http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=9463387

Police Shoot Man Attacking Muhammad Cartoonist


Police shoot ax- and knife-wielding man attempting to kill Prophet
Muhammad cartoonist
By JAN M. OLSEN Associated Press Writer
COPENHAGEN January 2, 2010 (AP)

A Somali man wielding an ax and a knife was shot by police as he
attempted to kill an artist who drew a cartoon depicting the Prophet
Muhammad that sparked outrage in the Muslim world, the head of Denmark's
intelligence agency said Saturday.

Jakob Scharf said in a statement that a 28-year-old man with ties to
al-Qaida attempted to enter Kurt Westergaard's home in Aarhus shortly
after 10 p.m. (2100 GMT) on Friday. But Westergaard pressed an alarm and
police arrived minutes later, foiling the attempt on his life.

The attack on the artist, whose rendering was among 12 that led to the
torching of Danish diplomatic offices in predominantly Muslim countries
in 2006, was "terror related," Scharf said.

Westergaard, whose 5-year-old granddaughter was in the home on a
sleepover, sought shelter in a specially made safe room when the suspect
broke a window of the home, said Preben Nielsen of the Aarhus police.

Officers arrived two minutes later and tried to arrest the assailant,
who wielded an ax at a police officer. The officer then shot the man in
a knee and a hand, authorities said. Nielsen said despite his injuries
the suspect's life was not in danger.

The suspect's name was not released in line with Danish privacy rules.

"The arrested man has according to PET's information close relations to
the Somali terrorist group, al-Shabaab, and al-Qaida leaders in eastern
Africa," Scharf said. The PET is Denmark's intelligence agency.

Scharf said without elaborating that the man is suspected of having been
involved in terror related activities in east Africa. He had been under
PET's surveillance but not in connection with Westergaard, he said

The man, who had a staying permit in Denmark, was to be charged Saturday
with attempted murder for trying to kill Westergaard and a police
officer, Scharf said.

It was unclear whether the suspect managed to actually get inside the
home of the 75-year-old cartoonist in Denmark's second largest city, 124
miles (200 kilometers) northwest of Copenhagen.

Westergaard could not be reached for comment. However, he told his
employer, the Jyllands-Posten daily, that the assailant shouted
"revenge" and "blood" as he tried to enter the bathroom where
Westergaard and the child had sought shelter.

"My grandchild did fine," Westergaard said, according to the newspaper's
Web edition. "It was scary. It was close. Really close. But we did it."

Westergaard was "quite shocked" but was not injured, Nielsen said.

Westergaard remains a potential target for extremists nearly five years
after he drew a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb-shaped
turban. The drawing was printed along with 11 others in Jyllands-Posten
in 2005.

The drawings triggered an uproar a few months later when Danish and
other Western embassies in several Muslim countries were torched by
angry protesters who felt the cartoons had profoundly insulted Islam.

Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even
favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

Westergaard, whose provocative cartoon thrust Denmark into the midst of
an international crisis, has been exposed to death threats and an
alleged assassination plot.

The case "again confirms the terror threat that is directed at Denmark
and against the cartoonist Kurt Westergaard in particular," Scharf said.

In October, terror charges were brought against two Chicago men whose
initial plan called for attacks on Jyllands-Posten's offices. The plan
was later changed to just killing the paper's former cultural editor and
Westergaard.

In 2008, Danish police arrested two Tunisian men suspected of plotting
to murder Westergaard. Neither suspect was prosecuted. One of them was
deported and the other was released Monday after an immigration board
rejected PET's efforts to expel him from Denmark.

Throughout the crisis, then-Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen
distanced himself from the cartoons but resisted calls to apologize for
them, citing freedom of speech and saying his government could not be
held responsible for the actions of Denmark's press.+++

---



Anatomy of a Failed Presidency!


The  following is quite worthwhile. We will see how long Dr. Hunt can remain
at NIH once the powers that be get wind of his article.


Dr. Hunt is a social and  cultural anthropologist. He has had nearly 30
years experience  in planning, conducting, and managing research in the
field of youth  studies and drug and alcohol research. Currently Dr. Hunt is
a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Scientific Analysis and the
Principal Investigator on three National Institutes on Health projects. He
is also a writer for American Thinker.

Another Failed  Presidency

An article from American Thinker

- by Geoffrey P. Hunt

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly  failed presidency
since Woodrow Wilson. In the modern era, we've seen several failed
presidencies --- led by Jimmy Carter and  LBJ.  Failed presidents have one
strong common trait --- they are  repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out.
Of course, LBJ wisely took  the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into
oncoming traffic by his  own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in
disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by
his  triumphant overture to China.

But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing
everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most  importantly, in
forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy
Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing
because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed
loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing  because
he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of
American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is
failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his
intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of  shame.


But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president
riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his
tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free
fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point
advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?


No narrative. Obama doesn't  have a narrative. No, not a narrative about
himself. He  has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised
or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is  isolated and doesn't
connect with us. He doesn't have an  American narrative that draws upon the
rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American
character that intersects with their own where they display a command of
history and reveal an authenticity at the core of  their personality that
resonates in a positive endearing way with the  majority of Americans. We
admire those presidents whose narratives  not only touch our own, but who
seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are
aspirational peers,  even those whose politics don't align exactly with our
own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, and Reagan.


But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing
about economics, and is  historically illiterate and woefully small minded
for the size of the task --- all contributory of course. It's that he's not
one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid  of content,
like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper.


Moreover, he doesn't command  our respect and is unable to appeal to our own
common sense. His  notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things
work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of  the
world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.


In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measure of this man,
he's dissed just about every one of us --- financiers, energy producers,
banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital
administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has  a non-green
job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012:


"For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not
offended,  you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second
term, I could have offended you too."


Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a
useful remedy for such a desperate state ---staggered  terms for both houses
of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get
voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative
gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.


Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but
the wagon train keeps rolling along.


Margaret Thatcher: "The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run
out of other people's money."



"When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both."  - James
Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union


"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus



"A  Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own." -
Unknown





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Official: Apparent contact between AbdulMutallab and radical cleric


STORY HIGHLIGHTS

.         AbdulMutallab appears to have had direct contacts with Anwar
al-Awlaki, official says

.         Officials investigating whether al-Awlaki connected to botched
Christmas Day terror attempt

.         Some speculate he was killed in recent strike on suspected
jihadist hideouts in Yemen

.         But a U.S. official said the intelligence community believes
al-Awlaki is alive

RELATED TOPICS

.         Umar <http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab>
Farouk Abdulmutallab

.         Terrorism <http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Terrorism>

.         National Counterterrorism Center
<http://topics.cnn.com/topics/National_Counterterrorism_Center>

Washington (CNN) -- Terror suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab appears to have
had direct contacts with radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.
counterterrorism official told CNN Thursday.

The official could not say more about the contacts, their frequency or
timing.

Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking member of the
House Intelligence Committee, has said he believes there is a connection
between AbdulMutallab, who is accused of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound
airliner on Christmas Day, and the American-born cleric.

Officials are evaluating whether al-Awlaki played a role in the botched
attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet en route from
Amsterdam, Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan on Christmas Day. The attempt to
ignite explosives hidden in AbdulMutallab's
<http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab>  underwear failed
to bring down the plane.

Al-Awlaki's name surfaced in November when U.S. officials revealed he and
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the U.S. Army psychiatrist accused of fatally
shooting 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5 -- had exchanged
e-mails. The intercepted e-mails between the two, officials said, had not
not set off alarm bells.

The cleric recently told Al Jazeera's Arabic-language Web site that he had
been in touch with Hasan in recent years. In that interview, al-Awlaki said
he met Hasan nine years ago while serving as an imam at a mosque in the
Washington, D.C., area.

The cleric said Hasan communicated with him via e-mail starting about a year
before the shooting rampage -- seeking advice about killing U.S. troops, the
cleric said.

The cleric said he lauded the Fort Hood attack because it was aimed at
troops, whom he accused of fighting an unjust war against Islam.

"It is a military target inside America and there is no dispute over that,"
al-Awlaki said. "Also, these military personnel are not ordinary; they were
trained and ready to fight and kill oppressed Muslims, and commit crimes in
Afghanistan."

The 9/11 Commission Report says al-Awlaki had contact with two of the 9/11
hijackers while they were in the United States, though there is no evidence
he knew of the plot.

Al-Awlaki is believed to have fled to Yemen in 2003 or 2004. Since then, he
has been referred to as a "rock star" by some of those who incite radicalism
on the Internet.

His current whereabouts are unknown to U.S. officials. Some have speculated
that he was killed in a recent strike on suspected jihadist hideouts in
Yemen.

But a U.S. official said the intelligence community believes al-Awlaki is
alive. His own family was quoted this week as having said the same thing.

Al-Awlaki's relatives deny he has played any role with al Qaeda. CNN
terrorism <http://topics.cnn.com/topics/Terrorism>  analyst Peter Bergen
said he has seen no evidence to the contrary. "There's no indication that
al-Awlaki the cleric is in any way involved in operational matters for al
Qaeda, but clearly he has operated as an inciter to jihad in the United
States, by his own account," Bergen said.

But even before his name came up in connection with the Fort Hood shootings,
al-Awlaki was a subject of scrutiny by the counterterrorism community as he
had moved into what one official described as "more of an operational role"
for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

CNN Homeland Security Correspondent Jeanne Meserve and National Security
Producer Pam Benson contributed to this story.





http://images.clickability.com/pti/spacer.gif












Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/31/abdulmutallab.terror.radical.cleric/i
ndex.html





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<http://www.nypost.com/> New York PostUpdated: Fri., Jan. 1, 2010, 8:50 AM
home

Afghan CIA victims will join agency's honor roll

By ANDY SOLTIS

Last Updated: 8:50 AM, January 1, 2010

Posted: 3:55 AM, January 1, 2010

This is the Memorial Wall at the CIA's Virginia headquarters, where the
officers slain Wednesday in Afghanistan will likely be honored with stars.

There are 90 such stars currently on the wall. They appear without names,
under the heading "In honor of those members of the Central Intelligence
Agency who gave their lives in the service of their country," but the heroes
whose names can be revealed are inscribed in the agency's Book of Honor.





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12/31/2009 01:09 PM


The Duty Free Time Bomb


Unions Want Controls On Airport Perfume And Alcohol Sales


In the wake of the Christmas Day terror attempt on a Northwest Airlines
flight, two major German employee unions are calling for closer scrutiny of
products sold in airport duty free shops. Highly flammable perfumes and
high-percentage spirits could be used to make explosive devices, they argue.

In the aftermath of the foiled terrorist bomb plot on Northwest Flight 253
to Detroit on Christmas day, the discussion
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,669244,00.html>  about
aviation security in Europe continues to simmer. On Thursday, the heads of
one of Germany's biggest police unions and a major pilot's association have
come up with several suggestions for improved safety checks at European
airports. Should they be taken seriously, some of them are bound to be
controversial.

The most contentious measure that Rainer Wendt -- head of the German Police
Union (DPolG), which represents around 80,000 workers -- has suggested is a
ban on the sale of what he describes as "potentially dangerous" goods like
perfume and alcohol in duty free shops at European airports.

In an interview with the regional daily Neuen Osnabrücker Zeitung published
on Thursday, Wendt said: "Once the potential perpetrators have gone past the
security checks they can get everything they need to build a bomb in duty
free shops and restaurants." For this reason, Wendt added that, "as quickly
as possible, there should be an EU wide sales ban on potentially dangerous
materials."

"The security of citizens must come before business interests," Wendt
concluded.

'The Bomb from Duty Free'

In November 2006, German public broadcaster ZDF's "Frontal 21" investigative
news program caused a scandal when one of the station's reporters managed to
smuggle dry chemical substances through Frankfurt airport security checks
and purchase additional substances at duty free shops that, when combined,
created a functioning bomb. During the segment, called "The Bomb from Duty
Free" the reporter later detonated the explosive device in a controlled area
away from the airport, causing serious damage to a medium-sized autombile.

The head of Cockpit, a German pilots' association, also drew attention to
duty free dangers on Thursday. In an interview with the daily Tagesspiegel,
Cockpit spokesman Jörg Handwerg said some of the items available for sale in
duty free shops should be reviewed. "The passengers have a lot of harmless
things confiscated from them during security checks," Handwerg said. "But
then right afterwards they can acquire a variety of potentially dangerous
items." Handwerg told the newspaper that he himself had had a water bottle
confiscated at a London airport but was able to buy razor blades in the duty
free area immediately afterwards. "You couldn't blow up a plane with that,"
Handwerg said, "but you could certainly threaten the plane's crew."

Meanwhile, Wolfgang Spyra, a security expert at the Brandenburg University
of Technology, told the Berlin daily that hair sprays, perfumes and spirits
with a highly flammable alcohol content could aid in setting a fire on board
a plane, or could be mixed to create a potentially explosive mixture. Rather
than banning the sale of such goods altogether, however, Spyra suggested
duty free items could be ordered before the flight or on board the plane and
then delivered to passengers as they disembarked the aircraft at their
destination.

cis -- with wires





URL:


* http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,669674,00.html





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Anyone familiar at all with Nigeria would not be surprised.  If the scanners
were not unused, if manned by Nigerians they'd be broken in a day.



B





Dec 31, 3:32 PM EST



US scanners went unused at Nigeria airport

By JON GAMBRELL
Associated Press Writer

Virginian Pilot

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) -- The U.S. gave Nigeria four full-body scanners for its
international airports in 2008 to detect explosives and drugs, but none were
used on the man suspected trying to blow up a Detroit-bound flight, Nigerian
officials say.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tracked by cameras through the security check,
only went through a metal detector and had his bag X-rayed when he arrived
at Nigeria's busiest airport to start his journey, the officials say.

The Soter RS scanners delivers 3-D images that would have shown something
hidden under clothing. But a spokesman for the anti-drug agency, which
operates the Nigerian machines, told The Associated Press that the one at
Lagos airport is used sporadically and only on potential narcotics
smugglers.

After clearing security at Murtala Muhammed International Airport,
Abdulmutallab flew to Amsterdam, boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253, and
allegedly lit an explosive device hidden in his underpants as the plane
approached Detroit on Christmas Day.

Even word of the scanners' presence in Nigeria's four main airports
apparently hasn't reached top officials, including one responsible for
airline safety.

Harold Demuren, the head of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, told
reporters Wednesday that his government would buy 3-D full-body scanners for
the airports, and insisted there were currently none there.

But on Thursday, Ofoyeju Mitchell of Nigeria's National Drug Law Enforcement
Agency, told the AP that one of the machines sits in a room near the
security checkpoint in Lagos' often chaotic international airport.

He said they aren't used on every passenger. Instead, drug agents select
frequent flyers, travelers heading to and from drug shipment points, and
people who seem deceptive or under stress. Nigeria is a major transit point
for Afghan heroin and South American cocaine.

"The frequency of checks is determined by the risk level of our assessment
... (and) reasonable cause for suspicion," Mitchell said.

Such limited use is not what the U.S. State Department intended when it gave
Nigeria the scanners.

According to an April 30 U.S. State Department report, the scanners were
installed in March, May and June of 2008 "to detect explosives and drugs on
passengers."

The U.S. Embassy in Nigeria would not comment on the use of the scanners.

Reuben Abati, a columnist at Nigeria's Guardian newspaper, highlighted a
different risk factor - a culture of graft and favoritism that allows VIPs
to bypass screening.

"Big men and their wives and children are often piloted through security,"
Abati wrote. "They could go straight to the tarmac to board the aircraft,
depending on the scope of their influence. With the power of cash, anything
can be taken onto an aircraft in Nigeria."

Abdulmutallab's father is a prominent banker. However, Demuren and the
country's Information Minister have said Abdulmutallab did go through a
metal detector and had his bag X-rayed, citing security camera footage which
they refuse to release.

Sam Adurogboye, a spokesman for the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, did
not deny that some passengers have been allowed to breeze past security
checkpoints.

"It is possible in the past that people may have gone above the law," he
said. However, he insisted that new rules and their strict enforcement would
prevent such practices from recurring.

Passengers can fly directly from this West African city to Europe and the
United States. The most recent available statistics say some 2.1 million
international travelers passed through the airport in 2006.

