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l Clinton profits from felon backed by China
By Jim McElhatton
March 7, 2008
Former President Bill Clinton speaking at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Thursday, Feb. 28
The spring before his wife began her White House campaign, former President Bill Clinton earned $700,000 for his foundation by selling stock that he had been given from an Internet search company that was co-founded by a convicted felon and backed by the Chinese government, public records show.
Mr. Clinton had gotten the nonpublicly traded stock from Accoona Corp. back in 2004 as a gift for giving a speech at a company event. He landed the windfall by selling the 200,000 shares to an undisclosed buyer in May 2006, commanding $3.50 a share at a time when the company was reporting millions of dollars of losses, according to interviews.
A spokesman for the William J. Clinton Foundation declined to identify the buyer who was willing to pay so much for a struggling company's stock, saying only that the transaction was handled by a securities broker. It occurred seven months before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her bid to run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
The spokesman, Ben Yarrow, declined last week to say whether Mr. Clinton knew about the Chinese government's connection to Accoona or the felony fraud conviction of one of the company's founders.
"President Clinton gave a speech; he did not endorse a product," Mr. Yarrow said.
The $700,000 capital gains was listed on the tax returns of Mr. Clinton's foundation that were reviewed by The Washington Times.
The lack of disclosure about the buyer and the general activities of former presidents' foundations troubles some ethics experts.
Sheila Krumholz, executive director for the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which studies political money and ethics, said even though the law doesn't require former presidents to disclose donations and stock transactions to their foundations, they should do so to avoid the appearanc
"We're in a unique period where the wife of a former president is running for the job of the son of a former president," she said, referring to Mrs. Clinton and the current President Bush.
Accoona offered its own Internet search engine as a rival to giants Google and Yahoo, and Mr. Clinton was the keynote speaker at the company's Dec. 6, 2004, launch in New York. He even joked about the price of the stock that he was given that day as compensation for his speech.
"So I hope you get a big run-up in your stock price, I hope you have a great time doing it, but remember you're doing something profoundly good for humanity and the future as you do," Mr. Clinton told Accoona executives.
Accoona, based in Jersey City, N.J., was co-founded by Armand Rousso, who as of last year held more than 14 percent of the company's shares. He pleaded guilty in 1999 to federal money laundering and other charges in a fraud investigation in New Jersey.
After being jailed for 19 months and cooperating with government investigators for several years, he was sentenced to probation in 2006 and was barred from working in the securities industry.
Rousso "does not get involved in the management of this company; if he did, I would not be here," Accoona's chief executive, Valentine J. Zammit, said in an interview. "I didn't come on board to be told what to do. ... We've made a lot of changes.
The China Daily Information Co., or CDIC, a subsidiary of the Chinese-controlled newspaper China Daily, holds nearly a 7 percent stake in Accoona, records show. Mr. Zammit said CDIC also has no management role.
Still, the company has touted its ties to China to potential investors.
"CDIC's market knowledge and its parent's ownership by the Chinese government gives us an advantage over companies that do not have such a relationship," the company said in a prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year.
The stock
Accoona officials have declined to discuss the arrangement they had with Mr. Clinton. "Obviously, we're a private company. ... I'm not about to give out that [information]," said Mr. Zammit, who wasn't with the company when Mr. Clinton got the stock.
Mr. Clinton's foundation has raised more than $250 million for the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and other charitable causes since 2004.
"The foundation is proud of the work that it does, and its tremendous successes — including its success on previously intractable problems such as the cost of AIDS medicine in the developing world — would not be possible without the generous support it receives from donors," Mr. Yarrow said.
Before calling off a plan to raise money on the stock market last year, Accoona said in a detailed prospectus filed with the SEC that it had issued 200,000 shares of common stock in 2004 for what it called "marketing services," valuing the deal at 66 cents per share. The documents do not name a recipient.
When Mr. Clinton's foundation sold its 200,000 Accoona shares in 2006, the transaction was worth $3.50 per share. The IRS document doesn't name the buyer, and officials did not respond to a request for more information about the transaction.
There is no established market price for the stock because the company is private. But records show that the company posted at least $60 million in losses during the period from 2004 to 2006.
The Chicago Tribune, reporting the stock transaction on Tuesday, quoted a business agent for former Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov, saying his client also was paid in stock options after attending Accoona's launch in 2004.
However, the agent said, Mr. Kasparov did not exercise the options because financial advisers said the shares were worth less than the $1 option price, according to the report. The agent, Owen Williams, declined to comment when contacted by The Times.
Pat Huddleston, former branch enforcement chief for the SEC, did not describe the $3.50 per share paid to the Clinton Foundation as inappropriate but speculated that Accoona may have agreed in 2004 to buy back the stock at a predetermined price.
"A private company still owes a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder, ... but the definition of fair price in a private company is what a willing seller and what a willing buyer agree on," he said.
"I wonder if there wasn't an agreement where whoever is arranging the former president's [speaking] engagement is saying, 'I'm going to take stock, but you agree that when I sell it, you're going to have to buy it at such and such a price,' " Mr. Huddleston said.
The concerns
Not all political leaders have been as enthusiastic about Accoona as Mr. Clinton. One prominent member of the British Parliament raised concerns about the company's close ties to the Chinese government after it introduced a European search engine.
Derek Wyatt, who chaired a House of Commons committee on Internet-related issues, reportedly called on advertisers at the time to "shun" the company.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Wyatt told The Times that he was concerned that the company was too close to China, which has been criticized by human rights groups for restricting Web sites critical of the Chinese government.
"You can't have a search engine and restrict the search," Mr. Wyatt said.
Larger search engines have faced scrutiny over cooperation with the Chinese government. Reporters Without Borders in 2005 accused Yahoo of acting as a "police informant" for China in the arrest of a Chinese journalist.
Mr. Zammit said the company does not keep information on its users, adding, "We haven't been approached by the Chinese government to provide any information."
In an SEC filing, the company said, "We are required to report any suspicious content to relevant government authorities and to undergo computer security inspections."
Despite Accoona's connections in China, the company has struggled to turn a profit. Last year, the New York Times reported that plans to raise $80.5 million through a stock offering halted when an underwriter withdrew from the deal.
Accoona disclosed Rousso's criminal history in a prospectus filed with the SEC. The document says Rousso was convicted of securities fraud in France in 1999 and separately pleaded guilty to securities fraud and money laundering in federal court in New Jersey.
Rousso worked for at least two years as an outside consultant to Accoona through New York-based SPBD Consulting, which was paid millions of dollars. Attempts to reach Rousso through the business were unsuccessful.
"SPBD and Mr. Rousso are no longer consulting for Accoona Corporation," the company said in an e-mail last week, adding that Rousso would not comment on any Accoona-related matters.
"The principal underlying activities occurred during a period ending over nine years ago and are themselves completely unconnected to us," Accoona said in its SEC filing.
Rousso has been credited with helping secure 11 criminal convictions and $7 million in forfeited assets during the years that he spent cooperating with the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey, according to court records.
"Before I was arrested in January 1999, my conduct was illegal and I deeply regret it," Rousso told a judge in federal court in Newark at his sentencing in 2006.
"The 19 months I did in jail between January 1999 and August 2000 was the best thing that could happen to me. It gave me the strength and courage to carry on," he said.
Who Is Samantha Power?
Don't Worry, Though. Obama's Just As Bad As His Advisers.
By Dan McLaughlin Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles | When in Doubt Blame the Jews — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
For those of you whose first exposure to Obama senior foreign policy adviser Samantha Power is her foolish insults to Ohio and Hillary Clinton discussed by Moe below, you have some catching up to do - but fortunately, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline has been on the case for months. Mirengoff has laid out his case that Power - to an even greater extent than some of Obama's other key advisers - is anti-Israel and buys into the Walt-Mearsheimer line that U.S. policy in general, and Iraq policy in particular, is under the nefarious influence of "special interests," mainly the Israel lobby, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Key quote from Power:
Another longstanding foreign policy flaw is the degree to which special interests dictate the way in which the "national interest" as a whole is defined and pursued. Look at the degree to which Halliburton and several of the private security and contracting firms invested in the 2004 political campaigns and received very lucrative contracts in the aftermath of the U.S. takeover of Iraq. Also, America's important historic relationship with Israel has often led foreign policy decision-makers to defer reflexively to Israeli security assessments, and to replicate Israeli tactics, which, as the war in Lebanon last summer demonstrated, can turn out to be counter-productive.
So greater regard for international institutions along with less automatic deference to special interests – especially when it comes to matters of life and death and war and peace – seem to be two take-aways from the war in Iraq.
Of course, this sort of paranoia should not surprise observers of Obama, given where Obama himself, in his celebrated 2002 war speech, placed the blame for the decision to go to war:
(Read On...)
What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.
What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.
That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.
Gee, why specifically Perle and Wolfowitz, and not, say, Cheney and Rumsfeld? I think I know, and I think you do too. Obama knew his audience that day. But in fairness to Obama, he did argue that the Iraq War wasn't just a conspiracy of Jews, but also a political plot by Karl Rove to distract us from the Great Depression of 2002. That's a theme Obama has echoed elsewhere, albeit cannily shifting the blame for this sort of rhetoric to his constituents:
"Blacks are not willing to feel obliged to support the president's agenda," explains Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama. "They are much more likely to feel that (Bush) is engaging in disruptive policies at home and using the war as a means of shielding himself from criticism on his domestic agenda."
But never fear. Barack Obama isn't divisive; just ask him. Barack Obama doesn't demonize his opponents; just ask him. Barack Obama doesn't feed resentment and paranoia; just ask him. But don't listen too closely to him or his advisers.
Clintons blocking release of pardon papers
posted at 7:20 am on March 7, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Remember how Barack Obama called Hillary Clinton one of the most secretive politicians in America? That apparently applies to both Hillary and her husband as a team. Archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library have decided to keep the records of Bill’s pardons locked away from prying eyes — such as those of Obama, John McCain, and the media:
Federal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundreds of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich.
That archivists’ decision, based on guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides, prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests.
Clinton’s legal agent declined the option of reviewing and releasing the documents that were withheld, said the archivists, who work for the federal government, not the Clintons.
The decision to withhold much of the requested material could provide fodder for critics who say that the former president and his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, have been unwilling to fully release documents to public scrutiny.
Hillary is a curious candidate. She wants to run on her “experience” as First Lady in the Clinton administration — but she wants us to see as little evidence of that experience as possible. In fact, she says that “experience” is so compelling that we would want her in the White House answering the phone at 3 AM when a crisis occurs. If it really is that impressive, why is she and Bill going to such lengths to hide it?
The pardons present a very tricky problem for Hillary. That really does speak to the character of the Clinton administration, and obviously not in glowing terms. In the final days of his administration, Clinton pardoned Marc Rich, who had been a fugitive from American justice for tax evasion and other indictments, apparently because his ex-wife donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the presidential library that now hides those records. The Department of Justice had asked Clinton not to issue a pardon to Rich, as precedent had been not to grant clemency to fugitives, but that didn’t stop Clinton.
Marc Rich demonstrated why the Clintons had such faith in him by proceeding to become a major figure in the Oil-for-Food scandal.
But Rich isn’t the only questionable figure in the pardons scandals, and he’s not the only family member under suspicion. Hillary’s brother Tony Rodham represented Edgar and Vonna Gregory for a pardon, which Bill granted so that Gregory’s business could get federal contracts. Edgar and his wife had convictions for bank fraud that interfered with United Shows, and the Gregorys needed connections. Not only did they hire Rodham to represent them, they donated $10,000 to Hillary Clinton — half before the pardon, and half afterwards, in 2000.
The story doesn’t end there. The Gregorys then made a series of “loans” to Tony Rodham totaling over $100,000, the last of which came right before they declared bankruptcy in 2002, leaving creditors holding the bag once again. Rodham never made a single payment to repay these loans, and the Gregorys never made any attempt to collect them. Only after the United Shows books came under the scrutiny of bankruptcy courts did anyone press Rodham to repay the debt as an asset of United Shows.
The Clintons have plenty of reasons to hide their handiwork on pardons. If they released them, the only way people would want Hillary to answer that phone at 3 AM is if John McCain hired her as a switchboard operator.
