in al-Qaeda, have joined the so-called Sunni awakening, the Sahwa, and crossed over to America's side. At the same time, Sunnis and Shias have stopped killing each other in the vast numbers that followed the blowing up of a Shia shrine in early 2006. General Petraeus's surge is only one reason for this. Another reason, less flattering to the Americans, is that after last year's frenzied ethnic cleansing fewer neighbourhoods are still mixed. But it is also the case that a lot of Iraqis, having waded briefly into the horror of indiscriminate sectarian slaughter, have for the present made a conscious decision to step back.
The conflict between Shias and Shias has died down too. In the past few weeks Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, has belied a reputation for weakness by sending the army to take control of the port city of Basra and the Baghdad slum known as Sadr City, both strongholds until then of the powerful militia run by Muqtada al-Sadr, a vehemently anti-American Shia cleric. The fact that Mr Sadr considered it wise not to resist suggests not only that the army is now strong enough to out-face private militias but also that the state has acquired far greater political legitimacy, in Shia minds at least.
Needless to say, these conflicts could resume. The Sunnis fighting on America's side today could direct their fire back towards the Americans and Shias tomorrow if not enough room is made for them in the new, Shia-dominated order. On the Shia side, it is not clear whether Mr Sadr has given up violence for good. And his is not the only political movement to have a private army. Sunnis, Shias and Kurds alike still see their respective militias as a hedge against an uncertain future.
To that extent, Iraq is still far from normality. But if the calm survives, politics will at least have a chance. Mr Maliki's next job is therefore to go ahead with the provincial elections due before the end of the year. A good showing by the Sunnis, too few of whom voted in 2005, could bring them back into the political mainstream, enabling them to wield serious power in their own provinces at least. The elections can also provide a useful alternative path to power for the Sadrists, if they really have given up violence and decide to take part.
George Bush meanwhile has a further part to play, which consists mainly of not doing things that might tempt him. He should not, for example, attack Iran. One of the impressive things about Iraq's present government is its refusal to take sides between America and its next-door neighbour. It needs good relations with both if it is to prosper. Mr Bush has also to find a way to leave to his successor the business of negotiating a new agreement on the status of American forces in Iraq. This may become a toxic issue in Iraq's elections as the existing UN mandate expires. Mr Maliki is said to want a guarantee that America will defend its borders. His opponents accuse America of seeking permanent bases in Iraq, turning it into a vassal. It would be wrong for a lame duck in Washington to tie the hands of the next administration on such matters.
It's really not about that any more
In highlighting the improved conditions in Iraq we do not mean to justify The Economist's support of the invasion of 2003 (see article). Too many lives have been shattered for that. History will still record that the invasion and occupation have been a debacle. Iraqis even now live under daily threat of violent death: hundreds are killed each month. They remain woefully short of the necessities of life, such as jobs, clean water and electricity. Iraq's government is gaining confidence faster than competence. It is still fractious, and in many places corrupt.
Nor does it follow that a turn for the better necessarily validates John McCain's insistence on America staying indefinitely. A safer Iraq might make Barack Obama's plan to pull out most American troops within 16 months more feasible, though at the moment a precipitate withdrawal looks foolish. But to guard the fragile improvements, the key for America must be flexibility. Both candidates have to keep their options open. If America's next president gets Iraq wrong because he has boxed himself in during the campaign, all the recent gains may be squandered and Iraq will slide swiftly back into misery and despair. That would be to fail twice over.
Back to top ^^
In how many cases has that happened?
And yes, protections under the constitution are for American citizens
Others, particularly those at war with us are held to different standards
Makes sense to me
More Words of Wisdom from the Democrat's 'Genius' Candidate
Clarice Feldman
Barack Obama once again embarrasses himself with his poor grasp of history. Even worse, the former president of the Harvard Law Review does not seem to understand the nature of a famous court. Jake Tapper of ABC's Political Punch blog writes:
Obama, a former senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, cited "that principle of habeas corpus, that a state can't just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process -- thatʼs the essence of who we are. I mean, you remember during the Nuremberg trials, part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities that no one had ever seen before, we still gave them a day in court and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law. Now the Supreme Court upheld that principle yesterday."
(Though Obama was clearly referring to the principle of giving criminals a day in court, it's worth pointing out the distinction here, that the Nuremberg trials did not give Nazi war criminals access to U.S. courts, but to a special international military tribunal created by the U.S., USSR, France and the U.K. Though Nuremberg currently is considered a model for international law, it's not as if Rudolph Hess had access to challenge his detention in U.S. federal court.)
Khatami aide admits strategy of nuclear deception [Michael Rubin]
The former spokesman of the President Mohammed Khatami’s government (1997-2005) acknowledges in a debate that a goal of the reformism was to lull the West into a false confidence so that Iran could pursue illicit nuclear activities:
Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, Khatami-era government spokesman, on a panel with Mehdi Faza'eli, general secretary of the Muslim Journalist Association: "We did our outmost to prevent the case of Iran being sent to the Security Council, whose judge is the United States.... During the confidence building-era, we entered the nuclear club, and despite the suspension [of uranium enrichment] we imported all the materials needed for our nuclear activities of the country...We were not subjected to sanctions regime during the reform era, but today, even our ophthalmologists are not allowed to import laser products [needed for operations]... If we pursue the right to nuclear energy for bombs, it is clear that the world does not want this, and if we want it for electricity, they say 'you don't have nuclear power plants, what do you want nuclear fuel for?' Just take a look at what the Russians have done to us in the Bushehr nuclear power plant.