In new information released Thursday, Information Minister Dora Akunyili
said Abdulmutallab flew into Lagos from Accra, Ghana on Christmas Eve and
"spent less than 30 minutes" in the airport before catching the flight to
Amsterdam.

Nigerian officials had said earlier that his round-trip ticket was bought in
Accra for $2,831 in cash on Dec. 16. Akunyili's statement did not say how he
spent the rest of the week before flying to Lagos.

Abdulmutallab raised no alarms as he boarded the flight to Amsterdam. He
also underwent a second set of searches in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport that
turned up nothing.

Schiphol has 15 scanners, but the U.S. has discouraged their routine use on
privacy grounds. Dutch authorities say Abdulmutallab raised no suspicions
that would require a scan.

Demuren, the civil aviation chief, said scanners Nigeria will buy are "very
new machines" used in few airports worldwide. "Nigeria is determined to
acquire these," he said.

He referred further questions to the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria,
the agency that oversees airport construction and maintenance. An agency
spokesman could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Since the attempted bombing, the police presence at the Lagos airport has
noticeably increased, with officers cradling weathered assault rifles both
inside and outside the terminal. Airline officials also are making a point
of going through every bag presented to them at check-in.

C 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our
<http://apdigitalnews.com/privacy.html> Privacy Policy.





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Well done!  The Justice Department does not belong in a war zone.



B



Judge dismisses all charges in Blackwater shooting

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 31, 2009; 4:15 PM

A federal judge on Thursday threw out charges against five Blackwater
Worldwide security guards accused of killing 14 people in a 2007 shooting in
downtown Baghdad.

In a 90-page
<http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/blackwater_123109
.pdf>  opinion, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ruled that the
government violated the guards' rights by using their immunized statements
to help the investigation. The ruling comes after a lengthy set of hearings
that examined whether federal prosecutors and agents improperly used such
statements that the guards gave to State Department investigators following
the shooting on Sept. 16, 2007.

"The explanations offered by prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to
justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the
defendants' compelled testimony were all too often contradictory,
unbelievable and lacking in credibility," Urbina wrote.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said, "We're obviously
disappointed by the decision. We're still in the process of reviewing the
opinion and considering our options."

The five guards -- Paul Slough, Nicholas Slatten, Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard
and Donald Ball -- are charged with voluntary manslaughter and weapons
violations in the killing of 14 civilians and the wounding of 20 others.

The Justice Department alleges that the guards unleashed an unprovoked
attack on Iraqi civilians in Nisoor Square while in a convoy. One guard,
Jeremy P. Ridgeway, has pleaded guilty and was expected to testify against
the others. Blackwater, which has since renamed itself Xe, had a contract to
provide security for the State Department in Iraq.

Mark Hulkhower, the defense lawyer representing Slough, said he was
obviously pleased. "We are very gratified by the judge's thoughtful and
reasoned opinion and we are very happy that Mr. Slough can start the New
Year without this cloud hanging over his head."





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http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/12/former_gitmo_detaine_1.php




Former Gitmo detainee killed in Yemen while plotting attack on British
embassy


By Thomas JoscelynDecember 30, 2009 7:06 AM

A former detainee at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility was killed by
Yemeni forces during a raid in Arhab, which is north of the capital Sanaa,
on Dec. 17. The former detainee, Hani Abdo Shaalan, was preparing attacks
along with other al Qaeda terrorists against the British embassy and other
Western targets at the time.

The raid that killed Shaalan was one of several operations carried out
across Yemen - in Arhab, Sanaa, and the southern province of Abyan - against
al Qaeda targets. The Yemeni government claims that dozens of suspected
terrorists have been killed, while dozens more have been captured. Shaalan's
death has been confirmed by both the Yemeni government and a human rights
activist familiar with his case, according
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR200912290
2289_2.html>  to the Washington Post.

A statement by the Yemeni government released on the 26Sep.net web site,
which is affiliated with Yemen's defense ministry, said that the impending
terrorist attack against the British embassy and other targets was "in its
final phase" of planning. "A group of eight suicide bombers were to carry
out the operation using explosive belts and two car bombs," Agence France
Presse, quoting from the statement, reported.

The plot against the British embassy "was to be modeled on the operation
that was carried out against the American embassy" in September 2008, the
statement added. That attack killed 19 people, including one American.
Another former Gitmo detainee, Said
<http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/01/return_to_jihad.php>  al
Shihri, a Saudi who is currently the number two deputy of al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula, reportedly helped plan the September 2008 attack.

Hani Abdo Shaalan joins a growing list of former Gitmo detainees who have
joined al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is the strongest
branch of al Qaeda outside of South Asia.

In addition to al Shihri, at least 10 other former Gitmo detainees were
included on the Saudi Kingdom's list of 85 most wanted terrorists in
February. All of them were graduates of the Saudi rehabilitation program.
One of them has since then reportedly turned himself in. But others either
remain at large or have been killed in fighting.

Ibrahim
<http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/12/former_guantanamo_de_1.php>
Rubaish is a former Gitmo detainee who has become AQAP's chief ideologue.
Rubaish is responsible for providing the theological justifications for
AQAP's terror. Two other former Gitmo detainees who fled to Yemen along with
Rubaish have been killed in shootouts. [See LWJ reports "Former
<http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/09/former_gitmo_detaine.php>
Gitmo detainee killed in shootout" and "Another
<http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/10/another_former_gitmo.php>
former Gitmo detainee killed in shootout."]

All of the above former Gitmo detainees who have joined AQAP are Saudis.
Shaalan is now the first Yemeni who was detained at Guantanamo and confirmed
to have joined AQAP upon his release.

A Taliban 'chef's assistant' who was admittedly armed at Tora Bora

Shaalan, who was listed as Hani
<http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/225-hani-abdul-muslih-al-s
hulan/documents/5/pages/243>  Abdul Muslih al Shulan during his time at
Gitmo, was transferred to Yemeni custody on June 18, 2007. During his
combatant status review tribunal (CSRT) at Gitmo, Shaalan said
<http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/225-hani-abdul-muslih-al-s
hulan/documents/4/pages/1294#5>  he first traveled from Yemen to Afghanistan
"to get employment and save money." Shaalan claimed that his father paid for
his trip, and downplayed his ties to the Taliban and al Qaeda.

US military and intelligence officials did not buy Shaalan's story. And
Shaalan made important admissions during his CSRT.

US officials found that Shaalan's "travel to Afghanistan was facilitated by
a Yemeni national known to have recruited Yemeni men to fight the Jihad
against the Russians in Chechnya," according
<http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/225-hani-abdul-muslih-al-s
hulan/documents/1/pages/260>  to a June 10, 2005 memo. Shaalan decided to
travel to Afghanistan "in response to a fatwa for the purpose of fighting
coalition forces."

During his CSRT, Shaalan denied that his travel to Afghanistan was inspired
by a fatwa or that anyone convinced him to leave for South Asia. However,
Shaalan's own testimony indicated that he was likely recruited by a jihadist
recruiter. When asked how he knew where to go in Pakistan and then
Afghanistan, Shaalan said he met "a man who gave me directions and was
guiding me how to get there." Shaalan said
<http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/225-hani-abdul-muslih-al-s
hulan/documents/4/pages/1294#6>  the man's name was Saleh al Raeni, and that
he was associated with "a mosque called al Forkan."

It is possible, if not likely, that Shaalan was referring to the Furqan
Institute in Yemen. According to another
<http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/32-faruq-ali-ahmed/documen
ts/1/pages/36>  memo produced at Gitmo, the Furqan Institute "was a meeting
and recruiting ground for jihadist[s] in Yemen. Many Yemeni al Qaeda members
have links to the institute, specifically a number of the al Qaeda members
involved in the" attack on the USS Cole.

Another indication that Shaalan was initially recruited for jihad is that he
stayed "in Taliban safe houses during his travel to and within Afghanistan,"
according to the transcript of his CSRT hearing. Shaalan did not deny this
allegation. "I had to stay in a place that was safe," Shaalan said
<http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/225-hani-abdul-muslih-al-s
hulan/documents/4/pages/1294#3> . Taliban and al Qaeda safe houses are
governed by strict security protocols, so not just anyone can gain access.
That Shaalan stayed in Taliban safe houses is, therefore, an indication that
a known Taliban or al Qaeda member vouched for him.

During his CSRT, Shaalan claimed he was just a "chef's assistant" and was
coy about his time in Afghanistan, claiming that he could not remember if he
was employed by the Taliban north or south of Kabul. At one point in
custody, according to a US government memo
<http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/225-hani-abdul-muslih-al-s
hulan/documents/1/pages/260> , Shaalan "stated that his job was to prepare
food that was later transported to soldiers fighting on the front lines."

It is possible that his role went beyond that of a mere cook, however. US
officials found that he spent "two months at a Taliban camp." When he was
captured, Shaalan also had in his possession "a Casio watch, model # A159W,
which has been used in bombings linked to al Qaeda." Although Casio is a
common brand of watch, al Qaeda and Taliban trainees frequently received
certain models as part of their training. These watches work well when
attempting to detonate an improvised explosive device, or other types of
bombs. Thus, Shaalan's watch may be an indication that he received training
on explosives. For his part, Shaalan denied having anything to do with
explosives during his CSRT.

Whether Shaalan was trained or not, he was armed at Tora Bora, which was a
stronghold for Taliban and al Qaeda members following the US-led invasion in
late 2001. The US government found
<http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/225-hani-abdul-muslih-al-s
hulan/documents/1/pages/260#11>  that he was "present in the Tora Bora
region during the US air campaign." Shaalan denied being there during the
air campaign, but conceded that he fled through the Tora Bora Mountains for
Pakistan with "a lot of people."

One member of Shaalan's tribunal asked
<http://projects.nytimes.com/guantanamo/detainees/225-hani-abdul-muslih-al-s
hulan/documents/4/pages/1294#5>  him, "Were any of them armed?" Shaalan
responded, "Some of them, they were carrying weapons."

"Were you carrying one a the same time?," a tribunal member asked. Shaalan
admitted, "Yes, I was."

Despite admitting that he was armed at Tora Bora, Shaalan refused to tell
the Gitmo tribunal whether or not he believed in waging jihad. When asked,
"Do you believe in jihad?," Shaalan responded: "That is not included in my
unclassified evidence."

A tribunal member pressed, "Did you go to Afghanistan to fight jihad?"

"The first question was why I went to Afghanistan. I have already answered
that question," Shaalan said, even though he never really answered questions
concerning his ideological beliefs one way or the other.

Given recent events, Shaalan had a good reason to be evasive when asked
about his jihadist inclinations. After leaving Gitmo, Shaalan rejoined one
of the strongest al Qaeda branches on the globe, and reportedly helped his
fellow jihadists plan an attack against the British embassy and other
Western targets prior to his death.



Read more:
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/12/former_gitmo_detaine_1.php#ix
zz0bHylqHSM





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/6913448/Detroit-t
error-attack---Failed-bombing-highlights-danger-of-Britain-says-US.html




Detroit terror attack - Failed bombing highlights danger of Britain, says US



The failed terrorist attack on Flight 253 carried out by a young Muslim
radicalised in London underlines that one of the biggest threats to the
United States is posed by Britain, according to senior American
policymakers.




By Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 10:00PM GMT 30 Dec 2009

Amid the internal recriminations among American intelligence agencies
yesterday over how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was able to get on a flight in
Amsterdam bound for Detroit, there was also growing concern about the role
of "Londonistan" in fomenting his Islamist beliefs.

Abdulmutallab, 23, was president of the Islamic Society at University
College, London and spent formative years from 2005 to 2009 in the British
capital. In January 2007, he sponsored a "War on Terror Week" that was
harshly critical of US policy.

Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber" who tied to blow up a jet between Paris and
Miami in 2001 was British, as was Saajid Badat, who pleaded guilty in London
in 2005 to a similar attempt.

Ahmed Omar Sheik, who was behind the kidnap and murder of the journalist
Daniel Pearl in 2002, was a British citizen and London School of Economics
graduate

Although there are indications that a telephone number associated with
Abdulmutallab was noted by MI5 in its monitoring of Islamist radicals, he
was never viewed by the British security services as a threat.

"The British have an immense problem," said Charles Allen, a
recently-retired veteran CIA officer who was intelligence chief at the
Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.

"There are more challenges in Muslim immigrants integrating into British
society than there is in America, a lack of assimilation, a great deal of
alienation."

As a result, al-Qaeda, particularly since 2006, has "worked much harder to
get Westerners, people who live in the West, who may be citizens of the
West" to become recruits and train in places like the tribal areas of
Pakistan and Yemen. "The British have the most immediate and serious
problem."

Daniel Pipes, a scholar on radical Islam and former adviser to the Rudolph
Giuliani during his presidential campaign, said: "The UK is a menace to the
outside world. It's been a problem for years now. This is just one more
example.

"It's a very profound problem that has to do with the sense of who one
is....the French have a sense of self, of culture much more strongly than
Britain does now."

British authorities refused Abdulmutallab a visa in May and put him on an
immigration watch list but did not pass this information to the US. While
some officials have said this could have helped American agencies, others
have more fundamental worries about Britain and Europe.

"We are in grave danger as a result of the fact that we are lowering our
defences by doing away with vital tools in the War on Terror that have
proven successful all in response to the hue and cry from the European Left
and to appease European opinion," said Marc Thiessen, former chief
speechwriter for Mr Bush and a former Pentagon aide.

"You are still in the law enforcement approach to terrorism in Britain - the
one that we seem to be returning to here in the US. You have all of this
hand-wringing about how Binjamin Mohammed [a former Guantanamo inmate who
used the British courts to accuse the US of torturing him] is being treated.


"The fact is there is no shame in aggressively interrogating terrorists or
treating them as enemy combatants as opposed to criminals. What was
attempted in Detroit, what was done to you on the London underground, these
were not crimes, they were acts of war."

Muslims immigrants to the US are much better integrated in society and
consider themselves Americans "within a generation", he said, because the US
embraces the "melting pot" concept, said

"That doesn't exist in Europe in the same way and particularly in Britain,
which is a more socially stratified society than the US. They live in Muslim
ghettoes and feel alienated from the larger society and not accepted."

Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration official and president of the
Centre for Security Policy think tank, said: "It's much bigger than Britain.
This particular character got some of it there but also got some of it in
Yemen, probably got some of it in Nigeria."

He added: "There is a trajectory that is described by Sharia and that's the
ideology we're up against. Britain is farther along on it than we are but
it's the same trajectory.

"We know that in Detroit, in northern Virginia, in southern California, in
Boston and in New York we have cells or hotbeds of this Sharia adherence in
mosques, in Muslim student associations that are every bit as virulent as
what you have in Britain.

"It's just that it hasn't metastasised yet quite as obviously as it has in
the UK. It's just a question of time."





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

No evidence at all that Obama understands reality.



B



http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/31/obama%e2%80%99s-tortured-rendezvous-with-
reality-by-jamie-glazov/



Obama's Tortured Rendezvous With Reality - by Jamie Glazov

Posted By Jamie Glazov On December 31, 2009 @ 12:03 am In FrontPage | 6
<http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/31/obama%e2%80%99s-tortured-rendezvous-with
-reality-by-jamie-glazov/print/#comments_controls>  Comments



Frontpage Interview's guest today is Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and
historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is a columnist
<http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YzFlMGZkZjYxMTU2NDkwOWFhYWQxNGQ1Njk5MD
k2YTA=>  for National Review [1]and a recipient of the 2007 National
Humanities Medal.



FP: Victor Davis Hanson, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

First things first, let me ask you this.

If our government was serious about fighting Islamic terrorism and saving
lives, wouldn't Abdul Mutallab be getting water-boarded just about now?

We know that the use of "enhanced techniques" of interrogation on al-Qaeda
leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed - which included waterboarding - forced KSM to
give up crucial information that ended up preventing countless terrorist
attacks and saving an infinite amount of innocent lives. It allowed, for
instance, the U.S. to capture key al- Qaeda terrorists and to thwart a
planned 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles.

But now, thanks to the Obama administration and its approach to the terror
war, Abdul Mutallab will probably be getting a lawyer and not have to say
anything. This, naturally, drastically increases, rather than minimizes, the
possibilities of a future terror attack on our soil and against our
citizens.