Doing that wudu at Harvard
As of January 28, according to Abbie Ruzicka's Boston University Daily Free Press report, Harvard has imposed women-only swimming hours at its Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center. Harvard adopted the women-only hours after members of the Harvard Islamic Society and the Harvard Women's Center petitioned the university for a more comfortable environment for women. Ruzicka's account makes clear the Muslim impetus of the policy:
Harvard Islamic Society's Islamic Knowledge Committee officer Ola Aljawhary, a junior, said the women-only hours are being tested on a trial basis. The special gym hours will be analyzed over Spring Break to determine if they will continue, she said.
Aljawhary said that she does not believe that the women-only gym hours discriminate against men.
"These hours are necessary because there is a segment of the Harvard female population that is not found in gyms not because they don't want to work out, but because for them working out in a co-ed gym is uncomfortable, awkward or problematic in some way," she said.
Michael Graham's Boston Herald column comments:
In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Mohammed.
At Harvard, that’s called progress.
Graham tracked a Harvard spokesman down and elicited the usual obfuscatory blather:
When I asked Harvard spokesman Bob Mitchell about this new Sharia-friendly policy, he denied that they were banning anyone. “No, no,” he told me, “we’re permitting women to work out in an environment that accommodates their religion.”
By banning all men from the facility, right?
“It’s not ‘banning,’” he insisted. “We’re allowing, we’re accommodating people.”
Graham is unfortunately, to borrow a phrase, a voice crying in the wilderness.
Powerline
The arrogance of impotence, Obama style
Barack Obama likes to complain about American "arrogance" during the Bush years. In fact, our alleged arrogance is his pretext for wanting to negotiate directly and without pre-condition with some of the world's worst and most virulently anti-American dictators, a move that even Hillary Clinton opposes.
Yet it would be difficult to find a more arrogant foreign policy proposal than the one his key foreign policy adviser Samantha Power spoke favorably of in 2002, namely inserting a large military force into Israel and its territories for the purpose of imposing a Palestinian state. The arrogance (and stupidity) of this concept is so self-evident that Power now not only disavows it, but purports to find it incomprehensible.
Obama, to my knowledge, has never advocated anything like military intervention to create a Palestinian state. However, Ed Lasky reports that Obama and Power are contemplating the promotion of ethnic cleansing in Iraq. During a BBC broadcast, Power revealed that when President Obama retreats from Iraq, his plans might very well include "moving potentially people from mixed neighborhoods to homogenous neighborhoods" if that is their choice. Power acknowledged that this action would be the “equivalent of facilitating ethnic cleansing."
You can understand the logic of this idea from the Power-Obama perspective. Power made her name on the issue of genocide and, specifically, by advocating that the U.S. do more to prevent it. In fact, I understand that it was her book on this subject that brought her to Obama’s attention. She and Obama understand that if the U.S. abandons Iraq, the ensuing chaos could produce genocide or something approaching it. Thus, she contemplates ethnic cleansing as a fig leaf. (No "mammoth protection force" of the kind she contemplated for the new Palestine this time).
Still, it strikes me as arrogant and anti-humanitarian for the U.S. to ratify the results of sectarian terrorism, unleashed following our intervention and subsequent failure to assert control, by moving people from their neighborhoods based on their religion. Although Power says the U.S. would not force people to move, we would be handing them an ultimatum -- abandon your home or face the consequences of violence that we have the power to prevent. The idea of staying in Iraq to preserve and enhance the increasingly favorable status quo – and thereby virtually ensure the absence of anything like genocide – apparently is a non-starter for Power and Obama. Maybe they think this would be arrogant.
Arrogance is a pretty malleable concept, and Power and Obama may subscribe to the traditional leftist view that actions taken by the U.S. during a craven retreat by definition cannot be arrogant. Otherwise it's difficult not to affix that label to a course of action under which we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and offer the victims moving expenses as they flee from the consequences.
UPDATE: Notice the parallel way in which Power prefaces her case for invading Israel and for facilitating ethnic cleansing in Iraq. First Israel:
Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic.
Now Iraq:
[M]oving potentially people from mixed neighborhoods to homogenous neighborhoods [is] tragic. . .it's the equivalent of facilitating ethnic cleansing, which is terrible.
So why do such dreadful, terrible, and tragic things? In the case of Israel it's because the leaders in question, to whom she refers as "Sharafat” [Sharon-Arafat], "have been dreadfully irresponsible." Note the slanderous, anti-Israel equation of Sharon (who later would unilaterally disengage from portions of the disputed territory) with Arafat.
In the case of Iraq it has something to do with being able "to focus on Afghanistan [where only a small portion of the withdrawn troops would head] and in quotes [why "in quotes"?] deal with al Qaeda." It also has to do with "learn[ing] to live with insecurity in the way that people in [Great Britain] have lived with it," [you can say that again] plus "restor[ing] American standing longterm."
Translation: Tragedy is a small price to pay for bowing to trendy leftist talking points .
ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Of course I wouldn't expect the person who doesnt understand the concept of winning a Nobel prize to have the intellectual ability to read and consider contrary fact based opinions
Just keep sticking your head in the sand and covering your ears
NY Climate Conference: Journey to the Center of Warming Sanity
By Marc Sheppard
If you rely solely on the mainstream media to keep informed, you may not have heard that the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change concluded in New York City on Tuesday. And if you have heard anything -- this being primarily a forum of skeptics -- it was likely of a last gasp effort by "flat-Earthers" sponsored by right-wingers in the pockets of big-oil to breathe life into their dying warming denial agenda. Well, having just returned from the 3 day event, I'm happy to report that the struggle against the ravages of warming alarmism is not only alive, but healthier than ever.
Granting a long overdue forum to noted dissenting scientists, economists and policy experts from around the world, the Heartland Institute-sponsored symposium at the Marriott Marquis offered welcomed reasoned analysis as alternative to last December's hysterical circus which was Bali. It also served as the perfect launch point for a long-awaited un-IPCC report -- Nature, Not Human Activity, Rules the Climate: Summary for Policymakers of the Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change [PDF].
Compiling the work of over 20 prominent fellow researchers, editor Fred Singer's NIPCC report distinguishes itself from the recent IPCC Fourth Assessment (AR4) and its predecessors in that it was not pre-programmed to "support the hypotheses of anthropogenic warming (AGW) and the control of greenhouse gases." Instead, the nearly 50 page document is a non-political authoritative rebuttal to the multi-government controlled IPCC's "errors and outright falsehoods" regarding warming's measurement, likely drivers, and overall impact.
And its ultimate conclusion of "natural causes and a moderate warming trend with beneficial effects for humanity and wildlife" set the perfect framework for speakers and panelists - many of whom contributed to the NIPCC -- to elaborate on the summit's "Global warming is not a crisis" theme.
While Mainstream Media Ignored, Alarmist Propaganda Machine Attacked
Even before the first mention was made of activists and media misrepresenting current climate science while completely ignoring the serious inaccuracies in virtually all IPCC documents at Sunday's opening dinner, alarmist groups were busy marginalizing the event. Treehugger.com, DeSmogBlog.com and Greenpeace's Kert Davies -- who actually attended -- dubbed it "Denial-a-Palooza," and painted it as a desperate "final battle" in a war that's been long won by their side. Gloating over pending carbon regulations and collaborating GOP politicians, alarm-leader Davies asks:
"Just what do these denial professionals think of the likes of turncoats Walmart, General Electric, GM, Alcoa, Fed-Ex, Coca-Cola, Bank of America to name a few, who have acknowledged the threat, and either endorsed regulatory approaches or and taken measures to shift investment and business practices?"
Perhaps had Davies taken some time off from hijacking press members in the hallway to recycle-to-death his "I'm the skunk at the garden party" line, and actually attended a panel or two, he would have heard Steve Milloy's unsurprising response to that question -- Follow the MONEY. That's right, during a Monday afternoon political session, the founder of junkscience.com explained GE's double-dipping ability to manufacture and sell windmills while receiving government subsidies for doing so. And how, under proposed cap-and-trade plans, companies like Alcoa and DOW will be eligible for retroactive carbon credits for emission abatements they've accomplished in the past. Oh, and who do you suppose owns the exchange where these carbon credits will be traded? Can you spell Goldman Sachs?
Fuel refined from what these greenies don't understand about business could cleanly power the planet for years.
As usual, our friends in the mainstream dutifully dispensed their duties as well. Covering the event for the New York Times, Andrew C. Revkin writes:
"One challenge they faced was that even within their own ranks, the group - among them government and university scientists, antiregulatory campaigners and Congressional staff members -- displayed a dizzying range of ideas on what was, or was not, influencing climate."
Challenge, Andrew? Hearing cogent discussion and widely diverse idea-exchanges in contrast to the monotonous "settled science" IPCC-composed group-speak -- the compulsory soundtrack of previous climate conferences -- far from being a challenge, quickly reaffirmed which side wanted at the truth. As panel member Michael R Fox wrote back in 2006:
"When Michael Crichton said that ‘Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled,' he was right. When it comes to the natural sciences consensus is not science, and science is not consensus."
Revkin closed his attempted hatchet-job with an amazingly low-rent observation:
"The meeting was largely framed around science, but after the luncheon, when an organizer made an announcement asking all of the scientists in the large hall to move to the front for a group picture, 19 men did so."
This was a gratuitous attempt to suggest that few of the participants were actually men of science. Of course, had he opened a program or even journeyed to a few of Monday's 20 panels he would realized that there were, in fact, over 100 in attendance, specializing in everything from climatology to geology to meteorology to physics. In fact, on the final day over 60 scientists found the time to come forward for the commemorative photo.
Nice try.
Besides, the conference didn't focus exclusively on rebuking the junk science of AGW. While tracks one and two featured experts in paleoclimatology and climatology, respectively, the remaining three explored the impacts, economics and politics of warming itself and, moreover, the left's hysterical response to it.
Let's Get One Thing Settled -- The Science is NOT
There were a total of 32 discussions between the opening shredding of temperature records and biased recording mechanisms offered by Prof. Robert Balling and Ross McKitrick and the closing session's critique of media bias by ABC News correspondent John Stossel. Of those, 11 were purely devoted to science and another 8 studied impacts, which were often scientifically inclusive.
If I have any complaint at all about the conference it is only that with 5 sessions running concurrently, one was constantly forced to make the difficult decision of which to attend. That said, moving about as best I could landed me in the midst of many fascinating forums. .
I heard Christopher Monckton recall the consequences of Hitler's eugenics programs, Stalin's lyceum movement, Mao's "great leap backward," and the World Health Organization's DDT ban to conclude that it "kills people if you get the science wrong." And he attributed the current AGW scare story to the "same people" arguably responsible for 40 million children dying from malaria by demagoguing DDT:
"It's the international left, it's the media wanting another scare story, it's teachers wanting to seem relevant ... who sense that they can advance their causes, collectively, together, by getting behind this nonsense."
Lord Mockton feels that the public will eventually become aware that the activists do, indeed, have the science all wrong and that "once the penny drops -- that will be the end of this scare too." The former policy advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher predicts we're not far from that point. I wonder.
Moving up two floors I found Dennis Avery pleading that we "don't burn food" by mandating biofuels in a misguided and futile effort to control atmospheric CO2 levels. Singer, Avery's coauthor of the fabulous Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, then spoke briefly about the NIPCC report which he would officially debut in his address to that day's plenary lunch session. Next, J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School discussed the impracticalities and pitfalls of warming-induced polar bear population fluctuation forecasts, particularly as they relate to green attempts to have the bears declared an endangered species. More on that later.
In the next session, astrophysicist and geoscientist Willie Soon made an extremely compelling argument that "CO2 is not in charge of all things weather and climate." And Professor Howard Hayden managed a big laugh when he lambasted IPCC reliance on computer models with the words "Garbage in - Gospel out."
Afterwards, Craig Loehle stepped up to the podium to discuss his recently well-received research into non-tree ring proxies. Computing mean temperature anomaly history from eighteen 2000 year-long data sets of 6 different types, Loehle constructed a graph which suggests that mean temperatures between 800 and 1300 A.D (a.k.a the Medieval Warm Period) were approximately 0.3°C warmer than 20th century values. This, of course, stands in complete incongruity to the already discredited hockey stick graph (MBH98 -- Michael Mann et al.) highlighted in Al Gore's movie and prominently featured in the UN's alarming 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report.