With the current speed of enrichment, it will take us 25 years before we reach enrichment self-sufficiency. And who knows where we want to find nuclear fuel? And our reserves are unknown... The solution is to prove to the entire world that we want the power plants for electricity. Afterwards, we can proceed with other activities... The peak of our goal is an honorable life for the people. Do we want to become another North Korea…?
There are only two ways of coming through the current crisis. One is what Khatami did by winning the election of 1997, and the other what [he did] after September 11th, which both guarded the country against war. Today, the solution is to marginalize the Ahmadinejad government from political decision-making in the nuclear energy field, with decisions be taken elsewhere.
As long as we were not subjected to sanctions, and during our negotiations we could import technology. We should have negotiated for so long, and benefited from the atmosphere of negotiations to the extent that we could import all the technology needed. The adversary wanted the negotiations to come to a dead end and initiate a new phase. But we wanted to continue negotiations until the U.S. would be gone from the circle of negotiations. We had one overt policy, which was one of negotiation and confidence building, and a covert policy, which was continuation of the activities...
We consider access to all sciences and technologies of the humankind a necessity, but we also prioritize confidence building. Today, in the field of confidence building, Japan is the most advanced country in the world, but Japan can produce a nuclear bomb in less than a week...We achieved to divide the Europeans from the Americans, but today it has come to a point that the Europeans and the Ameicans have harmonized their policies.
Thanks to former Royal Danish Defence College analyst Ali Alfoneh for finding this story in his scan of the Iranian press and providing a pre-dawn translation.
06/15 04:14 AM
What are they going to do with those people?
Their own countries don't want them back
Despite you hysteria, it's a fact that released enemy combatant have been recaptured doing the same thing that got them interred in the first place
The fact that you can't see that that can result in death to Americans attests to your dimmness, not any fear mongering
China is now the biggset user of oil
Who's gonna tell them to stop??
Any solution based on limiting growth is a no go
Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol
Silicon Valley is experimenting with bacteria that have been genetically altered to provide 'renewable petroleum'
Some diesel fuel produced by genetically modified bugs
Some diesel fuel produced by genetically modified bugs
Image :1 of 3
Chris Ayres
“Ten years ago I could never have imagined I’d be doing this,” says Greg Pal, 33, a former software executive, as he squints into the late afternoon Californian sun. “I mean, this is essentially agriculture, right? But the people I talk to – especially the ones coming out of business school – this is the one hot area everyone wants to get into.”
He means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.
Mr Pal is a senior director of LS9, one of several companies in or near Silicon Valley that have spurned traditional high-tech activities such as software and networking and embarked instead on an extraordinary race to make $140-a-barrel oil (£70) from Saudi Arabia obsolete. “All of us here – everyone in this company and in this industry, are aware of the urgency,” Mr Pal says.
Related Links
* Biofuel: a tankful of weed juice
* The arithmetic of crude oil
What is most remarkable about what they are doing is that instead of trying to reengineer the global economy – as is required, for example, for the use of hydrogen fuel – they are trying to make a product that is interchangeable with oil. The company claims that this “Oil 2.0” will not only be renewable but also carbon negative – meaning that the carbon it emits will be less than that sucked from the atmosphere by the raw materials from which it is made.
LS9 has already convinced one oil industry veteran of its plan: Bob Walsh, 50, who now serves as the firm’s president after a 26-year career at Shell, most recently running European supply operations in London. “How many times in your life do you get the opportunity to grow a multi-billion-dollar company?” he asks. It is a bold statement from a man who works in a glorified cubicle in a San Francisco industrial estate for a company that describes itself as being “prerevenue”.
Inside LS9’s cluttered laboratory – funded by $20 million of start-up capital from investors including Vinod Khosla, the Indian-American entrepreneur who co-founded Sun Micro-systems – Mr Pal explains that LS9’s bugs are single-cell organisms, each a fraction of a billionth the size of an ant. They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-de-signing their DNA. “Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,” he says. “Now it can take weeks and cost maybe $20,000.”
Because crude oil (which can be refined into other products, such as petroleum or jet fuel) is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.
For fermentation to take place you need raw material, or feedstock, as it is known in the biofuels industry. Anything will do as long as it can be broken down into sugars, with the byproduct ideally burnt to produce electricity to run the plant.
The company is not interested in using corn as feedstock, given the much-publicised problems created by using food crops for fuel, such as the tortilla inflation that recently caused food riots in Mexico City. Instead, different types of agricultural waste will be used according to whatever makes sense for the local climate and economy: wheat straw in California, for example, or woodchips in the South.
Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.
The closest that LS9 has come to mass production is a 1,000-litre fermenting machine, which looks like a large stainless-steel jar, next to a wardrobe-sized computer connected by a tangle of cables and tubes. It has not yet been plugged in. The machine produces the equivalent of one barrel a week and takes up 40 sq ft of floor space.
However, to substitute America’s weekly oil consumption of 143 million barrels, you would need a facility that covered about 205 square miles, an area roughly the size of Chicago.
That is the main problem: although LS9 can produce its bug fuel in laboratory beakers, it has no idea whether it will be able produce the same results on a nationwide or even global scale.
“Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we’ll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011,” says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.
Are Americans ready to be putting genetically modified bug excretion in their cars? “It’s not the same as with food,” Mr Pal says. “We’re putting these bacteria in a very isolated container: their entire universe is in that tank. When we’re done with them, they’re destroyed.”