Your thoughts?

Hanson: I don't think right now the question is over interrogation
techniques, but rather not giving this foreign national would-be mass
murderer full rights, as if he were a common criminal rather than a
non-uniformed soldier at war.

Mutallab apparently, has been happy to tell all he knows without even being
interrogated formally, which makes the entire foiled attack even more
absurd: a Nigerian radical Muslim buys with cash a one-way ticket, carries
no check-in luggage, was previously reported by his own father as a threat
to America, and boards a plane to America after previous stays in Yemen?

Before we even get to questions of interrogation, how about first some
sanity? And in reaction to all this, Secretary Napolitano nonchalantly talks
about the system working like "clockwork"? I think very soon we will hear of
no more "overseas contingency operations" and "man-made disasters"-and no
more Janet Napolitano as head of our homeland security.

And when the next official struts and says "Bush did it", the public will
sigh "Thank God, he did", since in comparison with the seriousness with
which the prior administration dealt with terrorism, the Obama team seems to
consider radical Islam an interesting catalyst for a civil liberties debate.
"Reset" button probably won't be used any more either-the phrase is too
ironic now, and would mean going back to our anti-terrorism policies from
2001-9, which are preferable to the present mess. In political terms, one
cannot ask millions of Americans to take off their belts and shoes, and then
not put someone like Mutallab on a no-fly list.

FP: The fate of Gitmo?

Hanson: With over 100 Yemenis in Guantanamo, I doubt the facility will be
closed; perhaps it will be virtually closed like the Iranian deadlines to
stop building a bomb, or the health-care deadlines. I doubt too that Khalid
Sheik Mohammed is ever tried in New York; that partisan gambit will be
quietly Guatanamoized.

The present Obama diffidence-trash the Bush anti-terrorism protocols, bow,
and apologize abroad, contextualize the US in the Al Arabiya interview and
Cairo speech, promise to try KSM in New York, shut down Guantanamo-does not
quite work in the context of a new series of human IEDs being unleashed
against the US. Surely there are one or two astute advisors who will take
the President aside and quietly say, "Your present rhetoric and policy are
nuts! And you will destroy the Democratic Party for 30 years if you
continue!"

FP: Abdul Mutallab doesn't seem to come from the ranks of the poor, the
oppressed and the downtrodden. What does this do to the Left's belief that
the devil made them do it when it comes to our enemies?

Hanson: Well that debate was over long ago, when we learned of the past
profiles of the 9/11 killers, the West Bank suicide monsters, and many of
the human bombs who went off in Iraq.

The angriest at the West are those with enough money, and education to have
developed a full sense of inferiority, self-disappointment, envy, and
jealousy. A Major Hasan or Mutallab or Atta inside the West sees the
prosperity, liberality, informality, and success around him, begins to
figure that no such thing exists in the world of the Middle East and Islamic
world, and, presto, believes America and the Jews ensured that there is no
resurgent majestic caliphate. We excite the appetites in these characters
faster than radical Islam can repress them. That we too often apologize and
convey a sense of shame about our own culture only emboldens these killers
in their fantasies.

Every bit as important as our military response and vigilance, is our moral
tone, which should be along the following lines: "Dear radical Muslims, you,
not us, created your present misery through religious intolerance, gender
apartheid, statism, corruption, tribalism, anti-scientific fundamentalism,
and autocracy, and we have neither regrets about our own success nor
responsibilities for your own self-induced miseries, unfortunate as they
are." Until they get that message, we will have the sort of image conveyed
by Obama in Cairo and his Al Arabiya interviews: pleasing to the world, but
a signal to those who despise the US that we really do not believe in our
own exceptional history and institutions.

FP: You mentioned Napolitano, her moronic statements, and how she might not
be around much longer. What's the psychology here of this administration and
its overall dance with denial?

Hanson: They seem very naive and inexperienced, almost as if to say: "This
is not supposed to be happening to me; I was elected to undo George Bush's
anti-constitutional, so-called war against terror, not actually fight real
life terrorists." In this administration everything is "isolated" and
"allegedly", unless you're the Cambridge police, and then we really can snap
to instantaneous judgement.

Again, I think the Obama administration felt that it would prance in, and
end the bad war in Iraq, finish off the good war in Afghanistan, and
dismantle the unnecessary Bush crusade against mythical dragons. Instead,
they learned that Iraq was essentially won by Bush, Afghanistan is heating
up, and there are thousands of al Qaeda terrorists who hate us for who we
are, and don't give a damn that our President's middle name is Hussein. We
are no longer dealing here with college deans and TV pundits who are wowed
by split-the-difference, hope-and-change soaring rhetoric.

FP: Two of the four leaders behind the Northwest Airlines passenger jet
appear now to have been released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in
November, 2007. Significance?

Hanson: It reminds us of what happens when the Bush administration caved to
the popular slur that Guantanamo was a veritable Gulag, and also reminds us
that those in Guantanamo were there for a reason.

We have this la-la land fantasy that there are perfectly good and bad
choices. But there are no such things. We are targeted by premodern killers,
out of uniform, who are keen students of Western doubt and guilt. And in
dealing with them, there are no easy solutions, as is always true when the
postmodern meets the premodern.

Guantanamo was a bad solution amid far worse alternatives. Candidate Obama
demogogued the issue, as he did tribunals, renditions, and the Patriot Act,
and now, invested with responsibility rather than mere rhetoric, can't close
it when he promised. 'Guantanamoize' is a good verb for incessant rhetorical
deadlines that are never met. Ask Ahmadinejad.

FP: Concluding thoughts? What most worries you about the threat we face and
the people who are supposedly overseeing our protection?

Hanson: Our well intentioned leaders see radical Islam more as an
alternative world view that has grievances, rather than a sick, perverted
Nazi-like creed that wants to take the world back to a 7th century
theocracy, where freedom is denied, heretics and gays stoned, and women
relegated to servile status-all overseen by rather creepy autocrats that
destroy almost any modern institution they encounter.

Too often Obama, Biden, Holder, Napolitano, etc. see terrorists in terms of
domestic criminals, not as enemy combatants. But once one wades into that
legalistic mess of war being a judicial circus, nothing good comes from it:
is it a supposed sin to water-board the confessed architect of 9/11 to find
out about future mass murdering, but OK in legal terms to be district
attorney, judge, jury, and executioner in a nanno-second when sending
Predator drone hellfire missiles into the mud-brick compounds of suspect
terrorists and their families in Waziristan?

We are in a race between sober people around Obama trying to apprise him of
the danger, and his natural Carter-like take on America's partial
culpability for world tensions. Let us hope that the serious people win.

FP: Victor Davis Hanson, thank you for joining Frontpage Interview.

*
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<http://www.nypost.com/> New York PostUpdated: Thu., Dec. 31, 2009, 7:31 AM
home

O's day of reckoning

By RALPH PETERS

Last Updated: 7:31 AM, December 31, 2009

Posted: 1:14 AM, December 31, 2009

It's showtime, folks! Today's the deadline President Obama imposed on Iran's
leaders to give up their nuclear ambitions and be nice.

Not sure if the deadline expires at midnight in Tehran or on Washington
time, but the mullahs and President Mahmoud "Mighty Mouse" Ahmadinejad
aren't scrambling to give Obama a New Year's Eve smooch.

Rather than cave in to our president's mighty rhetoric, the Tehran tyrants
took a break from killing protesters in the streets to attempt to import
more than 1,300 tons of make-a-nuke uranium ore from Kazakhstan.

They've also increased their nuke-cooker centrifuge count, tested new
long-range missiles and lied like Persian rugs about hidden nuke sites. In
response, our president threatened to huff and puff and blow their house
down.

Iran's retort? "Love the cool breeze, Barack."

This is another debacle of Obama's own making. It's a fundamental rule of
playgrounds and security policy that you shouldn't make threats you can't or
won't back up. But Obama's in love with the sound of his own voice. The
fanatics in Tehran are more interested in the sound of a nuclear blast.

Desperate leftists in our country still compare Obama to Bush, insisting
that, well, Obama's not doing so badly, not really, not if you really think
about it.

Bush, for all his faults, worried our enemies. Obama amuses them.

Obama's primary threat against the Tehran thugs has been sanctions. OK,
let's see if he can get internationally recognized sanctions that actually
bite. I'm offering 100-to-1 odds in Tehran's favor.

China won't play. Beijing wants Iran's oil and values Tehran as a regional
cat's paw.

Dubai won't halt its massive illicit trade with Iran. Local ruler Sheikh
Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum's desert playground is $80 billion in the
hole. And smuggling's Dubai's only growth industry these days.

And Russia will cheat on any paper agreements. As will the 'stans of Central
Asia. And Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait. Iraq, too. And Pakistan.

Obama's threatened sanctions get even more laughable, since they'd target
only Iran's power elite. Insiders in any dictatorship are those best able to
duck the pain of sanctions. So Ahmadinejad can't get a visa for a Vegas
vacation. That'll teach him a lesson.

Only comprehensive sanctions backed by a military blockade have any chance
of working. Otherwise, as we've seen in North Korea, the well-connected
continue to feast while the commoners faint from hunger. And there won't be
a blockade, folks.

If sanctions weren't enough of a joke, we also have Obama's all-too-obvious
reluctance to back the millions of Iranians struggling for freedom and
democracy. Our president's empty remarks this week checked the block for
nervous American leftists, but provided no useful support to Iranians
risking their lives for basic rights.

What should this inept administration do? Provide clandestine, covert and
overt support to Iran's freedom crusaders. And funnel money and arms to
Baluchi, Kurdish, Azeri and Arab separatists willing to take on the
Revolutionary Guard jihadis.

Meanwhile, a paradox arises from those courageous demonstrations in Iran:
They really do threaten the monstrous regime of the mullahs -- and that
makes Iran's bully-boys even more likely to use nukes as soon as they get
them.

If Ahmadinejad and the turbaned tyrants sense that time's running out,
they'll launch any nukes they have against Israel in a frantic attempt to
kick-start Armageddon and entice the Hidden Imam to return.

These are not rational actors by our standards. They're authentic fanatics.
And the (shrinking) civilized world is racing against the clock to change
the Tehran regime before the regime can change the world.

President Obama's answer? Make it harder for Iran's rulers to acquire
foreign luxury goods. Guess Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah Khamenei won't be
drinking Chateau Margaux or Cheval Blanc at their we-popped-a-nuke
celebration.

While Obama dithers, Israel may have to act. The Gulf will explode. Oil will
be a bargain at $400 a barrel. The global economy will freeze. And we'll be
in the fight anyway.

And then? Obama will interrupt another vacation to explain that those wicked
Israelis didn't give his sanctions time to work. And it'll be Bush's fault,
too. And America's. And Islam will have nothing to do with religious madmen
murdering their own people in the streets and begging Allah to help them
nuke their neighbors.

Happy New Year!





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

1.      There is no more war on terror



2.       Islam-centric Administration downplays Islamic terrorism.



B



The clues piled up, but why did US security fail to act over terrorist?

Inquiry into how a Nigerian almost blew up a US plane despite warnings is
due to report to the President today

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

Thursday, 31 December 2009

The Independent

America's much-criticised intelligence agencies were back under the
microscope yesterday, as an urgent inquiry ordered by President Barack Obama
got under way into how they failed to prevent the Nigerian student Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab from almost blowing up a US airliner on Christmas Day.

New details make clear that the authorities had unusually abundant clues
that such a terrorist attack was imminent: not only the father's warning to
the CIA in November that his son had developed alarming extremist Islamic
views, but also intercepted "chatter" from al-Qa'ida leaders in Yemen about
"a Nigerian" who was being trained for a terrorist operation.

Yet Abdulmutallab, 23, was only placed on a register of 550,000 people who
might have links to terrorism, not on a smaller list of 14,000 subject to
special screening before being permitted to board a plane, or on a 4,000
person no-fly list. Nor was his multiple-entry visa to the US revoked.

The focus is not just on the CIA, still smarting from its intelligence
failures over the September 2001 attacks and Iraq's non-existent weapons of
mass destruction, and which appears not to have passed on the information
about Abdulmutallab. Fingers are also being pointed at the new agencies set
to correct the shortcomings laid bare eight years ago - above all the
National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC), supposed to serve as a clearing
house for all terrorism intelligence.

Intelligence officials say their critics are merely indulging in the wisdom
of hindsight and that no single piece of evidence against Abdulmutallab was
conclusive. But the NCTC has reportedly complained that neither the CIA nor
the National Security Agency, the US government's worldwide electronic
eavesdropping body, made available all the data in their possession.

Dennis Blair, who as Director of National Intelligence is in overall charge
of the 16 US intelligence-gathering agencies, told The Wall Street Journal
that although improvements had been made since 9/11, "gaps remain and they
must be fixed".

His words are acknowledgement of the similarities between today and eight
years ago, when bureaucratic rivalries between the CIA and the FBI prevented
the pooling of information that might have thwarted the terrorist attacks on
New York and Washington. Something similar appears to have happened this
time, prompting the thinly veiled anger of Mr Obama on Tuesday as he ordered
a preliminary investigation into what happened to be completed within 48
hours, in other words today.

But Mr Obama was also trying to stave off political damage. Republicans are
using the incident to make their familiar argument that Democrats are weak
on national security. In particular, they have seized on the remark by Janet
Napolitano, Secretary for Homeland Security, that "the system worked" in the
case of Flight 253. Those ill-chosen words have caused much embarrassment
for the White House, although officials say Ms Napolitano's job is safe.

But criticism is being directed at the Republicans, one of whose senators is
singlehandedly holding up confirmation of Mr Obama's choice to head the
Transportation Security Administration, the body responsible for air travel
security in the US. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has for months been
blocking the nomination of Erroll Southers - not because of any security
concerns, but out of fear that Mr Southers might allow TSA workers to join a
trade union.

In the meantime the Pentagon is weighing an increase in strikes against the
Yemen operations of the al-Qa'ida affiliate there, which has claimed
responsibility for the 25 December attack. Abdulmutallab had two spells in
Yemen, in 2004 to 2005 and then between August and December this year, when
he was trained for last week's attack.

Officials here reckon that between 200 and 300 al-Qa'ida operatives are
based in Yemen, and Abdulmutallab reportedly has told interrogators that
many others like him are being trained for attacks. But after a series of
recent strikes both in collaboration with Yemeni security forces and by
unarmed drones, US commanders are unsure how many militants may have been
killed, or whether the local al-Qa'ida leadership has scattered, at least
temporarily.

But given Mr Obama's vow earlier this week that the US would not rest "until
we find all who were involved," some increase in US-led counter-terrorism
operation in Yemen seems sure.

Yesterday meanwhile, Nigeria joined the Netherlands in announcing that it
plans to equip its international airports with full-body scanners to counter
the enhanced terrorist threat. The machines, which use radio waves to
generate a picture of the body that can see through clothing and spot hidden
weapons or packages, will be installed next year, the Nigerian aviation
chief Harold Demuren said.

Earlier the Interior Minister of the Netherlands, Guusje Ter Horst, said
that her country's international airports it will begin using the scanners
for flights heading to the United States immediately. "It is not
exaggerating to say the world has escaped a disaster," she told a news
conference.

* It emerged last night that Abdulmutallab spent two weeks in Houston last
year attending a seminar conducted by an internet-based Islamic education
center. Waleed Basyouni, vice-president of the AlMaghrib Institute, said
Abdulmutallab registered online in April 2008, then attended a two-week
programme hosted by the institute in Houston four months later. Records show
the Nigerian identified himself as a 21-year-old student at UCL and the
London School of Economics.

Terror threat Somali suspect held

A man tried to board a commercial airliner in Mogadishu, Somalia, last month
carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that could have caused an
explosion in a case bearing similarities to the terrorist plot to blow up a
Detroit-bound airliner, officials said yesterday.

The Somali man, whose name has not yet been released, was arrested by
African Union peacekeeping troops before the Daallo Airlines flight took off
on 13 November. It had been scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the
northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai. A Somali
police spokesman, Abdulahi Hassan Barise, said the suspect was in Somali
custody.

Catalogue of failures: How Abdulmutallab slipped through the net

* Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's father went to the US embassy in Nigeria a
month before the failed attack, to confide his worry over his son's "radical
views".

