 | ||||
| ||||
| Master Headline Here | ||||
| SENATORS GET OFF THE POLITICAL FENCE THEY VOTE 80-19 TO BUILD 700 MILES OF DOUBLE-WALL FENCE ON U.S.-MEXICAN BORDER The Senate just finished passing the U.S. House of Representative's fence bill. It will now go to President Bush who has promised to sign it. This is a stand-alone bill. It was not bundled with any compromises, any increases in immigration, any new guestworker visas or any amnesty. It deals only with making our southern border more secure and to further impede the flow of illegal workers and dependents. Your incredible phoning today -- and all month -- and your relentless faxing and other pressure throughout the year left most Senators with little choice. This fence was barely talked about two years ago and mostly thought to be a crackpot, off-the-wall (er, poor choice of words) idea -- and it still is by most of the newspaper editorial writers of this country. Our hat is off to www.WeNeedAFence.com, the Minutemen and a number of other smaller groups who really championed this rather obscure cause in the early stages. So, how could this pass so overwhelmingly? Ever since the House passed this fence bill 283-138 earlier this month, major Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate have said they would refuse to allow this bill to come to a vote. They said passing an enforcement-only bill would take away a bargaining chip they need to pass a bill with guestworkers and an amnesty. They used all kinds of maneuvers to keep from having to vote directly on this bill. But a lot of the Senators -- such as Sen. Martinez (R-FL) -- who so vociferously spoke against this bill ended up voting for it tonight. Why? Because they knew that regular voting citizens like you would hold them accountable. This lop-sided vote is absolutely a sign of the tremendous power that this growing citizen movement is accumulating -- and of your steadfast commitment. You can read more about the fence and this bill (H.R. 6061) at: http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/congress.html JUST ANOTHER INCREMENTAL STEP -- BUT A VERY IMPORTANT ONE This bill basically is the only step forward that Congress has taken this year in the fight against out-of-control mass immigration. It is sad that this is all we got when we consider the great promise of the ATTRITION THROUGH ENFORCEMENT bill (H.R. 4437) passed last December by the House. But the Senate refused to deal with it unless it could add an amnesty and incredible increases in legal immigration. In addition, we have to remember that the bill tonight was not an appropriations bill. The money to fund the fence must come in another bill. Money for a few hundred miles appears to be in the pipeline, but the Senate so far has not shown signs of being willing to provide all the money to build all 700 miles. Nonetheless, there will be plenty of money to get started. As this fence begins to be erected at and near the populated settlements along the Mexican border -- and as it clearly slows the illegal traffic -- we can hope that steps of success will breed more interest and more money for more fence in Congress next year. FULL SUCCESS OF FENCE DEPENDS ON US WINNING OTHER TOOLS | ||||
Powerline just posted this. Looks as if we may be getting the job done in spite if everything.
AP reports that al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Hamza al-Muhajir (aka Abu Ayyub al-Masri) has produced an audiotape in which he says that 4,000 foreign insurgents have been killed in Iraq. According to the AP, the Arabic word al-Masri used indicated he was speaking about foreigners who joined the insurgency in Iraq, not coalition troops."......
"Recruiting terrorists: Cut-and-run would work best
Editorial
Source UnionLeader.com
"America’s intelligence agencies have determined that the war in Iraq has helped recruit more terrorists. Well, duh. It’s called fighting back.
Democrats leapt upon this news as proof that the Iraq war has made us less safe. But that is not what the bulk of the available evidence, including the declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate, shows.
The NIE concludes that the No. 1 factor radicalizing Muslims continues to be "entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination. . ." Those first two are exactly the grievances President Bush is trying to remedy, in part by replacing Iraq’s despotic regime with a democratic one.
Remember, the terrorists hit us before we toppled Saddam Hussein: In 1983, 1998, 2000 and 2001. Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States in 1998, not 2002.
A report released late last month by Britain’s Royal Institute for International Affairs also found that America’s presence in Iraq had helped recruit terrorists. But it concluded that the Iraq war has sharply reduced the appeal of violence as a political tool in the Muslim world and slashed the popularity of terror organizations among most Muslims: a net gain for the West. It has received little if any media attention in the United States.
The NIE suggests that the best way to combat radical Islam is to divide and conquer: separate the radicals from the majority of Muslims, and fight them. The British report suggests this is what the war in Iraq is doing.
Pulling out now because the terrorists have decided to fight back instead of roll over would give terrorists the best recruitment poster they could imagine. If we want to reduce their ranks, now is the time to hit them even harder and let them know that we will never give up the fight."
BY RICHARD MINITER
Wednesday, September 27, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
Source WSJ.com
(excerpt)
Bill Clinton's outburst on Fox News was something of a public service, launching a debate about the antiterror policies of his administration. This is important because every George W. Bush policy that arouses the ire of Democrats--the Patriot Act, extraordinary rendition, detention without trial, pre-emptive war--is a departure from his predecessor. Where policies overlap--air attacks on infrastructure, secret presidential orders to kill terrorists, intelligence sharing with allies, freezing bank accounts, using police to arrest terror suspects--there is little friction. The question, then, is whether America should return to Mr. Clinton's policies or soldier on with Mr. Bush's.
It is vital that this debate be honest, but so far this has not been the case. Both Mr. Clinton's outrage at Chris Wallace's questioning and the ABC docudrama "The Path to 9/11" are attempts to polarize the nation's memory. While this divisiveness may be good for Mr. Clinton's reputation, it is ultimately unhealthy for the country. What we need, instead, is a cold-eyed look at what works against terrorists and what does not. The policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations ought to be put to the same iron test.
With that in mind, let us examine Mr. Clinton's war on terror. Some 38 days after he was sworn in, al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center. He did not visit the twin towers that year, even though four days after the attack he was just across the Hudson River in New Jersey, talking about job training. He made no attempt to rally the public against terrorism. His only public speech on the bombing was a few paragraphs inserted into a radio address mostly devoted an economic stimulus package. Those stray paragraphs were limited to reassuring the public and thanking the rescuers, the kinds of things governors say after hurricanes. He did not even vow to bring the bombers to justice. Instead, he turned the first terrorist attack on American soil over to the FBI.
In his Fox interview, Mr. Clinton said "no one knew that al Qaeda existed" in October 1993, during the tragic events in Somalia. But his national security adviser, Tony Lake, told me that he first learned of bin Laden "sometime in 1993," when he was thought of as a terror financier. U.S. Army Capt. James Francis Yacone, a black hawk squadron commander in Somalia, later testified that radio intercepts of enemy mortar crews firing at Americans were in Arabic, not Somali, suggesting the work of bin Laden's agents (who spoke Arabic), not warlord Farah Aideed's men (who did not). CIA and DIA reports also placed al Qaeda operatives in Somalia at the time."...........
(timelines)
........."There is much more to Mr. Clinton's record--how Predator drones, which spotted bin Laden three times in 1999 and 2000, were grounded by bureaucratic infighting; how a petty dispute with an Arizona senator stopped the CIA from hiring more Arabic translators. While it is easy to look back in hindsight and blame Bill Clinton, the full scale and nature of the terrorist threat was not widely appreciated until 9/11. Still: Bill Clinton did not fully grasp that he was at war. Nor did he intuit that war requires overcoming bureaucratic objections and a democracy's natural reluctance to use force. That is a hard lesson. But it is better to learn it from studying the Clinton years than reliving them."
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009001
"RIPS 'FLATLY FALSE' CLAIM ON BUSH'S BID
TO GET BIN LADEN
By IAN BISHOP Post Correspondent
Source New York Post
(excerpt)
"September 25, 2006 -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making "flatly false" claims that the Bush administration didn't lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.
Rice hammered Clinton, who leveled his charges in a contentious weekend interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News Channel, for his claims that the Bush administration "did not try" to kill Osama bin Laden in the eight months they controlled the White House before the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false - and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," Rice said during a wide-ranging meeting with Post editors and reporters.
"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice added.
The secretary of state also sharply disputed Clinton's claim that he "left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy" for the incoming Bush team during the presidential transition in 2001.
"We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice responded during the hourlong session.
Her strong rebuttal was the Bush administration's first response to Clinton's headline-grabbing interview on Fox on Sunday in which he launched into an over-the-top defense of his handling of terrorism - wagging his finger in the air, leaning forward in his chair and getting red-faced, and even attacking Wallace for improper questioning.".......
....."In her pointed rebuttal of Clinton's inflammatory claims about the war on terror, Rice maintained the Bush White House did the best it could to defend against an attack - and expanded on the tools and intelligence it inherited.
"I would just suggest that you go back and read the 9/11 commission report on the efforts of the Bush administration in the eight months - things like working to get an armed Predator [drone] that actually turned out to be extraordinarily important," Rice added.
She also said Clinton's claims that Richard Clarke - the White House anti-terror guru hyped by Clinton as the country's "best guy" - had been demoted by Bush were bogus.
"Richard Clarke was the counterterrorism czar when 9/11 happened. And he left when he did not become deputy director of homeland security, some several months later," she said."......
........."Rice cited the final 9/11 commission report to substantiate her claims, while Clinton relied on Clarke's book as the basis for many of his rehashing the events leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks."....
........"Transitioning to the global war on terror, an animated Rice questioned, "When are we going to stop blaming ourselves for the rise of terrorism?" .....
