If accurate, this is the highly disturbing ....
http://debka.com/article/8657/
Washington sharpens crisis with Israel, may give Palestinians military shield DEBKAfile Special Report March 18, 2010
Tags: Gen. Petraeus Israel Obama
"Israel is one of our closest allies and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that's not going to go away," said President Barack Obama to Fox News Wednesday, March 17, after denying any crisis in the relationship. debkafile's Washington sources note that denial makes a lot of sense for the president because it lets him off the hook for dealing with it. However, in Jerusalem, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu called his inner cabinet into its second session on the crisis that same night. The seven ministers were asked to review the situation after President Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton turned down their initial proposals for easing the upset and laid down three pre-conditions for restoring normal relations with Jerusalem:1. The Netanyahu government must extend the 10-month freeze on West Bank settlement construction to include East Jerusalem;
2. When the moratorium runs out in September, it must be renewed for the duration of peace negotiations with the Palestinians;3. Israeli must make more concessions to the Palestinian Authority and its chairman Mahmoud Abbas.The Israeli government was informed that until those conditions were met, its ministers would not be received in Washington by high-level American officials - a virtual boycott, which downgrades the normal diplomatic, strategic and security exchanges between the two administrations to the level of senators and the special Middle East envoy George Mitchell.Netanyahu tried offering the Obama administration a number of compromise proposals, such as the suspension of construction in East Jerusalem and the city's outlying Jewish suburbs until September, but they were rejected, as was an offer to prohibit further Jewish purchases of land and buildings in Jerusalem's Arab districts during peace negotiations.
Obama and Clinton made it clear they would brook no departures from their three demands, which Israel is required to treat as an ultimatum.Neither party to the difference has mentioned the US administration's fourth condition for resuming normal relations: an Israeli commitment to refrain from attacking Iran's nuclear program without prior US consent. Because that commitment has not been offered, administration officials are continuing to hammer Israel in every possible arena. Indeed, the gloves are now off in earnest for insinuations that Israel's settlement policy is the root-cause of Iran's drive for a nuclear bomb and of the conflicts endangering American lives in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Vice President Joe Biden launched this drive, when he reportedly attacked Netanyahu for the announcement of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem by saying: "What you are doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan."
A much-admired American military figure, CENTCOM chief, Gen. David Petraeus, was the next US official to put this linkage into words. In his briefing to a Senate panel, he said Wednesday, March 16: Clearly the tensions on these issues [with Israel] have enormous effect on the strategic context in which we operate in the Central Command's area of responsibility."
The general denied he had as yet formally asked for the Palestinian territories to be transferred to his command, but added: "In fact, staff members at various times have discussed asking for the Palestinian territories to be added to CENTCOM's turf."debkafile's military sources explain that, if approved, this step would be tantamount to providing the Palestinians with an American military umbrella against Israel.More than one friend of Israel demurred against the Petraeus suggestion.
Former presidential candidate, Republican Senator John McCain, caught on fast to the way the wind is blowing in Obama's Washington: During his testimony, he put in: "Isn't the issue not the issue of settlements as much as it is the existence of the state of Israel…? So maybe you could put it all into the larger context of what needs to be done to reduce tensions on the US's closest ally and friend in many respects."The general did not rise to the senator's challenge, except for a polite: "Absolutely true."Some of the more respectable US and British media are playing up the theme that Israel has shot itself in the foot and therefore deserves what's coming, namely escalating punishment from the Obama administration.
http://debka.com/article/8665/
Obama recalls bunker-buster bomb kits to bar Israeli strike on Iran DEBKAfile Special Report March 20, 2010,
Tags: bunker-busters Israel Obama
Shortly after Vice President Joe Biden's Israel visit ended on March 11 in high dudgeon over the approval 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, US president Barack Obama ordered a consignment of Joint Direct Attack Munition- JDAM already on its way to Israel to be diverted to the US Air Force base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. This step, the pointer to a US arms embargo for preventing Israel attacking Iran's nuclear sites, is first revealed here by debkafile's military sources.US military sources describe the consignment as consisting of 387 JDAM kits for attachment to the warheads of 2,000-pound BLU-109/MK-84 or the 1,000-pound BLU-110/MK-83 bunker-busters for their conversion into smart bombs. On March 13, debkafile disclosed that the Obama administration was pondering withholding from Israel military hardware that could be used for an Israeli attack on Iran. In late February, we reported that defense minister Ehud Barak had submitted to defense secretary Robert Gates a list of the items Israel required urgently to stand up to a four-front assault by Iran and its allies - mainly air force ordnance, certain types of missile and advanced electronic devices. Barak made it clear that all these items must be present in Israel before the outbreak of hostilities. The requests were so urgent that the minister proposed that if Washington was reluctant to hand them directly to Israel, they could be stored for the interim in the big American emergency depots in Israel's Negev.
The 387 DJAP kits were due for delivery at one of the Israeli Air Force's Negev bases in March. Because of his concern over the US president's step to divert the shipment, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu decided to take the defense minister with him to Washington next Monday, March 22 and have him present at the meeting with Obama which the US media reports has been fixed for Tuesday (the day after his address to the AIPAC annual conference). Together they will ask for the delayed munitions to be released and handed over as part of any general understandings they may reach.debkafile reports that the pair of Israeli Gulfstream Vs converted to spy planes sighted over Budapest on March 17 may have been an Israeli signal of its concern over White House measures for keeping the means of attacking Iran out of its hands. The long-haul flights, demonstrating the Israel Air Force's ability to cover the distance to Iran, took the aircraft over Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania as well as Hungary. The two planes carried out maneuvers over Budapest international airport with no attempt at concealment. Because they fly in pairs, Western aviation experts say the electronic measures aboard are able to detect the functioning of electronic devices, radar stations, communications centers and cell phones on the ground, locate them and relay the data for warplanes to destroy them. Two years ago, in June 2008, Israel deployed more that 100 Air Force F-16 and F-15 warplanes over Greece and the Aegean Sea in a big exercise designed to showcase its long-range capabilities.
[this latter piece is interesting in that there was a news report recently from Scotland about these weapons; and the story being peddled was that the US was stockpiling weapons at Diego Garcia to attack Iran with. I thought this was ludicrous given Obama's overall fecklessness towards Iran and antipathy to military action. the Debka article makes more sense; although it is still troubling)].
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Do O & Pelosi Have the Votes ? uh, maybe not...
Exclusive: House Minority Leader John Boehner on the Health-Care Vote [Robert Costa]
EXCLUSIVE — Rep. John Boehner (R., Ohio), the House minority leader, tells National Review Online that as of late Thursday afternoon, Democratic leadership “still doesn’t have the votes” to pass their health-care bill, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) is “prepared to sacrifice her members, and her speakership, so that she can plant the flag of universal health care in the ground.” Boehner says this weekend will be a waiting game — “If the speaker doesn’t have 216 votes locked down, she will not go to the floor. If she’s short, she knows that there is no way she can pick up two or three votes on the floor.” On that same point, he admits that “if this comes to the floor, it’s already over…though I still don’t know how she can get there [to 216].…I’d never put myself in this box.”
“The right is mad, the middle is mad, and the left is mad,” Boehner says. “They’ve made a calculation: They know they won’t get the right or middle, so they saying to their members that they need their left, because if they lose the left, their base will sit home. The president is staying in town because he knows the left will kill him if he’s not here to help.”
Boehner adds that Pelosi has “made a big mistake by talking about this gimmicky way to pass this without having a real vote.” President Obama, he says, “has put all of his marbles, literally all of his marbles, on jamming through something the people don’t want” and has “arrogantly misjudged this entire issue from the start.” Here’s why, Boehner says: “The Left sees this as their best opportunity in 50 years to put their stamp on the direction of this country.”
Boehner believes that abortion will be the key complication for on-the-fence Democrats in the final hours. “I’ve always thought that this would be the issue,” he says. “This is public funding for abortion. They know it can’t be fixed. There just aren’t the votes in the Senate.” He says he respects pro-life congressman Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) for holding firm, but cautions that he “never thought that Stupak could hold ten to twelve votes.”
Boehner says there will be major political consequences for pro-life Democrats who break from the Stupak bloc. “Take [Rep.] Steve Driehaus, for example,” he says. “He may be a dead man. He can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati. The Catholics will run him out of town.”