* He reportedly had a face-to-face meeting with a CIA official which he
followed up with several calls.

* A senior White House official said intelligence officials also picked up
"chatter" among al-Qa'ida members referring to a possible attack by "a
Nigerian".

* They had already received warnings about a possible Christmas Day attack.

* After his father's visit, Abdulmutallab's name was put on the CIA's list
of 550,000 people with "possible links to terrorism", but intelligence was
not shared, and his name was not put on the list of 18,000 from which the
"no-fly" list of 4,000 is taken.

* His multiple-entry US visa was not revoked, and no alarm bells were
sounded when he bought his one-way ticket with cash, in Accra, Ghana, and
only carried hand baggage.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091230/ts_nm/us_korea_north_theft




North Korea pilfering nuclear reactor site: report


Wed Dec 30, 2:48 am ET

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea has been taking equipment left at a nuclear
reactor site that was mothballed when an international consortium halted
work on grounds the communist state was breaking an agreement, a news report
said on Wednesday.

If the report is true, the looting would be in defiance of a deal the North
reached in the 1990s with regional powers and could cloud a recent push to
restart international disarmament-for-aid discussions.

Billions of dollars were poured into the project to build two relatively
proliferation-resistant light water reactors for the North in return for a
promise to freeze its nuclear plant that produces arms-grade plutonium. The
deal was halted in 2002 with a third of the work finished.

North Korea may have used some of the more than 200 pieces of heavy
equipment taken from the site in the country's northeast to stage a nuclear
test in May, South Korea's JoongAng Ilbo newspaper said, quoting government
officials.

"The removal of equipment without taking steps to settle financial issues is
a clear violation of the agreement and can be construed as theft," one
official was quoted as saying.

South Korea bore the majority of the costs spent on the project arising from
a deal called the Agreed Framework, signed in 1994 by the United States and
North Korea. A consortium called KEDO to build the nuclear plants also grew
out of the deal.

Equipment left behind at the site is valued at 45.5 billion won ($39
million), including cranes and bulldozers and nearly 200 trucks and other
vehicles, the JoongAng Ilbo said.

Most of the 6,500 tons of steel and 32 tons of cement left behind has also
been taken from the site by the destitute North, which is desperately short
of building material.

South Korea's foreign ministry could not confirm the report but said it has
asked the North every year for confirmation of KEDO's rights to the
equipment. The North has said nothing would be allowed to be shipped out
until the project is restarted and complete.

North Korea was hit by U.N. sanctions after its nuclear test in May that
experts said further squeezed its already broken finances and may be pushing
it back to stalled talks on ending its atomic ambitions in the hopes of
winning aid.

North Korea indicated it may be ready to resume dialogue after the first
envoy sent by U.S. President Barack Obama visited Pyongyang this month for
talks.

In an incident that could increase tension, North Korea on Tuesday said it
was holding a U.S. citizen who crossed into the state.

The North may use the arrest of activist Robert Park, who said he was
crossing into the state to raise awareness about its human rights abuses, as
a bargaining chip with Washington in the nuclear talks, analysts said.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/59138



The 'Stimulus' Picture Crumbled
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
  <http://www.cnsnews.com/commentator/l._brent_bozell_iii> By L. Brent Bozell
III  <http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/outloudopinion>
Listen to Commentary Podcasts




On December 22, the networks calmly, briefly, and quietly acknowledged the
news that the government revised its economic-growth number for the third
quarter downward, from 3.5 percent to a less impressive 2.2 percent.

As 2009 comes to a close, the media elite are showing enormous patience with
the pace of a recovery, without any troublesome talk of whether Barack
Obama's dramatic expansion of government is helping or hurting the economy.

Back in 2004, when unemployment was 5.4 percent instead of the present-day
10 percent, these same networks were comparing George W. Bush to Herbert
Hoover. The government announced 250,000 new jobs were created, but the
anchormen talked incessantly about how Bush was losing unemployed voters in
Ohio.

The Business and Media Institute found 77 percent of reports on economic
indicators on ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC (as well as The New York Times and The
Washington Post) were negative that summer.

The economy can no longer be blamed on Bush. Obama has shaped it with his
fiscal policies. He owns it. So when wil his allies in the press ever
acknowledge that the "jobs program" is a fiasco, and that Team Obama failed
to match its own hyperbole on what the "stimulus" would accomplish?

Words mean something. Before he was even in office in January, Obama's
economic advisers Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein issued a report on the
economic situation. If nothing was done, they claimed, the unemployment rate
would keep rising, reaching 9 percent in early 2010. But if the nation
embarked on a fiscal stimulus of $787 billion, the unemployment rate was
predicted to stay under 8 percent.

So the Congress passed this massive spending plan, but instead, unemployment
rose above the danger zone that these Obama advisers predicted if the
spending plan did not pass.  But you didn't see Katie Couric, Charlie
Gibson, and Brian Williams pointing accusatory fingers at the White House
economists for their utterly incorrect projections. It's as if they have
their fingers crossed - hoping, hoping things somehow improve.

Worse yet, in December the president announced his support for a second
"stimulus," sneakily taking $150 billion in unused TARP funds for preserving
the banks and pouring it down a liberal "recovery" rathole. When at first
you make a fiasco, try, try again? When will the media acknowledge what they
ought to be able to deduce from the ossified economies of Western Europe,
never mind the pulverized economies of Eastern Europe?

Yes, government can save government jobs - as Obama's "stimulus" was broadly
spent in preserving positions for schoolteachers, public librarians, and
employees at community health clinics - but it can't create and maintain
private-sector jobs, or force the private sector to create and maintain
jobs.

Christina Romer, who became the chair of Obama's Council of Economic
Advisers, estimated that increased government spending would add $1.57 to
GDP for every $1 spent, while $1 of tax cuts would add only 99 cents. But a
vigilant media would have noticed what economist Greg Mankiw did: that Romer
wrote a paper with her husband David in 2007 that found that each dollar of
tax cuts has historically raised GDP by about $3 - three times Romer's new
estimate.

Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna recently conducted a
comprehensive analysis for the National Bureau of Economic Research. They
looked at large changes in fiscal policy in 21 nations in the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development. They identified 91 episodes since
1970 in which policy moved to stimulate the economy. They then compared the
interventions that succeeded with robust growth, and those that failed to
deliver.

The results were crystal clear. Successful stimulus depended almost entirely
on cuts in business and income taxes. Failed stimulus occurs mostly with a
strategy of increases in government spending.

Is it really rocket science to suggest businesses will not go on a hiring
binge when the liberal agenda in Washington - on health care, "cap and
trade," and other tax-spend-and-regulate plans - creates so much heartburn
about whether businesses can make a profit?

The word "profit" is almost an obscenity in the hallways of Team Obama. It's
suggested that the times are too hard for business to seek profits now -
which guarantees more months of stagnant employment ahead.

Through it all, the media seem willing to extend to the administration the
benefit of every doubt and the blanket assumption that every socialist
premise is almost drowning in compassion - even as the hard times continue.

Ronald Reagan's economic recovery program generated the greatest peacetime
expansion in history. That is fact. To this day, the "news" media report it
as a failure. Obama's economic program thus far has been a disaster. That is
fact. To this day, the "news" media "report" it as a "recovery." George
Orwell would be proud





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/59137



Napolitano, You're Doing a Heck of a Job
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
  <http://www.cnsnews.com/commentator/rich_galen> By Rich Galen
<http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/outloudopinion>
Listen to Commentary Podcasts




On September 2, 2005, after his delayed trip to the Gulf Coast to view the
devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush said of
Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA),
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Brownie, as we now know (and which I knew at the time because I was actually
in the FEMA command trailer watching him) was an abject failure in
organizing the post-hurricane recovery operation to the point that the
United States Army had to be sent in to take control of the situation in New
Orleans.

FEMA is a sub-unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The
Secretary of DHS is Janet Napolitano, the former Governor of Arizona (GovAz
- ok, I made that up).

Janet Napolitano was interviewed on CNN's Sunday show "State of the Nation,"
following the failure of the Tightey-Whitey-Bomber to bring down a flight
just outside of Detroit on Christmas Day and said, "One thing I want to
point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role
here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action."

Of course that is preposterous. The system pretty obviously did not work
because if the system had worked "the passengers and crew of the flight"
would not have had to take any "appropriate action" other than whining about
the agents taking too long to bring the jet bridge up to the plane.

According to Napolitano the system that "worked" had allowed Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab (UFA), a guy from Lagos, to take time out from sending me spam
e-mails about how I had won the Nigerian national lottery because my e-mail
address had been selected out of the 87 trillion e-mail addresses on the
planet and if I would just send (1) a signed copy of a check showing my
account and bank routing number, (2) a credit card number (including the
security code and expiration date), and (3) the last four digits of my
social security number, he would be happy to send me the $125 million which
is now sitting in a bank in Cote d'Ivoire in an account with my name on it.

That same guy went to terrorist band camp in Yemen where he learned how to:

-- Put on a pair of panties which had a very powerful explosive sewn into
them;

-- Talk his way onto airplanes in Lagos and Amsterdam having paid only cash
and having only a small carry-on even after his father had told U.S.
authorities that his son was crackers;

-- Get the seat most likely to set the plane's fuel on fire, and;

-- Inject a liquid into his . well where the explosives were located, which
was supposed to blow the plane out of the sky.

That's the system which Secretary Napolitano thinks worked.

Checking on the Delta website last night, a one-way coach ticket from Lagos
to Detroit was priced at $3,654.30. The unit of currency in Nigeria is the
naira. One US dollar is worth about 152.29 nairas. So, that ticket to the
U.S. would have required UFA to cough up 556,513.35 nairas. In cash.

Hefting more than a half million nairas up on the counter to pay for his
ticket must have required UFA to be wearing a truss, in addition to his
Big-Bang-Briefs, but that raised no eyebrows anywhere in Napolitano's
well-oiled, highly-effective system.

Nor did the fact that he had been refused a visa to return to the U.K. where
he had lived long enough to get a college degree, yet has been granted a
valid US visa, where he has never lived for any length of time. Ok. Maybe
that system needs a little tweak.

It took about 24 hours for Secretary Napolitano to come up with a
clarification of her shockingly stupid statement. After calling in all the
geniuses in the Administration's stable of communicators, "Nappy's"
explanation of saying that the system worked was: It was taken out of
context.

I was at CNN on Monday and spoke with a reporter who was in the Bureau when
Nappy was on the air.

"It was a live interview," the reporter said. "How can it have been taken
out of context?"

Nappy did a heck of a job





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/56974



Politically Correct Murder
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
  <http://www.cnsnews.com/commentator/rich_galen> By Rich Galen
<http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/outloudopinion>
Listen to Commentary Podcasts




We are learning more about Nidal Hasan, the spineless thug who used handguns
the same way a suicide bomber would use explosives to kill himself and those
around him.

Except that Hasan is such an inept soldier he couldn't even get himself
killed during his attack.

The questions surrounding this worm are growing and are becoming more
troubling.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal by Yochi J. Dreazen And
Evan Perez, "The Pentagon said it was never notified by U.S. intelligence
agencies that they had intercepted emails between the alleged Fort Hood
shooter and an extremist imam until after last week's bloody assaults."

Hasan's ability to not only remain in the Army, but to be promoted to the
rank of Major may have more to do with our national obsession with political
correctness and far less to do with promoting service members who have
developed the appropriate skills for their rank.

The Military has an "up or out" policy. Generally speaking, if you are
passed over twice for promotion, you have to resign and find a job in the
civilian world.

This is very smart. Were it not for this policy the Army would be saddled
with a bunch of 45-year-old 1st Lieutenants (which, by the way, I spelled
correctly on my first try) blocking the upward path of younger, more
talented officers.

As we have discussed many times, perfection is a religious concept, not a
concept that works in the real world. So, occasionally someone who should
not be promoted is.

But Nidal Hasan not only slipped through the cracks, he was actually carried
along by the powers that be and was deposited, with full military honors, on
the other side of crack solely on the basis that he was a Muslim and no one
wanted to be accused of being a anti-Islamic bigot.

I got a call yesterday afternoon from a senior enlisted man with whom I had
the honor of serving in Iraq. This is a good man. A man who, having served
in Iraq, recycled back to a tour in Afghanistan. He is a reservist and his
real job is delivering mail to along a rural route in the American
Southwest.

He called because he was trying to understand how someone like Maj. Nidal
Hasan, who was so clearly deranged, disloyal or both could have been
permitted to remain in the Army - HIS Army.

My friend is an American soldier who has been responsible for the safety and
welfare of younger enlisted men and women in really bad places where really
bad people wanted to do really bad things to them.

I got to travel with him and his troops across large portions of Iraq in day
and night moves. I trusted him with my life. When he called to complain; I
listened.

Switch to Capitol Hill. I got an email from another friend. This one a
Senate staffer wanting to know how she could light a fire under the Senate
Homeland Security Committee or the Senate Armed Services Committee or the
Senate Judiciary Committee to open an investigation into how a man who had
been in contact with people who had openly proclaimed anti-American
sentiments was allowed to be promoted through the Military system.

I asked my friend if she thought, had Hasan been a Lutheran or a
Presbyterian or a Jew who had been found to have been in affirmative e-mail
contact with the Unibomber, or Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, he
would have been allowed to continue with his Military career.

I am not anti-Islam. As long-time Mullsters know, I spent three years
running the Middle East for a major U.S. corporation and still have very
good friends - Muslim friends - in the region.

I am, however, anti-stupid.

It is high time we recognize that we have entered a period of national
idiocy in the matter of political correctness. Rather than making people
adhere to American standards of behavior, we tell ourselves, "It's in their
belief system, so it must be ok."

No. It is not ok. This is America. They must adhere to our belief system.

Political correctness be damned.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100020942/where-is-the-secret
ary-of-state-hillary-clinton-has-gone-awol-on-the-iranian-front/



Wednesday 30 December 2009




Where is the Secretary of State? Hillary Clinton has gone AWOL on the
Iranian front




By Nile Gardiner <http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/nilegardiner/>
World <http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/category/world/>  Last updated:
December 30th, 2009

The White House should send a search party to track down Hillary Clinton.
America's foreign policy chief has been missing from the world stage for
several days, and has become as elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel at the
height of the French Revolution. I wrote
<http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100004024/the-decline-and-fa
ll-of-hillary-clinton/>  earlier in the year that Clinton had become the
invisible Secretary of State, and her current absence certainly reinforces
that impression.

One would have thought that with a potential revolution on the streets of
Tehran, and with scenes of horrific and savage brutality against protesters
by the Iranian regime, that Washington's official voice on international
affairs might at least have expressed an opinion. Even Barack Obama took
time away from the golf course in Hawaii to comment
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8433281.stm>  (albeit rather weakly)
on the latest developments in the Middle East's biggest power, which
included over
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/world/middleeast/29iran.html?_r=2&hp>
1,500 arrests by the brutal Iranian security forces and Revolutionary
Guards, and the murder of at least ten dissidents.

I'm not aware however of a single statement from a senior official at the
State Department on the latest situation in Iran - a disgraceful state of
affairs and a huge abdication of responsibility.

As far as I can tell there is no foreign policy leadership at all in
Washington at the moment, at a time when the United States is faced with a
grave nuclear threat on the horizon from the Iranian dictatorship, and the
world is anxiously watching as pro-democracy protesters are being beaten to
a pulp and in some cases killed.

I don't buy the view that because this is the Christmas/New Year holiday,
senior figures in the Obama administration can't be expected to react
rapidly to major international developments. There are millions of police
officers, nurses and other vital personnel on duty at this time - why not
top government officials when the need arises? It's also significant that
several of Hillary Clinton's counterparts in Europe have already been vocal
in condemning the actions of the Iranian government, and that includes even
the usually meek <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8433625.stm>  David
Miliband, hardly known for picking
<http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/10096128/David_Miliband_cowe
rs_before_the_mullahs_of_Iran/>  a fight with the Mullahs.