Loehle also demonstrated how his reconstruction fit quite nicely into the 1500 year cycle proposed by Singer and Avery and then elicited a few laughs by adding, "Fred Singer is helping me with this and that should guarantee that I never get it published."
Funny, yes -- but sadder yet.
Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, I only managed to catch the tail end of meteorologist Anthony Watts' presentation. The founder of surfacestations.org has been reporting irregularities in the housings and locations of USHCN weather stations - from which virtually all agencies derive their data -- for quite some time. As I entered, the screen snapped continuous slides of stations placed near AC vents, parking lots, under shady trees, atop sun-soaked asphalt -- you name it. While some were actually funny - all were deeply disturbing.
My final climatology lesson came Tuesday morning from energy expert Richard S. Courtney who presenting a rather passionate analysis of the carbon cycle - specifically its "natural sequestration process [which] can easily cope with human emitted CO2."
Other science presenters time didn't allow me hear were CO2 expert Craig Idso, marine geologist Bob Carter, climate scientist David Archibald, Dr. Timothy Ball, professor Tim Patterson, meteorological researcher William Gray, climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer and too many more to possibly list.
But I'd certainly heard more than enough to understand that minds much greater than those from which the words "the debate is over" sloppily spout know well that it is not.
Green Policy Future -- I fear you more than any science I have seen
I apologize to Dickens for the section heading, but given November's very possible Washington realignment, settling the science may be the least of our worries.
My foray into the conference's politics track began with David Henderson discussing how once UN pressured governments signed on to the IPCC CO2 hysteria, "received opinion" swayed the public to believe that the science was settled; AGW was, indeed, a threat; and that immediate action must be taken. The academic economist stressed that people drafting IPCC reports"are not policy neutral, they're not meant to be -- they're policy makers." And those running the IPCC "are those already convinced so they can't imagine any other conclusion."
Shifting to insanity of a more local nature, former EDF member John Charles told fascinating tales of the business extortive and often ludicrous means by which Portland, OR has attempted to earn the title "America's greenest city." Then came Steve Milloy, whose eye-opening greed-based explanation of just how we find ourselves at the apex of declaring CO2 a toxic chemical in spite of the concept of it driving climate change being "hogwash" I've already acknowledged.
Next, director of Climate Strategies Watch Paul Chesser gave a dizzying presentation on the shady relationship between the Center for Climate Strategies, a self-proclaimed technical advisory service organization claiming no specific policy advocacy, and the environmental advocacy group Pennsylvania Environment Council. Mystery fans curious about how alarmist money is driving legislation are encouraged to visit Paul's fascinating site and delve into this Chandleresque web of eco-deception and policy peddling intrigue.
Benny Peiser, social anthropologist at Liverpool John Moores University and editor of the excellent CCnet, addressed an impacts session following an interesting but time overrunning Hurricanes and Global Warming presentation by expert Stan Goldenberg. In his abbreviated podium appearance, Peiser addressed the human condition aspects of the debate. Granted, he says, probability is not on the side of recent Nobel laureate Gore -- who, by the way declined an invitation to speak at the conference.
Nonetheless, let's not minimize or ridicule the public anxiety caused by the headlines from alarmists who constantly declare an absolutely worst case scenario as likelihood. After all, asks Peiser, what if, as CO2 continues to rise, temperatures follow? Or, current foretelling of a possible new Little Ice Age -- the last one caused mass starvation in Europe -- should prove to be right? Listening to his real concerns about these anthropological impacts and the tripling of energy needs should China and India reach a modern lifestyle in the next 40 years certainly moves one's mind nearer the center of the debate.
That is, until you're reminded of what the alarmists are planning.
Which I quickly was at Tuesday morning's final political forum. For openers, CEI senior fellow Marlo Lewis painted a harrowing picture of an America in which CO2 had been declared a pollutant by the EPA. He warned of an extension of Clean Air Act section 165 (preventing significant deterioration of air quality) to limit building and expansion permits for hotels, restaurants or any structure using natural gas for heating or cooking. He then coined the phrase "policy terrorism" to describe potential EPA extortion -- accept cap and trade or we'll blow up your economy. Nice.
Dr. Michael R. Fox then pointed out how lessons learned by the nuclear industry -- after its assault at the hands of "energy illiterate" activists -- must be appreciated in dealing with the current attack by "climate illiterates."
Finally, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works communications director took the helm. While the Bush Administration likely will not, last year's wrongly decided Supreme Court opinion has given future (read that Democrat) EPAs the power to regulate CO2 as a pollutant, warns Marc Morano. Furthermore, the decision was likely based on the AR4 SPM, which was written by not thousands, but rather 52 hand-selected scientists. Morano wonders whether knowledge of the "over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called ‘consensus' on man-made global warming" might have swayed the court's majority opinion in another direction. As do I.
He then reminded us of the global Carbon tax urged by a panel of UN experts at Bali. And of the words of MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen:
"Controlling Carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon you control life."
As an example of just how scary green policy may soon become -- remember Scott Armstrong's polar bear concerns? Here are Morano's:
"If polar bears are listed under the Endangered Species Act, then someone running a lawnmower in Miami could, theoretically, be cited for endangering the polar bear."
Earlier that morning, the president of the Czech Republic, Hon. Vaclav Klaus, received a standing ovation when he declared Europe's emission reduction goals impossible to meet without lowering populations or creating widespread poverty.
So, they're wrong on the science. They're wrong on the solutions. And, implementing their wrong solutions will impede freedom, retard growth and, ultimately, destroy economies. All while changing global mean temperatures not one single degree.
Not one.
As I hopped on the train headed for home, it struck me -- I may well have just left the only place on Earth where walked, however briefly, more sane-thinkers on the subject than not.
The chill the thought sent up my spine is not completely gone.
Marc Sheppard is a frequent contributor to American Thinker. He welcomes your feedback.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/ny_climate_conference_journey.html
Take the time to red the article and the links provided- you might learn somehting
Let's see if you can discredit ALL these scientists
Exclusive: Israeli cabinet okays Hamas, Jihad Islami targets for attack
March 5, 2008, 8:57 PM (GMT+02:00)
Hamas hard-liner Mahmoud a-Zahar
Hamas hard-liner Mahmoud a-Zahar
DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose that Israel’s security cabinet approved Wednesday, March 5, a series of terrorist targets for early attacks as part of a sustained military offensive against escalated Palestinian attacks from Gaza on Israeli civilians.
Prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Ehud Barak earlier obtained a quiet nod from US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice before she wound up her visit. These targets are revealed here by DEBKAfile:
1. Chiefs and senior officers of Hamas’ and Jihad Islami’s armed wings.
2. Their senior political officials in the Gaza strip, excluding prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, but including hard-line Mahmoud a-Zahar.
3. Hamas and Jihad institutions, including police stations.
These decisions were taken at the security cabinet’s first exhaustive review of Israel’s Gaza options.
DEBKAfile’s sources reveal the ministers considered demolishing urban districts in Gaza which serve as launching pads for missiles after evacuating their inhabitants. No final decision was reached on this.
Our military sources report that these strikes are expected to let loose a stepped up Hamas Grad rocket barrage against Ashkelon or even points further north, such as Ashdod, both important Mediterranean port cities. Sderot, Netivot and Ofakim may also come under heavy missile attack and Hamas will make a supreme effort to bring off suicide attacks inside Israel.
Notwithstanding this expectation, the defense minister is determined to deny Hamas the ability to create a balance of deterrent with Israel. Therefore, the Israeli operation will persist even under heavy Hamas assaults.
In any case, the Palestinians launched a fresh onslaught on the heels of Rice’s departure after her talks with Palestinian and Israel leaders.
Five Katyusha rockets fired from Gaza at Ashkelon exploded on empty ground south of the city; four Qassam missiles were aimed at as Sderot and the Eshkol farming region, raising the total from Wednesday morning to eight.
Our military sources believe that the five rockets were deliberately aimed to explode harmlessly as a warning from Hamas of the violence in store if Israeli goes ahead with more military offensives. Military experts inf
Party of Anecdote [Victor Davis Hanson]
One striking difference between McCain's speeches and those both of Obama and Clinton is the former's absence of personal misery stories. At least McCain is clear on two vital issues of our time: ensuring that U.S. forces once committed to war defeat the enemy rather than withdraw in defeat, and ensuring that we cease borrowing money to spend what we don't have or are not earning.
94% of mortgages may be paid each month, but we hear constantly from Obama of foreclosure signs and the evicted. Unemployment may still be at historic lows (cf. the frequent -6-7% of the last three decades), but in Hillary's world Jane Doe and Joe Sixpack are out of work and starving. The point is not that these are not real stories, but that these human agonies are not put into any broad perspective to ascertain to what degree things in general are far worse than before.
A poignant anecdote is instead intended to move, sadden, and finally anger us—to the point of begging a Hillary or Barack to intervene to stop the unceasing misery of innocent others. The net result is one of profound depression that America is such an awful, failed country — and I'm not sure if that innacurate storyline is one they really want to pound home to the voters for the next nine months. It all sounds right out an Athenian court case where the victim brings in starving children in rags to sway the popular jury.
If one were going to make the case for agony and hardship, the Democratic candidates should at least make it rational and collective: e.g., gas is over $3.50 a gallon, this means X billion out of U.S .pockets, and Y dollars more lost from your personal budget for the year — AND this is due to A, B. and C that we had some control over. It gets worse when we get to education, where the culprit is always the absence of money, never the lack of standards, the absence of accountability, the politicization of the curriculum, the infusion of therapy into the classroom, the popular emphasis on sports or leisure rather than on knowledge, or the role of unions in stifling indvidual initiative and excellence.
I don't think I have witnessed any campaign in recent memory so full of platitudes and mush — and thousands of personal voice tales of catastrophe right out of Dickens.
03/05 02:44 PM
Al-Qaeda is losing the war of minds
By Peter Wehner
Published: March 4 2008 18:39 | Last updated: March 4 2008 18:39
The US “surge” in Iraq has been so manifestly successful that no serious person can deny that gains have been made. Even Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have (grudgingly) conceded progress. Yet both Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama are quick to add that progress has been purely on the military side and that those gains are ephemeral. This fits with their broader narrative – that the war has been a disaster on every front.
During a recent Democratic debate, for example, Mr Obama declared: “We are seeing al-Qaeda stronger now than at any time since 2001.” Mrs Clinton says President George W. Bush’s policies in Iraq have “emboldened our enemies”. We should leave Iraq, she says, so we can better focus on the threat of al-Qaeda.
In fact, in large measure because of what is unfolding in Iraq, the tide within the Islamic world is beginning to run strongly against al-Qaeda – and this, in turn, may be the single most important ideological development in recent years.
In November 2007 Sayyid Imam al-Sharif (“Dr Fadl”) published his book, Rationalizations on Jihad in Egypt and the World, in serialised form. Mr Sharif, who is Egyptian, argues that the use of violence to overthrow Islamic governments is religiously unlawful and practically harmful. He also recommends the formation of a special Islamic court to try Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two and its ideological leader, and calls the attacks on September 11 2001 a “catastrophe for all Muslims”.
Mr Sharif’s words are significant because he was once a mentor to Mr Zawahiri. Mr Sharif, who wrote the book in a Cairo prison, is “a living legend within the global jihadist movement”, according to Jarret Brachman, a terrorism expert.
Another important event occurred in October 2007, when Sheikh Abd Al-‘Aziz bin Abdallah Aal Al-Sheikh, the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa prohibiting Saudi youth from engaging in jihad abroad. It states: “I urge my brothers the ulama [the top class of Muslim clergy] to clarify the truth to the public . . . to warn [youth] of the consequences of being drawn to arbitrary opinions and [religious] zeal that is not based on religious knowledge.” The target of the fatwa is obvious: Mr bin Laden.
A month earlier Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, an influential Saudi cleric whom Mr bin Laden once lionised, wrote an “open letter” condemning Mr bin Laden. “Brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak, and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of al-Qaeda?” Sheikh Awdah wrote. “The ruin of an entire people, as is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq ... cannot make Muslims happy.”