Asked about recently leaked internal U.S. intelligence estimates that claimed the Iraq war was fueling terrorist recruiting, Rice said: "Now that we're fighting back, of course they are fighting back, too." .......
........"These are people who want to fight against us, and they're going to find a reason. And yes, they will recruit, but it doesn't mean you stop pursuing strategies that are ultimately going to stop them," Rice said.
She insisted U.S. forces must finish the job in Iraq and the wider Middle East to wipe out the "root cause" of violent extremism - not just the terror thugs who carry out the attacks.
"It's a longer-term strategy, and it may even have some short-term down side, but if you don't look at the longer term, you're just leaving the problem to somebody else," she said. ".......
....."In Latin America, home to outrageous Venezuelan bomb thrower Hugo Chavez, Rice said the U.S. approach is to "spend as little time possible in talking about Chavez and more time talking about our positive agenda in Latin America," including several trade agreements."
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09252006/news/nationalnews/rice_boils_over_at_bubba_nationalnews_.htm
Rather long but well detailed article which shows Clinton goes ballistic when confronted with facts about something he's made every effort to conceal.
Clinton echoes the same mantra as terrorists, blaming everyone, everything other than himself for being caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Archived timeline of China-gate here http://alamo-girl.com/treason.htm
My picnic with Bill
How one reporter gave Clinton heartburn over Chinagate
The following was originally published as the cover story for WorldNet Magazine in February 2000.
By Paul Sperry
Source WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON -- There's probably no finer place to throw a party than the South Lawn of the White House, and no better time to do it than on a mild and breezy day in early fall. And there's probably no guest more grateful for such a free fete than the Washington press corps.
My colleagues will climb over each other to get to a table full of rubbery hoagies, soggy chips and stale Budweiser. Doesn't matter what it is, really, so long as it's free.
But this. This was hog's heaven for the cheap scribes who filed onto the White House grounds that Friday night in September for a Cajun party in their honor. What a spread. On red-checkered picnic tables spanning the length of the plush green lawn, beckoned trays of jambalaya, boudin and boiled shrimp.
And the bars, under colorful tents, were stocked full of liquor. No kegs here. Black-tie-clad help poured your favorite libation from bottles. Forget Budweiser; they had Guinness Stout and other imported brews. Fine reds and whites, too, and highballs. All free.
Zydeco tunes skipped across the crowd of giddy guests. As the sunny day faded to dusk, the soft lights of the White House portico glowed behind us. Intoxicating. What a night.
But, for me, there was still something wrong with this party -- namely, the host.
President Clinton, the function's main attraction, was due to make a cameo appearance at any moment. Despite having to wade through 40-plus scandals over the previous seven years, my cohorts in the press were all atwitter at the prospect of pumping Clinton's arm and snapping shots of him with their spouses and kids.
Just 48 hours earlier, four FBI agents had testified before the Senate that Justice Department lawyers had stopped them from pursuing leads back to Clinton in the ongoing campaign-finance investigation.
Not only that, agents swore that lawyers for months had blocked their request to ask a judge for a warrant to search the Little Rock, Ark., office of Clinton fund-raiser Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie. Agents sifting through his trash found that key records subpoenaed by the Senate had been shredded.
Among the torn-up documents: checks from Asian donors to Clinton's legal defense fund, Democratic National Committee donor lists, travel records for Chinese money men and statements from Chinese bank accounts. There was also a FedEx slip showing the White House had sent two pounds of documents to Trie just two months before a 1997 Senate probe of Chinagate kicked off.
What's more, one agent said 27 pages of notes detailing her struggles with Justice over the Trie case were ripped out of spiral notebooks after she turned them over to her superiors.
The explosive testimony was ignored by most of the media. But I couldn't shake it from my mind, no matter the occasion. Was Clinton's attorney general covering for him in one of the gravest probes in U.S. history, one with national security implications? Did Clinton have any knowledge of it?
Sometime after 6 p.m., the president emerged from the Oval Office. Dressed in a suit, he strolled down the walkway, only to disappear through a doorway. His aide Sidney Blumenthal strolled on and joined the crowd. At his side was Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass. (I ran into Markey later in the evening inside the White House. He was giving his wife and father a tour. Markey's now all over the TV talk shows flacking for Vice President Al Gore's campaign.)
The suspense built as the guests closed in around a loose rope line that stretched from the edges of the Oval Office area to the stage where the band played. Then, at last, Clinton came out of the White House wearing what can only be described as a get-up -- tight black pullover shirt, tight black pants with a big silver-buckle black belt and black cowboy boots.
Strutting past me, he looked like a bad imitation of Johnny Cash. Or was it an over-the-hill Elvis? Tom Jones? Whatever, the silver-haired devil made a beeline for the stage, climbed up on it and drawled on about how great it was for all of us to be there with him on such a wonderful night listening to such great music. At that, a guest tried to hand a tenor saxophone up to him. Several painted-up women pushed their way to the stage. By the way, Clinton remarked, "Hillary wanted to be here with y'all, but she's up in New York tonight." Wink-wink.
Little did he know that in just a few minutes, a rude guest would give him a Maalox moment to remember and probably spoil any entertainment plans he had for the evening.
As Clinton worked the rope line on his way back toward the White House, it was hard not to be taken up in the electricity of the moment. Everyone was having such a good time. And a buoyant Clinton was working the crowd, yucking it up like no one can. At one point, he was even wearing baubles around his neck. Husbands were offering up their wives and children for grip-and-grin shots. Photojournalists were camped out like paparazzi. Why not? A notorious celebrity was in their midst. Even one of my reporters was snapping shots with his instamatic -- for his wife.
I stood there slack-jawed, watching one powerful journalist after another clamor like so many fawning teen rock-idol fans to grasp the hand of the most corrupt president in U.S. history.
So many scandals, so many unanswered questions -- so many unasked questions. National security at stake. That little boy there, that little girl over there ... your sons, your daughters. Don't you care what this president has or hasn't done with our military secrets?
Maybe I just cared too much. Relax. Yes, have a good time; it is a party after all. Don't be so serious. Loosen up.
But just as I was about to give in to the perverse euphoria, suspending disbelief about the harmlessness of old Slick like everyone else around me, I recalled a Proverb I'd read that morning -- "Do not envy wicked men, do not desire their company" -- and I closed my eyes for strength.
It was my turn to meet the celebrity president. As he approached me, I politely, if coolly, asked him when he would hold his next formal press conference. It had been several months since his last and he's had fewer than any recent president. I admit I was trying to agitate the proper forum for questions about the FBI agents' charges. But, to me, this was still a rather innocuous question, even within the supposedly neutral zone of a party. A relevant question, too, given the gathering. Other hard-nosed reporters surely were wondering when they'd get another crack at Clinton.
Or so I thought. My simple question was rewarded with boos and hisses from the adoring Clinton groupies around me. So much for the adversarial press.
But that was nothing compared with Clinton's reaction to my inquiry about his next press confab. In an instant, his 100-watt charm shut off, replaced by a taunting belligerence. "Why?" he barked.
"Because the American people have a lot of unanswered questions," I replied, struggling to hold my bladder. At that point, he moved back down the rope, pulling up square in front of me, and demanded, "Like what?"
"Well, like illegal money from China and the campaign-finance scandal ..."
What happened over the next 10 minutes was nothing short of a "scene." The party-goers collapsed in around us. I watched the blood rush to Clinton's gargantuan face as he launched into a tirade against ex-Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, the FBI, Bob Dole and Republicans in general. All the while, he tried to belittle me by making faces (to get a rise out of his fans) and intimidate me by getting in my face.
And now I can see how he can do that to people. Clinton's not just intellectually intimidating, he's physically imposing. He's tall (6-2) and big-boned.
Luckily, I'm the same height and was able to stand toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with him. I'll never forget the maniacal look in his bloodshot eyes. There was a moment, fleeting, where I sensed he wanted to try to take a swipe at me. I was getting full frontal Clinton. His volcanic temper, hidden so well from the public by his handlers, erupted less than 12 inches from my eyes.
Clinton always is game for a debate. That I asked him hard questions at a party wasn't what ticked him off. It's what I asked him about. He clearly doesn't want to talk about the mother of all scandals -- Chinagate.
He also may have been thrown by my grasp of the facts. I'd been tracking the Beijing-tied Lippo Group's influence in the Clinton White House since 1996 and have been suspicious of the probity of Attorney General Janet Reno's special task force since she let John Keeney Sr. set it up -- a month after the election -- to look into Lippo's influence.
Keeney's son is none other than a defense attorney for John Huang, the former Lippo executive and convicted Clinton-Gore fund-raiser. Junior, who's also a long-time Democratic National Committee lawyer, cut Huang a deal with daddy's old task force that got him no jail time and immunity from prosecution for espionage.
Clinton also was unprepared for my tenacity. Other reporters may back down after he singes their eyebrows with a verbal fusillade. Dummy me, I hung in there for more abuse, challenging his answers, following up with more questions. Which only made him madder.
Take, for instance, the exchange we had after I asked him what he thought of the FBI agents' charges two days earlier that they'd been blocked from following trails back to the White House in the Chinagate probe. (When I first mentioned the agents, he acted dumb: "What FBI agents?")