If Boehner is “lucky enough to become speaker,” he says he plans to work to repair the “damage to the institution” that the health-care debate has caused over the past year. “It will be different,” he pledges. “We’d run this different than how it is run today, and from how my predecessors ran it. We’ve got to make this government smaller and less costly. There are big problems to address. It’s been shocking how people have been paying attention to the process, and we’ve noticed. We’ll repeal this — we’ll put a bill on the floor to take out the Medicare cuts, the tax increases, and the individual mandates.”
A final message for the weekend? “Kill the bill, just kill the bill,” he says. To do that, he says the NRCC is running a “Code Red” project, robocalls are going out, and members are going on local radio shows and hosting telephone town halls — in Democratic districts. “It’s all targeted,” he says.
CBO on $1.2 Trillion: ‘No’ [Robert VerBruggen]
Over at Critical Condition, Hanns Kuttner notes that while the Democrats attribute their claim that health-care reform will cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion in its second ten years to the Congressional Budget Office, this estimate is nowhere to be found in the CBO report itself. It seems that the Democrats took the CBO’s estimate that deficit reduction could fall “in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP,” matched it up to some estimates of GDP in 2020–2029, and attributed their back-of-the-envelope math to the CBO itself.I e-mailed a source within the CBO to ask if they had arrived at the $1.2 trillion figure themselves.
The source e-mailed back one word: “No.”
Show Me the Money, Cont'd [Daniel Foster]
The always worthwhile Megan McArdle has her own take on the CBO report. In the same spirit as I wondered whether Ezra Klein literally believes, as a matter of fact, that Obamacare will cut health costs and reduce the deficit, McArdle doubts whether Democrats believe (or even care) that they can keep the bill's fiscal promises.
On the topic of the Cadillac Tax:
The proposed changes increase spending dramatically, most heavily concentrated in the out-years. The gross cost of the bill has risen from $875 billion to $940 billion over ten years—but almost $40 billion of that comes in 2019. The net cost has increased even more dramatically, from $624 billion to $794 billion. That's because the excise tax has been so badly weakened. This is of dual concern: it's a financing risk, but it also means that the one provision which had a genuine shot at "bending the cost curve" in the broader health care market has at this point, basically been gutted. Moreover, it's hard not to believe that the reason it has been moved to 2018 is that no one really thinks it's ever going to take effect. It's one thing to have a period of adjustment. But a tax that takes effect in eight years is a tax so unpopular that it has little realistic chance of being allowed to stand.
And, on whether the promised Medicare cuts will ever come:
. . .Ultimately, this rests on the question: are we really going to cut Medicare? If we're not, this gargantuan new entitlement is going to end up costing us about $200 billion a year next decade, which even in government terms is an awful lot of money. There are offsetting taxes, but they're either trivial or likely to be unpopular—look forward to a 4% rent increase when your landlord has to stump over the same amount for the new tax on rents. Then look forward to repeal of same.
I think this is a fiscal disaster waiting to happen. But no one on the other side cares, so I'm not sure how much point there is in saying that any more.
Read it all here.
EXCLUSIVE — Rep. John Boehner (R., Ohio), the House minority leader, tells National Review Online that as of late Thursday afternoon, Democratic leadership “still doesn’t have the votes” to pass their health-care bill, and that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) is “prepared to sacrifice her members, and her speakership, so that she can plant the flag of universal health care in the ground.” Boehner says this weekend will be a waiting game — “If the speaker doesn’t have 216 votes locked down, she will not go to the floor. If she’s short, she knows that there is no way she can pick up two or three votes on the floor.” On that same point, he admits that “if this comes to the floor, it’s already over…though I still don’t know how she can get there [to 216].…I’d never put myself in this box.”
“The right is mad, the middle is mad, and the left is mad,” Boehner says. “They’ve made a calculation: They know they won’t get the right or middle, so they saying to their members that they need their left, because if they lose the left, their base will sit home. The president is staying in town because he knows the left will kill him if he’s not here to help.”
Boehner adds that Pelosi has “made a big mistake by talking about this gimmicky way to pass this without having a real vote.” President Obama, he says, “has put all of his marbles, literally all of his marbles, on jamming through something the people don’t want” and has “arrogantly misjudged this entire issue from the start.” Here’s why, Boehner says: “The Left sees this as their best opportunity in 50 years to put their stamp on the direction of this country.”
Boehner believes that abortion will be the key complication for on-the-fence Democrats in the final hours. “I’ve always thought that this would be the issue,” he says. “This is public funding for abortion. They know it can’t be fixed. There just aren’t the votes in the Senate.” He says he respects pro-life congressman Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) for holding firm, but cautions that he “never thought that Stupak could hold ten to twelve votes.”
Boehner says there will be major political consequences for pro-life Democrats who break from the Stupak bloc. “Take [Rep.] Steve Driehaus, for example,” he says. “He may be a dead man. He can’t go home to the west side of Cincinnati. The Catholics will run him out of town.”
If Boehner is “lucky enough to become speaker,” he says he plans to work to repair the “damage to the institution” that the health-care debate has caused over the past year. “It will be different,” he pledges. “We’d run this different than how it is run today, and from how my predecessors ran it. We’ve got to make this government smaller and less costly. There are big problems to address. It’s been shocking how people have been paying attention to the process, and we’ve noticed. We’ll repeal this — we’ll put a bill on the floor to take out the Medicare cuts, the tax increases, and the individual mandates.”
A final message for the weekend? “Kill the bill, just kill the bill,” he says. To do that, he says the NRCC is running a “Code Red” project, robocalls are going out, and members are going on local radio shows and hosting telephone town halls — in Democratic districts. “It’s all targeted,” he says.
CBO on $1.2 Trillion: ‘No’ [Robert VerBruggen]
Over at Critical Condition, Hanns Kuttner notes that while the Democrats attribute their claim that health-care reform will cut the deficit by $1.2 trillion in its second ten years to the Congressional Budget Office, this estimate is nowhere to be found in the CBO report itself. It seems that the Democrats took the CBO’s estimate that deficit reduction could fall “in a broad range around one-half percent of GDP,” matched it up to some estimates of GDP in 2020–2029, and attributed their back-of-the-envelope math to the CBO itself.I e-mailed a source within the CBO to ask if they had arrived at the $1.2 trillion figure themselves.
The source e-mailed back one word: “No.”
Show Me the Money, Cont'd [Daniel Foster]
The always worthwhile Megan McArdle has her own take on the CBO report. In the same spirit as I wondered whether Ezra Klein literally believes, as a matter of fact, that Obamacare will cut health costs and reduce the deficit, McArdle doubts whether Democrats believe (or even care) that they can keep the bill's fiscal promises.
On the topic of the Cadillac Tax:
The proposed changes increase spending dramatically, most heavily concentrated in the out-years. The gross cost of the bill has risen from $875 billion to $940 billion over ten years—but almost $40 billion of that comes in 2019. The net cost has increased even more dramatically, from $624 billion to $794 billion. That's because the excise tax has been so badly weakened. This is of dual concern: it's a financing risk, but it also means that the one provision which had a genuine shot at "bending the cost curve" in the broader health care market has at this point, basically been gutted. Moreover, it's hard not to believe that the reason it has been moved to 2018 is that no one really thinks it's ever going to take effect. It's one thing to have a period of adjustment. But a tax that takes effect in eight years is a tax so unpopular that it has little realistic chance of being allowed to stand.
And, on whether the promised Medicare cuts will ever come:
. . .Ultimately, this rests on the question: are we really going to cut Medicare? If we're not, this gargantuan new entitlement is going to end up costing us about $200 billion a year next decade, which even in government terms is an awful lot of money. There are offsetting taxes, but they're either trivial or likely to be unpopular—look forward to a 4% rent increase when your landlord has to stump over the same amount for the new tax on rents. Then look forward to repeal of same.
I think this is a fiscal disaster waiting to happen. But no one on the other side cares, so I'm not sure how much point there is in saying that any more.
Read it all here.
GOP Doctor to Pelosi: 'Arrogant. Ignorant. Incompetent.'
This kinda speaks for itself, no ?
GOP Doctor to Pelosi: 'Arrogant. Ignorant. Incompetent.' [Daniel Foster]
During a press conference held by eleven Congressional GOP doctors today, Rep. Paul Broun (R., Ga.) had harsh words for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.)