These criticisms by prominent voices within the jihadist movement should be seen in the context of an even more significant development: the “Anbar Awakening” now spreading throughout Iraq. Just 18 months ago Anbar province was the stronghold of al-Qaeda in Iraq; today it is known as the birthplace of an Iraqi and Islamic grass-roots uprising against al-Qaeda as an organisation and bin Ladenism as an ideology. It is an extraordinary transformation: Iraqis en masse siding with America, the “infidel” and a western “occupying power”, to defeat Islamic militants.
Not surprisingly, al-Qaeda’s stock is falling in much of the Arab and Islamic world. A recent survey found that in January less than a quarter of Pakistanis approved of Mr bin Laden, compared with 46 per cent last August, while backing for al-Qaeda fell from 33 per cent to 18 per cent.
According to a July 2007 report from the Pew Global Attitudes Project, “large and growing numbers of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere [are] rejecting Islamic extremism”. The percentage of Muslims saying suicide bombing is justified in the defence of Islam has declined in seven of the eight Arab countries where trend data are available. In Lebanon, for example, 34 per cent of Muslims say such suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified; in 2002, 74 per cent expressed this view. We are also seeing large drops in support for Mr bin Laden. These have occurred since the Iraq war began.
Since General David Petraeus put in place his counter-insurgency strategy early last year, al-Qaeda has been dealt punishing military blows. Iraqis continue to turn against al-Qaeda and so does more of the Arab and Muslim world. In the past half-year an important new front, led by prominent Islamic clerics, has been opened. Militarily, ideologically and in terms of popular support, these are bad days for Mr bin Laden and his jihadist jackals.
If we continue to build on these developments, the Iraq war, once thought to be a colossal failure, could turn out be a positive and even a pivotal event in our struggle against militant Islam. Having paid a high cost in blood and treasure and having embraced the wrong strategy for far too long, we stayed in the fight, proving that America was not the “weak horse” Mr bin Laden believed it to be. Having stayed in the fight, we may prevail in it. The best way to subvert the appeal of bin Ladenism is to defeat those who take up the sword in its name.
We are a long way from winning in Iraq. It remains a traumatised nation and the progress made can be lost. But the trajectory of events is at last in our favour and a good outcome is within our grasp. If we succeed it will have enormously positive effects beyond Iraq.
The writer, formerly deputy assistant to President George W. Bush, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Fool, I guess you think that Gore didn't win a Nobel either since he was part of a group also??
you stated Arafat won it..
3 men Shared the Prize that year
So, using your "logic" no one won the prize that year????
The three of them won- there ahve been many times when more than one recipient wins- it's very common with the science awards in particular
You're only proving how dumb youa re by not admitting you were wrong
And about the temperatures- I believe that the temperature change in 2007 was one of the most dramatic in history- a great reduction
I;ll try and find the link
Bad news for al Qaeda. . .and for liberal talking points
For years now, the American left has been arguing that the war in Iraq is a distraction from the "real" war against al Qaeda and is counter-productive because it's "creating" new terrorists. Apparently, it never occurred to these deep-thinkers that inflicting a defeat on al-Qaeda in Iraq -- a defeat made possible because a previously sympathetic population turned with our help against al Qaeda -- might constitute a devastating blow to al Qaeda's standing in the Arab world.
The idea that losing a war hurts one's standing may be a novel one for our sophisticated liberals. But Osama bin Laden has long grasped it, famously stating years ago that "when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse."
Our amazing progress in Iraq is demonstrating that, for now, al Qaeda rather than the U.S. is the weak horse in the very country that al Qaeda has identified as the key battleground in its struggle against us. Consequently, as Peter Wehner shows, the tide within the Islamic world is beginning to run strongly against al-Qaeda. For example, Sayyid Imam al-Sharif recently published a book -- Rationalizations on Jihad in Egypt and the World -- in which he argues that the use of violence to overthrow Islamic governments is religiously unlawful and practically harmful. He also recommends the formation of a special Islamic court to try bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two and its ideological leader. These words are significant, Wehner says, because Sharif was once a mentor to Zawahir and has been described by terrorism expert Jarret Brachman as “a living legend within the global jihadist movement.”
Similarly, Sheikh Abd Al-‘Aziz bin Abdallah Aal Al-Sheikh, the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia, issued a fatwa late last year prohibiting Saudi youth from engaging in jihad abroad. It states: “I urge my brothers the ulama [the top class of Muslim clergy] to clarify the truth to the public . . . to warn [youth] of the consequences of being drawn to arbitrary opinions and [religious] zeal that is not based on religious knowledge.” Around the same time, Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, an influential Saudi cleric whom bin Laden once lionised, wrote an “open letter” condemning bin Laden. “Brother Osama, how much blood has been spilt? How many innocents among children, elderly, the weak, and women have been killed and made homeless in the name of al-Qaeda?” Sheikh Awdah wrote. “The ruin of an entire people, as is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq . . . cannot make Muslims happy.”
Public opinion polls seem to confirm al Qaeda's suddenly low standing in the Muslim world. Wehner points to a survey in Pakistan finding that in January less than a quarter of Pakistanis approved of bin Laden, compared with 46 per cent last August, while backing for al-Qaeda fell from 33 per cent to 18 per cent. And Pew reports that the percentage of Muslims saying suicide bombing is justified in the defense of Islam has declined in seven of the eight Arab countries where trend data are available. In Lebanon, for example, 34 per cent of Muslims say such suicide bombings are often or sometimes justified. In 2002, before the Iraq war began, 74 per cent expressed this view.
Wehner notes that, even in the face of evidence like this, Barack Obama declared in a recent debate that “we are seeing al-Qaeda stronger now than at any time since 2001.” This may reflect the counsel he's getting from Zbigniew Brzezinski, Lawrence Korb, and Samantha Power. However, with Sunnis in Iraq siding en masse siding with the American “infidel” and “occupying power” to purge al Qaeda and with prominent Islamic clerics throughout the region following suit, Obama's view bears no apparent relation to reality.
powerline
Are you really that stupid??
I take that back, the answer is obvious
The fact that there were 3 recipients that means none of them won????
And you consider that a "Fact"
Sheesh, that's scary
I know how to use " the Google"
Arafat won the award in 1994
DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
The Nobel Peace Prize 1994
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1994, in alphabetical order, to Yasir Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin, for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East.
Before you call someone else out, you MIGHT wanna be sure of the facts
FOOL
AGW Skeptics Meet
Posted by: McQ
And, apparently, roast Al Gore. To be expected, I guess (although viewing a film by Glenn Beck isn't a particularly good answer to the pot shots at Gore's film).
The most important quote to come out of the meeting Monday in New York, which was sponsored by the Heartland Institute, was that of Fred Singer:
"Our imperfect understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change means the science is far from settled," said Fred Singer, of the Science and Environmental Policy Project.
"Proposed efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions are premature and misguided. Any attempt to influence global temperatures by reducing such emissions would be both futile and expensive," he said.
An excellent statement of the skeptic's argument. Frankly I think everyone needs to step back, take a deep breath, and calmly revisit all the science on this subject, and include the skeptics in this examination as well. My guess is that won't happen because of the vested interests of those pushing the AGW theory (and that is all it is, btw).
In the meantime, the skeptics (heretics, "nazis", whatever we're being called today) need to keep themselves and their theories in the public eye. Otherwise, costly decisions are going to be made which, in my opinion, won't effect climate change in the least, but which could lead to economic consequences which could prove devastating to a good portion of the globe. The skeptics must keep this controversy visible and must demand a seat at the table if this is to be averted. The conference in NY is a good step in that direction.
Hey, Ball was only one of the presenters
How do you deal with the fact that last year was one of the coldest on record and that the temperature drop has basically undone all the years of warming?? The ice caps are growing
Solar flares have a bigger influence than you taking a long shower
Find something else to feel guilty about
The same Nobel committee that gave the peace prize to Yasir Arafat??
nuff said
Climate skeptics roast Al Gore on global warming
Mon Mar 3, 2008 5:51pm EST
E
By Steve James
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Al Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for his environmental advocacy, was the main target on Monday at a conference of dissident scientists skeptical of his views on global warming.
Several speakers at the conference on climate change whose theme was "Global warming is not a crisis," took pot-shots at the ex-vice president and his film, "An Inconvenient Truth," which won last year's Academy Award for best documentary.
"Whether we like it or not, it was extremely effective propaganda," said Timothy Ball, an environmental consultant and former climatology professor at the University of Winnipeg.
"It was appropriate that he got an Oscar from the land of make-believe," he joked.
The gathering was sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a non-profit libertarian organization that studies environmental and other issues "from a free-market perspective" and argues that "property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies."
Attendees watched a movie, "A Climate of Fear," by conservative TV commentator Glenn Beck, who charged that anyone who opposes the view that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are causing the earth to warm up, are branded "heretics or Nazis."
"Al Gore's version of climate change has no longer become science. It's dogma. And if you question it, you are a heretic," Beck said in the film.
The conference challenged a strong majority of world scientific opinion that has concluded that greenhouse gases are contributing to global warming. Continued...
This view has been backed by bodies such as the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
"Our imperfect understanding of the causes and consequences of climate change means the science is far from settled," said Fred Singer, of the Science and Environmental Policy Project.
"Proposed efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions are premature and misguided. Any attempt to influence global temperatures by reducing such emissions would be both futile and expensive," he said.
Lord Monckton, who advised former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, blamed "the international left," for promoting that global warming is dangerous.
"It's the media wanting a scare story," he said.
(Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by Alan Elsner)
Speaking truth to Power
« H E » email
posted Monday, 3 March 2008
Samantha Power is the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on genocide, and she has a professorship at Harvard (in something called "Global Leadership and Public Policy"). She is also a senior foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama. This isn't an honorific: she has worked for Obama in Washington, she has campaigned for him around the country, and she doesn't hesitate to speak for him. This morning, the Washington Post has a piece on Obama's foreign policy team, identifying her (and retired Maj. Gen. Scott Garion) as "closest to Obama, part of a group-within-the-group that he regularly turns to for advice." Power and Garion "retain unlimited access to Obama." This morning's New York Times announces that Power has an "irresistable profile" and "she could very well end up in [Obama's] cabinet."
She also has a problem: a corpus of critical statements about Israel. These have been parsed by Noah Pollak at Commentary's blog Contentions, by Ed Lasky and Richard Baehr at American Thinker, and by Paul Mirengoff at Power Line.
Power made her most problematic statement in 2002, in an interview she gave at Berkeley. The interviewer asked her this question:
Let me give you a thought experiment here, and it is the following: without addressing the Palestine-Israel problem, let’s say you were an advisor to the President of the United States, how would you respond to current events there? Would you advise him to put a structure in place to monitor that situation, at least if one party or another [starts] looking like they might be moving toward genocide?
Power gave an astonishing answer:
What we don’t need is some kind of early warning mechanism there, what we need is a willingness to put something on the line in helping the situation. Putting something on the line might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import; it may more crucially mean sacrificing—or investing, I think, more than sacrificing—billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence. Because it seems to me at this stage (and this is true of actual genocides as well, and not just major human rights abuses, which were seen there), you have to go in as if you’re serious, you have to put something on the line.
Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people. And by that I mean what Tom Friedman has called “Sharafat” [Sharon-Arafat]. I do think in that sense, both political leaders have been dreadfully irresponsible. And, unfortunately, it does require external intervention.... Any intervention is going to come under fierce criticism. But we have to think about lesser evils, especially when the human stakes are becoming ever more pronounced.
It isn't too difficult to see all the red flags in this answer. Having placed Israel's leader on par with Yasser Arafat, she called for massive military intervention on behalf of the Palestinians, to impose a solution in defiance of Israel and its American supporters. Billions of dollars would be shifted from Israel's security to the upkeep of a "mammoth protection force" and a Palestinian state—all in the name of our "principles."
This quote has dogged Power, and she has gone to extraordinary lengths to put it behind her. Most notably, she called in the Washington correspondent of the Israeli daily Haaretz, Shmuel Rosner, to whom she disavowed the quote:
Power herself recognizes that the statement is problematic. "Even I don't understand it," she says. And also: "This makes no sense to me." And furthermore: "The quote seems so weird." She thinks that she made this statement in the context of discussing the deployment of international peacekeepers. But this was a very long time ago, circumstances were different, and it's hard for her to reconstruct exactly what she meant.
It must be awful, at such a young age, to lose track of why you recommended the massive deployment of military force, and not that long ago. So let me help Samantha Power: I can reconstruct exactly what she meant.