"The Eff-Bee-Ahh," Clinton said, his tone dripping with contempt and suspicion. "What do you think of the FBI?"
I don't have an opinion, sir. My question is to you.
"Yeah, the FBI wants you to write about that rather than write about Waco," a reference to lingering questions about the agency's role in the 1993 fire that killed Branch Davidian separatists in Waco, Texas.
It was an extraordinary remark. The president was questioning the motives and veracity of his own agency.
I piped up that these were career FBI agents. One had been with the agency 25 years. And they made these charges under oath.
"Are you suggesting they're not telling the truth, Mr. President?" I asked.
Clinton's face turned a darker hue of red, almost the purplish color of raw hamburger meat that's been left out on the counter. Changing the subject, he attacked Republicans for their own fund-raising woes.
After Clinton had had enough of me, he tried to move on. But, I pressed, reminding him that he still hadn't answered my original question: When will you have another formal news conference?
"You just had one," he snapped.
With that, I turned around and knifed my way through the crowd that had gathered. Two women -- one from AP, then another from CNN -- rushed up to me. Both asked what got Clinton so angry.
"Why'd he turn so red?" asked one. Good question, I said, then replayed the exchange for them. Both asked for my card, though neither of their news agencies filed a story.
Before grabbing a plate of Cajun food and a much-needed cold one, I scribbled down what Clinton had told me on some White House napkins and left the grounds soon after. As I made my way to the Metro station, I realized my knees were a bit wobbly.
Still dazed by the time I got home, I trudged in the front door and only half-jokingly told my wife to prepare for an IRS audit. As I did radio shows around the country over the next few weeks, I found I wasn't the only one with that thought. Except callers weren't fooling.
Some warned me to get my tax forms in order and "not to take any plane trips." They were concerned I'd pay a heavy price for "standing up to the scary occupant of the White House," as one put it.
Another radio caller reckoned "there is a lot of info from FBI files being used to leverage reporters." (That's actually not so far-fetched. White House correspondents have to submit to background checks.)
One wise guy actually posted a phony Washington Post obituary on the Internet.
"Paul Sperry, the Washington bureau chief of Investor's Business Daily, was found in the swimming pool of his Richmond, Va., home early this morning," the prankster wrote. "He had apparently shot himself in the head in his living room before throwing himself fully clothed into the pool. A .45-caliber bullet was found in his skull and he was holding the suicide weapon, a 9 mm automatic with the serial numbers filed off.
"His notes and home computer were found burning in a trash can," he added. "Police were alerted to the body by an anonymous tip. No foul play is suspected."
I'm of the mind that the president and first lady, both of whom have strangely gone out of their way to remind the public that they've "even been accused of murder," like that people think that. It breeds fear, and fear makes those who might otherwise confront the Clintons with the facts think twice about doing so.
Still, after taking calls into the wee morning hours, such thoughts didn't exactly help me sleep over the next several days as the story grew legs.
Saturday night, Sept. 25: As I was typing up my story, James Grimaldi, a reporter for the Seattle Times, called me at home. He had been covering the Microsoft trial in Washington but he was working on another story -- mine -- and had a few questions for me.
Turns out Grimaldi was standing right next to me during the exchange with Clinton. He heard the whole thing and we compared notes. He said he was filing a story for the Times' Sunday edition. At first, I was frosted seeing that Grimaldi would beat my story. My paper at the time, Investor's Business Daily, only publishes Monday through Friday and Monday's paper is put to bed on Friday. So my story wouldn't run till Tuesday.
Even so, I was thankful that another major paper would corroborate the interview.
"The blood was rushing in and out of his face," Grimaldi observed over the phone. "He actually blew up. His initial blow-up was unexpected and unanticipated."
He counted at least 10 exchanges, "back and forth." Not one question I asked, he said, was "rude" or "disrespectful," although the entire impromptu interview could be construed as such. He also said Clinton "was baiting you" into asking more questions.
At one point, Grimaldi said the official White House photographer standing behind Clinton shouted: "This is so inappropriate! This is so inappropriate!" I never heard him. Clinton's own shouting must have drowned him out.
Tuesday night, Sept. 28: The Drudge Report posted a story at the top of its website: "Fight Club: Furious Clinton Orders Reporter Banned After Grilling!"
Wednesday, Sept. 29, at 3:12 p.m. EDT: In the White House briefing room, a Washington Times reporter asked Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart about Clinton's FBI remark. But Lockhart brushed him off. Then the reporter asked about the Drudge Report.
Before answering, Lockhart lectured reporters on the "virtues or lack thereof" of using citizen cyberjournalist Matt Drudge as a news source. He nonetheless confirmed Drudge's report.
"I was asked for comment from the reporter about the incident and I made the comment that the only regret I have is inviting him to the party -- and I wouldn't make that mistake again," he explained. "So to the extent that we judge coverage of this building by the parties, he's banned."
Lockhart left the impression that he personally told me I was banned. And that's the way the press reported it.
In fact, Lockhart never called me. He had his girl give me the news. And even she passed it along sheepishly.
On Monday, Sept. 27, I had called Lockhart's deputy Jake Siewart to see if the president wanted to clarify any of the remarks he made to me. Siewart replied, bluntly, that Clinton "doesn't regret making" them.
Not 10 minutes after I hung up, a woman called from the White House identifying herself as Lockhart's assistant. She had a message for me.
What is it? I asked.
"I didn't say it. It's not coming from me," she assured me, speaking under her breath. "It's specifically from Joe Lockhart."
All right, what?
"The only regret we have is inviting you to the party," she said, quoting her boss, "and we won't make that mistake again."
Is he serious? I asked.
"Uh-huh."
How juvenile, I thought, but how predictable for this White House.
I left that part out of my story at the request of my editor, who asked me to divorce myself from the story as much as I could.
But the next day, Drudge called from Hollywood and asked about the story which, by then, was bouncing around the Internet. I mentioned being kicked off the invite list. He wasted no time in posting the news later that night on his website.
Where Drudge got the "Class A s--thead" slur, I don't know. No one from Lockhart's office uttered it to me. (Could it be that Drudge has a mole in the White House?) If Lockhart indeed used the childish epithet, he clearly was accusing me of being a relative.
Wednesday, Sept. 29: Washington Post reporter Beth Berselli called my editor Wes Mann in Los Angeles for comment on the Drudge Report. Her first question: "So what disciplinary action do you plan to take against your reporter?"
The presumption of guilt came through loud and clear in the next day's "Reliable Source" column she helped pen. Reporting with the certainty of an eyewitness, Berselli said I "ambushed" Clinton.
Only, she wasn't there. She relied on the account of Lockhart, who told her I was "badgering" the president. Only, Lockhart wasn't there either. Berselli never talked to me.
I never planned to buttonhole the president, but I'm glad I did. His heated reaction to simple questions was revealing. And I pried away some remarkable quotes, particularly about the FBI.
Though admittedly a far cry from the backbiting seen during Watergate, there hasn't been this much tension between a president and his chief law enforcement agency since President Nixon.
It was news. Big news. Yet the Washington press corps, by and large, passed on the meat of the story and focused instead on the theater of a reporter mixing it up with the president at a picnic.
"National Papers Miss Flare-Up Highlighting Clinton-FBI Rift," said a report in Media Critic, an online newsletter of the nonpartisan Center for Media & Public Affairs in Washington.
"Beltway Blinders: Smaller Papers' Scoops Get Little Notice," said White House correspondent Josh Gerstein in his ABCNEWS.com column. Gerstein was the only reporter who picked up my line of questioning with Clinton. On Oct. 1, as Clinton was dashing off to California, he pressed Clinton to open up more about his problems with the FBI, though without much luck.
Sure, the New York Times and the Washington Post eventually used my revealing quotes, while holding their noses and calling me "rude" and "impertinent" for extracting them at a social event -- as if I were the first to do that. According to former press secretaries, both Sam Donaldson and Helen Thomas worked over President Reagan and President Bush at press parties and state dinners.
A social aide for Reagan told me the two veteran correspondents were hectoring the president to such a degree during one dinner that she and other aides had to literally put their bodies between them and the president to spare the guests from more obnoxious shouting at closer range.
Funny how the press corps suddenly stands on ceremony when a Democrat is in the White House.
The old bar flies at the National Press Club roundly booed me when they saw me talking about the dust-up on one of the Fox News shows. And they weren't just booing my TV performance.
Though I clearly exposed a nerve on Chinagate, the White House press corps has failed to tap into it. At Clinton's Feb. 16 press conference, no reporter plied him with questions on the still-mushrooming conspiracy and now-fully active cover-up -- even though 10 days earlier the Los Angeles Times had reported that a foreign donor with ties to the People's Liberation Army laundered money through convicted Clinton fund-raiser Trie (who, it turns out, drove around Beijing in a PLA-issue car).
Citing FBI interviews, the story also revealed Trie sought "fund-raising help" from the Chinese consulate in Houston right after Clinton told him he was running for president early last decade.
Did Clinton in fact meet with Trie back then? What did they talk about? Did he have any idea that his Arkansas friend was so tight with the communists in Beijing? No one bothered to ask.
If I get banned for asking tough questions about a deadly serious scandal (unlike the Lewinsky affair), what does that say about all those among the White House press corps who haven't been banned? Are they tossing up softballs?