“I have three simple questions Ms Pelosi,” said Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga. “Are you so arrogant that you think you know what’s best for the American people? Are you so ignorant that you are oblivious to the wishes of the American people? And are you so incompetent that you are going to ignore the Constitution of the United States, use tricks, deceptions, bald faced lies to try to ram down the throat of the American people something that they do not want and is going to be absolutely worse for their healthcare?”
We'll know the answer by Sunday.
GOP Doctor to Pelosi: 'Arrogant. Ignorant. Incompetent.' [Daniel Foster]
During a press conference held by eleven Congressional GOP doctors today, Rep. Paul Broun (R., Ga.) had harsh words for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.)
“I have three simple questions Ms Pelosi,” said Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga. “Are you so arrogant that you think you know what’s best for the American people? Are you so ignorant that you are oblivious to the wishes of the American people? And are you so incompetent that you are going to ignore the Constitution of the United States, use tricks, deceptions, bald faced lies to try to ram down the throat of the American people something that they do not want and is going to be absolutely worse for their healthcare?”
We'll know the answer by Sunday.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Obama Interviewed On Fox by Bret Baier
Not the usual softball interview the Prez is accustomed to.
Obama is not, and cannot, make the sale. When you are selling dog poo, what do you expect ?("but wait, if you order now, you get .....")
http://www.nationalreview.com/the-feed/459/video-obama-fox-news
Bret Baier [Seth Leibsohn]
Bret Baier just concluded the single best interview of President Obama in a year, by any reporter. He was resilient in the face of the president’s obvious attempts to run down the clock by stonewalling; Bret continually hammered a series of questions the president did not want, and yet he was polite in explaining to the president the meaning of the questions just in case they were not what the president was familiar with (see the question about Connecticut for example). It was a model of how not to be cowed by a strong and charismatic leader and a model of a truly independent anchor/reporter.
President Obama knew he didn’t have Bret at the very end when his last effort at victimhood was to sarcastically hang his head to the side in response to Bret’s saying he didn’t mean to interrupt, as if Bret were being insincere—which he wasn’t. Anyone who watches the interview can see who was stalling, who was running the clock, who was refusing to answer the questions, and why polite interruption was exactly what was needed. It was a model. If any of the MSM can watch it and conclude anything it is that FNC deserves a) its ratings and b) kudos for being truly independent from the herd of faux independent minds, the likes of which Howell Raines seems to esteem. Bret showed the rest of the press how to do it from now on.
Good job by Bret.....
Obama is not, and cannot, make the sale. When you are selling dog poo, what do you expect ?("but wait, if you order now, you get .....")
http://www.nationalreview.com/the-feed/459/video-obama-fox-news
Bret Baier [Seth Leibsohn]
Bret Baier just concluded the single best interview of President Obama in a year, by any reporter. He was resilient in the face of the president’s obvious attempts to run down the clock by stonewalling; Bret continually hammered a series of questions the president did not want, and yet he was polite in explaining to the president the meaning of the questions just in case they were not what the president was familiar with (see the question about Connecticut for example). It was a model of how not to be cowed by a strong and charismatic leader and a model of a truly independent anchor/reporter.
President Obama knew he didn’t have Bret at the very end when his last effort at victimhood was to sarcastically hang his head to the side in response to Bret’s saying he didn’t mean to interrupt, as if Bret were being insincere—which he wasn’t. Anyone who watches the interview can see who was stalling, who was running the clock, who was refusing to answer the questions, and why polite interruption was exactly what was needed. It was a model. If any of the MSM can watch it and conclude anything it is that FNC deserves a) its ratings and b) kudos for being truly independent from the herd of faux independent minds, the likes of which Howell Raines seems to esteem. Bret showed the rest of the press how to do it from now on.
Good job by Bret.....
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Obama's anti-Israel leanings exposed and criticized - "crossed the line"
Must reads:
16/03/2010 06:42
It will hopefully also encourage the Obama administration to relate to us with at least the same level of courtesy and respect it extends to rogue states.
Obama has crossed the line: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=171110
- a really excellent piece
2 Congressman send Obama letter suggesting he tone down the rhetoric: http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=171170 Congress expresses support for Israel
http://www.debka.com/article/8654/ Did Obama shut down a secret US-Israel joint project to confront Iran ?
Obama has crossed the line
By ISI LEIBLER16/03/2010 06:42
The bureaucratic fashla [blunder] of our dysfunctional government to forestall the announcement of a new housing project in Jerusalem during the visit of US Vice President Joe Biden provided a pretext for the Obama administration to launch one of the harshest condemnations ever leveled against us by a US government. But while the timing of the announcement was appalling, it involved no breach of undertaking.
In fact, the Obama administration had previously publicly praised the Israeli governmentfor making a “major concession” by imposing a settlement freeze which explicitly excluded Jerusalem.
The campaign was personally orchestrated by President Barack Obama. His Vice President Biden accused us of “endangering US lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Despite Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s abject apology, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused him of “insulting” the US. Obama’s chief political adviser David Axelrod even claimed that the Israeli government was deliberately undermining peace talks.
These hostile outbursts must be viewed in the context of the fact that despite strong ongoing support for Israel by the American people, the US-Israel relationship has been on a downward spiral since the election of the new administration. Former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy attributes this to Obama’s determination to rehabilitate Islam’s global tarnished image.
Yet his strategy of “engaging” Islamic rogue states has been disastrous. The effort to prevent the nuclearization of Iran by appeasing the Iranian tyrants backfired with the ayatollahs literally mocking the US. The response of Syrian President Bashar Assad to US groveling and the appointment of an ambassador to Damascus, was to host a summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hizbullah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah and ridicule the US demand that he curtail his relationship with Iran. President Obama did not consider this “insulting,” prompting the editor of the LebaneseThe Daily Star to say that “the Obama administration these days provokes little confidence in its allies and even less fear in its adversaries.”
The Arab League refuses to modify its hard-line against Israel. It insists that Israel unconditionally accept the Saudi peace plan, a full retreat to the ‘67 borders and the implementation of the Arab right of return which would signal an end to Jewish sovereignty in the region.
THERE ARE now ominous signals that to obviate their failures, White House strategists are cynically distancing themselves from us in order to curry popularity by capitalizing on the anti-Israeli hatred which has engulfed the world.
Despite continuously incanting the mantra that it remains committed to the alliance with Israel, the White House is not behaving in an even-handed manner. Obama does not disguise his animosity and repeatedly humiliates our prime minister. Theadministration “condemns” us for building homes, not in densely Arab populated areas of Jerusalem but in Jewish suburbs like Gilo and most recently Ramat Shlomo which most of us regard as Israel no less than Tel Aviv.
Instead of condemning the brutal Palestinian murderer of an Israeli civilian in December, the US requested “clarification” after Israel apprehended the killers who the PA extolled as heroes. They failed to block a UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israeli police for protecting worshippers at the Temple Mount from Arabs hurling stones at them. They even condemned us for authorizing repairs on Jewish heritage sites over the Green Line.
In stark contrast, the US has not publicly reprimanded the PA on a single issue over the past twelve months. It is unconscionable that neither the White House nor the State Department conveyed a word of protest concerning the ongoing incitement and spate of ceremonies sanctifying the memory of the most degenerate suicide killers and mass murderers. Not even when our peace partners President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad personally partook in these ghoulish ceremonies. In fact, during Biden’s visit, the PA announced that they would postpone a ceremony to name a public square in Ramallah to honor Dalal Mughrabi, the female monster responsible for the abominable 1978 massacre in which 37 Israelis including 13 children were butchered. Nevertheless the ceremony took place and the PA TV interviewed Mughrabi’s sister who stated: “This is a day of glory and pride for the Palestinian people. We must unite, and our rifles must unite, against the enemy who steals our land.” The US failed to register a protest.
NETANYAHU HAS extended more concessions than any other Israeli leader. Hisgovernment immediately agreed to negotiations with the Palestinians. In contrast, Abbas told The Washington Post that being confident that the US would ensure that the Palestinians obtained whatever they sought, he saw no benefit in negotiating with the Israelis. This scenario is now being realized.
Netanyahu also overcame Likud resistance to a two-state solution and acceded to a temporary settlement freeze which no previous Israeli government was willing to consider. He authorized the release of prisoners and reduced checkpoints, even compromising the security of Israeli civilians.