Power gave the interview on April 29, 2002. This was the tail end of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield, Israel's offensive into the West Bank in reaction to a relentless campaign of Palestinian suicide bombings that had killed Israeli civilians in the hundreds. The military operation included the clearing of terrorists from the West Bank city of Jenin (April 3-19). At the time, Palestinian spokespersons had duped much of the international media and human rights community into believing that a massacre of innocent Palestinians had taken place in Jenin. It had not, but the name of Israel had been smeared, particularly in academe. At Harvard, pro-Palestinian activists canvassed the faculty for support of a petition calling on Harvard to divest from Israel. (It was published on May 6.)
Power at the time was executive director of Harvard's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, which she founded in 1999. In 2001, she had recruited a celebrity director for the Carr Center: Michael Ignatieff, a Canadian intellectual and journalist who, like herself, had come to prominence writing about atrocities in the Balkans and Africa. A profile of Ignatieff in March 2002 described the division of labor in the Carr Center: "He shares administrative responsibilities with Samantha Power, the center's executive director. The division of labor works wonderfully, he says: 'She does all the work.'" Power later told a Canadian journalist that "their social relationship was based on three Bs: baseball, bottles and boys. They talked about the Boston Red Sox, of whom she is a fanatic supporter; they spent evenings together 'yelling and laughing' over bottles of wine, and she found him a kind and sympathetic confidant when it came to affairs of the heart."
The Carr Center under this management team generally steered clear of the Middle East. But in that spring of 2002, the pressure to come up with something was very great. Ignatieff, who had been to the Middle East a few times, took the lead. On April 19, 2002, only ten days before Power emitted her "weird" quote, Ignatieff published an op-ed in the London Guardian, under this headline: "Why Bush Must Send in His Troops." I wrote a thorough critique of this piece over five years ago, so I won't repeat my dissection of its flaws. As I showed then, the op-ed includes every trendy calumny against Israel.
More relevant now are Ignatieff's policy conclusions. "Neither side is capable of making peace," he determined, "or even sitting in the same room to discuss it." The United States should therefore move "to impose a two-state solution now."
The time for endless negotiation between the parties is past: it is time to say that all but those settlements right on the 1967 green line must go; that the right of return is incompatible with peace and security in the region and the right must be extinguished with a cash settlement; that the UN, with funding from Europe, will establish a transitional administration to help the Palestinian state back on its feet and then prepare the ground for new elections before exiting; and, most of all, the US must then commit its own troops, and those of willing allies, not to police a ceasefire, but to enforce the solution that provides security for both populations.
Ignatieff ended with a grand flourish:
Imposing a peace of this amplitude on both parties, and committing the troops to back it up, would be the most dramatic exercise of presidential leadership since the Cuban missile crisis. Nothing less dramatic than this will prevent the Middle East from descending into an inferno.
So this was the thrilling idea that swept the Carr Center that April: a "dramatic exercise of presidential leadership," through a commitment of U.S. troops to impose and enforce a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Middle East would be saved. The "amplitude" of this notion made divestment seem small-minded. Samantha Power did not misspeak ten days later in her Berkeley interview. She was retailing a vision she shared with her closest colleague. Power went a bit further than Ignatieff, when she spoke about how this show of presidential courage "might mean alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import." Ignatieff would never have written that. But it was implicit in his text anyway.
So Ignatieff's op-ed was exactly what Power meant. That she should claim no recollection of any of this context seems... weird. Or perhaps not. Remember, Ignatieff wasn't talking about deploying "international peacekeepers," the context Power now suggests for her words. He specifically proposed United States troops, followed by anyone else who was "willing." Their job wouldn't be to keep the peace, but to "enforce the solution." Far better today for Power to have some kind of blackout, than to tell the truth about the "dramatic exercise" she and Ignatieff envisioned.
("Iggy," by the way, left Harvard in 2005 to plunge into Canadian politics, and he is now deputy leader of Canada's opposition Liberal Party. He still has strong views on what Americans should do. "I've worn my heart on my sleeve for a year," he recently announced. "I'm for Obama.")
Is there a conclusion to be drawn from this genealogy of a truly bad policy idea? Ignatieff himself may have hit on it. Last year he published a reflection on what he'd learned since experiencing real (as opposed to academic) politics. "As a former denizen of Harvard," he wrote, "I’ve had to learn that a sense of reality doesn’t always flourish in elite institutions. It is the street virtue par excellence. Bus drivers can display a shrewder grasp of what’s what than Nobel Prize winners."
Just substitute Pulitzer for Nobel.
In the Slums of Fallujah
In the Slums of Fallujah.jpg
FALLUJAH, IRAQ – Captain Steve Eastin threw open the door to the Iraqi Police captain’s office and cancelled a joint American-Iraqi officer’s meeting before it could even begin. “Someone just shot at my Marines,” he said. “We can’t do this right now.”
I following him into the hall.
“What happened?” I said.
“Someone just shot at my guys at the flour mill,” he said. “A bullet struck a wall four feet over a Marine's head. We have to go in there and extract them.”
“They don't extract themselves?” I said.
“They're on foot,” he said, “and we're going in vehicles. They don't extract themselves on foot.”
And I was getting comfortable and even bored in post-insurgent Fallujah. Complacency kills, and Fallujah isn't completely free of insurgents just yet.
Complacency Kills.jpg
“Can I go with the extraction team?” I said.
“They’ve already left in Humvees,” he said.
But he did send a patrol to the flour mill less an hour later, and I went with them.
Captain Eastin is the commanding officer of Lima Company, and they operate in the slums of southern Fallujah. The houses down there are smaller than they are in the rest of the city, and much more decrepit. Southern Fallujah isn't nearly as rough as a Latin American, Indian, or Egyptian shantytown, but its residents live a hardscrabble life and largely depend on charity for survival. There isn't much of an economy. Unemployment is well over 50 percent. Many residents worked in the industrial district, but only a few factories have re-opened so far. Business owners are waiting for government compensation which was supposed to have been delivered from Baghdad months ago.
Rubble and Blank Walls Fallujah.jpg
During periods of heavy fighting there were more insurgents in this part of the city than in the north, but they fought more for money than ideology. They needed the survival cash Al Qaeda paid them.
“Get your shit on!” Corporal Z bellowed at the privates under his command. He screamed at just about everyone, including me. He's a tyrant to work underneath, and he's a royal pain to work near. His belligerent attitude was unprofessional, and I was surprised his fellow Marines put up with him. I'm referring to him as Corporal Z instead of his full name because my objective here isn't to name and shame him as an act of revenge.
“Are we walking or driving?” I said to him before I realized who I was dealing with.
He scowled at me like I was the dumbest human being he had ever seen.
“We don't drive,” he said. “We walk. You got that? We walk. We don't ever drive out of here.” He scoffed and shook his head.
Forty five minutes earlier his commanding officer Captain Eastin sent a unit to the flour mill in Humvees. Corporal Z only thought he knew what he was talking about.
As it turned out, though, we did walk. The previous patrol had been safely extracted, and the Marines didn't want to look like they were scared.
Lieutenant Justin Lappe led the unit from the joint security station to the flour mill where the shot had been fired. We walked out the gate, and we walked quickly.
“Fuck,” Corporal Z said. “Fuck. I hope I get to shoot somebody today.”
We were in earshot of Iraqi civilians, and I hoped they didn't understand English.
“What's his problem, anyway?” I said to Lieutenant Lappe.
“He's from the south side of Chicago,” he said, as if that explained it. “I guess he grew up in a really bad area. For the last five months I've tried to civilize him, but it can't be done and I've given up.”
“How many people is he in charge of?” I said.
“You'd think he was in charge of a hundred people the way he yells at everybody,” he said. “But he's only in charge of ten. Don't let him get to you. We've all learned to ignore him. I don't even hear him anymore.”
Corporal Z reminded me of another Marine NCO in Fallujah whom I'll call Sergeant C. Sergeant C does not play well with others. He made it clear he hates journalists as a species and that he was going to take it out on me personally. It was nearly impossible to have anything resembling a normal conversation with him.
“When are we moving out, sergeant?” one of his men asked before rolling out on a mission.
“In a few minutes,” Sergeant C said. “Now calm down and stick your tampon back in.”
I saw him slap a private – hard – in the head in the chow hall during lunch. Any private sector employer would have fired him on the spot.
Lieutenant J.C. Davis at Camp Baharia once asked me how everybody was treating me.
“Like gold,” I said. “With one exception. I am not really getting along with Sergeant C.”
The lieutenant laughed out loud hard.
“Nobody gets along with Sergeant C,” he said.
What struck me most about Corporal Z and Sergeant C, though, is how unusual they were. I met hundreds of Marines in Fallujah, but only these two had this kind of attitude problem. Most soldiers and Marines in Iraq are far more polite and respectful of others than Americans generally.
I will not publish Corporal Z's and Sergeant C's names because I don't wish to cause them any trouble, but they nevertheless violated MJT's First Rule of Media Relations: Be nice to people who write about you for a living.
The flour mill where Marines had been shot at was only a quarter mile away, but the Marines still walked quickly and didn't stop to talk to any Iraqis. They were much more serious and focused than usual. They knew, and I knew, that we were much more likely to be shot at this time.
An Iraqi Police station had just been constructed a few blocks from the mill, and we stopped to pick up some of their officers to take with us. I waited in the front parking lot.
The neighborhood looked terrible: shoddy houses, concrete walls, barbed wire, garbage, and rubble. I snapped a few pictures.
Garbage Slums of Fallujah.jpg
Destruction Near Flour Mill Fallujah.jpg
A poor man and his two children saw me point my camera in their general direction and decided to pose for me. They thought I wanted a picture of them. I didn't really, but I took one anyway.
Family Barbed Wire Fallujah.jpg
They had an innocent and kind look about them, and I felt bad that they didn't realize that what I was really trying to photograph was their destitute neighborhood. They did not seem ashamed of their humble circumstances.
It would not have surprised me if they had. When I tried to photograph a slum in Cairo near Giza – a slum that was in much worse shape than this one – my taxi driver was embarrassed and implored me to put down my camera. He knew I was a journalist, and he wanted to protect Egypt's dignity.
A unit of Iraqi Police officers emerged from the station with their gear on, and we walked the few remaining blocks to our destination.
Flour Mill Angled Shot.jpg
The flour mill is the tallest building in the area, and I thought it looked like an ideal location for a sniper's nest. I walked toward it in a random zigzag pattern to make myself a more difficult target.
Iraqi Police on Way to Flour Mill.jpg
An Iraqi Police truck roared past us on the street and nearly ran over several Marines and Iraqi Police officers. The driver slammed on the brakes. Officers jumped out with their AK-47s at the ready and merged into the staggered line of Marines.
Flour Mill from Below.jpg
The flour mill loomed ominously overhead. Was the earlier shot fired at the building or from the building? That wasn’t clear to me, and I dearly hoped the shot had come from somewhere else.
We made it inside the parking lot. A handful of Iraq civilians were already there talking to some Iraqi Police officers.
Consult at the Flour Mill.jpg
“Get in here! Get in here!” Corporal Z bellowed at everyone, American and Iraqi alike. “We need to shut this gate now!”
At the Flour Mill Fallujah.jpg
Just behind the sliding gate were the words Complacency Kills. Corporal Z, for all his faults, at least wasn’t complacent.
Complacency Kills Flour Mill.jpg
Once everyone was inside the parking lot, an Iraqi Police officer lackadaisically shut the gate to keep the city at bay. I assumed, then, that the shot had not come from the flour mill or we likely wouldn’t have barricaded ourselves in. Everyone seemed tense, but only slightly – except for Corporal Z who looked like he wanted to fire his weapon. I hoped his superior officers kept him away from detainees.
“Are we going inside?” I said to Lieutenant Lappe.
“I don't know,” he said. “We need to talk to the owner, but he isn't around. The Iraqis are trying to locate him.”
The purpose of the mission was to find him and talk to him, and also to show force. The Marines who were shot at had to be extracted, but at the same time they can’t be seen steering clear of a place just because somebody fired a round at them.
This is as much action as the Marines see any more in Fallujah, which is why the city and the rest of the province are being handed back to Iraqis.
The police could not locate the owner, so we left.
I spoke to Corporal Benjamin Smith on our walk back to the station. He had been in Fallujah before.