Besides, he says, there is greater good being served. “I have two children, and climate change is something that they are going to face. The energy crisis is something that they are going to face. We have a collective responsibility to do this.”
Power points
— Google has set up an initiative to develop electricity from cheap renewable energy sources
— Craig Venter, who mapped the human genome, has created a company to create hydrogen and ethanol from genetically engineered bugs
— The US Energy and Agriculture Departments said in 2005 that there was land available to produce enough biomass (nonedible plant parts) to replace 30 per cent of current liquid transport fuels
Obama on Social Security
In a speech to senior citizens in Ohio yesterday, Obama unveiled his new position on Social Security. The Associated Press tries to make sense of it, with the assistance of Obama staffers, here.
Obama proposes an increase in Social Security taxes. Here is how he described it to his audience in Ohio:
Here's where I would start. Right now, the Social Security payroll tax is capped. That means that most middle-class families pay the payroll tax on every dime that they earn. But, once you get to $102,000 per individual, then you're no longer paying the payroll tax.
And what that means is, is that while you, most of the people here, paid Social Security on every dime you ever earned, you've got billionaires and millionaires who are paying only a tiny fraction -- paying payroll tax on only a tiny fraction of their income.
I've got a friend in Omaha -- you may have heard of him -- named Warren Buffett. He's worth $56 billion. You know, if he's only paying the first $100,000, that is .000001 percent of his income is he paying Social Security. I may have lost a couple of zeroes in there.
The point is, it's negligible to him. It's not even noticeable. Now, I think that's why the best way forward is to first look to adjust the cap on the payroll tax so that people like me -- because I'm earning more than $102,000 -- pay a little bit more and people in need are protected.
There is a reason, of course, why the income on which we pay Social Security taxes has always been capped. The Social Security program was intended as a safety net, not as a wealth redistribution program. Since the amount of benefits one can receive is capped, it has always been considered fair to cap the income on which the tax is paid as well.
Obama, of course, is not a courageous enough politician to follow his own logic if it will cost him votes. So, weirdly, he goes on to create an exemption from his own tax increase:
And, by the way, I think that we should exempt anyone making under $250,000 from this increase, so it will not burden the middle class. Anybody under $250,000 would not be affected whatsoever; 97 percent of Americans will see absolutely no change in their taxes under my proposal, 97 percent.
This makes no sense. If it is unfair for someone making $100,000 to pay Social Security taxes on all of his income while "billionaires" likewise pay only on their first $100,000 of income, then why isn't unfair for the $100,000 guy to pay taxes on his whole income, while the $200,000 earner pays Social Security taxes only on the first half?
The answer, of course, lies in politics rather than logic. There are relatively few voters who earn more than $250,000, while there are a great many earning between $102,000 and $250,000. In fact, this income demographic corresponds with remarkable precision to Obama's core supporters, the only Americans to be singled out for a tax preference under Obama's plan. A "new kind of politics," indeed.
The incoherence of Obama's approach to Social Security doesn't stop there. He rails ritually against private accounts:
Now, my opponent in this general election, John McCain, his idea on Social Security amounts to four more years of what was attempted and failed under George Bush. He said that he supports private accounts for Social Security, in his words, along the lines that President Bush proposed. *** But let me be clear: Privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George Bush proposed it; it's a bad idea today.
When Obama goes on to outline his own plan, however, it turns out that the centerpiece (along with a tax increase) is nothing other than private accounts:
Finally, we're not going to help people reach a secure retirement unless we encourage savings. But today, personal savings is at an all-time low, as the average American has seen their wages or incomes flat-line or even decline, at the same time as costs for everything are going up. *** And that's why I've proposed an automatic workplace pension. There's going to be no red tape or complicated forms. Employers will provide a direct deposit of a small percentage of each paycheck into your account. You can add to it, or you can opt out of it at any time. And so it's going to be optional. *** And employers will have an easy opportunity to match employee savings. If you switch jobs, your savings will roll over into your new employer system. If you become self-employed, you'll be able to control your account. *** And we'll also help middle-class families start their own nest egg by matching 50 percent of the first $1,000 saved, a match that will be directly deposited into your savings account, a tax cut that will truly encourage savings....
Are private accounts a good idea? Of course they are. Obama is planning for his own retirement through his 401(k) plan and related private accounts, not Social Security, as is probably every single person with whom Obama is acquainted. But it is incoherent and dishonest, even by Obama's standards, to denounce private accounts in one breath and propose them in the next.
Boumediene — The Great Sandbagging
MichaelW on Jun 13 2008 at 12:38 pm | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Law, MichaelW's Page, Military
Malik Obama confirms his half-brother Barack grew up a Muslim
By Israel Insider staff June 13, 2008
Bookmark to del.icio.us
Malik holds a photo of Obama and him in Muslim dress, reportedly when the two first met in 1985
Apparently the Obamas of Kenya have been reading those scurrilous emails to which Barack likes to refer, because they have no doubt -- contrary to the claims of the Obama campaign, that the presidential candidate was raised a Moslem. They take that as a given.
As the Jerusalem Post reports, "Barack Obama's half brother Malik said Thursday that if elected his brother will be a good president for the Jewish people, despite his Muslim background. In an interview with Army Radio he expressed a special salutation from the Obamas of Kenya."
The Obama brothers' father, a senior economist for the Kenyan government who studied at Harvard University, died in car crash in 1982. He left six sons and a daughter. All of his children - except Malik -- live in Britain or the United States. Malik and Barack met in 1985.