"I've been all around this country, and you are the first person to ask me about (Chinagate)," Clinton claimed. "Not one person has brought that up."
Maybe no one among the media elite. But average Americans have. Surely, Clinton's heard or seen the placard-waving citizens who for months have been protesting his blind appeasement of China at the north entrance to the White House. Many of them are tied to FreeRepublic.com, (http://alamo-girl.com/treason.htm ) ( http://alamo-girl.com/ ) which has built a compelling chronology of the Chinagate scandal.
Investor's Business Daily got more than 1,100 e-mails and letters and hundreds of phone calls from readers. All but one were supportive (the lone dissenting voice wished I'd asked about the homeless). And most demanded more answers about Chinagate. Here is a sample:
"When President Clinton said Mr. Sperry was the first person to ask about the Chinese campaign finance scandal, he showed just how badly the American people are being under-served by the media," said T. Downs of Neptune Beach, Fla. "We Americans really would like to know what went on in the Chinese funny-money scandal."
Wrote Wendy Jacques of Farmington Hills, Mich.: "I read what happened to you when the president did not wish to answer your factually-based question regarding the apparent cover-up by the Justice Department of the president's acceptance of illegal campaign donations and apparent compromise of our country's national security in exchange for those donations. I admire you for asking an important question."
"Keep going after this China thing," said Jerry Hatch of Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Christopher Sivley of Decatur, Ala., said: "If the president took illegal money from the Chinese in exchange for U.S. technology, then he is guilty of treason. It's about time the press started ... asking real questions."
"Thank you for your courage in asking the president to explain to the people of the United States why he sold our secrets and weapons technology to the Chinese for campaign money," wrote Esther Nobrega, Nashua, N.H.
Patrick Giagnocavo e-mailed: "Please know that I, too, would like to see many more answers from the White House concerning the very serious, very detailed charges of what can only be called treason."
"I send my appreciation to Mr. Sperry for asking President Clinton about China and campaign finance," wrote Connie Ward of Pensacola, Fla. "I am disgusted by the president's response."
"Despite what Mr. Clinton says, the American people do want to know," said Michael McTaggart.
R. North responded: "About time somebody rattled his cage about a very important matter."
"Please thank Mr. Sperry for his courage in confronting the president with questions about the Chinese contributions to the DNC," Bill Bynum e-mailed. "The president hasn't heard those questions asked in his travels around the U.S. because he is shielded. But I guarantee there are people like me who want answers to them."
Michael Audette insisted: "I, for one, am very interested in his connections with the People's Republic of China."
"It's about time the news media stopped giving Clinton a pass," wrote R.H. Langill of Plainfield, N.H. "The selling of policy for Chinese money in 1996 and probably earlier should be completely aired."
"Paul Sperry is to be congratulated for his efforts. He is asking what many Americans want to know," said J.A. Brady of Mashpee, Mass. "I hope that other reporters will also ask President Clinton for more details about his involvement. Clinton has never been held accountable for his part in those fund-raising activities due to the stonewalling of Attorney General Janet Reno. Please continue to press for answers."
Bo Mosley of Honolulu wrote: "The China fund-raising scandal has burned me to the core, and I am pleased to see that some inside the Beltway are just as concerned as I am."
"Someone has to have the guts to ask some of these questions," said Steve Tronnes of Edgerton, Wis. "If there wasn't anything to any of these allegations, then the president would not have gone ballistic."
Excellent point, but one apparently lost on my normally hard-boiled colleagues. They seem more interested in currying favor with this White House and maintaining their good standing in the Washington tail class than ferreting out the truth for the American people and holding the president accountable for sending our national security to China in a handbasket.
The press corps should be ashamed that a single reporter was able to fire off as many, if not more, specific and tough questions at the president about Chinagate in 10 minutes than they've managed to do in the three years since this scandal broke. Did I pay a price in becoming the persona non grata of the Clinton White House? Yes, but I wear it as a badge of honor. I did my job. Now it's your turn.
Paul Sperry is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist, WND contributor and author of "Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington."
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=20765
"New photos of Clinton
blowing a gasket
Pics record notorious dust-up between then-prez and WND's Sperry
Posted: September 24, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Source WorldNetDaily.com
"Just in time for the fourth anniversary of WND Washington bureau chief Paul Sperry's celebrated confrontation with then-President Bill Clinton on the White House south lawn, WND has obtained new photos of the verbal brawl revealing a visibly upset chief executive getting in the face of the one reporter who dared to ask the tough questions.
Sperry, who at the time was Washington bureau chief for Investor's Business Daily, five months after the incident accepted an offer for the same position at WorldNetDaily. In one of his first WND stories, he documented his fiery impromptu debate with Clinton in a widely read account titled "My picnic with Bill."
 Clinton uses index finger in direction of Paul Sperry, right, to make a point. Janet Fallon is at left. |
It was Sept. 24, 1999, when Sperry attended a White House south lawn party for Washington reporters. The event would turn out to be his last White House visit, since the Clinton administration banned him from the grounds after he dared confront the president on his own turf.
Sperry set the stage in "My picnic with Bill":
This was hog's heaven for the cheap scribes who filed onto the White House grounds that Friday night in September for a Cajun party in their honor. What a spread. On red-checkered picnic tables spanning the length of the plush green lawn, beckoned trays of jambalaya, boudin and boiled shrimp.And the bars, under colorful tents, were stocked full of liquor. No kegs here. Black-tie-clad help poured your favorite libation from bottles. Forget Budweiser; they had Guinness Stout and other imported brews. Fine reds and whites, too, and highballs. All free.
Zydeco tunes skipped across the crowd of giddy guests. As the sunny day faded to dusk, the soft lights of the White House portico glowed behind us. Intoxicating. What a night.
But, for me, there was still something wrong with this party – namely, the host.
 Clinton asks for and takes Sperry's business card. |
Around 6 p.m., Clinton emerged from the White House to greet his guests. The president was dressed in an all black casual outfit, as Sperry described, "like a bad imitation of Johnny Cash."
As Clinton began working the crowd of reporters, Sperry asked the president a simple question – one that set off a 10-minute confrontation the reporter recalls as "nothing short of a 'scene.'" The question: When would he hold his next formal press conference?
Clinton barked back, "Why?" and the bout began:
"Because the American people have a lot of unanswered questions," I replied, struggling to hold my bladder. At that point, he moved back down the rope, pulling up square in front of me, and demanded, "Like what?""Well, like illegal money from China and the campaign-finance scandal ..."
The party-goers collapsed in around us. I watched the blood rush to Clinton's gargantuan face as he launched into a tirade against ex-Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, the FBI, Bob Dole and Republicans in general. All the while, he tried to belittle me by making faces (to get a rise out of his fans) and intimidate me by getting in my face.
And now I can see how he can do that to people. Clinton's not just intellectually intimidating, he's physically imposing. He's tall (6-2) and big-boned.
Luckily, I'm the same height and was able to stand toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with him. I'll never forget the maniacal look in his bloodshot eyes. There was a moment, fleeting, where I sensed he wanted to try to take a swipe at me. I was getting full frontal Clinton. His volcanic temper, hidden so well from the public by his handlers, erupted less than 12 inches from my eyes.
 |
One of the event's attendees was Janet Fallon, a public-relations specialist who, ironically enough, had worked for Pat Buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign. Fallon stood just to the right of Clinton – a front-row seat for the dust-up. "..........
I've seen Powerline dissect inaccuracies printed by the New York Times and other media outlets. One thing you can say for them is they don't give up until all the facts come out.
Looks like Bill Clinton is getting the same attention. Remember these guys are attorneys so have built in antennae for BS snow jobs, concealing truth. First mistake was attempt at censorship which sent up a red flag. Second mistake was "purple faced rage" in the interview with Chris Wallace.
That purple faced rage will be seen as a reaction to someone calling him on something he's concealing as shown in the next article after this one I'm posting with verifiable time-lines of events, people, etc.
"Play it as it lies
The most striking feature of Bill Clinton's bloviations on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace yesterday was the incredibly low ratio of facts to whoppers. If Chris Wallace could prompt that red-faced response with such an innocuous question, I wonder if a few minutes with Richard Miniter (author of Losing bin Laden, interviewed by NRO here), might not send him to intensive care. I would love to hear Miniter ask Clinton a few questions about Clinton's treatment of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center -- an attack that Clinton shrugged off in a few paragraphs of his subsequent Saturday morning radio talk, never to return to the subject. (Miniter quotes the relevant paragraphs of the radio address at pages 28-30 of his book.)
Our friends at RealClearPolitics have posted a tough column by Ronald Cass begins to address Clinton's rewriting of the record."....................
Had to chase this down but knew I'd read it. It's correctly quoted and linked for reference.
By Dick Morris
Dear Hillary,
In your new book, Living History, you correctly note that when you asked me to help you and Bill avert defeat in the congressional election of 1994 I was reluctant to do so. But then you assert, incorrectly, that my reluctance stemmed from difficulties in working with your staff. You even misquote me as telling you: "I don't like the way I was treated, Hillary. People were so mean to me."
As you know, I never said anything of the sort. I had, in fact, no experience in dealing with either your staff or the President's at that point, and had not yet met Leon Panetta or George Stephanopoulos. My prior dealing with Harold Ickes had been twenty five years earlier.