Yet, far from acting as an honest broker, the US effectively endorsed most of the Palestinian positions and is poised to pressure Israel into making further unilateral concessions.
In a recent chilling document, reiterated by Biden in the course of his condemnation of construction in Jerusalem, the US assured the PA that the principal objective of the “indirect” negotiations was not peace, but the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and that parties who adopted negative positions would be dealt with “in order to overcome that obstacle.”
Our relations with the US will now be further tested.
Obama is surely aware that recent statements by his administration will only embolden the Palestinians and Jihadists to be more extreme in their demands, making it inevitable that the talks will almost certainly fail. Some may infer that this is precisely his intention. We will then be blamed for the breakdown and the US, with the backing of the Quartet and others, will then seek to impose a solution upon us.
There are certain red lines which nogovernment of Israel may cross. Netanyahu, on this occasion, must stand firm. The current crisis transcends political or ideological differences between Likud, Labor and Kadima. All mainstream parties should unite and convey to President Obama that Israel is a sovereign state and will not automatically bow to diktats of the US administration. They need to make the US administration and public understand that no government of Israel will agree to freeze construction in Jerusalem, the heart and soul of the Jewish people.
We may not be a superpower but the Obama administration will hesitate to pursue a path which rejects the consensus of the nation. A demonstration of unity against the unprecedented attacks on Israel’s sovereignty by the Obama administration will also encourage the American people and Congress to publicly support and assist us to reaffirm the traditional alliance and bonds of friendship between our two nations.
In fact, the Obama administration had previously publicly praised the Israeli governmentfor making a “major concession” by imposing a settlement freeze which explicitly excluded Jerusalem.
The campaign was personally orchestrated by President Barack Obama. His Vice President Biden accused us of “endangering US lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Despite Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s abject apology, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused him of “insulting” the US. Obama’s chief political adviser David Axelrod even claimed that the Israeli government was deliberately undermining peace talks.
These hostile outbursts must be viewed in the context of the fact that despite strong ongoing support for Israel by the American people, the US-Israel relationship has been on a downward spiral since the election of the new administration. Former Mossad head Ephraim Halevy attributes this to Obama’s determination to rehabilitate Islam’s global tarnished image.
Yet his strategy of “engaging” Islamic rogue states has been disastrous. The effort to prevent the nuclearization of Iran by appeasing the Iranian tyrants backfired with the ayatollahs literally mocking the US. The response of Syrian President Bashar Assad to US groveling and the appointment of an ambassador to Damascus, was to host a summit with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hizbullah terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah and ridicule the US demand that he curtail his relationship with Iran. President Obama did not consider this “insulting,” prompting the editor of the LebaneseThe Daily Star to say that “the Obama administration these days provokes little confidence in its allies and even less fear in its adversaries.”
The Arab League refuses to modify its hard-line against Israel. It insists that Israel unconditionally accept the Saudi peace plan, a full retreat to the ‘67 borders and the implementation of the Arab right of return which would signal an end to Jewish sovereignty in the region.
THERE ARE now ominous signals that to obviate their failures, White House strategists are cynically distancing themselves from us in order to curry popularity by capitalizing on the anti-Israeli hatred which has engulfed the world.
Despite continuously incanting the mantra that it remains committed to the alliance with Israel, the White House is not behaving in an even-handed manner. Obama does not disguise his animosity and repeatedly humiliates our prime minister. Theadministration “condemns” us for building homes, not in densely Arab populated areas of Jerusalem but in Jewish suburbs like Gilo and most recently Ramat Shlomo which most of us regard as Israel no less than Tel Aviv.
Instead of condemning the brutal Palestinian murderer of an Israeli civilian in December, the US requested “clarification” after Israel apprehended the killers who the PA extolled as heroes. They failed to block a UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israeli police for protecting worshippers at the Temple Mount from Arabs hurling stones at them. They even condemned us for authorizing repairs on Jewish heritage sites over the Green Line.
In stark contrast, the US has not publicly reprimanded the PA on a single issue over the past twelve months. It is unconscionable that neither the White House nor the State Department conveyed a word of protest concerning the ongoing incitement and spate of ceremonies sanctifying the memory of the most degenerate suicide killers and mass murderers. Not even when our peace partners President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad personally partook in these ghoulish ceremonies. In fact, during Biden’s visit, the PA announced that they would postpone a ceremony to name a public square in Ramallah to honor Dalal Mughrabi, the female monster responsible for the abominable 1978 massacre in which 37 Israelis including 13 children were butchered. Nevertheless the ceremony took place and the PA TV interviewed Mughrabi’s sister who stated: “This is a day of glory and pride for the Palestinian people. We must unite, and our rifles must unite, against the enemy who steals our land.” The US failed to register a protest.
NETANYAHU HAS extended more concessions than any other Israeli leader. Hisgovernment immediately agreed to negotiations with the Palestinians. In contrast, Abbas told The Washington Post that being confident that the US would ensure that the Palestinians obtained whatever they sought, he saw no benefit in negotiating with the Israelis. This scenario is now being realized.
Netanyahu also overcame Likud resistance to a two-state solution and acceded to a temporary settlement freeze which no previous Israeli government was willing to consider. He authorized the release of prisoners and reduced checkpoints, even compromising the security of Israeli civilians.
Yet, far from acting as an honest broker, the US effectively endorsed most of the Palestinian positions and is poised to pressure Israel into making further unilateral concessions.
In a recent chilling document, reiterated by Biden in the course of his condemnation of construction in Jerusalem, the US assured the PA that the principal objective of the “indirect” negotiations was not peace, but the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and that parties who adopted negative positions would be dealt with “in order to overcome that obstacle.”
Our relations with the US will now be further tested.
Obama is surely aware that recent statements by his administration will only embolden the Palestinians and Jihadists to be more extreme in their demands, making it inevitable that the talks will almost certainly fail. Some may infer that this is precisely his intention. We will then be blamed for the breakdown and the US, with the backing of the Quartet and others, will then seek to impose a solution upon us.
There are certain red lines which nogovernment of Israel may cross. Netanyahu, on this occasion, must stand firm. The current crisis transcends political or ideological differences between Likud, Labor and Kadima. All mainstream parties should unite and convey to President Obama that Israel is a sovereign state and will not automatically bow to diktats of the US administration. They need to make the US administration and public understand that no government of Israel will agree to freeze construction in Jerusalem, the heart and soul of the Jewish people.
We may not be a superpower but the Obama administration will hesitate to pursue a path which rejects the consensus of the nation. A demonstration of unity against the unprecedented attacks on Israel’s sovereignty by the Obama administration will also encourage the American people and Congress to publicly support and assist us to reaffirm the traditional alliance and bonds of friendship between our two nations.
It will hopefully also encourage the Obama administration to relate to us with at least the same level of courtesy and respect it extends to rogue states.
ileibler@netvision.net.il
Monday, March 15, 2010
Under the Bus: The Latest on Obama, Hilary, Biden mistreatment of Israel
This is really sad & disturbing. At the same time that O & co. are hyperventilating about Israel possibly building housing in its own capital, the Palestinians were busy dedicating a town square in the West Bank to a female terrorist murderer responsible for one of the most vile terrorist attacks, killing a bunch of innocent women and children.
What did Obama, Biden, Hilary, Axelrod or Gibbs have to say about that ?
Well, nothing.
In another move that's bound to bring about a peaceful settlement between Israel and the 'Palestinians,' 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazenparticipated this week in the naming of Dalal al-Mughrabi square in beautiful downtown Ramallah. A mere birthday party isn't good enough for Dalal. She has to have a square named after her to perpetuate her memory among the 'Palestinian people.'
Dalal al-Mughrabi was the perpetrator of the1978 Coastal Road Massacre in which 37 civilians, including 12 children and US citizen Gail Rubin, were murdered. Honoring her and making her into a hero is apparently just fine with the Obama administration. It's certainly not an 'obstacle to peace.
Dalal al-Mughrabi was the perpetrator of the1978 Coastal Road Massacre in which 37 civilians, including 12 children and US citizen Gail Rubin, were murdered. Honoring her and making her into a hero is apparently just fine with the Obama administration. It's certainly not an 'obstacle to peace.