In a remarkable denial issued last November that still stands on the official campaign website, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs issued a statement explaining that "Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian."
Apparently Malik Obama, himself a Muslim, had not read the press release.
Melanie Phillips is the most recent commentator to draw attention to the massive body of evidence that leaves no doubt that Barak Hussein Obama was born a Muslim (Islam is patrilineal) and raised a Muslim (so registered in school, acknowledging attending Islamic classes, reported accompanying his step-father to the mosque, and able to recite the Koran in the original Arabic).
Reuven Koret, Aaron Klein and Daniel Pipes have previously pointed to the attempts by Obama and his campaign to conceal the candidate's Muslim background. The well documented evidence draws upon the on-the-ground interviews by researchers in Indonesia and Kenya, published quotations of Obama's childhood friends and his school records, as well as the candidate's own autobiography.
It is not clear whether Barack Obama will now disown his half-brother Malik, or throw him under the campaign bus, for acknowledging that shared family background. In any case, some one should notify "Fight the Smear" tout de suite. Perhaps they can get him with the program.
Again, it's not his faith that's the issue. If true, the issue is his lying about it
How about the 11% who still approve of the Dem controlled COngress??
Is justice only for Americans
AS defined by the Constitution in this particular case, yes and it's very clear on that
According to the Court's previous ruling habeus doesn't apply to foreign citizens held outside the US- that is why the prisoners were sent to Guantanamo.
In this ruling they reversed that because the present war has gone on too long- just a ridiculous argument
Boumediene the day after
In one sense, the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in the Boumediene case granting foreign terrorists detained in Guantanamo access to the federal courts and the right of habeas corpus was predictable. It was predictable in the sense that the majority opinion extrapolates on the Court's war-on-terror jurisprudence. Stepping back a bit, however, the decision appears bizarre. I am not an expert in the applicable law and tentatively offer the following observations, subject to correction, without getting into the fine points of habeas doctrine debated in the Court's opinions in the case.
1. What Warren Court liberals did for the common American criminal, the Court's current liberals are in the process of doing for foreign terrorists captured or held by American forces around the world.
2. The extension of constitutional rights to detainees at Guantanamo is premised on the government's de facto control over the territory. The Court leaves the concept of de facto control open for further development in the future on a case-by-case basis. The Court has opened the floodgates to a vast and untoward expansion of federal jurisdiction on behalf of foreign terrorists.
3. In setting up the detention facility at Guantanamo, the Bush administration reasonably relied on the Court's decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. In Eisentrager the Court held that nonresident enemy aliens have no right to seek relief in the federal courts in wartime. The Court does not expressly overrule Eisentrager in Boumediene, but Boumediene cannot fairly be reconciled with Eisentrager. The distinctions drawn by the majority between Eisentrager and Boumediene in part IV of Justice Kennedy's opinion are remarkably unpersuasive. The unpersuasiveness of this crucial part of the opinion shows the Court, rather than the Bush administration, to be acting arbitrarily.
4. The Court treats the difficulties created by its assertion of federal jurisdiction over areas other than battlefield with a blasé carelessness that is shocking. "[C}ivilian courts and the Armed Forces have functioned along side each other at various points in our history," Justice Kennedy writers. "The Government presents no credible arguments that the military mission at Guantanamo would be compromised if habeas courts had jurisdiciton to hear the detainees' claims." No problem!
5. Justice Kennedy concedes: "It is true that before today the Court has never held that noncitizens detained by our Government in territory over which another country maintains de jure sovereignty have any rights under our Constitution. But the case before us lacks any hisotorical parallel." Why? Because the war "is already among the longest wars in American history." Why is that relevant? In past wars, were the Court's wartime decisions premature? Should they have been held in abeyance so that the duration of the conflict could be ascertained? The Court of course does not even explore the issue.
6. "The detainees, moreover, are held in a territory that, while technically not part of the United States, is under the complete and total control of our Government." The concept of "complete and total control" is left open for future development by the Court. As Justice Scalia notes in dissent, "it clears a wide path for the Court to traverse in the years to come."
7. The Court's decision leaves the government with options to avoid the federal courts. Congress has the power under the Constitution to suspend the privilege of habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion (but one is unsure whether that too is subject to judicial review). The military may be able to hold detainees abroad in territory that leaves less argument about the de facto control of the United States. The government may turn the detainees over to foreign countries for interrogation or detention.
8. Other of the Court's opionions in the recent past have imported foreign law into American constitutional law for the purported benefit of American citizens. Boumediene reverses the process, exporting American constitutional law to territory arguably under the de facto control of the United States for the benefit of foreign terrorists.
9. Justice Scalia notes in his dissent that the Court's decision is difficult to reconcile with American history as well as its own precedent:: "The category of prisoner comparable to these detainees are not the Eisentrager criminal defendants, but the more than 400,000 prisoners of war detained in the United States alone during World War II. Not a single one was accorded the right to have his detention validated by a habeas corpus action in federal court—and that despite the fact that they were present on U. S. soil."
10. Boumediene works a vast expansion of the wartime power of the federal courts and, ultimately, of five members of the Supreme Court. By the same token, it contracts the power of the elected branches of government to provide for the common defense. With respect to the executive in particular, Hamilton's comments in Federalist 69 are suggestive in this context: "Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand. The direction of war implies the direction of the common strength; and the power of directing and employing the common strength, forms a usual and essential part in the definition of the executive authority." We will have occasion to regret the Court's handiwork in Boumediene for years to come.