“I was hit more than ten times with IEDs in 2006,” he said.
“What kind of IEDs did they use out here?” I said. I was pretty sure there were no EFPs – explosively formed projectiles that tear through tanks, Humvees, and people as though they were made of wet paper. EFPs are made in Iran and are therefore supplied to Iraqi Shia militias. Fallujah is Sunni.
“155 [mm] artillery shells,” he said. “Mortar rounds. Propane tanks. P4 explosives.”
“What was Fallujah like then compared to now?” I said.
“We did a few foot patrols,” he said, “but mostly convoys. Kids even ran up to us then sometimes, but not very often. There are lots more people in the street now. Only once in a while, back then, did anyone wave. It was very rare. Typically, people who saw Marines turned their backs. It was a tough environment.”
An Iraqi Police truck roared down the street. One of the officers threw handfuls of leaflets over the side. Kids scrambled to pick them up.
The belligerent Corporal Z waded into the crowd of kids, smiled warmly, patted one on the head, and gave the others high-fives. What was this? He can’t be nice to Americans, he said he hoped he got to shoot somebody that day, but he’s affectionate with the kids?
Kids Waving on Way to Flour Mill.jpg
“I like it when the kids swarm around me,” he said when he saw that I watched him. “I feel a lot safer.” This was the first time I heard him speak in a normal tone. He’s complicated.
Corporal Smith and I kept walking together.
“What's the most intense thing you saw in Fallujah back then?”
“An SVBIED,” he said. Suicidal vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. In other words, a suicide car bomber. “It was a civilian van. It swerved right toward me, and the guy blew up himself and the van. We found pieces 150 yards away. The engine block blew 50 feet in the air and landed on a Humvee. What was left of the guy was nasty, as if he'd been drawn and quartered.”
I didn't know what to say.
“There was another time when an SVBIED fuel tanker came at us,” he said. “Our EOF [escalation of force] measures couldn't stop it. The driver made it into the outpost. He destroyed four Humvees and even melted one of them. No one was killed, though. Just one dead insurgent. Enemy contact was a daily occurrence then. Me and everyone I know who was here then and now are like, what the fuck? This is Fallujah? Sometimes we'll be driving along and I'll pass a place where I got hit. I'll say oh fuck, this is that place where I got hit and everybody stops talking. It's like fucking crickets in the Humvee.”
Lieutenant Lappe overheard our conversation. I think he was worried that I was getting nervous.
“No one can lay down an IED anymore without somebody calling it in,” he said.
Marine Buys Candy Fallujah.jpg
He fished some Iraqi dinars out of his pocket, walked up the counter of a small store, and bought a huge bag of treats for the kids. It was instant kid bait.
“Chocolate! Chocolate!”
“Mister, I love you!”
“These kids are our security,” he said.
And the Marines are their security.
Kids burst out of every house on the street and formed a violent mob. They fiercely pushed, hit, kicked, and screamed at each other in a mad scramble for a small piece of candy. Someday, I thought, these children will be adults.
Lieutenant Lappe was horrified by their behavior, and he held the bag over his head and told them to calm down. They didn’t calm down. They just keep pushing and punching each other to get as close to the bag of candy as possible.
“You know what?” he said. “Fuck it.” And he threw the bag of candy up into the air over their heads. It landed in the street with a loud smack and broke open. The mob descended and it was all elbows and fists.
“Jesus,” I said.
“Yeah,” the lieutenant said. “These people have issues.”
We walked past a nice-looking Opel sedan. A Marine peered into the driver side window. Another crouched down and looked underneath.
“The Opel is like the Humvee for the muj, man,” said another.
“It's a bad ass car,” our Iraqi-American interpreter said and grinned.
*
“There are no reporters in all of Fallujah, except Mike,” Captain Eastin said to his men when I first arrived. “So if he talks to you, talk to him. It's the only way to get our story out.”
Soldiers and Marines tend to be a bit more friendly and trusting when I'm introduced to them in this way, and Lima Company was no exception.
I sat with a handful of jokesters in the smoke pit outside the station while First Sergeant Alonzo Baxter held court and entertained us all with his war stories and wisecracks. I can't quote him exactly because I did not have my notebook or voice recorder with me at the time, but almost everything he said was hilarious.
“This guy ought to be famous,” one of his fellow Marines said.
“I'm famous already,” Sergeant Baxter said. “I've been on TV. Ain't no thing.”
“Well, I'll make you famous again,” I said and snapped his picture.
Sgt Baxter Fallujah.jpg
First Sergeant Alonzo Baxter
Lieutenant Colonel Chris Dowling paid a brief visit to the station from Camp Baharia just outside the city. He caught wind of the smoke from Sergeant Baxter's cigar.
“What are you smoking?” Colonel Dowling said. “Is that a Cuban?”
“It's a Cuban,” Sergeant Baxter said.
Colonel Dowling scowled at Sergeant Baxter and looked like he was gearing up to read him the riot act – or worse.
Colonel Dowling Fallujah.jpg
Lieutenant Colonel Chris Dowling
“You want one, sir?” Sergeant Baxter said meekly.
The colonel put his hands on his hips. Then he laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “I'll take one.”
Sergeant Baxter handed Colonel Dowling a Cuban cigar.
“Now I get a free pass next time I mess something up,” he said.
“Oh, no you don't,” Colonel Dowling said.
“Ah, come on, sir,” Sergeant Baxter said. “Just something small.”
The colonel then made an announcement. Secretary of the Navy Donald C. Winter was going to drop by and pay us a visit. Every Marine in the smoke pit sat bolt upright in their chairs. “So we need to get this place straightened up now.”
Five seconds later I was the only one who remained sitting. The rest were busting out brooms, organizing clutter, and taking trash to the burn pit.
No one, including the colonel, had any idea the Secretary of the Navy would be dropping by their random Joint Security Station in a rented house in the slums of Fallujah. How unlikely was that?
“Is he going to patrol?” I heard one Marine say.
“Fuck no,” said another. “That's like President Bush going on patrol.”
Marines don't like it when you point this out, but they are part of the Department of the Navy. They like to fashion themselves as more bad ass than the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force. They do have a point. A Marine is much more likely to see combat than a service member in any of the other branches. The Marine Corps takes far more casualties per head than the others. But the Secretary of the Navy outranked the bejeezus out of every man at that station. They found Lieutenant Colonel Dowling a little intimidating, but the news of a visit from Donald C. Winter made me think of that famous bumper sticker: Jesus is Coming. Look Busy.
Two hours later, he arrived. Lieutenant Colonel Dowling shook his hand, called him sir, and introduced him to the Marines. They stood and faced him like star struck teenagers and seemed terrified that he might find them inadequate.
He did not.
Instead he read a letter written by an Iraqi woman who wanted to thank the U.S. armed forces for freeing and protecting her country.
Each Marine was asked to briefly introduce himself. Each was given one of Donald C. Winter’s very own “unit” coins.
Sec of Navy Handshake Fallujah.jpg
Sec of Navy Coin Fallujah.jpg
After the formalities, Sergeant Baxter approached the secretary with a cigar in his hand.
“Would you like one, sir?” he said. “It’s a Cuban.”
Secretary Winter happily grinned and did not even bothering putting on a show of disapproval.
“Why thank you,” he said. “I think I will.” Then he slipped the cigar into his pocket.
I quietly introduced myself to his aid Becky Brenton.
“What’s he doing this for, exactly?” I said. I doubted it was for a photo op. I was the only reporter in all of Fallujah. He crossed paths with me by sheer chance. It was obvious that he wasn’t there for any attention from me.
Sec of Navy Fallujah.jpg
“He wants to thank the troops,” she said. “He does this every year. He’s on his way to Afghanistan now.”
“Well,” I said, “this is a good time for him to come to Fallujah. It’s not dangerous anymore.” I thought he might be on the dog and pony show happy tour circuit. I was wrong.
“Oh,” she said. “He’s been here before. And he was in Haditha last year.”
“Last year,” I said. “When Haditha was still hot.”
“He risked getting blown up just like everyone else,” she said.
She introduced me to him, and he was startled to see me.
“Get their stories out,” he said as he shook my hand.
“I will,” I said. “That’s why I came.”
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Troop Surge Belies Deeper Success of New Tactics in Iraq, Ex-Marine Turned Filmmaker Says
By Kevin Mooney | March 3, 2008 - 10:10 ET
Iraq’s Anbar Province has awakened, the U.S. military is on the offensive, and Al Qaeda and is on the run but it is a mistake to assume this dramatic turnaround is exclusively the result of additional troops, J.D. Johannes, a former Marine and television news producer explained in an interview.
Johannes traveled to Iraq with the Marine Corps unit he previously served with in 2005 with the intention of pursuing syndicated television reports. This project grew into a documentary called “Outside the Wire: Call Sign Vengeance” that told the story of a Marine platoon on deployment in Fallujah.
Three additional documentaries followed from a subsequent trip in 2007 as part of “Outside the Wire.” (www.outsidethewire.com) The film, “Anbar Awakens" was screened during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washignton D.C. last month. It highlights the partnership between coalition forces and Sunni tribes. The film points out that in 2006 a classified report had declared the province to be lost.
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However, over the past year U.S. forces operating in conjunction with tribal leaders orchestrated a remarkable turnaround that is now widely viewed as model for counter-insurgency. “It’s not just the additional surge in troops,” Johannes said in an interview.
“It is a wholesale change in tactics that we are seeing. “It’s about getting into the neighborhoods, living in the neighborhoods, conducting census data operations so that we know who lives in the neighborhoods, then controlling who moves in and out.”
“Anbar Awakens” features interviews with military officers and tribal leaders positioned along the Euphrates River. Col. G.I. Wilson, USMC (Ret.), a two-tour veteran of Al Anbar with expertise in counter-insurgency offers commentary throughout the film. “An insurgent that cannot operate in plain sight is an insurgent that cannot operate,” Johannes said. “That’s the big strategic change.”
The same counter-insurgency principles applied in Anbar parallel somewhat with the methods and techniques Great Britain used during the “Malayan Emergency” in the 1950s and 1960s, Johannes observed.
However, he cautions against assuming the Anbar model would be an exact fit in other areas of Iraq. “Anbar is its own animal because it’s a totally homogenous province and the [Sunni] tribes are all tied in,” Johannes said. “It won’t be the same [in other provinces] because you have to work with different tribes and different religious groups.”
However, the idea of building a census database and properly identifying the population of people who are part of neighborhood is something that can be broadly applied,” he added. American soldiers have, over time, fostered a certain degree of good will by virtue of their consistent and respectful treatment of the local population, Johannes explained. This example is not lost on the Sunnis who have been on the receiving end of Al Qaeda’s brutality, he continued. “Overtime what your are doing is not trying to win hearts and minds so much as it is show that you are a better and more consistent alternative than the enemy,” Johannes said.
[Recommend story on Digg.com]
will the war candidate invite The Decider to join him on the campaign trail?
Nobody really cares but you , the derider.
Bush will help him raise tons of money and keep a low profile
I know you must be nervous about the vast reprogramming you'll need when Bush is no longer in office
PS
It's not Bush saying Iraq is more stable that makes it so, it's the reduced casualties, legislative progress ans the sharing of the oil wealth
Obama: Arab-American Families Being Rounded Up?
By Lance Fairchok
"If there is an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties. It is that fundamental belief, I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, it is that fundamental belief that makes this country work."
- Senator Barack Obama
In a televised twelve-second campaign spot aired in Texas, Senator Obama gives a stirring speech to a standing ovation. It is the predictable litany of American faults he will miraculously correct: literacy, expensive prescription drugs and insufficient civil liberties. However, he seems particularly concerned for Arab-Americans. "If there is an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney, it threatens my civil liberties."
This was an astonishing statement, an infuriating statement and a statement that speaks volumes to Obama's ideology.
Arab-American families being rounded up would not only threaten all our civil liberties, it would raise such a universal outcry, it could not long endure. Even the suggestion it could occur is a profound insult to our nation and our citizenry. It is an image of the gulag, the death camp, the dictatorship, and so inappropriate in any discussion about America, it is beneath our contempt.