It's time for Hillary Clinton to make an appearance and project a strong US
voice on the Iranian issue, condemning the sickening violence meted out by
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's jackbooted thugs against Iranian protesters, and
sending a clear signal that the United States is on the side of those
fighting for freedom in Iran. Her striking absence from the world stage is a
damning indictment of the lack of American leadership at a time of
tremendous upheaval on the streets of Tehran, and when the United States is
facing a mounting threat from an increasingly dangerous and hostile Islamist
regime





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/59145



Yemen's Link to Airline Plot Complicates Obama's Plan to Release Yemenis
From Guantanamo Bay
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
By Mike Melia, Associated Press




San Juan, Puerto Rico (AP) - The alleged Yemeni roots of the attack on a
Detroit-bound airliner threaten to complicate U.S. efforts to empty
Guantanamo, where nearly half the remaining detainees are from Yemen.

Finding a home for them is key to President Barack Obama's pledge to close
the prison, but emerging details of the plot are renewing concerns about
Yemen's capacity to contain militants and growing al-Qaida safe havens.

While inmates of other nationalities have left Guantanamo in droves, roughly
90 Yemenis have been held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba for as long as
seven years.

A breakthrough seems less likely since al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula
claimed responsibility for the plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner on
Christmas Day. The group counts two former Guantanamo detainees among its
leaders, and some in the U.S. Congress are warning against sending any more
detainees to Yemen.

David Remes, an attorney who represents Guantanamo detainees, said he fears
concerns about the terror threat will block the repatration of any inmates
to Yemen, including those already cleared for release.

"In theory, what's going on in Yemen should have nothing to do with whether
these men are transferred," he said. "The politics of the situation may turn
out to be prohibitive, at least in the short run, and that would be a
tragedy."

The U.S. has expressed concern about the handling of militants in Yemen, a
mountainous, impoverished country on the southern tip of the Arabian
peninsula that has been an al-Qaida haven partly because of a weak central
government.

On Tuesday, officials in Yemen were investigating whether the Nigerian
suspected in the attempted attack on a U.S. airliner spent time with
al-Qaida militants in the country, where he briefly attended a school to
study Arabic.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which was created in a merger between
operatives from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, is led by a Yemeni who escaped from
a Yemeni prison in 2006 with 22 other al-Qaida figures. And two of the
organization's leaders in Yemen are Saudis who were released from Guantanamo
in November 2007.

Steven Emerson, the executive director of the Investigative Project on
Terrorism research group, said he would not be surprised if those former
Guantanamo detainees were behind the airliner attack.

"Serving time in Gitmo has become a status thing for al-Qaida terrorists,"
Emerson said. "Those that have served time have become appointed to top
positions within the terrorist group once they make their way back to
Yemen."

Six detainees were sent home to Yemen from Guantanamo earlier this month in
a rare transfer that was viewed as a trial run for others to come. But Remes
said he expects optimism to fade among Yemeni detainees, men he describes as
effectively "stateless."

A task force created by Obama has been reviewing each Guantanamo detainee's
file to determine whether they should be prosecuted, detained or
transferred. U.S. officials have declined to reveal details of any
discussions with Yemen.

A senior administration official said authorities still see closing the
facility as a national security priority. While Obama has directed the U.S.
to acquire a maximum-security prison in rural Illinois to hold as many as
100 Guantanamo detainees, he is counting on sending others back to their
homelands or, in cases where that is impossible, to willing third-party
countries.

While detainee transfers to Yemen are likely to face closer scrutiny, the
U.S. has also begun working for closely with Yemen to fight terrorism,
providing $70 million in military aid this year.

Sheila Carapico, a Yemen expert at the University of Richmond, said joint
military operations against al-Qaida sites suggest cooperation at high
levels that could facilitate an agreement to transfer and monitor Guantanamo
detainees.

"This suggests to me a whole new era of cooperation, which will probably
include discussions of what to do with these Gitmo guys," she said.

Yemen has said publicly that it wants all its nationals sent home from
Guantanamo





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/59143



Many Americans Question Napolitano's 'System Worked' Comment
Wednesday, December 30, 2009



Washington (AP) - The Obama administration's claim that "the system worked"
after a failed aircraft bombing wasn't quite as jolting as President George
W. Bush's "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" while New Orleans sank under
deadly Hurricane Katrina. But both raised disturbing questions about
presidential response in a time of crisis.

Bush's praise for his beleaguered FEMA director, Michael Brown, came while
storm evacuees remained trapped in the Louisiana Superdome and victims'
bloated bodies floated in the streets. It became a clarion call for all his
administration did wrong during the 2005 calamity -- and a larger symbol of
all that people disliked generally about Bush.

Obama is dealing with a crisis of a different sort, Friday's attempt by a
23-year-old Nigerian to blow up a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam. It
ended with only a quickly extinguished fire, no lives lost and the man in
custody.

Still, the close call prompted alarm about government performance.

-- How did airport security, improved at much cost after the 2001 terrorist
attacks, miss the bomber's concealed explosives?

-- How did the terrorist watch list system allow Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
to keep his American tourist visa and avoid extra flight screening despite
his father telling authorities his concerns about the younger man's
radicalization?

-- Why didn't Abdulmutallab's lack of luggage, and cash purchase for an
international flight, raise suspicions?

-- Why was the plot thwarted only by an apparent explosive malfunction and
fellow passengers' quick action?

Amid those questions, administration officials' repeated statements that
"the system worked" were jarring. They made it sound like the administration
doesn't get it, like it is paying too much attention to political fallout
and too little to public fears.

Officials insist the assertion, made by Homeland Security Secretary Janet
Napolitano and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs Sunday on television
talk shows, referred only to heightened security procedures scrambled into
place after the incident.

They say it is being purposely taken out of context by partisans playing
politics with near-disaster.

They note Obama ordered two reviews, of the nation's multilayered terrorist
watch list system and of airport security procedures, something he clearly
wouldn't do if he believed there were no flaws.

Gibbs and Napolitano also were hoping, with the busy holiday travel season
still in full force, to instill confidence in air safety.

"The system worked," Napolitano declared on CNN during questioning about the
lapses. Gibbs used nearly the same language on CBS, saying that "in many
ways, this system has worked," without elaborating.

Later that same day, Napolitano put it differently on ABC, saying "once the
incident occurred, the system worked." She tried again on Monday, saying in
a round of TV interviews that "our system did not work in this instance. No
one is happy or satisfied with that."

But the damage was done.

Members of Congress -- Republicans, but some Democrats too -- were
incredulous that "the system worked" was used in any context to describe
what happened. "It is insulting that the Obama administration would make
such a claim," Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House
Intelligence Committee -- who is running for governor in Michigan -- said in
a campaign e-mail.

Republican Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl on Tuesday criticized
President Barack Obama and his administration's response following the
attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound airliner. McCain
said Obama should have addressed the nation earlier about the botched
attack. Kyl said he now doesn't feel "totally safe" with Napolitano as
homeland security secretary.

Phrases do matter. Sometimes they come to take on a life of their own, with
context and nuance forgotten, representing broader beliefs or fears.

For Bush, the "heckuva job" comment more than four years into his presidency
fit into an already well-developed critical narrative, that he was loyal to
lieutenants to a fault and hands-off on even important matters. It stuck.

For Obama, still short of one year in office, his narrative, critical or
otherwise, isn't set yet.

Nonetheless, rumblings keep resurfacing about emotional distance, even
coldness. Whether it's Wall Street bonuses or terrorist near-disaster,
people wonder whether he feels as they do or ever acts out of passion. The
comment may well stick.

And it isn't the only part of Obama's response that drew criticism.

Until Monday, the president had not been heard from publicly since the
Christmas Day scare. He was ordering after-action reviews behind the scenes,
but also enjoying his Hawaiian vacation with games of golf, basketball and
tennis.

He also drew questions by not getting his first briefing on the incident
until two hours after it was all over -- and then only for 15 minutes, when
he departed for the gym.

Aides defended the low-key approach as designed to not give the attempted
attack undue presidential attention and perhaps encourage other terrorists.

Regardless, on Monday, the White House shifted strategy.

Napolitano was sent out to clarify the Sunday comments.

And Obama -- still the administration's best, some say only, fixer --
decided to talk to the public himself. It has been a pattern for Obama:
letting a situation unfurl out of his control while underlings attempt to
manage it, then swooping back into the lead role, usually successfully. It
happened with the hated financial industry bailout and this summer's health
care debate. And now this.

Benefiting from not being the one who made the initial damaging remarks,
Obama added his own words, a mix of calm, urgency and resolve. "We will do
everything in our power to protect our country," he said.

Obama then spoke again Tuesday, showing much more heat at the lapses on his
second go-round. "A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that
totally unacceptable," he declared.

Late in Obama's White House run, now-Vice President Joe Biden caused
campaign headaches by saying his young, relatively inexperienced running
mate would, if elected, face international crisis early on from those eager
"to test the mettle of this guy."

With the first year not over, that test is here.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/59153



Somali Man Arrested at Mogadishu Airport With Chemicals, Syringe Last Month
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
By Mohamed Olad Hassan

Mogadishu, Somalia (AP) - A man tried to board a commercial airliner in
Mogadishu last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that
could have caused an explosion in a case bearing chilling similarities to
the terrorist plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials told The
Associated Press on Wednesday.

The Somali man -- whose name has not yet been released -- was arrested by
African Union peacekeeping troops before the Nov. 13 Daallo Airlines flight
took off. It had been scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern
Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai. A Somali police
spokesman, Abdulahi Hassan Barise, said the suspect is in Somali custody.

"We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaida or other foreign
organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him
red-handed," said Barise.

A Nairobi-based diplomat said the incident in Somalia is similar to the
attempted attack on the Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in that the
Somali man had a syringe, a bag of powdered chemicals and liquid -- tools
similar to those used in the Detroit attack. The diplomat spoke on condition
he not be identified because he isn't authorized to release the information.

Barigye Bahoku, the spokesman for the African Union military force in
Mogadishu, said the chemicals from the Somali suspect could have caused an
explosion that would have caused air decompression inside the plane.
However, Bahoku said he doesn't believe an explosion would have brought the
plane down.

A second international official familiar with the incident, also speaking on
condition of anonymity because he isn't authorized to discuss the case,
confirmed that the substances carried by the Somali passenger could have
been used as an explosive device.

In the Detroit case, alleged attacker Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab hid
explosive PETN in a condom or condom-like bag just below his torso when he
traveled from Amsterdam to Detroit. Like the captured Somali, Abdulmutallab
also had a syringe filled with liquid. The substances seized from the Somali
passenger are being tested.

The November incident garnered little attention before the Dec. 25 attack
aboard a flight on final approach to Detroit. U.S. officials have now
learned of the Somali case and are hastening to investigate any possible
links between it and the Detroit attack, though no officials would speak on
the record about the probe.

U.S. investigators said Abdulmutallab told them he received training and
instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen -- which lies across the Gulf
of Aden from Somalia. Similarly, large swaths of Somalia are controlled by
an insurgent group, al-Shabab, which has ties to al-Qaida.

Western officials say many of the hundreds of foreign jihadi fighters in
Somalia come in small boats across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. The
officials also say that examination of equipment used in some Somali suicide
attacks leads them to believe it was originally assembled in Yemen.

Law enforcement officials believe the suspect in the Detroit incident tried
to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a
glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but
no deadly detonation. Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national, is charged with
trying to destroy an aircraft.

A Somali security official involved in the capture of the suspect in
Mogadishu said he had a 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) package of chemical powder
and a container of liquid chemicals. The security official said the suspect
was the last passenger to try to board.

Once security officials detected the powder chemicals and syringe, the
suspect tried to bribe the security team that detained him, the Somali
security official said. The security official said the suspect had a white
shampoo bottle with a black acid-like substance in it. He also had a clear
plastic bag with a light green chalky substance and a syringe containing a
green liquid. The security official spoke on condition of anonymity because
he wasn't authorized to release the information.

The powdered material had the strong scent of ammonia, Bahoku said, and
samples have been sent to London for testing.

The Somali security officials said the Daallo Airlines flight was scheduled
to go from Mogadishu to Hargeisa, to Djibouti and then to Dubai.

A spokeswoman for Daallo Airlines said that company officials weren't aware
of the incident and would have to seek more information before commenting.
Daallo Airlines is based in Dubai and has offices in Djibouti and France





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/59135



Putin Impedes Obama's Plan for 'World Without Nuclear Weapons'
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
By Patrick Goodenough, International Editor




http://media.cnsnews.com/resources/59134.jpg
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visits a new oil export terminal in eastern
Russia on Monday, Dec. 28, 2009. (AP Photo/ RIA Novosti)

(CNSNews.com) - Weeks after hinting that he may return to the Russian
presidency, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in a fresh muscle-flexing move
Tuesday, threw into disarray one of President Obama's key foreign policy
priorities - talks aimed at reducing the two countries' nuclear arsenals.

Signaling the possibility of further difficulties ahead in Moscow-Washington
relations, Putin said that before Russia would consider cutting its nuclear
stockpile it would need to develop new offensive weapons systems because of
U.S. missile defense plans.

Asked during a visit to Vladivostok what was delaying agreement on a new
arms-reduction treaty, Putin replied, "The problem is that our American
partners are building an anti-missile shield and we are not building one."

Interfax quoted him as saying that new offensive missiles would be Moscow's
answer to Washington's plans for a defensive missile shield.

Putin's intervention comes at a sensitive stage of a process of complex
negotiations aimed at producing a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms
Reduction Treaty. Failing to achieve agreement by the time the original
treaty expired on Dec. 5, the two sides had agreed on retaining the status
quo while talks continued.

They are now scheduled to resume in Geneva in mid-January. just days ago
U.S. officials indicated that agreement was close and Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said last Friday the work had "entered the home
stretch." Putin's comments Tuesday threw that into doubt.

For years - both as president and as prime minister after his handpicked
successor, President Dmitry Medvedev, came into office in 2008 - Putin
voiced strong opposition to U.S. plans to build a missile defense shield in
central Europe, as a defense against an Iranian long-range missile threat.

Disputing the Iranian focus, Moscow charged that the Pentagon proposal to
deploy ten missile interceptors in Poland and a radar tracking station in
the Czech Republic was in fact an attempt to undermine its own strategic
deterrent.

But Obama, after a lengthy policy review, dropped those plans in September,
saying the U.S. would instead look at developing an alternative system,
focusing on a short- and medium-range missile threat.

The new "phased adaptive approach," according to Missile Defense Agency,
initially envisages using U.S. Navy ships equipped with interceptors and
Aegis radar systems - capable of detecting and tracking missiles - deployed
in the Mediterranean Sea, as well as a forward-based sensor in an as-yet
undisclosed location in southern Europe.

http://media.cnsnews.com/resources/59136.jpg
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin meets with employees of a car assembling plant
in Vladivostok on Tuesday, Dec. 29, 2009. (AP Photo/ RIA Novosti)

Despite Obama's decision, which was welcomed by the Kremlin and widely
interpreted as a major concession to Moscow, Putin now appears to be taking
issue with the new plan too.

"By building such an umbrella over themselves, our partners could feel
themselves fully secure and will do whatever they want, which upsets the
balance," he said in Vladivostok, where he was visiting a naval port and
inaugurating a major new oil pipeline.


"To preserve the balance we must develop offensive weapons systems, not
missile defense systems as the United States is doing," he said.

Putin directly linked the missile defense issue with the arms reduction
talks.

"Let the Americans hand over all their information on missile defense and we
are ready to hand over all the information on offensive weapons systems," he
said.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly rejected Putin's statement, saying that
the START successor treaty under negotiation was "not the appropriate
vehicle" for addressing the "relationship between missile offense and
defense."

"We have agreed to continue to discuss the topic of missile defense with
Russia in a separate venue," he added.

Obama reached an initial agreement with Medvedev to reduce nuclear
stockpiles at a G20 summit in London in April, after calling in a speech in
Prague for "a world without nuclear weapons."

At a summit in Moscow three months later, the two presidents agreed to cut
the number of warheads to a maximum of 1,675 on each side, within seven
years of a new treaty's entry into force.

Any new treaty will need to be ratified by the U.S. Senate, with the support
of at least 67 senators required. Forty-one senators - 40 Republicans and an
independent - sent a letter to Obama earlier this month indicating that they
would only endorse a START follow-on treaty if the move was linked to a
significant modernizing of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

Comeback plans?