Posted by Scott at 5:13 AM | Permalink | E-mail this post to a friend |
No, ahole, I enjoy living in a country where the bedrock is not the elected leaders, but the constitution.
Your example of possible miscarriages occurring under the present scenario is typical . There are also innocent people convicted in our courts daily for serious offenses. Should we therefore end all law enforcement?
Those people wrongly interred do have recourse.
We're not abrogating any liberties, we were acting according to the COnstitution and the previous rulings of the SC
Those people ARE NOT citizens of the US- and thus aren't afforded the same privileges as citizens.
You may whine that that's not fair or that it hurts people's feelings, but I'll take the reasoning of the founding fathers over your misguided liberal pap
President Kennedy
June 13, 2008; Page A14
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy isn't known for his judicial modesty. But for sheer willfulness, yesterday's 5-4 majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush may earn him a historic place among the likes of Harry Blackmun. In a stroke, he and four other unelected Justices have declared their war-making supremacy over both Congress and the White House.
[Anthony Kennedy]
Boumediene concerns habeas corpus – the right of Americans to challenge detention by the government. Justice Kennedy has now extended that right to non-American enemy combatants captured abroad trying to kill Americans in the war on terror. We can say with confident horror that more Americans are likely to die as a result.
An Algerian native, Lakhdar Boumediene was detained by U.S. troops in Bosnia in January 2002 and is currently held at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. military heard the case for Boumediene's detention in 2004, and in the years since he has never appealed the finding that he is an enemy combatant, although he could under federal law. Instead, his lawyers asserted his "right" – as an alien held outside the United States – to a habeas hearing before a U.S. federal judge.
Justice Kennedy's opinion is remarkable in its sweeping disregard for the decisions of both political branches. In a pair of 2006 laws – the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military Commissions Act – Congress and the President had worked out painstaking and good-faith rules for handling enemy combatants during wartime. These rules came in response to previous Supreme Court decisions demanding such procedural care, and they are the most extensive ever granted to prisoners of war.
Yet as Justice Antonin Scalia notes in dissent, "Turns out" the same Justices "were just kidding." Mr. Kennedy now deems those efforts inadequate, based on only the most cursory analysis. As Chief Justice John Roberts makes clear in his dissent, the majority seems to dislike these procedures merely because a judge did not sanctify them. In their place, Justice Kennedy decrees that district court judges should derive their own ad hoc standards for judging habeas petitions. Make it up as you go!
Justice Kennedy declines even to consider what those standards should be, or how they would protect national security over classified information or the sources and methods that led to the detentions. Eventually, as the lower courts work their will amid endless litigation, perhaps President Kennedy will vouchsafe more details in some future case. In the meantime, the likelihood grows that our soldiers will prematurely release combatants who will kill more Americans.
To reach yesterday's decision, Justice Kennedy also had to dissemble about Justice Robert Jackson's famous 1950 decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. In that case, German nationals had been tried and convicted by military commissions for providing aid to the Japanese after Germany's surrender in World War II. Justice Jackson ruled that non-Americans held in a prison in the American occupation zone in Germany did not warrant habeas corpus. But rather than overrule Eisentrager, Mr. Kennedy misinterprets it to pretend that it was based on mere "procedural" concerns. This is plainly dishonest.
By the logic of Boumediene, members of al Qaeda will now be able to challenge their status in court in a way that uniformed military officers of a legitimate army cannot. And Justice Scalia points out that this was not a right afforded even to the 400,000 prisoners of war detained on American soil during World War II. It is difficult to understand why any terrorist held anywhere in the world – whether at Camp Cropper in Iraq or Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan – won't now have the same right to have their appeals heard in an American court.
Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution contains the so-called Suspension Clause, which says: "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Justice Kennedy makes much of the fact that we are not currently under "invasion or rebellion." But he ignores that these exceptions don't include war abroad because the Framers never contemplated that a non-citizen, captured overseas and held outside the U.S., could claim the same right.
Justice Kennedy's opinion is full of self-applause about his defense of the "great Writ," and no doubt it will be widely praised as a triumph for civil liberties. But we hope it is not a tragedy for civil liberties in the long run. If there is another attack on U.S. soil – perhaps one enabled by a terrorist released under the Kennedy rules – the public demand for security will trample the Constitutional delicacies of Boumediene. Just last month, a former Gitmo detainee killed a group of Iraqi soldiers when he blew himself up in Mosul. And he was someone the military thought it was safe to release.
Justice Jackson once famously observed that the Constitution is "not a suicide pact." About Anthony Kennedy's Constitution, we're not so sure.
The Climate Alarmist Manifesto
By Marc Sheppard
Just as class struggle forms the nucleus of Marxism, so does it sit at the very core of the Left's climate alarmism. At a glance, the regressive nature of fiscal Carbon control schemes, be they taxation or cap-and-trade, would appear to be antithetical to liberal thinking. But beneath the veneer of both the domestic and international green agenda lies a devious wealth-redistribution plan compared to which all predecessors pale.
Take, for instance, the recently tabled Lieberman-Warner Bill. The Act would have empowered government to control key aspects of -- while extracting trillions of dollars from -- our economy by forcing the auction of greenhouse gas (GHG) credits upon industry and power companies. And, while the left lauds penalizing bourgeois "big business" success, advocates for the poor were quick to point out that the inescapable consequent increase in energy costs across the board (electricity, home heating, gasoline, etc) would have placed a disproportionate burden upon proletarian lower wage-earners.