Perhaps the Senator is carried away by his remarkable political ascendancy and so emboldened by the lack of critical comment in the press, he believes he can say anything. Perhaps he believes he has so mesmerized us with his oratory that we will not catch the inference of his words. Perhaps he really believes that we are that kind of country, that our people do not cherish civil liberty sufficiently to defend it for all citizens.
This despicable image of innocent families imprisoned and the ethnic cleansing it suggests is a theme the radical left nurtures. It is by design intended to portray an unjust and intolerant people, it was no error, no misstatement. It elicits moral outrage with false assumptions, endlessly repeating those assumptions until believed. It is behind the exaggeration of everything the U.S. does in the war on terror or against Islamic extremism. It is behind the hysteria over the Patriot Act.
As divorced from truth as it is, it is found everywhere in the propaganda of the left, from the Bush-Hitler signs, to the fabrications of American military wrongdoing in the press, to the invented Islamophobia in our populace. It is the motivation behind Michael Moore, Code Pink, MoveOn.Org and George Soros. It is unfortunately the message the media aids and abets.
This moral contrariness gives us American "progressives" embracing dictators and terrorists such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Iran's Ahmedinejhad and Syria's Bashar al Assad. It finds equivalence between defending America and Al Qaeda and Hezbollah terrorism. It believes malevolent evil can actually be stopped with dialogue and compromise. It gravitates to a miserable "better red than dead" nihilism that allows no pride or faith in America. It excuses our enemies and indicts everything American. It is the impenitent legacy of the Carter and Clinton administrations. It is illogical and irrational and a road to failure and catastrophe.
"I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper, it is that fundamental belief that makes this country work." Yet, he also says that our country does not work, that we need change. Even as he wraps this contradiction in biblical allusion and positive words like "Hope" and "Change We Can Believe In" his underlying belief system surfaces in clues overlooked by his handlers.
The bleak fantasy of Arab-American families interred for being Arabs and, of course, for being Muslim is very plausible to the radicals that help write his speeches. Senator Obama holds a wretched America in his heart, a country he has no pride in nor wishes to preserve. If his vision starts from failure, where will it end? There is no truth in his words, just as there is no substance. One may speak well, but still speak lies. An Obama presidency would be a disaster.
The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.
- Cicero
Ahmadinejad in Baghdad’s Green Zone
DEBKAfile Special Report
March 4, 2008, 1:18 PM (GMT+02:00)
During his 2-day visit to Baghdad, March 2-3, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Iraqi hosts did a good job of ignoring the ubiquitous US military presence in Iraq - except for the Iranian president’s ritual anti-American blast. His welcome by Iraqi president, the Kurdish Jalal Talabani, and Shiite prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was played up as a bilateral event. Contact between the visitors’ retinue and the US military was nil.
Yet in Tehran, DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report, the president’s excursion into US-occupied territory was counted as a step forward in its seven-month old secret Saudi-mediated dialogue with Washington.
This dialogue has advanced in give-and-take steps on a broad set of issues.
The most prominent is Iran’s nuclear program. The third round of UN Security Council sanctions imposed Monday, March 3, banning trade with Iran did not really bother Tehran. The penalties were predicted and anticipated. Iran’s rulers can live with a motion which they see as the Bush administration’s parting shot in the dispute over the uranium enrichment issue. Not surprisingly Israel was not satisfied.
But mostly they are looking ahead to the next US president and their objective is clear: the cementing of the incumbent White House position on the North Korean nuclear weapons status as a convention which its next tenant will apply to Iran. This in rough terms means accepting a Tehran guarantee to freeze its uranium enrichment process, its nuclear bomb program and nuclear-capable ballistic missile project, without demanding their dismantlement.
This outline would be deemed in Tehran a positive basis for a nuclear deal with Washington. Iran’s supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hinted broadly at its acceptability when he chose Feb. 26, the day the New York Philharmonic Orchestra played in Pyongyang, for some pointed nuclear remarks.
What does the Bush administration expect from Tehran?
According to our Washington sources, George W. Bush is keen to hand his successor a relatively stable Iraq where the violence spiral sustains its downward curve. The US president accordingly stopped direct US military action against pro-Iranian Shiite “special groups,” in the expectation that Tehran will use its influence to keep Iraq on a relatively even keel for the remainder of his term in office.
The quid pro quo runs like this: Tehran is bidding for an understanding with Washington on its nuclear program, while the US is after Iran’s help to preserve the status quo in Iraq.
Iran has two powerful resources for delivering the goods:
1. An extensive clandestine intelligence and military infrastructure across Iraq that will obey Tehran’s orders to pull in its horns.
2. Tehran’s hand on the spigot of the flow of weapons, money and extra-powerful roadside bombs to the different anti-US insurgent groups.
DEBKAfile’s military sources in Iraq report that this flow has been slowed at times but never allowed to dry up. Up until the fall of 2007, pro-Iranian groups received a sufficiency of war materiel to mount attacks on US forces. Today, it is down to a trickle, just enough for the Revolutionary Guards to keep their hand in with those militias.
The third key issue dominating the US-Iranian dialogue is southern Iraq and its oil. This is also pivotal for Iran’s bilateral relations with Iraq.
Ahmadinejad’s hosts in Baghdad have to live with the realization that their guest has more clout with the Shiites of southern Iraq than the Maliki government.
Tehran’s dominance of southern Iraq has three focii:
The shrine-cities of Karbala and Najef and the oil port of Basra. Iran and the radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr at the head of his Mehdi Army militia divide control of these three cities between them.
If the central government wants any say in southern Iraq, it must stay on good terms with both its rival masters.
During his last visit to Tehran at the end of last year, prime minister al-Maliki signed an agreement to lay a pipeline taking Iraqi oil to Iranian refineries in Abadan. This was a bid to link southern Iraq’s oil to the Iranian oil fields and installations on the eastern bank of the Shatt al-Arb opposite Basra. The Americans, who control and defend the southern oil fields, let the agreement go through, although they are in competition against Iran in Central Asia and Turkey. The Bush administration is reconciled to including southern Iraq and its oil fields in the overall package of Iraq understandings with Tehran.
This package the White House is willing to hand over to the next president as long as the status quo is preserved in that part of Iraq too.
“Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death”
posted at 8:08 am on March 4, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Not long ago, my son and I had a dinner argument over the war against radical Islamist terrorism. He’s a brilliant academic, about to enter graduate school for either math, physics, or both, but he sometimes gets trapped in his rationalism — which, to be honest, isn’t exactly the worst thing a father could wish for his son. He insisted that violence only made the problem worse, and that we had to find a negotiated settlement with Islamist terrorists.
Alan Dershowitz had an answer for that in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. In an essay entitled “Worshippers of Death,” Dershowitz argued that the West has to understand that terrorists use our rationalism as perhaps their greatest weapon against us:
Now there is a new image of mothers urging their children to die, and then celebrating the martyrdom of their suicidal sons and daughters by distributing sweets and singing wedding songs. More and more young women — some married with infant children — are strapping bombs to their (sometimes pregnant) bellies, because they have been taught to love death rather than life. Look at what is being preached by some influential Islamic leaders:
“We are going to win, because they love life and we love death,” said Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah. He has also said: “[E]ach of us lives his days and nights hoping more than anything to be killed for the sake of Allah.” Shortly after 9/11, Osama bin Laden told a reporter: “We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the big difference between us.”
“The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death,” explained Afghani al Qaeda operative Maulana Inyadullah. Sheik Feiz Mohammed, leader of the Global Islamic Youth Center in Sydney, Australia, preached: “We want to have children and offer them as soldiers defending Islam. Teach them this: There is nothing more beloved to me than wanting to die as a mujahid.” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech: “It is the zenith of honor for a man, a young person, boy or girl, to be prepared to sacrifice his life in order to serve the interests of his nation and his religion.”…
As more women and children are recruited by their mothers and their religious leaders to become suicide bombers, more women and children will be shot at — some mistakenly. That too is part of the grand plan of our enemies. They want us to kill their civilians, who they also consider martyrs, because when we accidentally kill a civilian, they win in the court of public opinion. One Western diplomat called this the “harsh arithmetic of pain,” whereby civilian casualties on both sides “play in their favor.” Democracies lose, both politically and emotionally, when they kill civilians, even inadvertently.
Dershowitz challenges Western preconceptions about the definition of combatants in an age of symmetrical warfare. Instead of generals fighting the last war, the entire civilization has reacted to the asymmetrical terrorist conflict with the wrong notion of which side has the short end of the asymmetric stick. It’s not just the suicide bomber who qualifies as an “illegal combatant”, but also the civilian who allows the construction of the bomb in his home, the civilian who sends money to support terrorist activities, and the mosque where such activities get planned.
That’s a far cry from the Western notion of war, and its scope reveals that the West may find itself outnumbered, if not outgunned, in this war. If we want to dismantle the networks that support and create terrorism, then we have to adjust our definitions of civilian and combatant accordingly. That change has been forced on us by the terrorists, which is one of the reasons we cannot abide their presence: they want real non-combatants to die in droves in order to undermine our morale, precisely because we want to remain in a World War II mentality.
Does that mean we should reject rationalism and our humanity and kill everything in sight? Of course not. I don’t want my son to think that we have to wipe out all Muslims any more than I want Muslims to think that they have to wipe out all Christians and Jews. We do have to understand, however, that strikes on terrorists who bury themselves among civilians will create the collateral damage terrorists fully intend as a demoralizing influence on our will to resist them.
In short, we need to understand this war as something other than Hitler rolling into Poland or Japan bombing a naval base in Pearl Harbor. We face a network of radical theological nihilists who want to destroy civilization by using our civilized impulses against us. We have to maintain those impulses but not shy away from doing the necessary work of ridding the globe of this new and dangerous cancer, militarily, politically, and financially. That will require the West to understand that the collateral deaths are the fault of the terrorists, whether that is in Afghanistan, Gaza, Iraq, or anywhere else where terrorists launch attacks in the midst of civilians.
In short, it requires the West to dump the fantasy of the old set-piece paradigms and get serious about saving millions and perhaps billions of lives in the long run by doing what needs to be done now. The irrational do not seek a negotiated solution, and rationality cannot be r
fear of intelligent thought
Is Chavez admitting an alliance with FARC?
posted at 1:50 pm on March 2, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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The juxtaposition of events in Colombia and Venezuela give a compelling indication that Hugo Chavez has allied himself with FARC, the terrorist rebels just across his border. The day after the Columbians managed to kill FARC’s second in command, Chavez moved ten battalions to the border, threatening war against the US-allied government in Bogota, which he called “criminal”:
President Hugo Chavez on Sunday ordered 10 battalions of troops to the border with Colombia after Colombia’s military killed a top rebel leader.
Chavez told his defense minister: “move 10 battalions for me to the border with Colombia, immediately.” He also ordered the Venezuelan Embassy in Colombia closed and said all embassy personnel would be withdrawn.
The move threatens to bring the US into open conflict with Chavez for the first time. We have allied ourselves with the Colombian government to eradicate narco-traffickers as well as to help them eliminate the threat from FARC. The terrorist group still holds Americans, having kidnapped them years ago after a plane crash in territory under their control.
We saw a hint of this six weeks ago. Chavez demanded that Latin American nations recognize FARC (as well as a few other terrorist groups) as “legitimate armies” despite their track record of kidnapping and drug trafficking. As the Washington Post noted, even allies of Chavez balked at that notion. Now it looks as though Chavez will take Venezuela to war to support these terrorists, hoping to undermine President Alvaro Uribe and the democratic government in Colombia.
He’s taking his first steps to making himself a menace to the entire hemisphere rather than just to the Venezuelans.
If those battalions move across the border, Chavez had better expect a volley of cruise missiles at his command and control centers. The US will not allow Chavez to topple the elected government in Colombia. It would probably provide the only possible reason Washington would use military force against Chavez, and even this skeptical Congress would have little choice but to support the defense of an American ally under attack from a hostile nation.
Problems are never real unless the libs can fix them
For years they complained that the Social Security system was on the road to bankruptcy ( true )
When Bush suggested tackling the problem, they whined and whined about the system being fine and that nothing need be done
Classical liberal hypocrisy
Stumping For Hillary
Hillary Clinton is, more than anything else, the feminist candidate, circa 1970. So it is fitting that Gloria Steinem, whose career peaked in her youth when she was, very briefly, a Playboy bunny, should be campaigning for her:
[Steinem] claimed that if Clinton’s experience as First Lady were taken seriously in relation to her White House bid, people might “finally admit that, say, being a secretary is the best way to learn your boss’s job and take it over.”