Although Obama reached the agreements with Medvedev, not Putin, the prime
minister has not balked in the past at wading into areas reserved for the
president.

"I think that Putin is showing who is in charge in Russia," Russian defense
analyst Aleksandr Golts told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, commenting on
Putin's remarks in Vladivostok.

Medvedev's first term expires in 2012, and during a televised call-in show
early this month, Putin revived speculation that he is eyeing a return to
the position he held from 2000-2008.

Asked whether he planned to retire from politics, the 57 year-old Putin
replied, "Don't hold your breath." In response to another caller's question
about whether he would consider running in the 2012 presidential elections,
he said he would think about it, adding there was still enough time to do
so.

In 2008, Putin was barred by the Russian constitution from seeking a third
consecutive term, but he could run again in 2012 if he wished.

Furthermore, a constitutional amendment pushed through a year ago means that
with effect from 2012, Russian presidential terms will be six years, rather
than four.

In a Russian Public Opinion Research Center poll released on Tuesday, 67
percent of respondents named Putin as the leading figure of the Russian
elite. Medvedev's rating was 50.6 percent, which the center noted was 12
percent higher than last year





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Uncommon good sense!



B



http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2009/12/29/Outside-View-Afghanistan-nee
ds-a-national-guard-not-a-national-army/UPI-80971262102086/



Outside View: Afghanistan needs a national guard, not a national army

Published: Dec. 29, 2009 at 10:54 AM
By LAWRENCE SELLIN

HELSINKI, Finland, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- The
<http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2009/12/29/Outside-View-Afghanistan-ne
eds-a-national-guard-not-a-national-army/UPI-80971262102086/> National Guard
is part of the military reserve forces and operates under the authority of
the governor or adjutant general of each of the 50 U.S. states and may offer
an idea for security forces in
<http://www.upi.com/topic/War_in_Afghanistan/> Afghanistan.

Each U.S. state's National Guard may be called to active duty by that
state's governor during natural disasters or civil unrest. With the
governor's consent, state National Guard units may become part of the
National Guard of the United States and serve with active military
components during national emergencies. State National Guard units have a
long history of valorous service in wartime, most recently in Afghanistan
and Iraq.

A recent article by Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post states that
two days before announcing his Afghan surge of 30,000 additional U.S.
troops, President Barack Obama informed Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal that
he was not granting the general's request to double the size of the Afghan
army and police to 400,000. Nevertheless, Chandrasekaran reported that 10
days after the president's speech, the U.S. command responsible for training
the Afghans circulated a chart detailing the combined personnel targets for
the army and police. The goal of 400,000 remained unchanged.

After eight years of effort and at considerable expense, the Afghan national
army numbers between 88,000 and 92,000 troops. McChrystal admits that after
eight years of recruitment and training, the Afghan national army and the
Afghan national police are not sufficiently effective to take ownership of
Afghanistan's security.

Unlike U.S. National Guard units from different states, which have operated
seamlessly together in Afghanistan and Iraq, there remains little trust
between the various Afghan tribal factions, especially in the Pashtun
regions, where there is significant sensitivity to the presence of Tajiks,
for example, who presently dominate the ranks of the Afghan national army.

There are numerous reports of illiteracy, language differences among
recruits, drug use and the lack of fire discipline during combat operations.
Within the Afghan national army, desertion rates have been reported to be as
high as 25 percent.

This is not all the fault of the Afghans, because the Taliban are a fierce
and increasingly savvy fighting force. It is largely due to trying to
overlay a Western military structure on a tribal culture and setting
unreasonable numerical targets with an inadequate and improper mix of U.S.
training and mentoring resources.

This is less about total numbers, as the McChrystal report seems to imply,
and more about effective numbers. The present estimate of 88,000 to 92,000
trained Afghan troops in no way reflects actual combat capability. By merely
increasing the rate of what we are already doing, rather than changing our
training and mentoring methods, we will simply increase the magnitude of the
problems we have previously experienced.

The Afghan national army has to be built from the ground up and according to
the language, culture and tribal norms of that region. Given the stated or
implicit time and cost restraints of our commitment to Afghanistan, trying
to "boil the ocean" is not the answer. It means expending our greatest
effort in those regions most likely to create an immediate impact on the
current negative trends.

The best means to provide the local populace with security and the rule of
law is rooted in the Afghan identity or "woleswali." Afghanistan is a blend
of ethnic groups, languages, tribes and clans that have traditionally
provided religious, social and cultural identity, and -- in a power vacuum
-- an alternative
<http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2009/12/29/Outside-View-Afghanistan-ne
eds-a-national-guard-not-a-national-army/UPI-80971262102086/> government.
The Taliban largely succeeded in leveraging Afghan traditions by filling the
power vacuum during the 1990s. Nevertheless, they never fully controlled
many non-Pashtun enclaves in the north, and their harsh interpretation of
Islam clashed with many tribal traditions, which offer weaknesses that can
be exploited.

Creating Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara "national guards" with a
sufficient number of joint units to maintain and further build Afghan
national cohesion may present an alternative to efforts where we have
previously failed to achieve our goals.

--

(Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D., is a colonel in the U.S.
<http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2009/12/29/Outside-View-Afghanistan-ne
eds-a-national-guard-not-a-national-army/UPI-80971262102086/> Army Reserve
and a veteran of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. The views expressed
are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army or
government.)





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

"Jihadism", "Islamism", Salfism".all nonsensical distinctions.we are dealing
with Islam.

B



latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-rutten30-2009dec30,0,1984482.column

latimes.com



Jihadism and the Cold War

The West won the Cold War; we can use some of the same tactics to defeat
Islamic extremism.

Tim Rutten

December 30, 2009



As we sort through the implications of Umar Farouk Abdulmultallab's alleged
attempt to incinerate a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, we're bound to hear
a great deal about "the war on terror" and how it is or isn't being waged.

We're also going to have to assimilate the confounding facts that
Abdulmultallab converted to Salafism -- Islam's fundamentalist and
puritanical variant -- not in his native Nigeria but in London. He was
apparently drawn to Yemen, where his suicide mission was conceived, by
sermons and texts posted on the Internet, and it was there, on Monday, that
Al Qaeda's Arabian peninsula organization hailed him as a hero.

One of the paradoxes of our struggle with the jihadi strain of Salafist
Islam is its wholehearted embrace of the Internet, which is a quintessential
expression of the open society's creativity and values. Al Qaeda and its
fellow travelers use the Web for propaganda, education, recruitment and
operational communication.

This paradoxical conduct points to some of the emerging similarities between
this conflict and the long confrontation with Soviet totalitarianism, as
well as at least one significant difference that already is clear.

The West's victory in the Cold War essentially was built on a three-front
strategy. First, of course, was containment of Soviet ambitions through
military means. Second was the intellectual and ideological competition for
hearts and minds -- including those of reform-minded Soviets -- through the
arts, culture and social philosophy. Finally, there was the powerful example
of economic and social progress that spread across the Western democracies
throughout the post-World War II era. Communists across the Eastern Bloc saw
that free people simply lived better and in greater decency than they did.

Counter-terrorism is not confrontation with another nation-state. Moreover,
the Cold War was the end point of a great European civil war that dominated
the 20th century, eventually drawing into opposition two nations from
Europe's cultural periphery -- the United States and the Soviet Union.
Whatever their ideological differences, Washington and Moscow were heirs to
a common cultural patrimony. By contrast, the desires and interests of
modern America and those of an obscurantist Islam that wishfully evokes an
imagined medieval purity are mutually unintelligible. Still, there are
lessons from the Cold War that are applicable to the struggle with jihadism.

One is the value of containment, which is why President Obama was correct in
authorizing a military surge in Afghanistan and stepped-up covert operations
in Yemen. So long as Al Qaeda and other jihadi gangs remain underground
organizations with their leaders perpetually on the run and dependent on the
Internet, they are in an important sense "contained." When they gain a
foothold in a sympathetic nation, as they did in the Taliban's Afghanistan
or seem to be doing in the tribal regions of Yemen, their lethality
escalates dramatically. With more time and security to train the wretched
Abdulmultallab or other useful idiots, who knows what kind of tragedy might
have been organized for Christmas morning?

While we seem to be applying the containment lesson appropriately, we're
failing badly on the struggle's intellectual and cultural front. Many of the
most devastating blows struck against Soviet totalitarianism were inflicted
by writers and artists who'd lived under the system and then found allies in
the West who appreciated their work and, most important, disseminated it.
Books such as Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon," Czeslaw Milosz's "The
Captive Mind" and, most of all, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag
Archipelago" were iron nails in the coffin of Soviet illusion.

Where now are the critics, Western intellectuals and publishing houses
searching out and supporting the Islamic world's voices of tolerance and
modernity, whether philosophical or artistic? If we don't find and embrace
them and give them a secure platform from which to speak truth to those
within their own societies hungry to listen, we're waging this struggle with
one arm tied behind our collective back -- and, perhaps, hopelessly.

The one Cold War lesson that won't avail in this instance is that of the
open society's example as a changer of hearts and minds. One of the chilling
things about the jihadis is how many of them have lived and been educated in
the West. Abdulmultallab graduated from an English university, Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed from an American school, and Mohamed Atta studied at a German one.

Jihadism involves a conscious rejection of democracy, modernity and the open
society as embodied in the lives of each of these men. Their delusion is as
complete as their hostility is implacable. On this count, we can afford no
illusions of our own.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

So what else is new…China has always been contemptuous…and contemptible.



B




12/30/2009 02:40 PM


The World from Berlin


Execution Underscores 'China's Contempt for the West'


Coming on the heels of its efforts to derail climate change talks in
Copenhagen and the stiff prison sentence handed over to a political
dissident popular in the West, German newspapers see the handling of the
prosecution and execution of a British citizen in China as the latest
example of the country's "immature" behavior on the global political stage.

Few issues are as sensitive in Europe than that of capital punishment. The
death penalty is banned in each of the 27 European Union member states and
media coverage is often highly critical of state-ordered executions in the
United States and China.

Tuesday's execution by lethal injection in China of Akmail Shaikh, a
53-year-old British national with an alleged history of mental illness who
was busted in 2007 for smuggling 4 kilograms (around 9 pounds) of heroin, is
no exception. But coming just days after China stalled
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,669208,00.html>  global
climate negotiations in Copenhagen and issued a stiff, 11-year
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,669254,00.html>  sentence
against Liu Xiaobo, a dissident well known in the West, tensions between
Europe and China have clearly been exacerbated.

Shaikh's family, politicians and British rights group Repreive, which
mounted a Web campaign this month in an effort to save the condemned man,
claim that the Chinese justice system brushed aside requests that he be
given a psychiatric evaluation. Helen Pidd, a journalist with Britain's
Guardian newspaper, meticulously profiles
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/28/akmal-shaikh-execution-china-menta
l-illness>  the man's apparent slide into mental illness -- a world where he
suffered under the delusion he was about to become a pop star with his
out-of-tune song  <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFv0eS5p9hs> "Come Little
Rabbit," which he thought could help bring about world peace.

Family and friends claim he was duped by Eastern European criminals who he
believed had connections to music producers and promoters into unwittingly
smuggling drugs into China. Those familiar with Shaikh -- both in Britain
and where he later lived in Poland -- described a man who behaved
erratically, became estranged from his wife and showed signs of mental
illness, including hundreds of delusional e-mails he apparently sent to the
British embassy in Warsaw.

The outrage in Europe is centered on the question of why a man who appeared
to be mentally ill was not given proper treatment. Under Chinese law, the
prospect of mental illness must be considered before capital punishment may
be applied.

In Britain, where Prime Minister Gordon Brown had personally intervened to
seek clemency for Shaikh, the government summoned China's ambassador to a
45-minute meeting on Tuesday with Foreign Office Minister Ivan Lewis, who
said the diplomat had been called to "hear of the government's regret that
Akmal Shaikh's mental health had been ignored by the Chinese judiciary
despite repeated interventions by those with an interest in his case." Such
criticism extended across Europe, including Germany.

"To the Chinese leadership, this was about a demonstration of power rather
than rule of law," said Günter Nooke of Chancellor Angela Merkel's
conservative Christian Democrats, who is the government's top human rights
official. For a number of years, Germany and the European Union have held a
dialogue with China on the rule of law and human rights. In an interview
with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nooke indirectly suggested those
talks could be jeopardized. He said Shaikh's execution showed "what wobbly
legs our dialogue about greater rule of law and human rights in China are
standing on."

Meanwhile, Renate Wohlwend, an official at the Council of Europe, the
powerful European human rights watchdog, criticized the execution. "Capital
punishment has a brutalizing effect in society," she said. "It must be
totally removed once and for all from the legislation of all countries which
strive to uphold democracy, the rule of law and human rights."

German commentators on Wednesday are universally critical of Beijing, with
one of the country's largest newspapers accusing China of unacceptable
immaturity on the global stage.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"The execution of a British citizen in China is causing far greater
disturbance than it normally would, even if it were a European getting the
death penalty in the United States. In the Chinese justice system, excessive
killing isn't the only problem, and the execution of Akmal Shaikh is now
drawing attention to that here at home. More than anything, the system lacks
transparency and that makes it seem arbitrary. In the case of Shaikh, it is
especially outrageous because even in China, the fact that he was mentally
ill should have been treated as a mitigating factor. Was his mental state
even examined? Were dozens of petitions taken seriously? In this case, the
Chinese system also showed itself to be unrelenting politically, and that
will have consequences."

"It is highly unusual for the prime minister, foreign minister and even the
opposition leader to make a plea to a foreign government and then to be
brushed off the way they were by China. Their pleas were ignored by the
Chinese government and that points to a fundamental problem that is becoming
increasingly frequent in dealings with China. China is a hypersensitive
behemoth. Any time the country is criticized for its foreign policy
(relations with rogue states, for example) or its domestic policies (its
treatment of minorities in Tibet or Xinjiang, or human rights policies), it
reacts aggressively. In simple political disputes, like currency policies or
its obstructive moves during climate negotiations, it responds brusquely and
with hostility. In its international dealings, China shows an immaturity
that is no longer appropriate given its size and importance in the world.
China warns against interference into internal matters, but that's an
absurd, empty phrase in an interwoven world in which domestic situations
indeed play a role in decisions on investments and political cooperation."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"China has taken a liking to ignoring Western wishes and input. At the
global climate conference in Copenhagen, it was the main saboteur. A
dissident who found resonance abroad received a long prison sentence. And
now a British citizen has been executed, despite several pleas for mercy by
Gordon Brown and his government."

"The man was condemned for drug smuggling in a hasty trial in which the
court coldly brushed aside objections that the accused was mentally ill.
What kind of person would come to the idea that if he smuggled 4 kilograms
of heroin into China for two Polish drug smugglers that they would make him
a pop star there?"

"The leaders in Beijing appear to be brimming with confidence, and Americans
and Europeans are feeling it. And when they actually do dare to raise their
voices, the Chinese comeback line is always 'respect our sovereignty.' The
execution underscores the massive difference in the legal systems -- and
China's contempt for the West."

The center-left Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel writes:

"China has executed a drug smuggler and the fact that the man was British is
incidental -- no foreign passport can protect someone who has crossed a
border with 4 kilos of heroin. But the situation isn't as simple as it
appears at first glance. It also has historical resonances. When the Brits
used their power (close to 200 years ago) to destroy the Chinese empire
through forced opium imports, China was powerless to act. So China's
insistence to refuse to tolerate external interference today is even louder
in a case where a Brit has been condemned for smuggling in enough drugs to
'kill 26,000 people.' One could even follow the reasoning there.

"But China's position highlights less of a legitimate consciousness of
history than a revanchist national consciousness. If Akmal Shaikh had just
been convicted as a straightforward drug dealer, the outrage in the West
would have been limited. But if an apparently mentally ill man, whose
culpability is questionable, was convicted as an historical scapegoat, then
China shouldn't expect any understanding."

The conservative daily Die Welt, under the headline, "State Murder," writes:

"The real reason for the outrage in London and the West is not the
detestable death penalty itself … but rather the lack of transparency in the
case. Akmal Shaikh was no political incident. Why didn't the court allow
doctors to examine him? If it is true that the man suffered from serious
psychiatric problems, it also would have been a crime under Chinese law to
execute him. If he wasn't mentally ill, nobody in Europe would have
applauded his death penalty … but they also wouldn't have been as loud in
their denunciation of China.