The real reason I was reluctant was that Bill Clinton had tried to beat me up in May of 1990 as he, you, Gloria Cabe, and I were together in the Arkansas governor's mansion. At the time, Bill was worried that he was falling behind his democratic primary opponent and verbally assaulted me for not giving his campaign the time he felt it deserved. Offended by his harsh tone, I turned and stalked out of the room.
Bill ran after me, tackled me, threw me to the floor of the kitchen in the mansion and ed his fist back to punch me. You grabbed his arm and, yelling at him to stop and get control of himself, pulled him off me. Then you walked me around the grounds of the mansion in the minutes after, with your arm around me, saying, "He only does that to people he loves."
I continued to work for Bill since I felt a responsibility to do so until Election Day in 1990. But our relationship was never close and never the same. After the 1990 campaign we parted ways as a direct result of the altercation.
When the story threatened to surface during the 1992 campaign, you told me to "say it never happened."
That, and not the invented conversation in your memoir, was the reason that I was reluctant to work for Bill again.
Yours,
Dick Morris
- Dick Morris, an adviser to Bill Clinton for 20 years, is author, most recently, of Off with Their Heads : Traitors, Crooks & Obstructionists in American Politics, Media & Business.
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-morris061203.asp
"Bill Clinton’s Excuses
No matter what he says, the record shows he failed to act against terrorism.
By Byron York
National Review Online
....."But Clarke’s book does not, in fact, support Clinton’s claim. Judging by Clarke’s sympathetic account — as well as by the sympathetic accounts of other former Clinton aides like Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon — it’s not quite accurate to say that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden. Rather, he tried to convince — as opposed to, say, order — U.S. military and intelligence agencies to kill bin Laden. And when, on a number of occasions, those agencies refused to act, Clinton, the commander-in-chief, gave up."......
......"But the bottom line is that Bill Clinton, the commander-in-chief, could not find the will to order the military into action against al Qaeda, and Bill Clinton, the head of the executive branch, could not find the will to order the CIA and FBI to act. No matter what the former president says on Fox, or anywhere else, that is his legacy in the war on terror."
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDM4N2E1MzU5ZjQ0YTA3YmJiYzEyYjQ2ZDBiNWJlYjE=
Like I've said before slavery is STILL thrives in the Middle East. Saw this on another site a few days ago and found the follow up this morning.
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, September 18, 2006
WASHINGTON - U.S. relations with the United Arab Emirates could face another challenge amid a suit that charged the Gulf state's vice president with enslaving tens of thousands of children.
UAE Vice President Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum has been accused of enslaving about 30,000 children, some of them as young as two, since 1975.
The suit filed in U.S. district court in Miami charged that Al Maktoum, crown prince of Dubai, and his brother, Hamdan, ordered the stealing of the children to raise them as camel jockeys, Middle East Newsline reported.
"Boys as young as two years old have been stolen from their families, trafficked across international borders, and kept in brutal camel-racing camps throughout the United Arab Emirates, forced to train camels and perform as jockeys," the suit said.
The 56-page suit, filed on Sept. 13, could test the U.S. commitment to end human trafficking. The UAE, a leading defense client of the United States, has been cited as a major violator of human trafficking.
The Al Maktoums have property in Florida, including a horse ranch. The Dubai crown prince has not responded to the suit.
The six plaintiffs in the case have not been identified, but were said to be parents of children stolen by the UAE leaders. The suit said agents for Al Maktoum took young boys from such countries as Bangladesh and Sudan and transferred them to Dubai where they were forced to train camels and perform as jockeys.
The suit does not ask for specific compensation for the victims. Instead, the plaintiffs called for a jury to determine the damages.
"We hope to punish the perpetrators of these vile crimes and compensate the victims for their pain and suffering," Ron Motley, an attorney with the South Carolina-based law firm Motley Rice LLC, said. "
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/06/front2453996.452777778.html
"Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum and Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum
"A lawsuit has been filed and is seeking class action status against several rulers of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for allegedly enslaving tens of thousands of boys over the past three decades. The boys were allegedly forced to work as jockeys in the popular sport of camel racing. The lawsuit alleges Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai, and Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al Maktoum, the deputy ruler, were the most active perpetrators. The lawsuit claimed the boys were taken largely from Bangladesh and Pakistan, were held at desert camps in the UAE and other Persian Gulf nations, and forced to work. It also claimed some boys were sexually abused, given limited food and sleep and injected with hormones to prevent their growth.
Register your Camel Racing Complaint
If you or a loved one has suffered damages in this case, you may qualify for damages or remedies that may be awarded in a possible class action or lawsuit. Please click the link below to submit your complaint to a lawyer for a free evaluation, or call 1-866-886-5529 toll free."
http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/case/camel_racing_slave.html?ref=newsletter_bca_camel_racing_slave
Via Powerling The Anchoress blog's assessment of Chavez. He and Ahmadinejad have taken their clue and followed suit by repeating what Dem leaders their watering holes and MSM have encouraged for 6 years.
Since it just bit them on the behind but good, perhaps they can muster some shame for having wallowed in street trash coarseness.
But maybe some on the left finally understand that while they’ve been having fun and laughing while calling President Bush every manner of ugly name and insult, dangerous people have been watching. And they have made a calculation: We can disrespect Bush and America will laugh with us. Bush is weak. America is once again the appeasing “weak horse” it was throughout the 1990’s and even before…when we could attack anything and be accountable to no one.
I’m sure Hugo, once he left the guffawing chamber of hyenas at the UN, was shocked to discover that most Americans were not laughing, that even some Democrats were not.
And I’m sure some Democrats were shocked to see just how ugly their words sounded, when coming out of the mouth of someone else, someone with “no right,” to spew hate for political expediency.
There are some on the left who are suggesting that Hugo Chavez’s remarks are simply an indicator that the world “disrespects” President Bush…well…I wonder who gave them the idea that they could? Was it John Kerry calling him a “***king liar,” and not having to answer for that rudeness to anyone while the press shrugged it off? Good heavens, Bush calls terrorism “evil” and he was mocked and criticized for using that word, but the press never had a problem with “***king liar, ***king crooks and thieves” or with adolescent musings about the president’s name and female genitalia. It was alllllll soooooo funnnnneeeeeee, newsreaders could hardly deliver the spite without grinning, themselves.
Let me tell you, I didn’t see “disrespect” at the UN while President Bush was speaking…while he was speaking he was accorded that dubious body’s full and complete attention, and like it or not, nothing he said was disregarded, because the world knows he means what he says. They may not like him, but they respect him. And if they don’t respect him, they fear him just enough to pretend. Which frankly I prefer to a president they all “love” but don’t respect or fear, one who plays games.
But if Bush is being disrespected, then the Democrats need to look to themselves and their actions and understand how complicit they have been in encouraging it. Dems like Charlie Rangel, who called President Bush “Bull Connor,” knowing full well how wrong, inaccurate, unfair and inflammatory that was, or like the idiots who called Bush “a genocidal racist” after Hurricane Katrina, or like the party (and the press) who spent years telling America about Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction only to later pretend they never said such things, and to pretend further that somehow Bush’s believing the same things they believed…made him a liar.
The Democrats alleged something that disingenuous - that what they believed was true was suddenly not only false but one man’s lie - and the press let them do it.
The press repeated it, ad nauseam, and the press and the Dems promoted films with that message, and books, until that damnable, transparent and nonsensical lie was repeated enough…because everyone knows that if you tell a big lie enough, it becomes “the truth.”
If tinpot tyrants and madmen now come to the United Nations and believe they can say anything they wish about The American President, it is because - as some of us have been warning, for some time - while all manner or irresponsible nonsense and hate has been directed at this president…the world has been watching.
And now, these tyrants and madmen sound eerily like the Democrats and the press and the left. One ideology, the world over, had completely lost its bearings, its self-control and its manners concerning one man who has never - not once -repaid them back in kind. Not in speeches. Not to the press. Not to “friendly audiences.” He came to town talking about “changing the tone,” and that’s what happened, in a perverse way. One side’s tone went rabid, the other side went nearly-silent, but this one man…kept his tone."...............
Found a pic of Chavez in his new car. 
"Venezuela was the fourth-largest crude oil supplier to the U.S. last June, ." .... ... and we owe a debt of gratitude to the "greens" for hamstringing domestic drilling, refinery expansion thereby subjecting us to the whims of this tiny little despot seated above.
Just maybe the UN will move to Venezeula and a more meaningful, effective world organization can be formed.
"Chavez Wants to Reboot UN
Wow what posturing from the party who invited the world to foist insults onto a seated president during wartime, never miss an opportunity to grandstand when it suits their agenda.
Way too little ..... way too late .... totally unbelievable dog and pony show.
A clash of old against new, the old accustomed to ruling in darkness because it's been able to do so for 1500 years or more.
However, considering the amount of spiritual light or enlightenment that has poured onto the planet since the Harmonic Convergence in 1987, no wonder dark elements are fighting for their very lives. It's evident even here in the US.
They'll lose, light always prevails over darkness especially now that the balance is changed.
"The Pope and Kissinger Warn the World
September 20, 2006
By Tony Blankley
Washington Times
There is an historically fairly predictable pattern to the unfolding strategies and views of great wars. They often start with a morally ambiguous view of the enemy, a more limited conception of the war's magnitude and a restrained application of violent tactics.