Steinem raised McCain’s Vietnam imprisonment as she sought to highlight an alleged gender-based media bias against Clinton.
“Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], ‘What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?’” Steinem said, to laughter from the audience.
McCain was, in fact, a prisoner of war for around five-and-a-half years, during which time he was tortured repeatedly. Referring to his time in captivity, Steinem said with bewilderment, “I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so.”
Steinem’s broader argument was that the media and the political world are too admiring of militarism in all its guises.
“I am so grateful that she [Clinton] hasn’t been trained to kill anybody. And she probably didn’t even play war games as a kid. It’s a great relief from Bush in his jump suit and from Kerry saluting.”
To the Observer, Steinem insisted that “from George Washington to Jack Kennedy and PT-109 we have behaved as if killing people is a qualification for ruling people.”
Yes, that's Hillary's platform in a nutshell: George Washington was over-rated. This exemplifies, I think, the dilemma that Hillary's campaign faces. She is trying to convince Democratic voters that Barack Obama is not a serious, qualified candidate, while at the same time arguing that "being a secretary [read, First Lady] is the best way to learn your boss’s job and take it over." It never would have worked in the general election. The only surprise is that the light bulb has gone on while the Democrats are still holding primaries.
Global Warming Paradox?
By John Tierney
Tags: climate change, global warming
If only the masses could understand the science of global warming, they’d be alarmed, right? Wrong, according to the surprising results of a survey of Americans published in the journal Risk Analysis by researchers at Texas A&M University.
After asking a national sample of more than 1,000 Americans how much they knew about global warming and how they felt about it, the researchers report that respondents who are better-informed about global warming “both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming.” Another unexpected result: “Respondents who showed a great deal of confidence that scientists understand global warming and climate change showed significantly less concern for the risks of global warming than did those who have lower trust in scientists.”
The researchers offer several possible explanations for this apparent paradox. Paul Kellstedt, the lead author and a professor of political science at Texas A&M, told me that previous researchers found that a campaign to increase public understanding of genetically modified foods didn’t lessen public fears, and that more widespread “scientific understanding” of research on embryos actually diminished support for that research. “What those two studies show, and what ours does, too,” he said, “is that more information given to the mass public does not automatically translate into more support for what are (in the public’s mind) controversial areas of scientific research. In fact, more information, in all three cases, seems to have the opposite effect, creating opposition to the research area in question.”
It’s also possible that the better-informed people were being more realistic when they said didn’t feel personally responsible for global warming. As the researchers note in the paper:
Global warming is an extreme collective action dilemma, with the actions of one person having a negligible effect in the aggregate. Informed persons appear to realize this objective fact. Therefore, informed persons can be highly concerned and reasonably pessimistic about their ability to change climate outcomes.
But why would people who trust scientists not be as concerned when they hear so many scientists warning of the perils of global warming? “Though this effect differs from our expectations,” the researcher write, “it is consistent with the notion that people trust that scientists will be able, somehow, to devise technical solutions to any problems that arise because of global warming and climate change.” Dr. Kellstedt elaborated on this point by telling me:
More broadly, and again quite speculatively, I think that Americans have a great deal of faith in technology and technological solutions to problems. We have seen science do things (like send people into outer space, and to miraculously save them, Apollo-13 style, when things go badly) unimaginable for 99.9% of human history.
He won’t speculate how widespread that optimism is, and neither will I, but I can say that it explains my feelings about global warming. I think it’s a real risk, but I’m also confident that we’ll cope by adapting to climate change and/or finding ways to minimize it. Might there be any readers who disagree? And what do you think is the best explanation of this survey’s results?
In your utter intellectual dishonesty, you forgot to mention the rockets that are raining down on Israeli cities that are THE cause of the current situation.
IN your twisted world, it's OK for the Pals to do whatever they please because you hate Israel and believe they have stolen Pal land. Israel doesn't even have the right of self defense
It's self hating Jew enablers like you that help keep the Pals on their self destructive course
You weep at the Pal casualties while the Pals rig the situation to maximize the death of their own
Sortagreen will denounce their right to self defense.
Regardless of whether they should return to the pre 67 borders or not, ANY country under similar attack would defend itself
Fires blaze in Ashkelon’s shopping center from direct rocket hit Saturday as Gaza war intensifies
March 1, 2008, 5:16 PM (GMT+02:00)
Israeli self-propelled guns in Gaza
Israeli self-propelled guns in Gaza
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that after 21 missiles slammed into Ashkelon and Sderot and their environs overnight, Israeli Givati Brigade troops backed by tanks, self-propelled guns, F-16 fighters and helicopters went after terrorist targets in Sejaya and Jebalya, N. Gaza Strip early morning Saturday, March 1. Five Israeli soldiers were injured, two very seriously. The Palestinians report 35 dead, 15 in battle, the rest civilians including 5 children, as well as 120 injured. Two waves of Grad rockets hit the Israeli town of Ashkelon for the third day running. Two crashed into a house, injuring 5 people, two of them children. There were dozens of shock victims. Another 11 Qassam missiles explode at Sderot Saturday.
Our military sources report the Israeli military command is now targeting Hamas rule of the Gaza Strip as ultimately the only effective way of halting the Palestinian missile offensive against civilian locations. It therefore proposes to systematically destroy Hamas institutions one by one until its rule of Gaza caves in.
This tactic was presented to prime minister Ehud Olmert Friday on his return from Japan. If Hamas alternatively decides it can no longer afford the exorbitant price exacted by the Israeli military for sustaining its missile offensive, so much the better. Meanwhile, the port town of Ashdod north of Ashkelon and 27 km from Gaza is preparing for start of Palestinian rockets attacks. Twelve alert systems are ready.
The IDF has set itself the following targets:
Every Palestinian military and security installation belonging to Hamas, as well as its Al Dawa social welfare branches used as meeting places and the money changers’ places of business.
A series of ground operations on the same lines as the Sejayia raid will be launched to drive Hamas and its allied terrorist groups out of northern Gaza – the sites of most missile launches against Ashkelon and Sderot. Once this part of the territory is purged, Israeli military control can be exercised without reoccupation.
DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources report that Hamas leaders are well aware of the IDF’s revamped tactics and have employed counter-measures.
1. Their heads of government, armed wings and clerical authorities have gone to ground.
2. Their rank and file have taken over an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 civilian homes around Gaza City active and set up a wall for the town’s defense. Each home is provisioned with sufficient ammo, water and food for three weeks’ combat.
3. All Hamas operatives have dumped their cell phones and all means of communication which could betray their whereabouts. Orders and messages are carried by courier, usually children.
4. Thousands of missiles and rockets of different types are stocked in private homes and schools inside Gaza City and its refugee camps to escape Israeli attacks. This stratagem allows Hamas to calibrate its missile barrages on Israeli civilians according to the intensity of Israeli strikes against them.
Kinda funny how horrible this country is but a big problem is the huge number of people trying to move here
Funny in Cuba they have to use force to keep the people from leaving
The Economist Takes a Shot at Obama
"Old-Style Democrat" is not what Obama was hoping to run as.
By Adam C
The Economist and its libertarian leanings are one of the better analytic papers in the world. Unlike most papers, their endorsements are not preordained by political party. They called for Clinton's impeachment and removal, supported Bush in 2000, and then Kerry in 2004 ("The Incompetent versus the Incoherent"). After a notably laudatory article on McCain two weeks ago, the paper takes Sen. Obama to task for his populist anti-growth rhetoric on trade. The Economist pokes at Obama's message of "hope":
What is missing from Mr Obama's speeches is any hint that this is not the whole story: that globalisation brings down prices and increases consumer choice; that unemployment is low by historical standards; that American companies are still the world's most dynamic and creative; and that Americans still, on the whole, live lives of astonishing affluence.
And the paper goes for the jugular when it questions Obama's newness by calling him out:
The sad thing is that one might reasonably have expected better from Mr Obama. He wants to improve America's international reputation yet campaigns against NAFTA. He trumpets “the audacity of hope” yet proposes more government intervention. He might have chosen to use his silver tongue to address America's problems in imaginative ways—for example, by making the case for reforming the distorting tax code. Instead, he wants to throw money at social problems and slap more taxes on the rich, and he is using his oratorical powers to prey on people's fears.
Mr Obama advertises himself as something fresh, hopeful and new. But on economic matters at least he, like Mrs Clinton, has begun to look a rather ordinary old-style Democrat.
So, you're supporting Bush here???
BTW, in the sub prime mess, don't the people who took out the loans have some complicity also??
I know when I've taken out loans, the terms were always very explicitly spelled out before I signed
US warships move into E. Mediterranean in case Gaza escalation spills over into Lebanon
February 29, 2008, 1:30 PM (GMT+02:00)
Egyptian Gen. Suleiman cancels Israel visit
Egyptian Gen. Suleiman cancels Israel visit
Friday, Feb. 29, Egypt’s intelligence minister Omar Suleiman canceled his visit to Israel because of estimates in Cairo that hectic preparations current in Israel and the Gaza Strip augur a steep escalation of cross-border violence.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report: Officials in Cairo expect Israel redouble its air bombardment and armored raids against Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip, and Hamas to intensify and broaden the scope of its missile and rocket attacks on Israeli towns and villages.
Both sides are convinced that a further ratcheting-up of the war will generate indirect truce talks through a third party.
The US has meanwhile posted naval and marine vessels opposite the shores of Israel and Lebanon in case the fighting spreads to a second front. DEBKAfile’s Washington sources quote US and Israeli military sources as skeptical of the chances that prime minister Ehud Olmert and defense minister Ehud Barak will secure a ceasefire. The Gaza conflagration is more likely, they believe, to stir Hizballah to ignite a fresh assault from South Lebanon.
These sources point to four significant developments to watch for:
1. Hizballah is adamant about avenging the death of its military commander Imad Mughniyeh by border strikes against Israel and terrorist attacks inside the country. This Iranian front group is also committed to helping Hamas. The end of the 40 days of mourning for Mughniyeh on March 22-23 is anxiously awaited.
2. Israel is braced for this eventuality and in mid-preparation for its army to turn the tables on a Hizballah assault and carry the war into Lebanon.
US intelligence sources note that last week, the IDF deployed Patriot missile defense batteries around Haifa in case Hizballah unleashes a rocket offensive on the North as in 2005.
Our sources also report that local authorities and private security firms responsible for public safety in northern Israel were instructed to inspect bomb shelters and ascertain they were ready for use by March 10.
3. The quarrel between Saudi King Abdullah and Syrian president Bashar Assad, which is nearing boiling point, threatens to be fought out in Lebanon, their main bone of contention. Both are sending quantities of arms and ammo to the Lebanese militias under their respective wings.
4. This week, Abdullah persuaded Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s Abdullah to boycott the forthcoming Arab League summit in Damascus. Assad is unlikely to take this slap in the face lying down. There are indications he is ready to stir up Palestinian terrorist groups for attacks on Saudi, American and Israeli interests in the region.
Standing close by for immediate action off the troubled Mediterranean shores of Lebanon, Israel and Gaza is the USS Cole guided missile destroyer opposite Lebanon. It was joined Monday by the USS Nassau amphibious warship and its strike group of six vessels carrying 2,800 marines, flight crews and sailors. US naval sources report that a third group will join them shortly.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report the Nassau is accompanied by the amphibious transport dock ship USS Nashville , the guided missile destroyers USS Ross and USS Bulkeley and the fast nuclear strike submarine USS Albany SSN 753.
While cruising off the Lebanese coast, this formidable US naval force is close enough to the shores of Israel and Gaza to respond to developing emergencies.
Bill: "What's Still Left To Be Done There?" [Byron York]
In contrast to Hillary Clinton, her husband, the former president, is suggesting that U.S. efforts in Iraq, including the surge, have succeeded. Before a not-exactly-capacity crowd at a high school in Dayton last night, Bill Clinton said it is time to withdraw American troops because their mission has been accomplished:
It is the right thing for the Iraqis, even though they may not agree. Look at what's happened. The violence is down. They have a government. They have a constitution. The police and the armed services have been trained. What's still left to be done there? Two decisions only they can make: They have to figure out how to split that oil money and how to share the political power.