Are U.S.-Israeli Relations Headed for a Train Wreck? [Joel C. Rosenberg]
As Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu heads to Washington this weekend to address the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, relations between the U.S. and Israel appear to be headed for a train wreck. Indeed, Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., told Israeli diplomats in a conference call over the weekend that U.S.-Israel relations face their worst crisis in more than three decades.
Here’s what happened and why.
During Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Jerusalem last week to show American support for Israel, some lower-level officials in the Israeli bureaucracy decided it would be a good time to announce the construction of 1,600 new homes in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority immediately went ballistic, calling the announcement a threat to peace. The vice president was deeply offended and told Netanyahu that the timing of the announcement made the Israelis appear to be trying to sabotage the beginning of new peace talks with the Palestinians.
Netanyahu immediately apologized, saying he had not authorized the announcement to be made during the VP’s trip and was not trying to derail or disrupt the visit. Biden appeared to accept the apology, and Netanyahu thought the problem had been resolved. The main focus of Biden’s visit, after all, was supposed to be how to work together to handle the existential threat of Iran building nuclear weapons.
Since then, however, the situation has worsened significantly. The State Department called in Ambassador Oren last week and reprimanded him severely for the Israeli housing announcement. Three days after the incident, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton phoned Netanyahu and reamed him out for forty-three minutes, saying the Obama administration saw the housing announcement as "insulting." State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley confirmed for reporters on Friday that Clinton told Netanyahu that the U.S. had "strong objections to Tuesday’s announcement, not just in terms of timing, but also in its substance," that the U.S. “considers the announcement a deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship — and counter to the spirit of the Vice President’s trip,” and that this action has “undermined trust and confidence in the peace process, and in America’s interests.”
Secretary Clinton then gave Netanyahu a list of specific demands that Israel must meet for the U.S. to be convinced that she is serious about peace with the Palestinians.
Will ObamaCare pass ? Or even come to a vote ?
Despite the legislative shenanigans, the porky bribes, threats, rides on Air Force 1, and the full court press on TV by Axelrod, Gibbs and Co., to me it still seems not a done deal.
If it were a done deal, they would vote on something already. They would not need to fan out on TV and spread out talking points claiming the inevitability of passage.
We shall see.
@jaketapper Full transcript of our intvw wPOTUS http://bit.ly/9wlasL
Obama Comes to Ohio (Again), Nobody Shows Up [Matt A. Mayer]
President Barack Obama, joined by Ohio governor Ted Strickland, came to Ohio today to continue his permanent campaign on health-care legislation. His campaign events during the 2008 presidential race attracted crowds of thousands of Ohioans; this time, President Obama managed a crowd of about 200 people. With his negative approval numbers in Ohio (44 percent approve, 52 percent disapprove), it isn’t much of a surprise that few showed up to hear him once again talk about health care. On health care, Ohioans disapprove of the job President Obama is doing (34 percent approve, 58 percent disapprove). On the health-care proposal, 56 percent of Ohioans mostly disapprove of it, with 43 percent believing that the proposed changes go too far.
The fact of the matter is that Ohioans are almost solely focused on jobs, jobs, and more jobs. On the economy, President Obama is heavily into negative territory (37 percent approve, 57 percent disapprove) as Ohioans in large numbers disprove of his handling of the economy. Given the fact that Ohio had a net increase in jobs from 1990–2010 of just 79,100 private sector jobs in a state of 11.4 million people, these findings shouldn't be a surprise. For Ohioans, it really is time that President Obama stopped trying to ram health-care legislation through and started doing what he said he would do in the State of the Union speech — focus like a laser on jobs.
— Matt A. Mayer is president of the Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions
Pelosi Willing to 'Trust' the Senate to Pass Reconciliation [Daniel Foster]
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a group of bloggers and reporters today that "I have no intention of not passing this bill. . . . I have faith in my members that we will be passing this legislation."
In an effort to counter-program the clear mistrust between House liberals and the Senate, Pelosi said she had
"asked [the Senate] to show me what it is they can show me that I would be able to convince my members to go forward," and added that she was "willing to trust the Senate that they are able to pass the reconciliation package."
But Pelosi also acknowledged that she is working against the clock (while explicitly identifying the whole of the Republican party as a "special interest group.")
"Time is important for us here, because this city is the city of the perishable and every special interest group out there who doesn't want this to pass—including the entire Republican party—benefits from any delay," Pelosi told those in attendance. "Delay is our enemy."
William Saletan urges Democrats to ignore the health-care polls: "Democracy isn't about doing what might sell in the next election. It's about doing what you promised in the last one." Okay. Every Democrat who ran in the last election as anti-abortion should vote against the bill, and everyone who ran on a platform of tax hikes for health benefits, Medicare cuts, and an individual mandate should vote for it. Deal?
Pelosi: Obamacare Passage Will 'Kick Open Door' to Much More [Daniel Foster]
Don't take our word for it. As part of a round table with bloggers and reporters noted below, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that passage of Obamacare would “take the country in a new direction.”
“Kick open that door, and there will be other legislation to follow,” she said.
Pelosi argued that passing reform would give Dems a tool for drawing a sharp ideological contrast with Republicans and conservatives over time.
“Give them credit for being true to their convictions,” Pelosi said. “They don’t believe in health care for all Americans with any public role in it. That’s by and large what the Republican Party believes.”
Pelosi said passing the bill would allow Dems to undertake a “debate” with Republicans over “what is the balanced role that government should have.”
“We have to take it to the American people, to say, this is the choice that you have,” she said. “This is the vision that they have for your health and well being, and this is the vision that we have.”
More here.
Sweetheart Deals Not So Bad After All, Axelrod Says [Daniel Foster]
As key Democrats are (once again) claiming an 'end game' for health-care reform, the White House is backing off yet another promise in order to secure the final few votes the bill needs for passage.
The Associated Press reports:
Clinching support, though, might require Obama to back away from his insistence that senators purge the legislation of a number of lawmakers' special deals.
Taking a new position, Axelrod said the White House only objects to state-specific arrangements, such as an increase in Medicaid funding for Nebraska, ridiculed as the "Cornhusker Kickback." That's being cut, but provisions that could affect more than one state are OK, Axelrod said.
That means deals sought by senators from Montana and Connecticut would be fine — even though Gibbs last week singled them out as items Obama wanted removed. There was resistance, however, from two committee chairman, Democratic Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Chris Dodd ofConnecticut, and the White House has apparently backed down.
Axelrod said the principles the White House wants to apply include "Are these applicable to all states? Even if they do not qualify now, would they qualify under certain sets of circumstances?"
At the same time, wavering House Democrats are being treated to one-on-one White House meetings with the president, who is reportedly asking members 'what are you looking for in the bill?'
Axelrod's Whopper [Ramesh Ponnuru]
The Louisiana Purchase is really the Just-Happened-to-be-Louisiana Purchase.
Do They Really Believe in Obamacare? [Michael G. Franc]
The Congressional Insiders Poll in National Journal this week asks a cross-section of lawmakers a question that sheds some light on why Democratic party leaders continue to push Obamacare forward in such a politically reckless manner.
The insight: They honestly think its enactment would yield political dividends.
The National Journal asks: “If Congress enacts something close to President Obama’s health care reform plan, how would that affect your party in the midterm elections?”
The pool of respondents consists of 69 members of Congress: House and Senate; Republican and Democrat. They cover each party’s ideological waterfront — from Henry Waxman to Jim Cooper among Democrats and from Michele Bachmann to Olympia Snowe among Republicans. All ten Democratic senators in the pool voted for the Senate health-reform bill, of course, and all but six of the 59 Democratic House members did so. The members’ identities, moreover, are not linked to their responses.
Remarkably, 85 percent of the 44 Democrats who responded said passage of Obamacare would either help their party “a lot” (55 percent) or “a little” (32 percent). Almost all the explanations for why it would help are defensive and purely political in nature. In fact, only one response seems to come from the heart of a true believer who thinks the reforms will actually work. Among the political justifications:
“It’s getting something done, stupid.”
“It would regain a lot of the energy in our own base. Otherwise, we will be in deep trouble.”
“Democrats have to deliver. We are too far into this.”
“Passage means a Rose Garden signing ceremony and some immediate benefits. Failure to pass means incompetence despite our large majorities.”
The true believer, on the other hand, insists passage will help Democrats for more substantive reasons:
“If it passes, people see it’s not the end of the world and learn more about its benefits. The more they know about it, the more supportive they are.”