Eventually, moral clarity is obtained, war objectives expand - often to grandiosity, and tactics become ferocious. For example at the start of our Civil War in 1861 at the Battle of First Manassas, spectators came out by carriage with picnic lunches to observe the event. By 1865, Gen. Sherman executed a campaign of civilian terror and material obliteration in his march to the sea. Likewise, the war started with the purpose of saving the union, but morally expanded to end slavery - north and south.
World War II started out in Europe first with the phony war and mutual thoughts of a negotiated peace, then with careful bombing (Hitler initially ordered that London not be bombed) and ended with the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo and the atomic obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even during his war on the Jews, as late as 1940, Hitler was thinking of deporting German Jews to Madagascar, and ended in rounding up Jews throughout Europe and perpetrating genocide in industrially designed death camps (although some historians believe the Madagascar plan may always have been a subterfuge for the Final Solution.)
Today, the West's struggle to resist radical Islamic aggression (both cultural and terroristic) is still in that early phase of moral confusion and limited tactics. Thus we continue to debate the ethical merits of minor intrusions into American civil liberties (such as NSA surveillance of some phone calls from foreign suspects), and even serious and patriotic men such as Sen. John McCain and Gen. Colin Powell challenge the need to permit psychologically rough - but nonviolent - interrogation of captured terrorists.
But there are some signs that the early stage of moral confusion is beginning to give way to greater clarity. Last week, two towering intellects - Pope Benedict XVI and Henry Kissinger - began to offer clarity. On Tuesday the pope gave his now famous, but still misunderstood, lecture at the University of Regensburg, and on WednesdayMr. Kissinger published in The Washington Post a half page seminal article on the risk of civilizational war.
Any fair and careful reading of the pope's lecture must conclude that it was not an inadvertent insult to Islam. Rather it was a firm assertion that the Judeo-Christian God acts in accordance with reason (In the beginning was the logos - word and reason.), and thus Christians and Jews can undertake a rational debate about the morality of violence. He quotes, now famously, Emperor Manuel II's assertion in 1391 that Islam spreads its faith through violence - which, he says, is unreasonable and incompatible with the nature of God. He then cites an 11th-century Arab Muslim theologian, Ibn Hazn, who argued that Allah is transcendent of reason.
After criticizing secular Christians for not giving reason its proper place in understanding faith and God, he concludes his lecture by again quoting the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II on his same criticism of Islam. Then the pope finishes his lecture with the following words: "It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university."
In other words, he is inviting Islam to explain whether its God is like ours - inherently understandable by reason (and thus, is their God opposed to violence, as ours is?)
He was also, I strongly suspect, speaking to his own flock, both to return to proper Christianity and to consider the nature of Islam. And, I suspect, the pope did not inadvertently quote the now inflammatory passage. If he had not included that quote, the world would not now be debating his lecture. While the pope surely did not want to see violence, he just as surely wanted to engage the world in this vital search for clarity.
While not the pope, Mr. Kissinger is the world's premier practitioner and scholar of real politic. So, it is consequential that in his article last week he warned the world that "we are witnessing a carefully conceived assault, not isolated terrorist attacks, on the international system of respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity. The creation of organizations such as Hezbollah and al-Qaeda symbolizes the fact that transnational loyalties are replacing national ones. The driving force behind this challenge is the jihadist conviction that it is the existing order that is illegitimate."
He went on to warn that "The debate sparked by the Iraq war over American rashness vs. European escapism is dwarfed by what the world now faces...the common danger of a wider war merging into a war of civilizations against the backdrop of a nuclear-armed Middle East...We now know that we face the imperative of building a new world order or potential global catastrophe."
These are shocking words coming from the verbally impeccably careful diplomatist.
So, within 24 hours the pope raises the question whether Islam is inherently violent and unreasonable, while Henry Kissinger warns of a possibly emerging nuclear clash of civilizations.
Moral clarity, anyone?
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060919-091310-2934r.htm
http://www.stevequayle.com/News.alert/06_Global/060920.Pope.Kissinger.html?id=16966
What the MSM siding with terrorists ...................... Whoda thunkit?????
On April 12, I learned from military sources that an Associated Press photographer in Iraq, Fallujah native Bilal Hussein, had been captured in Ramadi in an apartment with insurgents and a cache of weapons. This was news. I asked the AP for confirmation. Corporate spokesman Jack Stokes informed me that company officials were "looking into reports that Mr. Hussein was detained by the U.S. military in Iraq but have no further details at this time." After reporting the alleged detention on my blog (michellemalkin.com/archives/005941.htm), I followed up several more times with AP over the past five months for status updates on Hussein. No reply.
On Sept. 17, the Associated Press finally acknowledged that Hussein was being detained. The AP's overdue revelation was likely part of an attempt to drum up sympathy for Hussein, who has made critical public statements against our troops in Fallujah, and undermine Bush administration interrogation efforts involving military detainees. The AP article not only confirmed Hussein's capture, it also revealed (buried deep in the story) that it knew of Hussein's capture from at least May 7 -- when it received an e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner revealing bombshell details:
"The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. 'He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces,' according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq."
In fact, the Pentagon said on Monday, after three separate independent reviews, the military had deemed Hussein a security threat with "strong ties to known insurgents . . . involved in activities that were well outside the scope of what you would expect a journalist to be doing in that country." Hussein "tested positive for traces of explosives."
Let me repeat that: An Associated (with terrorists) Press journalist gets caught with an alleged al Qaeda leader and tests positive for bomb-making materials. That. Is. News. How does a news organization explain away its decision to sit on it for five months? Like this: "The AP has worked quietly until now, believing that would be the best approach."
The best approach to journalism? No. The best approach to suppressing a damning connection to terrorists.
The mainstream media enjoys mocking bloggers as journalistic wannabes who don't do any "real" reporting and have no concern for the "public interest." But as in the case of the Reuters photo-faking debacle this summer, it is bloggers in their little home offices -- not the professionals on the ground thousands of miles away -- who smoked out a war story with profound national security implications. Well before I reported on Hussein's capture, military bloggers and media watchdog bloggers had raised persistent questions over the past two years about Hussein's relationship with terrorists in Iraq and whether his photos were staged in collusion with our enemies. (For a thorough overview, see http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/cat_bilal_hussein.php. ) ".................
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MichelleMalkin/2006/09/20/the_associated_with_terrorists_press
Posted this a few weeks ago ...... link was bad after a few days. Back up, running and worth time investment to watch. For anyone who ever thought Muslim extremists could ever be reasoned with this may shed some light as to their mindset.
They blame everyone and everthing but themselves.
No wonder the press reports pro-terrorist ... whoda thunk it?????? Permalink to discussion at the bottom.
My last post has established that al Qaida and the like are descended from Hitler's Nazis, also one article I posted said bin Laden was intent on "ethnic cleansing" so I'm not sure what it's going to take to convince some how serious their threat is.
These two articles are likely the intelligence President Bush was referring to in his latest speech because he was stressing the point that YES they do want to kill us, and YES they're planning another attack.
BTW, I use World Net Daily quite frequently for intelligence articles because Joseph Farah who owns WND also has an intelligence bulletin, G-2 which has been pretty accurate.
Live links.
Posted: September 17, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Source WorldNetDaily.com
"The new al-Qaida field commander in Afghanistan is calling for Muslims to leave the U.S. – particularly Washington and New York – in anticipation of a major terror attack to rival Sept. 11, according to an interview by a Pakistani journalist.
Abu Dawood told Hamid Mir, a reporter who has covered al-Qaida and met with Osama bin Laden, the attack is being coordinated by Adnan el-Shukrijumah and suggests it may involve some form of weapon of mass destruction smuggled across the Mexican border.
"Our brothers are ready to attack inside America. We will breach their security again," he is quoted as saying. "There is no timeframe for our attack inside America; we can do it any time."
As WND has previously reported, el-Shukrijumah is a trained nuclear technician and accomplished pilot who has been singled out by bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to serve as the field commander for the next terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
The terrorist was last seen in Mexico, where, on Nov. 1, 2004, he allegedly hijacked a Piper PA Pawnee cropduster from Ejido Queretaro near Mexicali to transport a nuclear weapon and nuclear equipment into the U.S., according to Paul Williams, a former FBI consultant and author of "The Dunces of Doomsday."
"He is an American and a friend of Muhammad Atta, who led 9/11 attacks five years ago," said Dawood. "We call him 'Jaffer al Tayyar' (Jafer the Pilot); he is very brave and intelligent. (President) Bush is aware that brother Adnan has smuggled deadly materials inside America from the Mexican border. Bush is silent about him, because he doesn’t want to panic his people. Sheikh Osama bin Laden has completed his cycle of warnings. You know, he is man of his words, he is not a politician; he always does what he says. If he said it many times that Americans will see new attacks, they will definitely see new attacks. He is a real mujahid. Americans will not win this war, which they have started against Muslims. Americans are the biggest supporters of the biggest terrorist in the world, which is Israel."
Dawood said he was currently conducting operations in Afghanistan under the leadership of the Taliban. He warned of a series of upcoming suicide bombings there directed against government and coalition forces during Ramadan.
He is also quoted as saying the next attack in America will not be conducted by people like Atta.