Ah, but the Democrats -- champions of the downtrodden that they are -- were just as quick to respond. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) offered a substitute amendment bearing her name, Subtitle I of which provided "Financial Relief for Consumers" as follows:
"The bill sets aside a nearly $800 billion tax relief fund through 2050, which will help consumers in need of assistance related to energy costs. The precise details of the relief will be developed by the Finance committee."
And if Senator Boxer's plan of doling out $800 billion in industry profits to the "needy" sounds like class warfare to you, just wait until you hear what's brewing down the hall.
Late last month, chairman of the Special House Committee On Global Warming, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-MA), unveiled even harsher climate change legislation. Unlike Lieberman-Warner, which would have at least eased industry and power companies into compliance over time, Markey's bill would require permits for virtually all emissions right from day one, in a crazy effort to roll atmospheric CO2 back to levels 85 percent below 2005 by 2050 (that's 15% more than even the doomed Senate bill).
Also unlike its Senate counterpart, Markey's Investing in Climate Action and Protection Act (ICAP) requires no amendments to begin redistributing the profits of domestic commerce. Actually, Subtitle A: Climate Trust Tax Credits and Rebates is quite clear in describing how $4.3 trillion (which represents an estimated 55 to 58.5% of auction proceeds) will:
"be used for refundable tax credits and rebates for middle- and low-income households, to compensate for any increase in energy costs resulting from the bill. Tax credits will be used to reach middle-income wage earners and senior citizens, and cash rebates -- distributed through the Electronic Benefits Transfer systems used for food stamps -- will be used to reach low-income households. All households earning under $110,000 will be eligible. Virtually all costs from climate regulation will be covered for households earning under $70,000, with benefit levels phasing out gradually for households earning $70,000 to $110,000."
Of course, under the cloak of a "market-based" solution, cap-and-trade's government command-and-control system is, as George Will so brilliantly describes it, already nothing more than "a huge tax hidden in a bureaucratic labyrinth of opaque permit transactions." Adding unabashedly obvious wealth-redistribution to the formula merely strips any façade of capitalism's skeleton beneath.
It seems that giddy anticipation of further power gains next year -- combined with hope of the most liberal among them living in the White House -- has caused many Dems to lower their guard with respect to their aims. Just last month, before a House Judiciary Committee, Maxine Waters apparently cared little for Shell Oil President John Hofmeister's response to her questions about guaranteeing a drop in oil prices were he allowed to drill off US shores. Visibly flustered, the California Democrat let slip to an astonished audience:
"And guess what this liberal would be all about? This liberal would be all about socialize -- uh, uh, would be about basically taking over and the government running all of your companies."
What still escapes me is just why anyone might be surprised by her faux-pas. Such is precisely the Left's rationale for jumping aboard the bogus GHG bandwagon in such earnest almost to the very man and woman.
In the section Das Klima Kapital of my recent piece celebrating the death of Lieberman-Warner for its lack of scientific merit, I also pointed out why cap-and-trade is the perfect liberal synergy of environmentalism and socialism:
"In 1867, Karl Marx argued that capitalism's cycle of labor exploitation could not endlessly sustain itself and would ultimately be its doom. Modern greenies insist that capitalism's cycle of environmental exploitation will not endlessly sustain itself and will ultimately be not only its doom -- but the entire planet's."
But, indeed, the reach of this ecosocialism extends far beyond our borders.
Internationally, the Left has always accused capitalist western nations of growing fat through the exploitation of poorer countries. And they now argue that those same fat-cat nations have exploited the planet to the brink of doom, also to the simultaneous exclusion and detriment of those less fortunate.
And for their imaginary sins of both economic and ecological abuse at both the national and global level, liberal-elitists have decreed that now is the time for the successful to atone. Translation: "developed" nations must not only clean up their own mess, but also pay to help "undeveloped" nations clean up theirs.
Much as Vladmir Lenin promised in 1920 that centralized electrification and "advanced technology" would abolish "the division between town and country" and "conquer completely and decisively the backwardness of the countryside, its scattered economy and its ignorance," so do the ecosocialists plan to uplift "developing nations." But unlike the first soviet leader's GOELRO project, which coalesced Russian scientists and peasant cooperatives to bring modernizing power to their own country, contemporary ecosocialists would simply play Robin Hood with the wealth and patented technology of "prosperous" nations under the false pretense of "saving the planet."
Through Carbon trading, taxes, mandatory "clean energy" technology transfers, and other austere regulations, proposed UN-controlled international climate treaties to succeed Kyoto would penalize wealthy, innovative, capitalist countries while subsidizing poorer nations with waivers and foreign aid. And with most "good governance" requirements for beneficiary nations lifted, this equates to coerced underwriting of military regimes, dictatorships and, of course, socialists.
In his 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx defined the basis for a communist society with the words "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." What a marvelous creed for today's climate alarmists, who would steal from flourishing countries, enterprises and citizens in order to give to those they deem chronically underprivileged. And, by spreading their woefully unproven yet widely accepted GHG horror stories, would do so on a global level that Marx and Lenin themselves dared only dream of. And would wield more centralized control of international economies than either ever dared envision.
In his book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, Vaclav Klaus wrote:
"The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.''
With all due respect to the wise Czech President, they are indeed one in the same.