Every single Republican surveyed, in contrast, insists enactment will help the GOP to one extent or another, with 76 percent saying it would help “a lot” and the remaining 24 percent believing it would help “a little.”
Can we take these Democratic responses seriously, or are they just what we should expect from a cowering rank-and-file not wanting to incur the wrath of the speaker, the majority leader, and Rahm? Remember that, because this is essentially a private ballot, the respondents had every reason to be honest in their replies.
My guess is that most Democrats on the Hill are living in a parallel universe right now. They hear daily from an unrelenting Democratic base its support for whatever Team Obama wants. The cherry-picked poll results that dominate their political briefings are designed to reassure them that it’s okay to follow their leaders. (See the curious way Obama’s own pollster did this on Saturday’s Washington Post op-ed page.) They watch MSNBC, scour the liberal blogs, and read the New York Times editorial page. Most of all, they have faith. Faith that their young and charismatic president won’t let them down.
Their Republican colleagues, meanwhile, can’t believe what they see unfolding before their eyes. To them, passing a bill will prove much more damaging to Democrats in November than if they simply walked away from the health-reform table and focused on more important issues like job creation. As one Republican respondent told National Journal, the effort to pass Obamacare is nothing less than “an act of political suicide.” Another mused that if Obama care is enacted “the protests last summer will pale in comparison with the turnout next November.” The result, a third Republican predicted: “the Republicans will win the House, possibly by a wide margin.”
Has legislation of such magnitude ever provoked such wildly disparate assessments from the two national parties — not just in terms of its substance but also in what its enactment would mean politically?
All this is more evidence that the end game on Obamacare is nothing less than the legislative equivalent of total war, the sort of total war that visits Washington only once every few generations.
Dreier: Democrats 'About 10 Votes Off' from Passage in House [Daniel Foster]
In a press conference on Capitol Hill today, Rep. David Dreier (R., Calif.), ranking Republican on the House Rules Committee, said the word around the House is that Democrats are still about 10 votes away from securing the 216 they will need to pass changes to the health-care bill. Dreier added that that number might be moving in the wrong direction for Democrats.
“You are hearing that people are peeling off,” he said.
Dreier also repeated the warnings about the Senate that many Congressional Republicans have been issuing to the other side of the aisle. He said that, assuming House Democrats succeed in passing a reconciliation measure along to the Senate, even marginal changes made there would require the measure to return to the House yet again.
“I would not be terribly sanguine about the prospect of the Senate effectively dealing with this,” Dreier said, adding that only once in history has a reconciliation measure passed through the Senate without a single amendment.
The reconciliation measure would also have to be sent back to the House if any provisions contained therein were struck down by the Byrd Rule. A memo from Dreier's office put it this way:
The one thing that history demonstrates is that the reconciliation process in the Senate is unpredictable. No matter how well you “scrub” the provisions in a bill for potential Byrd rule violations, something always gets through. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 had 3 provisions which were stricken on Byrd rule points of order despite a thorough review. The notion that the reconciliation bill will be immediately cleared by the Senate for the President is difficult to fathom.
Dreier said that Republicans won't know until later this week whether the Democrats will pursue a form of what has come to be known as the “Slaughter Solution” to avoid a direct vote on the Senate bill. But in the memo, Dreier's office gives three “flavors” such a rule could take. It could simply self-enact the Senate bill and send it to the president to sign. It could deem the Senate bill passed upon passage of the reconciliation measure in the House. Or, in the most unprecedented option, it could deem the Senate bill passed in the House only when the Senate passes the House reconciliation measure.
UPDATE: As several readers noted, the first draft of this post was unclear on whether the whip count was moving toward or away from passage. To clarify, Dreier suggested that the Democrats could be losing votes.
Scandalous, likely criminal behavior of the pro Gitmo defense lawyers exposed
What's a Modern John Adams to Do? [Andy McCarthy]
Why, hire private investigators to take surveillance photos of CIA agents and hand them off to other latter-day Adamses, who then showed them to top members of al-Qaeda — thereby identifying for the terrorists the agency's interrogators and, potentially, tipping the terrorists off to the locations where the agents' families live. And while the lawyers are at it, why not call the whole enterprise the "John Adams Project."
Actually, I would call the enterprise — just for starters — a wartime felony violation of the federal law barring disclosure of the identities of U.S. intelligence officers (Title 50, United States Code, Section 421), as well as a wartime felony violation of the espionage act (Title 18, United States Code, Section 793), which prohibits, among other things, obtaining national defense information with reason to know it will be used to the injury of the United States (including taking and using photographs "of anything connected with the national defense").
In the Washington Times, Bill Gertz has more on the indefensible Gitmo Bar and its indispensable DOJ protectors. To summarize, a cabal of the enemy's volunteer lawyers, led by the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and calling itself the "John Adams Project," is alleged to have hired investigators who staked out CIA agents believed (no doubt based on classified discovery in the detainee court cases) to have been interrogators. The investigators snapped pictures of the CIA agents — in some instances, apparently, in the vicinity of their homes where they reside with their families — and gave them to the lawyers, who, in turn, got them to other members of the Gitmo Bar (including at least some military lawyers) who showed them to top al-Qaeda detainees, enabling them to identify the CIA agents.
The scandal was uncovered because there are a lot of the photos and they've evidently been circulating around the detention camp, so some were discovered and seized by military guards. The CIA went appropriately ballistic over the patent security breach. But the Justice Department — which, as we've been noting, is rife with lawyers who volunteered their services to the detainees during the Bush years — insisted that the security breach was no big deal.
This has caused another round of fighting between the Intelligence Community the Justice Department — the IC is already under siege because Attorney General Eric Holder has reopened investigations against CIA interrogators despite the fact that the cases were previously vetted and closed by professional prosecutors because of a lack of evidence of criminal wrongdoing. One top DOJ official, Donald Vieira (a former Democratic counsel on the House Intelligence Committee) has now had to recuse himself for reasons that have not been explained.
I wonder if this is what Ken Starr & Co. had in mind when they analogized the Gitmo Bar to John Adams.
In any event, look on the bright side: No matter what happens to this investigation, the Left's lawyers now have photos they can use for the "reckoning" Holder promised against the Bush administration. Anyone doubt that the Center for Constitutional Rights, among other modern John Adamses, will try to use the photos to buttress its efforts to get some foreign tribunal to charge the CIA and Bush officials with "torture" and other war crimes?
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Holder & the Pro-Gitmo Detainee Lawyers Infesting Justice Dept.
More Commentary:
Re: The Gitmo Bar & Krauthammer [Andy McCarthy]
Jonah, there will be more evidence, and it is shocking.
Until then, I think you are misstating my argument — as is the excellent Paul Mirengoff, who also has a very thoughtful post at Powerline. I have argued that the Islamist agenda and even the al Qaeda agenda are much broader than just terrorism. They are anti-American, anti-Western, anti-capitalist, anti-individual liberty, pro-totalitarian, pro-collectivist, etc. They hold that American interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere, especially our military interventions, are exploitations of the Muslim world aimed at robbing its natural resources and spreading Western principles that are anathema to the indigenous culture. Leftists (including leftist lawyers) can easily sign on to much of that without signing on to all of Islamist ideology.
Along these lines, I respectfully suggest that by focusing on Islamist (and, frankly, Islam's) hostility to homosexuals, consignment of women to second-class status, and promotion of Islam in the schools, Paul misses the big picture. Islam and the Left are not perfectly aligned, but they are substantially aligned, much more so than most people realize. And as I said in my post, the issue isn't so much whether, in a vacuum, Leftist lawyers are pro-al Qaeda or pro-Islamist. It is where their sympathies lie as between two opponents: the United States as it is and Islamism. I disagree with John McCain on a number of issues that are of great importance to me — more issues than Paul cites as divergences between Islamists and Leftitsts. Yet, I supported McCain for president. Could you say I was pro-McCain? I suppose. But I wasn't dealing with McCain in a vacuum; I was dealing with a choice between McCain and Obama, and on that it was no contest.
The Marxist Center for Constitutional Rights has aggressively advocated for al Qaeda for years. CCR is the backbone of the Gitmo Bar, coordinating the representation of al Qaeda detainees by the legions of volunteers from our country's major law firms. While doing so, CCR has pushed for the indictment of Bush administration officials for war crimes and bragged that its recruitment of lawyers effectively shut down interrogations, depriving the United States of vital wartime intelligence. What more does CCR need to do to prove that, as between the United States and the Islamists, CCR is with the Islamists?