"We have a different plan for the next attack," he told Mir. "You will see. Americans will hardly find out any Muslim names, after the next attack. Most of our brothers are living in Western countries, with Jewish and Christian names, with passports of Western countries. This time, someone with the name of Mohamed Atta will not attack inside America, it would be some David, Richard or Peter."
He said there will be another audio message from bin Laden aired within the next two weeks.
Mir reportedly interviewed Dawood Sept. 12 at the tomb of Sultan Mehmud Ghaznawi on the outskirts of Kabul. Dawood and the al-Qaida leaders who accompanied him were clean-shaven and dressed as Western reporters. The al-Qaida commander had contacted Mir by cell phone to arrange the meeting.
"You have witnessed the brutality of the Israelis in the recent 34-day war against Lebanese civilians," said Dawood. "9/11 was a revenge of Palestinian children, killed by the U.S.-made weapons, supplied to Israel. The next attack on America would be a revenge of Lebanese children killed by U.S.-made cluster bombs. Bush and (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair are the Crusaders, and Muslim leaders, like (Pakistani President Pervez) Musharraf and (Afghani President Hamid) Karzai are their collaborators. We will teach a lesson to all of them."
El-Shukrijumah was born in Guyana Aug. 4, 1975 – the firstborn of Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, a 44-year-old radical Muslim cleric, and his 16-year-old wife. In 1985, Gulshair migrated to the United States, where he assumed duties as the imam of the Farouq Mosque in Brooklyn.
The mosque, located at 554 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, has served as a hive for terrorist activities. It has raised millions for the jihad and has served as a recruiting station for al-Qaida. Many of the planners of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, including blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, were prominent members of this notorious "house of worship."
In 1995, the Shukrijumah family relocated to Miramar, Fla., where Gulshair became the spiritual leader of the radical Masjid al-Hijah Mosque, and where Adnan became friends with Jose Padilla, who planned to detonate a radiological bomb in midtown Manhattan; Mandhai Jokhan, who was convicted of attempting to blow up nuclear power plants in southern Florida; and a group of other home-grown terrorists.
Adnan Shukrijumah attended flight schools in Florida and Norman, Oklahoma, along with Mohammad Atta and the other 9/11 operatives, and he became a highly skilled commercial jet pilot, although he, like Atta and the other terrorists, never applied for a license with the Federal Aviation Commission.
In April 2001, Shukrijumah spent 10 days in Panama, where he reportedly met with al-Qaida officials to assist in the planning of 9/11. He also traveled to Trinidad and Guyana, where virulent al-Qaida cells have been established. The following month, he obtained an associate's degree in computer engineering from Broward Community College.
During this time, he managed to get passports from Guyana, Trinidad, Saudi Arabia, Canada and the United States, according to Williams. He also began to adopt a number of aliases, including Abu Arifi, Jafar al-Tayyar, Jaafar At Yayyar, Ja'far al-Tayar, and Mohammed Sher Mohammed Khan (the name that appeared on his official FBI file). He traveled to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where he met with Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and other members of the al-Qaida high command. He also spent considerable time within al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan, where he received training in explosives and special operations.
Following 9/11, el-Shukrijumah was reportedly singled out by bin Laden and al-Zawahiri to spearhead the next great attack on America. One plan was for a nuclear attack that would take place simultaneously in seven U.S. cities, leaving millions dead and the richest and most powerful nation on earth in ashes.
"Muslims should leave America," said Dawood. "We cannot stop our attack just because of the American Muslims; they must realize that American forces are killing innocent Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq; we have the right to respond back, in the same manner, in the enemy's homeland. The American Muslims are like a human shield for our enemy; they must leave New York and Washington."
"I am saying that Muslims must leave America, but we can attack America anytime," he said. "Our cycle of warnings has been completed, now we have fresh edicts from some prominent Muslim scholars to destroy our enemy, this is our defending of Jihad; the enemy has entered in our homes and we have the right to enter in their homes, they are killing us, we will kill them."
http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52018
________________________
Osama's biographer says nukes in U.S.
Border used to smuggle WMDs inside America, says source
Posted: May 24, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Source WorldNetDaily.com
"Al-Qaida has smuggled tactical nuclear weapons and uranium into the U.S. across the Mexican border and is planning to launch a major terrorist attack using a combination of nukes and dirty nukes, according to an interview with Osama bin Laden's biographer, Hamid Mir, in WorldThreats.com.
The information confirms reports previously published in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin and in a new book by Paul L. Williams, "Dunces of Doomsday."
"I came up with this conclusion after eight years of investigation and research in the remote mountain areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I traveled to Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Uzbekistan and Russia and met dozens of people," Mir said. "I interviewed not only al-Qaida operatives but met scientists and top U.S. officials also. I will have the details in my coming book. At least two al-Qaida operatives claimed that the organization smuggled suitcase nukes inside America. But I have no details on who did it. But I do have details about who smuggled uranium inside America and how."
Mir claims his information is based not only on what al-Qaida operatives, including bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, told him, but also upon his own independent research as a journalist. Mir says his upcoming book, a biography of bin Laden, will disclose al-Qaida's nuclear attack plans.
"As far as I know, they smuggled three suitcase nukes from Russia to Europe," Mir says about al-Qaida. "They smuggled many kilos of enriched uranium inside America for their dirty bomb projects. They said in 1999 that they must have material for more than six dirty bombs in America. They tested at least one dirty bomb in the Kunar province of Afghanistan in 2000. They have planned an attack bigger than 9-11, even before 9-11 happened. Osama bin Laden trained 42 fighters to destroy the American economy and military might. Nineteen were used on 9-11, 23 are still 'sleeping' inside America waiting for a wake-up call from bin Laden."
Mir said al-Qaida operatives told him that tactical nuclear weapons were smuggled over the Mexican border before Sept. 11, 2001.
Mir said again he believes al-Qaida may use its nuclear arsenal after the U.S. attacks Iran in an effort to stop its nuclear weapons program.
"This is my opinion," he says. "No al-Qaida leader has ever admitted that they are working with Iran. I also think that, maybe, the Iranians will organize some attacks inside America and you will accuse al-Qaida."
Asked why al-Qaida hasn't used nuclear weapons it already possesses, Mir said: "They are waiting for the proper time. They want the U.S. to be involved in a mass killing of Muslims, so that they will have some justification. That is what I was told by a top al-Qaida leader in the Kunar Mountains of Afghanistan."
Mir made similar comments in an earlier interview with G2 Bulletin.
Hamid Mir's credibility skyrocketed when he accurately predicted in G2 Bulletin last month the imminent release of a new recorded communiqué from bin Laden through al-Jazeera, the Arabic TV network. Two days later, bin Laden's tape was the focus of international news coverage.
"If you think that my information and analysis about bin Laden's location is correct," said Mir, "then please don't underestimate my analysis about his nuclear threat also."
If it bleeds it leads. Hope 
she ejoys the spike in ratings.
"CNN talk show reaches a new depth of sleaze
Friday, September 15, 2006
But Grace wasn't satisfied with suspicion. She wanted to solve the case right there in front of a coast-to-coast television audience.
"Why are you not telling us where you were?'' Grace demanded, pounding the table. "Miss Duckett, you are not telling us for a reason. What is the reason?''
As the woman stumbled over her words, trying to come up with answers, a small yellow text box appeared at the bottom of the screen: "SINCE SHOW TAPING," it read, "BODY OF MELINDA DUCKETT FOUND AT GRANDPARENTS' HOME.''
That's right. Grace was interviewing a dead woman. Just hours before the taped interview aired last Friday, Duckett committed suicide at her grandparents' house.
Given the circumstances, Grace's grandstanding, badgering interview was bad enough. But the idea that her producers at CNN elected to go ahead and run the interview, even though they knew Duckett had killed herself, has veterans of television news shaking their heads.
"Look, Nancy Grace does what she does. She's an act,'' said Judy Muller, an Emmy-winning former ABC correspondent who now teaches at USC. "But to go ahead and air it -- that's despicable.''
The incident has rekindled the running debate about the ethics and the future of cable television news. Once, the idea of a network like CNN was all news, all the time. But now the cable news outlets seem to be staging a modern version of the Roman circus, and the louder the better.
"The truth of the matter is television has slowly changed as time has gone on,'' says Richard Wald, a former ethical standards director for ABC News who is a professor at Columbia University. "What started out as a conservative medium has become much more powerfully in your face.''
That's for sure.
Grace, a former prosecutor in Atlanta, made her television reputation by being louder and more aggressive than anyone else. She bills her show as "television's only justice themed/interview/debate show."
The scolding she gave Duckett was nothing unusual for her evening show. Viewers tune in to watch her grill guests. And she was anything but apologetic on Monday night when her show returned after the furor over Duckett's death hit over the weekend.
When one viewer called in to ask on the air whether Grace was worried she "might have somehow pushed her over the edge or contributed to her suicide,'' the anchor was unrepentant.
"I do not feel that our show is to blame for what happened to Melinda Duckett,'' she replied. "The truth is not always nice or polite or easy to go down. Sometimes it's harsh, and it hurts.''
Well, that's one way of putting it. Another would be that, with a crowded field of cable talk shows, from Fox to MSNBC to CNN to Court TV, it isn't easy to grab ratings unless you are the loudest and the most controversial. From JonBenet Ramsey to Scott Peterson, sensational crime stories draw viewers.