"The answer is simple: China didn't want to set a precedent for a foreigner.
The Chinese justice system issues more death penalties each year than any
other country in the world. But it is too cowardly to provide proceedings
that are transparent or anything close to adhering to the rule of law."

-- Daryl Lindsey





URL:


* http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,669573,00.html





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

But Muslims are the terrorists and Islam is at war with us!



B



http://spectator.org/archives/2009/12/29/abdulmutallab-and-the-obama-mi




Washington Prowler <http://spectator.org/departments/washington-prowler>


Abdulmutallab
<http://spectator.org/archives/2009/12/29/abdulmutallab-and-the-obama-mi>
and the Obama Mindset


By The Prowler <http://spectator.org/people/the-prowler>  on 12.29.09 @
6:09AM

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was placed on the British government's watch
list in May 2009 and banned from entering the country, the U.S. embassy in
London (and by extension the U.S. State Department), as well as U.S.
intelligence agencies, were notified of this move as part of
information-sharing agreements entered into by a number of Western
governments after the September 11, 2001 attacks, says a U.S. State
Department employee on the condition of anonymity because of concern that by
speaking about the situation, their job could be endangered.

"We have agreements with a number of different countries that work with us
cooperatively on intelligence matters," says the State Department employee.
"A number of the treaties work through our justice departments or foreign
offices or intelligence and interior or homeland security agencies. Several
departments here in Washington got the information from London and it didn't
trigger anything within our own system.

This employee says that despite statements from the Obama Administration,
such information was flagged and given higher priority during the Bush
Administration, but that since the changeover "we are encouraged to not
create the appearance that we are profiling or targeting Muslims. I think
career employees were uncomfortable with the Bush procedures and policies
and were relieved to not have to live under them any longer."

The Obama Administration is attempting to shift blame for Abdulmutallab,
pointing reporters to information that the Nigerian was given a visa by the
U.S. embassy in London to travel to the U.S. in 2008, around the same time
that he graduated from University College London, a well-respected
university. But the State Department source says at that time Abdulmutallab
was not on a watch list and traveled to Houston on that visa without
incident. A year later, in May 2009, his application for a student visa to
return to Britain was rejected because the college Abdulmutallab claimed he
would attend was "bogus," and that red flag was shared with U.S. State
Department, Homeland Security Department, U.S. Justice Department, and
almost certainly U.S. intelligence agencies.

The State source says that several schools, particularly those with ties to
the British Muslim community, have come under tighter scrutiny over the past
five years, and when foreign nationals with Muslim backgrounds apply to
those schools, it is red flag for British security offices.

"I'm not saying that this kind of screw up might not have happened in the
Bush Administration," the State source says, referring to the Christmas Day
snafu. "I'm just saying that a number of us were encouraged to have a
different mindset about such intel and such individuals, and today, we are
encouraged not to have that same mindset."





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.exposeobama.com/2009/12/29/unhealthy-arrogance/


















December 29, 2009 12:00 AM



Unhealthy Arrogance

Obamacare is about the president’s ego and his chance to impose his will.



By Thomas Sowell




The only thing healthy about Congress’s health-insurance legislation is the
healthy skepticism about it shown by most of the public, as revealed by polls.
What is most unhealthy about this legislation is the raw arrogance in the way it
was conceived and passed.



Supporters of government health insurance call its passage “historic.” Past
attempts to pass such legislation — going back for decades — failed
repeatedly. But now both houses of Congress have passed government-health-care
legislation and it is just a question of reconciling their respective bills and
presenting President Obama with a political victory.



In short, this is not about improving the health of the American people. It is
about passing something — anything — to keep the Obama administration from
ending up with egg on its face by being unable to pass a bill, after so much
hype and hoopla. Politically, looking impotent is a formula for disaster at
election time. Far better to pass even bad legislation that will not actually go
into effect until after the 2012 presidential election, so that the public will
not know whether it makes medical care better or worse until it is too late for
the voters to hold the administration accountable.



The utter cynicism of this has been apparent from the outset, in the rush to
pass a health-care bill in a hurry, in order to meet wholly arbitrary,
self-imposed deadlines. First it was supposed to be passed before the August
2009 congressional recess. Then it was supposed to be passed before Labor Day.
When that didn’t happen, it was supposed to be rushed to passage before
Christmas.

Why — especially since the legislation would not take effect until years from
now?

The only rational explanation for such haste to pass a bill that will be slow to
go into effect is to prevent the public from knowing what is in this massive
legislation that even members of Congress are unlikely to have read. That is
also the only reason that makes sense for postponing the time when Obamacare
goes into action until after the next presidential election.

What does calling this medical-care legislation “historic” mean? It means
that previous administrations gave up the idea when it became clear that the
voting public did not want government control of medical care. What is historic
is that this will be the first administration to show that it doesn’t care one
bit what the public wants or doesn’t want.

In short, this is not about the public’s health. It is about Obama’s ego and
his chance to impose his will and leave a legacy
<http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Njg4ZjliNTRiMzlkMTlmYTJiOTAyYWYzYTM1NjA2MD\
U=> .

This is not the only massive legislation to be rushed to passage in Congress and
then left to go into effect slowly. The same political formula was used earlier,
to pass the “stimulus” bill to spend hundreds of billions of dollars that
the government doesn’t have — and that may well amount to more than a
trillion dollars when the interest on the debt it creates is added, for this and
the next generation to pay off.

Legislation is not the only sign of this administration’s contempt for the
intelligence of the public and for the safeguards of democratic government.

The appointment of White House “czars” to make policy across a wide spectrum
of issues — unknown people who get around the Constitution’s requirement of
Senate confirmation for cabinet members — is yet another sign of the mindset
that sees the fundamental laws and values of this country as just something to
get around, in order to impose the will of an arrogant elite.

That some of these czars have already revealed their own contempt for the values
of American society in the things they have said and done only reinforces the
point.

In a sense, this administration is only the end result of a long social process
that includes raising successive generations with dumbed-down education in
schools and colleges
<http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=Njg4ZjliNTRiMzlkMTlmYTJiOTAyYWYzYTM1NjA2MD\
U=>  that have become indoctrination centers for the visions of the Left. Our
education system has turned out many people who have never heard any other
vision and who can only learn what is wrong with the prevailing vision from
bitter experience.

That bitter experience now awaits them, at home and abroad.

—  <http://www.tsowell.com/> Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the 
<http://www.hoover.org/> Hoover Institution. © 2009 Creators Syndicate, Inc












[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2009/12/29/obama-botches-response-terror-thre
at/



December 29, 2009


Obama Botches Response to Another Terror Threat


By Andrea Tantaros

  - FOXNews.com

As Obama's attempts to appease jihadists, it's clear the strategy of talking
nicely isn't working

Another terror threat, another botched response from the Obama
administration.

Last Friday's attempted attack to blow up an airplane en route to Detroit
from Amsterdam has bolstered what we've known for a long time: that stopping
the bad guys is so far outside the worldview of the president and his staff
it's downright scary.

In the hours that followed the attack, Obama foolishly called the attempt an
"isolated incident."

That's like Tiger Woods calling Rachel Uchitel an isolated incident.

We now know that the suspect had been in Yemen just days before the attack
and that a regional Al Qaeda group has claimed responsibility for it.

Obama appointee Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security chief, who earlier
in the year referred to terrorist attacks as "man-caused disaster" and said
that we weren't in a War on Terror, praised the system saying, "It worked."

No, it didn't.

She quickly and bizarrely tried to back-peddle the next day insisting that
the events following the failed attack unfolded as they should have, but
allowing the terrorist to board the plane with explosives clearly "signaled
a failure of the system."

Someone should tell Napolitano that her method for measuring success is very
strange.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra said it best: "Success is stopping these attacks, not
responding to them."

However, rather than demand answers, Congressional Democrats are on defense
while they lambaste Republicans for blocking an Obama's pick to head the
Transportation Security Administration.

Forget playing politics about the head baggage screener who wouldn't have
stopped the attack if he were in place. We've seen what has happened when
the baggage of the Obama administration isn't adequately screened.

Most recently the foreign minister of Yemen said that there are likely 200
to 300 terrorists in Yemen plotting future attacks. Why aren't we
water-boarding the Christmas Day bomber for information on who these men
are? Guess we're more worried about getting him legal representation.

While our president attempts to appease those who have declared a radical
jihad on U.S. and elsewhere, let the Christmas Day attack be a sign that the
strategy of talking nicely isn't working.

What will it take for the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats
to get tough on terror before more people die?

People are going to get killed if we don't change this pre-9/11 mentality.
This isn't about politics, it's about reality -- cold one that people want
to destroy us. Let this be another wake up call to the president before the
only man caused disaster we're talking about is his own naivete.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com
/2009/12/obamas_image_what_a_difference.html



December 28, 2009

Obama's Image: What a Difference a Year Makes

By  <http://www.americanthinker.com/ed_lasky/> Ed Lasky



Almost a year has passed since January 20, 2009 -- when the waters of the
ocean no longer rose and America began to heal from the depredations of
Republicans. Barack Obama has been our president for that long, and the
people have started to wise up.



The light that shines on Barack Obama as president has reflected back an
image that bears very little similarity to the iconic visage that floated
above us all in 2008. Why has Barack Obama betrayed so many allies, broken
so many promises, thrown so many pledges and people under the bus?



One simple aphorism (paraphrasing Winston Churchill) can explain it all.
Barack Obama is no longer a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.
Much about his past remains murky, but faced with the need to govern, he has
given the American people plenty of evidence of his nature...if only they
will look.



Obama is a cynic wrapped in a hypocrite inside a bully.



This comes as a shock to many, who are dismayed to find that he is "just a
politician," as Reverend Wright, Jr. (who knows him so well)
<http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/04/wright_on_obama_hes
_a_politici.html> called him back in 2008. But Wright was being all too kind
and generous to his future former parishioner (Wright followed a long and
ever-growing line of people trampled by Barack Obama's rise.)



But Barack Obama is far more than just a politician. We all swallow a lot
from politicians; we know that many pander and narrowcast, changing their
message to suit their audience. But Obama expressly campaigned as a man who
would not do this. He was the candidate of hope and change -- he would bring
a big broom to sweep clean the Augean Stables known as Washington, D.C. He
called forth the better angels of our nature (hat tip: Honest Abe Lincoln,
one of the truly honest politicians from Illinois) and tapped into a deep
yearning for the rarest of the real things: an honest leader.



A cynic



Obama defined his campaign with high-sounding
<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg22-2009dec22,0,7045732.co
lumn> rhetoric that "[his] rival in this race is not other candidates, but
cynicism." The line resonated and soon became his mantra.



He later asked us to fight cynicism and revealingly told us that cynics
believe they are  <http://www.esquire.com/features/barack-obama-0608.>
smarter than everyone else. To this it could be said that Obama knows what
that is like.



Could there be anything more cynical than to look upon Americans as being
too forgetful to remember all the broken promises Obama made?



These include -- but are not limited to -- a promise that there would be no
health care mandates (there are); that he would take a scalpel to the budget
and bring down the deficit (headed towards the stratosphere as he rewards
his own special interest groups); and that he would end earmarks (his
spending bills are polluted by them; he is, after all, a Chicago
politician).



He promised to close Gitmo -- not a done deal, and like many deadlines he
promised, no one is sure when or if this will happen.



He promised the end of partisanship, but he has stoked it to a roaring blaze
with his refusal to work with Republicans. He promised to end our wars, but
now he is sending more forces into Afghanistan.



He stated that he would fight the gay marriage ban, but instead he ended up
supporting it, in effect, by defending the Defense of Marriage Act.



He promised the most transparent administration in history, but instead he
imposes layers of secrecy and invokes executive powers to cloak his
administration from scrutiny (e.g., his use of executive privilege to
protect Desiree Rogers, his social secretary, from questioning regarding the
WhiteHouseGate-crashers).



We were promised that if we passed the stimulus bill under Barack Obama's
presidency, then the unemployment rate would drop below 8% by now -- and
here we are, during Christmas season, cruising along at a solid 10% (17% if
we include the underemployed and those who left the workforce because they
saw no prospects of landing a job).



We were promised that the anti-Bush would restore respect for America around
the world and bring international comity. Instead, he has alienated our
allies and empowered our adversaries -- a dynamic that has brought all but
zero benefits to America (very little cooperation in Afghanistan, on
"climate change," or on Iran's nuclear program). While he may have snagged
himself a Nobel Peace Prize, the leaders of the world are increasingly
treating him, and America, with
<http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/obama_praises_NuPTfoiIjqtEu92UmD
iwaP/1> disrespect and contempt.



The betrayals are so breathtaking and widespread (all of his promises have
an expiration date) that all one can surmise is that the ultimate cynic is
the One who campaigned against cynicism.



We can sense that Obama is a cynic by referring back to his own definition:
someone who thinks he is smarter than everyone else.



We have abundant evidence of this
<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/11/17/081117fa_fact_lizza?printable
=true> derisive attitude.

I think that I'm a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more
about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I'll
tell you right now that I'm gonna think I'm a better political director than
my political director.

Obama had the ego to think he was better than the key experts playing roles
in his victory: He is apparently smarter than his policy directors and
political directors, and he's a better speechwriter to boot.



We know how Obama feels about
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0408/Obama_on_smalltown_PA_Clinging_
religion_guns_xenophobia.html> small-town Americans: They are bitter yokels
who cling to guns or religion or antipathy towards people who aren't like
them or anti-immigrant sentiment. But he has additionally demeaned a wide
range of other Americans (doctors, cops, Special Olympics contestants, and
many more, as you can see via the
<http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/insulterinchief.html>
Insulter-in-Chief). And how many of us are the "
<http://www.usnews.com/blogs/news-desk/2008/03/21/obama-typical-white-person
-comment-delights-clinton-aides.html> typical white person" he derided in
the not-so-distant past? Patriots who wear flags on their lapels? They are
among the great unwashed.



We also know how Obama feels about people living in suburbia. He has no use
for those people in the gray flannel suits. He said, in an un-teleprompted
remark: "I'm not interested in suburbs. The
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/us/politics/28obama.html?pagewanted=2&ei=
5090&en=bed3d00e987394c2&ex=1327640400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss> suburbs
bore me."



As Barack Obama has intoned, words matter.



Yes, they do Mr. President, especially in the days of YouTube, Google, and
the internet. These are the tools the common folk can tap to remember your
promises -- and your breaking of them.



These are the videos we can watch instead of the redacted versions put out
by your pals and accomplices in the media --those versions scrubbed clean of
your malapropisms, mistakes, stammering, evasions, and most importantly,
your broken promises. Only a cynic would think of us as being too forgetful
or ignorant to recognize the Big Lie.



Only a certifiable cynic would consider the American people so unperceptive
as to not recognize the wide gap between the image and the reality, the
promises made and broken, the differences between the smiling visage on the
<http://www.coolhunting.com/archives/2008/01/shepard_fairey.php> Shepard
Fairey posters (themselves a
<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/10/shepard-fairey-admit
s-to-wrongdoing-in-associated-press-lawsuit.html> fraud -- how symbolic!)
and the hectoring, finger-pointing, vengeful curmudgeon we now have in the
Oval Office.



A hypocrite



The hypocrisy knows no bounds, either.



A hypocrite decries the role of money in politics and then breaks his
promise to accept public financing for his presidential campaign (because he
could see the money rolling in) while his challenger kept his promise to
abide by the campaign law he himself created. Was there a certain degree of
cynicism displayed there by Obama, knowing McCain was hoisted on his own
petard?



A hypocrite preaches that he will bring us together as a people and heal our
wounds when he wants our votes -- but after he wins, he practices the
politics of polarization and
<http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2009/03/64320451/1>
declares that he wants not "to quell people's anger," but to channel it.



Only a hypocrite would campaign on a platform of bringing us together ("we
are one people," "this was the moment -- this was the time -- when we came
together to remake this great nation," "there is no red America, there is no
blue America," etc.) and then stoke the very polarization that he promised
would end in the Age of Obama. His guru, Saul Alinksy, would be happy that
his Rules for Radicals has become the blueprint for how the president can
run, and ruin, a great nation.