Paul and Jonah also discuss the Gitmo Bar, and the DOJ lawyers therein, as if they were a monolith. Clearly, they are not. That's the reason many of us have been arguing for disclosure and political accountability not for disqualification.
Take Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, for example. He was the chief counsel for Qaeda operative Salim Hamdan, and ultimately convinced a sharply and ideologically divided Supreme Court to invalidate the Bush military commissions. Further, he did more than just represent Hamdan's legal position, he advocated on his behalf — publicly portraying him as a low-ranking nobody who was excluded from al Qaeda's high-level decision-making. In fact, Hamdan was Osama bin Laden's personal driver and confidant who had missiles (intended for firing at U.S. forces) in his possession when he was captured.
Now to me, it was a very bad thing to volunteer for Hamdan during wartime and under circumstances where the commission rules guaranteed him competent military counsel (i.e., he didn't need volunteer private counsel). Neal could have done a lot better things with his time and talent, so I think it's a mark against him. But it's not the total picture. Hamdan, after all, was accused or war crimes and therefore was entitled to counsel (most Qaeda detainees are challenging their detention and are not entitled to counsel). In representing him, Katyal was performing a necessary function (even if it wasn't necessary that he do it). What's more, Katyal is a serious, pro-American scholar and national security thinker who has proposed (along with Jack Goldsmith) the creation of "a comprehensive system of preventive detention" under the auspices of a national security court — an idea I've been harping on for six years.
Let's contrast Jennifer Daskal, another of of DOJ's former Gitmo lawyers. She is a left-wing extremist recruited by Attorney General Holder for DOJ's National Security Division despite a complete lack of prosecutorial experience. What is her experience? Well, in 2006, she campaigned for the UN Human Rights Committee to condemn the United States for its waging of the "so called 'war on terrorism,'" for what she portrayed as our serial violations of international law obligations, for our "cloak of federalism" (which she described as the means by which the U.S. defies international governance at the state and local level); for our purported infliction of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment on Muslim detainees at Gitmo and on all prisoners held in U.S. "supermax" prisons, etc.
Moreover, when al Qaeda operative Omar Khadr murdered an American soldier on the battlefield, she tirelessly championed his cause, arguing that his prosecution violated his rights as a child (he's now 23), that our detention of him transgressed various international law obligations, and that the United States was to blame for the Omar Khadrs of the world (see the YouTube clip, here). When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wanted to plead guilty in his military commission proceeding, she was claiming that his confession was suspect because he'd been tortured even as he couldn't stop bragging to anyone who would listen about all the atrocities he'd committed against the U.S. and about how Islam would ultimately vanquish the U.S.
Here is where the Obama administration's stonewalling on the Gitmo lawyers is truly infuriating. Why should Americans not know all these facts? If there was transparency, most people would find Daskal's role at DOJ frightening. On the scale of lawyers as ideologues, she seems to be about where CCR is. On the other hand, I sleep better at night knowing Neal Katyal is at DOJ. I don't agree with him about many things, and he'd never be Deputy Solicitor General in a conservative administration. But President Obama won the election, and he has the right to fill the slots with progressive lawyers. Katyal is a progressive lawyer who doesn't think we should be using military commissions to try terrorists. I disagree, but so what? That's what a the policy debate is about, and our side doesn't hold people ineligible because we disagree with them on policy. Meantime, Katyal accepts that terrorists are a major threat to the United States and that we have to have a system for detaining them even if we can't convict them of crimes. He's right — and one wishes more people in the Obama Justice Department saw it that way.
Finally, if Jonah and I have a disagreement over the distinction between Islam and Islamism, it's awfully hard to find. I didn't make "an argument for getting rid of the labels"; I made an argument for having them. I said I'm not sure there's any substantive difference between Islam and Islamism, but that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who do not want to impose or live in a sharia society, and that we need to encourage those people so we need a separate designation for them. Even if we're convinced that the root problem is their religious creed (as I am), many of them are trying to reform it, and we don't help them by telling them their belief system is incorrigible.
Jonah says he thinks Charles Krauthammer's distinction between Islam and Islamism is not only a practical necessity but "valid on the merits." Respectfully, I don't think either Dr. K or Jonah has made a case for how Islam and Islamism differ on the merits. I think they are making a deductive case that (a) because Islamists include terrorists and (b) because most Muslims are not terrorists, (c) Islam must therefore be different from Islamism. But that doesn't tell us how the tenets of Islamism supposedly differ from those of Islam. And although one need not be a Muslim to study and understand Islam, it's worth pointing out that while Charles and Jonah are not Muslims, many of the world's leading Islamists are Muslims graduated with doctorates in Islamic jurisprudence from al-Azhar University, the seat of Sunni learning. I think non-Muslims who propose that the true Islam is different on the merits from the belief system espoused by scholars who have been steeped in Islam for their entire adult lives have a very steep mountain to climb. That we want Islam and Islamism to be different — and I do — does not make it so.
"Gitmo's Indefensible Lawyers" [Andy McCarthy]
That's the title of of a mind-blowing op-ed by Debra Burlingame and Tom Joscelyn in Monday's Wall Street Journal. Debra and Tom make mince-meat of the hallucination that casts the Gitmo Bar as modern John Adamses.
The essay recounts, among other things:
The Gitmo Bar — in gross violation of the conditions of access to the enemy combatants — provided al Qaeda detainees with a propaganda brochure that instructed them on how falsely to claim that they had been tortured and abused. As the Gitmo commander put it, "The very nature of this document gives tremendous moral support to those who would strike out against our country.... It is not a factual report. Instead it is filled with second and third hand accounts, photos of protests that were staged, inflammatory photos from Iraq and provocative story captions."
The Gitmo Bar fomented a detainee hunger strike that disrupted security at the camp and set the stage for fabricated reports that the detainees were being tortured and force-fed.
The Gitmo Bar provided the detainees with virulently anti-American rhetoric that compared military physicians to Nazi Josef Mengele, labeled DOJ lawyers "desk torturers," and informed the detainees about the Abu Ghraib abuses and the potential for framing President Bush as a war criminal.
The Gitmo Bar provided the enemy combatant terrorists with a hand-drawn map of the detention camp's lay-out, including guard towers.
The Gitno Bar incited the detainees against the military guards.
The Gtimo Bar posted photos of Guantanamo security badges on the Internet in a transparent effort to identify U.S. security personnel.
The Gitmo Bar facilitated enemy combatants in communicating messages and interviews to their confederates and the outside world.
The Gitmo Bar provided a detainee with a list identifying all the other detainees in custody.
The Gitmo Bar provided the detainees with news accounts about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, including reports that U.S. forces were sustaining devastating casualities from IED attacks. (Again, it was a court-ordered condition of the lawyers' access to these war prisoners that they not be given information relating to military operations, intelligence, arrests, political news and current events, and the names of U.S. government personnel.)
The Gitmo Bar provided KSM and the 9/11 plotters — i.e., the murderers of 3000 Americans — with photographs of covert CIA officers in an effort to identify them as interrogators. (Leftist lawyers are attempting to have these interrogators indicted for torture and war crimes.)
The Gitmo Bar brags about its role in the release of enemy combatants who have returned to the jihad against American troops and the American people.
In a word, sickening.
Re: The Gitmo Bar & Krauthammer [Andy McCarthy]
Jonah, there will be more evidence, and it is shocking.
Until then, I think you are misstating my argument — as is the excellent Paul Mirengoff, who also has a very thoughtful post at Powerline. I have argued that the Islamist agenda and even the al Qaeda agenda are much broader than just terrorism. They are anti-American, anti-Western, anti-capitalist, anti-individual liberty, pro-totalitarian, pro-collectivist, etc. They hold that American interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere, especially our military interventions, are exploitations of the Muslim world aimed at robbing its natural resources and spreading Western principles that are anathema to the indigenous culture. Leftists (including leftist lawyers) can easily sign on to much of that without signing on to all of Islamist ideology.