Revisiting Obama's Speech to AIPAC
By Rick Richman
Barack Obama's June 4 speech to AIPAC received a favorable initial response, but the more one scrutinizes it, the more troubling it becomes. Here are some of the portions that raised questions, ranging from minor to major:
1. Obama began his speech (the video is here) with something not in his prepared text -- a reference to the need to remember and bring home "the three soldiers still held by Hezbollah." Perhaps it was simply a momentary slip, but it seems strange he did not realize that Gilad Shalit is held by Hamas in Gaza, not by Hezbollah in Lebanon, particularly since Shalit's status has been a key issue in the on-going negotiations over a Gaza truce.
2. More serious was his statement regarding Jerusalem -- and his reversal of it 24 hours later. In a paragraph beginning "Let me be clear," Obama told AIPAC that "Jerusalem must remain undivided." The statement produced a standing ovation. The next day, his campaign decided his statement had to be "clarified." It turned out that, by "undivided," Obama meant that, after the city was divided, there would be no checkpoints between the two sides.
3. Obama's statement to AIPAC that he supported "boycotting firms associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which has rightly been labeled a terrorist organization" was at best disingenuous. He did not acknowledge he had strenuously opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment last September, which called for precisely that policy.
His support at AIPAC for boycotting the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was thus a little late. The month after Kyl-Lieberman passed the Senate (by 76-22, including 29 Democratic votes), the Bush administration designated the Guard as a terrorist organization and subjected it to sanctions under U.S. law and relevant U.N. resolutions, just as the Senate had urged.
At AIPAC, Obama was thus supporting something that (a) had already been done (b) many months before (c) over his objections.
4. The nature of Obama's opposition to Kyl-Lieberman turns out to be instructive. On October 11, 2007, he published a lengthy op-ed in a New Hampshire newspaper about it. In the op-ed, he acknowledged that "[w]e do need to tighten sanctions on the Iranian regime, particularly on Iran's Revolutionary Guard." But he argued "this must be done separately" from Kyl-Lieberman, which he asserted went "out of its way to draw connections between distinct threats" -- the Iraq war and Iran -- and constituted "saber-rattling." He proposed instead "tough and direct diplomacy" with Iran.
It is hard to conceive of a more misleading description of what the Kyl-Lieberman amendment involved.
Kyl-Lieberman set forth seven pages of direct quotations from official sources, including: (a) the September 2007 testimony of Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, (b) the August 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, (c) the September 2007 Report of the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, (d) the September 2007 Defense Department report on Stability and Security in Iraq, and other sources.
Based on those sources, the Senate found that Iran was seeking to use the Guard "to turn the Shi'a militia extremists into a Hezbollah-like force" to "fight a proxy war" against the Iraqi government and the American-led forces in Iraq, and that it was a critical U.S. interest to prevent Iran from turning those extremists in Iraq into such a force. The Senate also concluded that the manner in which the U.S. "transitions and structures" its military presence in Iraq would have critical long-term consequences for the ability of Iran to threaten the security of the region and the prospects for democracy in the region.
In other words, Kyl-Lieberman did not go "out of its way to draw connections between distinct threats." Its findings established instead that Iran was fighting a proxy war against the United States and its interests in Iraq itself.
The Senate also made findings with respect to the efficacy of diplomacy as a solution to the proxy war. Kyl-Lieberman noted that Ambassador Crocker had held three rounds of talks with Iran on Iraq security since May 2007 and had "found no readiness on the Iranians' side at all to engage seriously on these issues." Crocker testified the Iranians "were interested simply in the appearance of discussions, of being seen to be at the table with the U.S. as an arbiter of Iraq's present and future."
In order to get Democratic votes for Kyl-Lieberman, the amendment was stripped of the provisions stating that: (1) U.S. policy should be "to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran," and (2) such a policy should be backed by the "prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq." In addition, two new findings were added, noting that both Ambassador Crocker and Defense Secretary Gates had endorsed diplomatic and economic means as the preferable approach to dealing with the Iranian challenge.
In other words, not only was Kyl-Lieberman not "saber-rattling," but the faint sound of sabers that had once been in it had been explicitly removed. The only action item left in the amendment when it passed, by an overwhelming margin, was economic sanctions on the Iranian entity seeking to destabilize Iraq.
5. Obama also promised at AIPAC that "I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon -- everything." The statement produced another standing ovation, but the repetition of "everything" masked the fact that he was simply pledging a maximum personal effort, not making a presidential commitment to actually achieve that result.
His statement recalled the colloquy during the October 30, 2007 presidential debate, when Tim Russert asked each candidate the same question -- "would you pledge to the American people that Iran will not develop a nuclear bomb while you are president?" -- and Hillary Clinton repeated her talking point three times (emphasis added):
CLINTON: I intend to do everything I can to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.
RUSSERT: But you won't pledge?
CLINTON: I am pledging I will do everything I can to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.
RUSSERT: But, they may.
CLINTON: Well, you know, Tim, you asked me if I would pledge, and I have pledged that I will do everything I can to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.
(LAUGHTER)
Compare Obama's promise to do "everything in my power" (echoing Hillary Clinton's pledge to do "everything I can") with John McCain's statement of a national commitment in his February 7, 2008 speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee:
I intend to make unmistakably clear to Iran we will not permit a government that espouses the destruction of the State of Israel as its fondest wish and pledges undying enmity to the United States to possess the weapons to advance their malevolent ambitions.