Only a hypocrite would engage in as many baldfaced lies as our president has
over the past few years. The end of lobbyists? Balderdash. In fact, as a
Politico headline noted, "
<http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=B41E9106-18FE-70B2-A8C96E940F1F
48D1> Lobbyists are on pace for a record year."



And what is a lobbyist? What is the meaning of the term when Andy Stern,
head of the Service Employees International Union, is such a frequent
visitor to the White House that he might as well sublet some space in the
Lincoln Bedroom? Does anyone think Andy Stern is there to talk about the
weather? A lobbyist by any other name is still, in the end, a lobbyist.



Barack Obama has also countenanced the
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1209/30815.html> buying of votes
(payoffs to states to get senators to sign on Harry Reid's health care
reform bill) in the Senate to get ObamaCare passed.



Obama decried the politics of fear during the campaign and then employed the
same as president -- as he did when he had the audacity to
<http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/198892> predict the
"bankruptcy" of America should ObamaCare not pass. Or, before that, he
augured the collapse of the economy should the stimulus bill not pass. When
every bill becomes a do-or-die proposition, is that not playing the politics
of fear?



Is it hypocritical to tout that tax dollars are not "monopoly money" and
that we "can't continue to spend as if deficits don't have consequences"
while engaging in irresponsible profligacy that would make Nero blanch?
(Obama has a history of
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/us/politics/27obama.html> problems with
his own credit standing, but now he is playing
<http://www.examiner.com/x-6356-Wichita-Independent-Examiner~y2009m12d21-Pre
sidential-Hypocrisy--Obama-touts-tax-dollars-not-Monopoly-money> with our
money.)



Does he think others are too stupid -- the belief that most defines a cynic
-- to realize that his deficit-plagued budgets are a sure way to penury for
us and our children and grandchildren?



Decrying fat cats while calling up a jet for a trip to Manhattan and a
stroll down the Great White Way of Broadway? Taking jaunts to Copenhagen to
try to snag the Olympics for his hometown pals in Chicago, who, no doubt,
were hoping to snag some lucre? That's the Chicago Way. One could go on.



A bully



All this cynicism and hypocrisy is wrapped up and empowered by the other
notable feature of Barack Obama: Our president is a bully.



Among the many examples: demeaning "fat cats" and telling Wall Street
bankers that he is the only one
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/23/AR200908230
2381_2.html> standing between them and the pitchforks; telling a
recalcitrant Democratic Congressman that they'd better toe the line because
"we are keeping score, brother"; belittling allies, such as the Israelis, by
telling them they need to be more self-reflective; trying to impose a
left-wing lunatic dictator wanna-be on the innocent people of Honduras;
dissing Eastern Europeans by not giving them a respectful warning that he
was going to break a promise to them regarding missile bases in their
nations; and forcing British  Prime Minister Gordon Brown to grovel in a
kitchen in order to have a few words with the President of the United
States. (This treatment is attributable,
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703442904574594043895540048.h
tml> speculates the Wall Street Journal, to some personal bad will between
Great Britain and some Kenyan ancestors of Barack Obama. The man knows how
to hold an ancestral grudge -- even if it means the rest of America suffers
from slighting one of our formerly most treasured allies).



A bully is someone who can justify his actions by bragging that "I
<http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17862.html> won." Whatever
happened to the slogan "Yes we can"? Whatever happened to the "
<http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/06/oooh_the_new_politics.htm
l> new kind of politics"? Well, they're so 2008.



A bully is someone who taunts, "
<http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0608/Obama_brings_a_gun_to_a_knife_f
ight.html> If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."



A bully is someone who runs roughshod over not only his opponents (politics
can be a blood sport, after all), but also the Constitution -- as Obama has
from almost day one of the One. Here are just a few examples of his
inclination to ignore our most sacred document: czars exercising power
without being approved by the Senate; violating the property clause by
ignoring bankruptcy law -- as he did with the auto bailouts and attempted to
do with mortgage "cram-down" plans; the chilling of free speech by threats
against Fox News and by bringing back the threat of regulation affecting
talk radio. Even health care reform has come under scrutiny for violating
the Constitution.



There is a cliché in Washington: that all one needs to know about politics
can be learned on the playground. But perhaps Obama's street-smart education
was learned on the basketball court -- where height reigns (and there is no
higher office in America), and where trash-talk is used to demoralize and
defeat.



A cynic wrapped in a hypocrite inside a bully.



Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.



Page Printed from:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/obamas_image_what_a_difference.html
at December 29, 2009 - 11:09:33 PM EST



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

<http://feedblitz.com/r.asp?l=43345116&f=340874&u=329452&c=0> The two
most-asked questions: will Obama attack Israel, will Israel attack Iran?

http://israelagainstterror.blogspot.com/2009/12/two-most-asked-questions-wil
l-obama.html


by Barry Rubin

Of all the questions readers ask, there's no question about which are the
two most frequent. First, is Israel about to attack Iran or when will this
happen? Second, do President Barack Obama and his entourage hate Israel and
will there be a major confrontation or some kind of sell-out.

The first two questions are pretty easy to answer, the third less so.

Israel and an attack on Iran: Israeli policy is quite clear. Its current
emphasis is on supporting strong sanctions. There is, of course, skepticism
as to whether strong sanctions will be applied and whether such a step would
work, but that's not the determining factor. It is recognized that the West
must thoroughly try diplomatic means to satisfy itself that everything short
of an armed attack has failed.

Only when the sanctions have been seen to be ineffective at stopping Iran's
march to nuclear weapons would Israel even begin to go into an attack phase
but even then there are two major considerations.

One is that Israel will only attack when Iran is on the verge of getting
weapons. Not only would that situation make the decision about responding an
immediate task but also because that would be when Tehran has the maximum
equipment installed and the most damage can be done. There is no sense
bombing half-empty buildings.

The disadvantage is that this would give the regime more time to disperse
the facilities. And that introduces the other problem. An Israeli cabinet
meeting would be held to determine whether an attack could be carried out,
whether the political and security costs would be acceptable, and whether an
attack would succeed in setting back the Iranian program by a big margin.

Is Israel capable of launching an effective attack? Without going into all
the complex details, the basic answer is "yes."

If destroying Iran's nuclear capability is an existential imperative could
Israel weather the diplomatic criticism and terrorist or other attacks?
Again, yes. Hamas and Hizballah would escalate and launch rockets but they
could be deterred or defeated.

It is the last point, however, that is critical: Would an attack achieve
considerable success in putting back Iran's nuclear program by years? That
cannot be taken for granted. In military action lots can go wrong. Planes
can crash; mechanical breakdowns or bad weather may cause failure. The
distances involved are huge; the margin of error very fine.

What if the bombs miss and hit civilians? (Yes, Israel cares a lot about
this despite all the slander and lies regarding its behavior.) Will
dispersion of facilities mean that only a small portion of Iran's facilities
will be damaged or destroyed?

In short, is it worth launching an attack that only inflames the situation
further, costs lots of diplomatic capital, and doesn't do any good?

This is a question that can only be raised and decided in a cabinet meeting
at the proper time. There is no determined choice already made and that is
as it should be.

The second question relates to Obama and Israel. In my opinion, Obama has
absolutely no warm feelings toward Israel at all and, if anything, his
instincts are hostile. But previous American presidents-notably Richard
Nixon-have followed pro-Israel policies despite being personally unfriendly.
What is important is that Obama and his entourage have learned two things.

One of them is that bashing Israel is politically costly. American public
opinion is very strongly pro-Israel. Congress is as friendly to Israel as
ever. For an administration that is more conscious of its future reelection
campaign than any previous one, holding onto Jewish voters and ensuring
Jewish donations is very important. There will almost certainly not be a
visit of Obama to Israel in 2010, he'll wait until it will do him some good
at the polls (which is a good thing since the less attention he pays to this
issue the less harm he'll do.)

The other point is that they have seen that bashing Israel doesn't get them
anywhere. For one thing, the current Israeli government won't give in easily
and is very adept at protecting its country's interests. This administration
has a great deal of trouble being tough with anyone.

If in fact the Palestinians and Arabs were eager to make a deal and
energetic about supporting other U.S. policies, the administration might
well be tempted to press for an arrangement that largely ignored Israeli
interests. But this is not in fact the case. It is the Palestinians who
refuse even to come to the negotiating table-and that is unlikely to change
quickly or easily. Arab states won't lift a finger to help the United States
on Iran, Iraq, or Arab-Israeli issues. So why bother?

Moreover, no matter how much noise the administration makes about being
engaged on the Israel-Palestinian front, it knows that not much is going to
happen. Its envoy, Senator Mitchell, will run around and make plans but the
top brass in Washington isn't going to devote all that much time to this
issue.

The hostility to Israel of the administration's overall personnel can also
be exaggerated. A couple of names come to mind of officials who are hostile,
but there are also many-arguably more in number--who are reasonably
friendly, including the secretaries of state and defense.

The idea that David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel constitute some anti-Israel
cabal is misleading, too. If there were a serious peace process, they'd
certainly push Israel harder to make more concessions than others would do
but they are focused on domestic affairs and also know that this issue is a
non-winner for them in terms of success, glory, or political advantage.

These two factors form the basic framework for understanding the Middle East
in 2010. Putting down a smokescreen of diplomatic activity and proposals,
the U.S. government is likely to place the "peace process," whose
non-existence is too real to ignore, on the back burner. Meanwhile, Israel
is doing the same thing with an attack on Iran. The next year's events in
the region will come from other crises and issues.


Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal.

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126213211097909605.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEADNews
Collection



* DECEMBER 30, 2009


Obama Slams Security Breach


Reports, Intercepts Suggested Attack Preparations; Multiple Agencies Had
Warning


By EVAN
<http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=EVAN+PEREZ&ARTICLE
SEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND>  PEREZ, JAY
<http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=JAY+SOLOMON&ARTICL
ESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND>  SOLOMON and SIOBHAN
<http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=SIOBHAN+GORMAN&ART
ICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND>  GORMAN


WASHINGTON -- The U.S. had multiple pieces of information about alleged
bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, according to senior U.S. officials,
including intelligence reports and communications intercepts suggesting a
Nigerian was being prepped for a terror strike by al Qaeda operatives in
Yemen.

The intercepts were collected piecemeal by the National Security Agency,
which has been monitoring al Qaeda militants in that country, including
former Guantanamo detainees believed to be leaders there.

In addition, the father of Mr. Abdulmutallab met with the Central
Intelligence Agency at the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, Nov. 19, and told
of his son's likely radicalization, U.S. officials say. That led to a
broader gathering of agencies the next day, including the Department of
Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the State
Department, in which the information was shared, a U.S. official said.

But U.S. officials said it isn't clear whether intelligence officials in
Washington charged with coordinating such intelligence activities
effectively distributed the information gathered in Nigeria.

President Obama on Tuesday described these lapses in general terms during a
sweeping broadside aimed at his government's intelligence services. Citing a
"potential catastrophic breach," he said the warning signs, if heeded, would
have prevented the Christmas Day attempted bombing on a Detroit-bound
airplane.

"A systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable,"
the president said, referencing "a mix of human and systemic failure." In
his comments, the president cited information "that could have and should
have been pieced together."

Officials familiar with a review ordered by Mr. Obama say the connections
aren't obvious, except in hindsight, and that there doesn't appear to be a
single clear warning that should have set off alarms. But if the information
had been brought together before Christmas, Mr. Abdulmutallab likely would
have been put on a no-fly list and kept off the plane he tried to destroy,
the president said.

U.S. and Yemeni authorities said they are investigating whether the bomb
plot was hatched by the former Guantanamo Bay prisoners in Yemen, the
claimed source of the attack. That development is likely to hinder the Obama
administration's effort to release detainees as it attempts to close the
prison.

The lapses, and Mr. Obama's critical comments, will focus fresh attention on
the operation of the U.S.'s intelligence agencies, particularly the National
Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, a Washington-based body set up after 9/11
to act as a clearinghouse for terrorism data. The U.S. has spent billions of
dollars building systems to detect impending attacks, which appear to have
failed in this instance.

It has already set off a round of finger pointing among multiple U.S.
agencies still stinging from 9/11 and Iraq-related intelligence failures.
According to officials, the NCTC has complained that the CIA didn't provide
all the information they had, such as where Mr. Abdulmutallab attended
college, while the agencies have said that the counterterrorism center had
what it needed to properly assess the threat.

Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the
NCTC, said in a written statement that despite improvements to information
sharing, "it is clear that gaps remain, and they must be fixed." The NSA
didn't respond immediately to requests for comment.

[Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab]Thisday

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab at age 19.

Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, said the agency first learned of Mr.
Abdulmutallab in November, when his father came to the U.S. embassy in
Nigeria. He said the agency helped place the Nigerian in the government's
terrorist database, including his extremist connections in Yemen, and also
forwarded biographical information to the NCTC.

"This agency, like others in our government, is reviewing all data to which
it had access -- not just what we ourselves may have collected -- to
determine if more could have been done to stop Abdulmutallab," he said.

The errors could prove a political problem for Mr. Obama, who spoke for the
second day running about the attack, after three days of silence. Over the
weekend, other administration officials, including Homeland Security
Secretary Janet Napolitano, argued that air-security systems had worked in
the attack's aftermath. Campaign consultants for potential Republican
presidential challengers in 2012 have been waiting for an opportunity to
paint the president as a soft on terrorism.

A senior administration official said Mr. Obama's Tuesday statement was
prompted by a conference call with Gen. James L. Jones, the national
security adviser, and other top security officials. The administration's
review had uncovered existing "bits and pieces" of information, some of it
"incomplete or partial in nature," that taken together constituted an
intelligence failure. That included information about the suspect's thinking
and his plans, about al Qaeda and its plans, and about potential attacks
over the holidays.

The officials said the president stands behind Ms. Napolitano and that her
job is secure. A preliminary review ordered by Mr. Obama is due Thursday.

It is rare for a president to publicly reprimand intelligence agencies,
particularly when he is relying on them to prosecute two wars. Tuesday's
scolding will likely compound an already tense relationship.

The failure to detect the plot out of Yemen is focusing attention on the
links between al Qaeda's operations there and the apparently pivotal role in
the group played by former Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Several detainees who joined "al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" -- the al
Qaeda affiliate in Yemen that Monday claimed responsibility for the bombing
attempt -- were released under the Bush administration and repatriated to
Saudi Arabia. Within a year, many had slipped into Yemen and joined al
Qaeda. Some terrorism experts said the Yemen branch was of little
consequence until the arrival of the Saudi Guantanamo Bay veterans.

Former Bush administration officials acknowledged Tuesday the concern that
detainees released under their watch could have been involved in the plot.
But they said the decision was the best of imperfect options.

  " Why
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126213211097909605.html?mod=WSJ_hps_LEADNew
sCollection#articleTabs%3Dcomments>  would anyone think that an
administration that can't even keep uninvited guests out of White House
state dinners would be more effective in keeping a lone terrorist off of an
airplane departing from a foreign country? "

- Peter Von Nessi

"It's a serious issue because we were trying to find ways to return
detainees to home countries and ultimately close Guantanamo while
effectively addressing the long-term security threats from such detainees,"
said Juan Zarate, a counterterrorism official in Mr. Bush's White House.

Two leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are Said Ali al-Shihri and
Muhammad al-Awfi, Saudi nationals released from Guantanamo in 2007,
according to the Pentagon.

At least 11 Saudis released from Guantanamo have joined militant groups in
Yemen in recent years, according to al Qaeda statements and Defense
Department documents. The extent of their involvement in the plot is now a
focus of the FBI's probe.

In a letter to Mr. Obama, Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John
McCain of Arizona and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, three prominent
supporters of closing Guantanamo, said transferring any more detainees to
Yemen is too risky given the Christmas plot.

About 45 of the more than 90 Yemeni prisoners that remain at Guantanamo are
cleared for release and likely would be sent home if it weren't for their
nationalities, two senior U.S. officials involved in detainee issues said.
If the Yemeni security situation doesn't improve, they may end up moved to a
Thomson, Ill., prison the U.S. plans to use to hold detainees if Mr. Obama
succeeds in closing the prison.

[terror]

-Elizabeth Williamson contributed to this article.





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