Along these lines, I respectfully suggest that by focusing on Islamist (and, frankly, Islam's) hostility to homosexuals, consignment of women to second-class status, and promotion of Islam in the schools, Paul misses the big picture. Islam and the Left are not perfectly aligned, but they are substantially aligned, much more so than most people realize. And as I said in my post, the issue isn't so much whether, in a vacuum, Leftist lawyers are pro-al Qaeda or pro-Islamist. It is where their sympathies lie as between two opponents: the United States as it is and Islamism. I disagree with John McCain on a number of issues that are of great importance to me — more issues than Paul cites as divergences between Islamists and Leftitsts. Yet, I supported McCain for president. Could you say I was pro-McCain? I suppose. But I wasn't dealing with McCain in a vacuum; I was dealing with a choice between McCain and Obama, and on that it was no contest.
The Marxist Center for Constitutional Rights has aggressively advocated for al Qaeda for years. CCR is the backbone of the Gitmo Bar, coordinating the representation of al Qaeda detainees by the legions of volunteers from our country's major law firms. While doing so, CCR has pushed for the indictment of Bush administration officials for war crimes and bragged that its recruitment of lawyers effectively shut down interrogations, depriving the United States of vital wartime intelligence. What more does CCR need to do to prove that, as between the United States and the Islamists, CCR is with the Islamists?
Paul and Jonah also discuss the Gitmo Bar, and the DOJ lawyers therein, as if they were a monolith. Clearly, they are not. That's the reason many of us have been arguing for disclosure and political accountability not for disqualification.
Take Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, for example. He was the chief counsel for Qaeda operative Salim Hamdan, and ultimately convinced a sharply and ideologically divided Supreme Court to invalidate the Bush military commissions. Further, he did more than just represent Hamdan's legal position, he advocated on his behalf — publicly portraying him as a low-ranking nobody who was excluded from al Qaeda's high-level decision-making. In fact, Hamdan was Osama bin Laden's personal driver and confidant who had missiles (intended for firing at U.S. forces) in his possession when he was captured.
Now to me, it was a very bad thing to volunteer for Hamdan during wartime and under circumstances where the commission rules guaranteed him competent military counsel (i.e., he didn't need volunteer private counsel). Neal could have done a lot better things with his time and talent, so I think it's a mark against him. But it's not the total picture. Hamdan, after all, was accused or war crimes and therefore was entitled to counsel (most Qaeda detainees are challenging their detention and are not entitled to counsel). In representing him, Katyal was performing a necessary function (even if it wasn't necessary that he do it). What's more, Katyal is a serious, pro-American scholar and national security thinker who has proposed (along with Jack Goldsmith) the creation of "a comprehensive system of preventive detention" under the auspices of a national security court — an idea I've been harping on for six years.
Let's contrast Jennifer Daskal, another of of DOJ's former Gitmo lawyers. She is a left-wing extremist recruited by Attorney General Holder for DOJ's National Security Division despite a complete lack of prosecutorial experience. What is her experience? Well, in 2006, she campaigned for the UN Human Rights Committee to condemn the United States for its waging of the "so called 'war on terrorism,'" for what she portrayed as our serial violations of international law obligations, for our "cloak of federalism" (which she described as the means by which the U.S. defies international governance at the state and local level); for our purported infliction of torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment on Muslim detainees at Gitmo and on all prisoners held in U.S. "supermax" prisons, etc.
Moreover, when al Qaeda operative Omar Khadr murdered an American soldier on the battlefield, she tirelessly championed his cause, arguing that his prosecution violated his rights as a child (he's now 23), that our detention of him transgressed various international law obligations, and that the United States was to blame for the Omar Khadrs of the world (see the YouTube clip, here). When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed wanted to plead guilty in his military commission proceeding, she was claiming that his confession was suspect because he'd been tortured even as he couldn't stop bragging to anyone who would listen about all the atrocities he'd committed against the U.S. and about how Islam would ultimately vanquish the U.S.
Here is where the Obama administration's stonewalling on the Gitmo lawyers is truly infuriating. Why should Americans not know all these facts? If there was transparency, most people would find Daskal's role at DOJ frightening. On the scale of lawyers as ideologues, she seems to be about where CCR is. On the other hand, I sleep better at night knowing Neal Katyal is at DOJ. I don't agree with him about many things, and he'd never be Deputy Solicitor General in a conservative administration. But President Obama won the election, and he has the right to fill the slots with progressive lawyers. Katyal is a progressive lawyer who doesn't think we should be using military commissions to try terrorists. I disagree, but so what? That's what a the policy debate is about, and our side doesn't hold people ineligible because we disagree with them on policy. Meantime, Katyal accepts that terrorists are a major threat to the United States and that we have to have a system for detaining them even if we can't convict them of crimes. He's right — and one wishes more people in the Obama Justice Department saw it that way.
Finally, if Jonah and I have a disagreement over the distinction between Islam and Islamism, it's awfully hard to find. I didn't make "an argument for getting rid of the labels"; I made an argument for having them. I said I'm not sure there's any substantive difference between Islam and Islamism, but that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims who do not want to impose or live in a sharia society, and that we need to encourage those people so we need a separate designation for them. Even if we're convinced that the root problem is their religious creed (as I am), many of them are trying to reform it, and we don't help them by telling them their belief system is incorrigible.
Jonah says he thinks Charles Krauthammer's distinction between Islam and Islamism is not only a practical necessity but "valid on the merits." Respectfully, I don't think either Dr. K or Jonah has made a case for how Islam and Islamism differ on the merits. I think they are making a deductive case that (a) because Islamists include terrorists and (b) because most Muslims are not terrorists, (c) Islam must therefore be different from Islamism. But that doesn't tell us how the tenets of Islamism supposedly differ from those of Islam. And although one need not be a Muslim to study and understand Islam, it's worth pointing out that while Charles and Jonah are not Muslims, many of the world's leading Islamists are Muslims graduated with doctorates in Islamic jurisprudence from al-Azhar University, the seat of Sunni learning. I think non-Muslims who propose that the true Islam is different on the merits from the belief system espoused by scholars who have been steeped in Islam for their entire adult lives have a very steep mountain to climb. That we want Islam and Islamism to be different — and I do — does not make it so.
"Gitmo's Indefensible Lawyers" [Andy McCarthy]
That's the title of of a mind-blowing op-ed by Debra Burlingame and Tom Joscelyn in Monday's Wall Street Journal. Debra and Tom make mince-meat of the hallucination that casts the Gitmo Bar as modern John Adamses.
The essay recounts, among other things:
The Gitmo Bar — in gross violation of the conditions of access to the enemy combatants — provided al Qaeda detainees with a propaganda brochure that instructed them on how falsely to claim that they had been tortured and abused. As the Gitmo commander put it, "The very nature of this document gives tremendous moral support to those who would strike out against our country.... It is not a factual report. Instead it is filled with second and third hand accounts, photos of protests that were staged, inflammatory photos from Iraq and provocative story captions."
The Gitmo Bar fomented a detainee hunger strike that disrupted security at the camp and set the stage for fabricated reports that the detainees were being tortured and force-fed.
The Gitmo Bar provided the detainees with virulently anti-American rhetoric that compared military physicians to Nazi Josef Mengele, labeled DOJ lawyers "desk torturers," and informed the detainees about the Abu Ghraib abuses and the potential for framing President Bush as a war criminal.
The Gitmo Bar provided the enemy combatant terrorists with a hand-drawn map of the detention camp's lay-out, including guard towers.
The Gitno Bar incited the detainees against the military guards.
The Gtimo Bar posted photos of Guantanamo security badges on the Internet in a transparent effort to identify U.S. security personnel.
The Gitmo Bar facilitated enemy combatants in communicating messages and interviews to their confederates and the outside world.
The Gitmo Bar provided a detainee with a list identifying all the other detainees in custody.
The Gitmo Bar provided the detainees with news accounts about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, including reports that U.S. forces were sustaining devastating casualities from IED attacks. (Again, it was a court-ordered condition of the lawyers' access to these war prisoners that they not be given information relating to military operations, intelligence, arrests, political news and current events, and the names of U.S. government personnel.)
The Gitmo Bar provided KSM and the 9/11 plotters — i.e., the murderers of 3000 Americans — with photographs of covert CIA officers in an effort to identify them as interrogators. (Leftist lawyers are attempting to have these interrogators indicted for torture and war crimes.)
The Gitmo Bar brags about its role in the release of enemy combatants who have returned to the jihad against American troops and the American people.
In a word, sickening.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