6. As Obama gave his AIPAC speech, his positions over the past year had been effectively refuted: he had opposed the surge (which has succeeded), opposed imposing economic sanctions under Kyl-Lieberman (but now favored them seven months after they were implemented), and had drawn no adverse conclusions from the fact that Ambassador Crocker's three rounds of negotiations with Iran had been fruitless and counterproductive. Instead, Obama proposed future "tough and principled" negotiations with Iran that would be conducted while the centrifuges continued to whirl, together with a "redeployment" of troops from Iraq.
7. It was that part of Obama's AIPAC speech that was the most troublesome of all. Here is the process of diplomacy with Iran that Obama outlined at AIPAC:
We will open up lines of communication, build an agenda, coordinate closely with our allies, especially Israel, and evaluate the potential for progress. . . .
[W]e will present a clear choice [to Iran]. If you abandon your dangerous nuclear program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, there will be meaningful incentives -- including the lifting of sanctions, and political and economic integration with the international community. If you refuse, we will ratchet up the pressure.
In other words, in 2009 or later, after the lines have been opened, the agenda is built, the allies coordinated, the potential evaluated, the choice presented, the talks held, and the talks eventually fail, Obama will then start to "ratchet up the pressure" -- at just about the time Iran will have completed (or used) its nuclear weapon. But Obama will be able to say don't blame him, he did everything he could.
It is easy to understand why Obama's speech at AIPAC received an enthusiastic response. It reflected his trademark rhetoric: soaring language, an inspiring delivery, sounding great for as long as it lasts (or until one thinks more about it). But like his final primary speech ("this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow") and his speech on race ("I could no more disown . . ."), the rhetoric can be overblown, and its shelf life limited.
Rick Richman edits Jewish Current Issues. His articles on the "peace process" have appeared in American Thinker, The New York Sun and The Jewish Press, among other publications.
Taking the War to the Dems
Victory or defeat?
By Charles Krauthammer
In his St. Paul victory speech, Barack Obama pledged again to pull out of Iraq. Rather than “continue a policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians. . . . It’s time for Iraqis to take responsibility for their future.”
↓ Keep reading this article ↓
We know Obama hasn’t been to Iraq in more than two years, but does he not read the papers? Does he not know anything about developments on the ground? Here is the “nothing” that Iraqis have been doing in the last few months:
1. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent the Iraqi army into Basra. It achieved in a few weeks what the British had failed to do in four years: take the city, drive out the Mahdi army, and seize the ports from Iranian-backed militias.
2. When Mahdi fighters rose up in support of their Basra brethren, the Iraqi army at Maliki’s direction confronted them and prevailed in every town — Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Kut, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniyah — from Basra to Baghdad.
3. Without any American ground forces, the Iraqi army entered and occupied Sadr City, the Mahdi army stronghold.
4. Maliki flew to Mosul, directing a joint Iraqi-U.S. offensive against the last redoubt of al-Qaeda, which had already been driven out of Anbar, Baghdad, and Diyala provinces.
5. The Iraqi parliament enacted a de-Baathification law, a major Democratic benchmark for political reconciliation.
6. Parliament also passed the other reconciliation benchmarks — a pension law, an amnesty law, and a provincial elections and powers law. Oil revenues are being distributed to the provinces through the annual budget.
7. With Maliki having demonstrated that he would fight not just Sunni insurgents (e.g., in Mosul) but Shiite militias (e.g., the Mahdi army), the Sunni parliamentary bloc began negotiations to join the Shiite-led government. (The final sticking point is a squabble over a sixth Cabinet position.)
The disconnect between what Democrats are saying about Iraq and what is actually happening there has reached grotesque proportions. Democrats won an exhilarating electoral victory in 2006 pledging withdrawal at a time when conditions in Iraq were dire and we were indeed losing the war. Two years later, when everything is changed, they continue to reflexively repeat their “narrative of defeat and retreat” (as Joe Lieberman so memorably called it) as if nothing has changed.
It is a position so utterly untenable that John McCain must seize the opportunity and, contrary to conventional wisdom, make the Iraq War the central winning plank of his campaign. Yes, Americans are war-weary. Yes, most think we should not have engaged in the first place. Yes, Obama will keep pulling out his 2002 speech opposing the war.
But McCain’s case is simple. Is not Obama’s central mantra that this election is about the future not the past? It is about 2009, not 2002. Obama promises that upon his inauguration, he will order the Joint Chiefs to bring him a plan for withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months. McCain says that upon his inauguration, he’ll ask the Joint Chiefs for a plan for continued and ultimate success.
The choice could not be more clearly drawn. The Democrats’ one objective in Iraq is withdrawal. McCain’s one objective is victory.
McCain’s case is not hard to make. Iraq is a three-front war — against Sunni al-Qaeda, against Shiite militias, and against Iranian hegemony — and we are winning on every front:
We did not go into Iraq to fight al-Qaeda. The war had other purposes. But al-Qaeda chose to turn it into the central front in its war against America. That choice turned into an al-Qaeda fiasco: Al-Qaeda in Iraq is now on the run and in the midst of stunning and humiliating defeat.
As for the Shiite extremists, the Mahdi army is isolated and at its weakest point in years.
Its sponsor, Iran, has suffered major setbacks, not just in Basra, but in Iraqi public opinion, which has rallied to the Maliki government and against Iranian interference through its Sadrist proxy.
Even the most expansive American objective — establishing a representative government that is an ally against jihadists, both Sunni and Shiite — is within sight.
Obama and the Democrats would forfeit every one of these successes to a declared policy of fixed and unconditional withdrawal. If McCain cannot take to the American people the case for the folly of that policy, he will not be president. Nor should he be.
Give the speech, senator. Give it now.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.