The idea is to cover the crimes, particularly murders, exhaustively, but make it seem as if it is a kind of public service. That's why, CNN Headline News explained, it went ahead and aired the interview even after Duckett killed herself.
Network spokeswoman Janine Iamunno provided us with the following statement on Thursday:
"We received the news of Ms. Duckett's death shortly before our special on Trenton's disappearance went to air. While we were saddened to hear of this development, our original goal in doing the special was to bring attention to this case, in the hopes of helping find Trenton Duckett. We decided to air the show, including a graphic announcing the news about Ms. Duckett, in keeping with that goal, and we will continue to cover the story until Trenton is found.''
See? They're actually helping with the investigation. And yet -- get this -- some spoilsports continue to complain that this was a sleazy and cynical play for ratings.
"I am not sure anymore,'' says Muller. "I used to think there were standards, but I don't begin to understand how someone can do this. Nancy Grace has become a parody of herself.''
That may be, but she continues to attract attention, if not huge ratings. Her show generally runs second or third among cable news outlets at the 8 p.m. time slot, behind Bill O'Reilly on Fox and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. But Grace has a formula, and she's going to stick with it. Wald compares the sleaze to pornography.
"The whole world will tell you that porn is horrible,'' Wald says. "But it is a multimillion-dollar industry that flourishes quite happily.''
So is there any hope, any light at the end of the tunnel?
"Sure,'' Wald says. "It isn't the light at the end of the tunnel, it is life. Someone will do something so egregious that it will become beneath our dignity and we won't watch. And it will change.''
And could this be that moment?
"Not even close,'' Wald says."................
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/15/MNGSAL67FH1.DTL
Came in email this morning. Interesting numbers.
Probably the most encouraging news in this vote was to see 64 Democrats vote for the fence.
FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 446(Republicans in roman; Democrats in italic; Independents underlined)
H R 6061 RECORDED VOTE 14-Sep-2006 3:41 PM
QUESTION: On Passage
BILL TITLE: Secure Fence Act of 2006
| Ayes | Noes | PRES | NV | |
| Republican | 219 | 6 | 5 | |
| Democratic | 64 | 131 | 1 | 5 |
| Independent | 1 | |||
| TOTALS | 283 | 138 | 1 | 10 |
| Aderholt Akin Alexander Andrews Bachus Baird Baker Barrett (SC) Barrow Bartlett (MD) Barton (TX) Bass Bean Beauprez Berkley Berry Biggert Bilbray Bilirakis Bishop (GA) Bishop (NY) Bishop (UT) Blackburn Blunt Boehlert Boehner Bonilla Bonner Bono Boozman Boren Boswell Boucher Boustany Boyd Bradley (NH) Brady (TX) Brown (OH) Brown (SC) Brown, Corrine Brown-Waite, Ginny Burgess Burton (IN) Buyer Calvert Camp (MI) Campbell (CA) Cannon Cantor Capito Capuano Cardoza Carter Castle Chabot Chandler Chocola Coble Cole (OK) Cooper Costa Costello Cramer Crenshaw Cubin Davis (AL) Davis (KY) Davis (TN) Davis, Jo Ann Davis, Tom Deal (GA) DeFazio Delahunt Dent Doolittle Drake Dreier Duncan Edwards Ehlers Emerson English (PA) Etheridge Everett Feeney Ferguson Fitzpatrick (PA) Flake Foley Ford Fortenberry Fossella Foxx Frank (MA) Franks (AZ) | Frelinghuysen Gallegly Garrett (NJ) Gerlach Gibbons Gilchrest Gillmor Gingrey Gohmert Goode Goodlatte Gordon Granger Graves Green (WI) Gutknecht Hall Harris Hart Hastings (WA) Hayes Hayworth Hefley Hensarling Herger Herseth Hobson Hoekstra Holden Hooley Hostettler Hulshof Hunter Hyde Inglis (SC) Israel Issa Istook Jenkins Jindal Johnson (CT) Johnson (IL) Jones (NC) Kanjorski Kelly Kennedy (MN) Kildee Kind King (IA) King (NY) Kingston Kirk Kline Knollenberg Kuhl (NY) LaHood Latham LaTourette Leach Lewis (CA) Lewis (KY) Linder Lipinski LoBiondo Lucas Lungren, Daniel E. Lynch Mack Maloney Manzullo Marchant Marshall Matheson McCarthy McCaul (TX) McCotter McCrery McHenry McHugh McIntyre McKeon McMorris Rodgers Melancon Mica Miller (FL) Miller (MI) Miller (NC) Miller, Gary Mollohan Moore (KS) Moran (KS) Moran (VA) Murphy Musgrave Myrick | Neugebauer Northup Norwood Nunes Nussle Osborne Otter Oxley Pascrell Paul Pearce Pence Peterson (MN) Peterson (PA) Petri Pickering Pitts Platts Poe Pombo Pomeroy Porter Price (GA) Pryce (OH) Putnam Radanovich Rahall Ramstad Regula Rehberg Reichert Renzi Reynolds Rogers (AL) Rogers (KY) Rogers (MI) Rohrabacher Ross Royce Ruppersberger Ryan (OH) Ryan (WI) Ryun (KS) Saxton Schmidt Schwarz (MI) Sensenbrenner Sessions Shadegg Shaw Shays Sherwood Shimkus Shuster Simmons Simpson Skelton Smith (NJ) Smith (TX) Smith (WA) Sodrel Souder Spratt Stearns Stupak Sullivan Sweeney Tancredo Tanner Taylor (MS) Taylor (NC) Terry Thomas Thornberry Tiahrt Tiberi Turner Upton Walden (OR) Walsh Wamp Weiner Weldon (FL) Weldon (PA) Weller Westmoreland Wexler Whitfield Wicker Wilson (NM) Wilson (SC) Wolf Young (FL) |
| Abercrombie Ackerman Allen Baca Baldwin Becerra Berman Blumenauer Brady (PA) Butterfield Capps Cardin Carnahan Carson Clay Clyburn Conaway Conyers Crowley Cuellar Cummings Davis (CA) Davis (IL) DeGette DeLauro Diaz-Balart, L. Diaz-Balart, M. Dicks Dingell Doggett Doyle Emanuel Engel Eshoo Farr Fattah Filner Gonzalez Green, Al Green, Gene Grijalva Gutierrez Harman Hastings (FL) Higgins Hinchey | Hinojosa Holt Honda Hoyer Inslee Jackson (IL) Jackson-Lee (TX) Jefferson Johnson, E. B. Jones (OH) Kennedy (RI) Kilpatrick (MI) Kolbe Kucinich Langevin Lantos Larsen (WA) Larson (CT) Lee Levin Lewis (GA) Lofgren, Zoe Lowey Markey Matsui McCollum (MN) McDermott McGovern McKinney McNulty Meehan Meek (FL) Meeks (NY) Michaud Millender-McDonald Miller, George Moore (WI) Murtha Nadler Napolitano Neal (MA) Oberstar Obey Olver Ortiz Owens | Pallone Pastor Payne Pelosi Price (NC) Rangel Reyes Ros-Lehtinen Rothman Roybal-Allard Rush Sabo Salazar Sánchez, Linda T. Sanchez, Loretta Sanders Schakowsky Schiff Schwartz (PA) Scott (GA) Scott (VA) Serrano Sherman Slaughter Snyder Solis Stark Tauscher Thompson (CA) Thompson (MS) Tierney Towns Udall (CO) Udall (NM) Van Hollen Velázquez Visclosky Wasserman Schultz Waters Watson Watt Waxman Woolsey Wu Wynn Young (AK) |
| Kaptur |
| Case Cleaver Culberson Davis (FL) | Evans Forbes Johnson, Sam Keller | Ney Strickland |
Sahara Desert.
THE #1 Site For Real-time Immigration Statistics |
| Finally, one site that finds the totals for you. ImmigrationCounters.com provides a single source of totals on the most pressing categories resulting from illegal immigration in America. Using the latest government and private organizational sources available, research and analysis trending data is factored at their individual rates of increase. For more information about the research behind this site, click here - DATA SOURCES. This site supports legal immigration and the human rights of all, yet highlights the significant weight of illegal immigration as a result of poor governmental controls. |
This is one of the best arguments for "FAIR Tax" a consumption tax which directly taxes the most wealthy individuals and luxury ... sometimes outlandish.... items they do purchase. FAIR Tax eliminates all federal payroll taxes and allows you to bring home all you've earned to spend it as you choose. No tax below the poverty line.
"The Grand Tax Illusion
By Tim Worstall
Source: TechCentralStationDaily
"You will have seen, around and about, a lot being said about how the current recovery just isn't feeding through to the average man and woman out there. Wages don't seem to be rising; in fact, Paul Krugman recently made the astonishing claim that they haven't risen for the average man, per hour, since 1973. Rather than rootling around in Census Bureau data to show the inanity of this claim (largely because neither you nor I desire a simple rehash of something I wrote here back in January) I thought I'd try and offer something constructive. A solution if you wish, offered with humility.
Let us put ourselves into the position of those complaining. Wages should rise -- a noble goal. How, exactly, are we to achieve this? By what mechanism are we going to reshuffle the current distribution of income so that more flows into the moth-eaten wallets of the hardworking US citizens? Simple:
Abolish the Corporate Income Tax.
I know, I know, you're aghast at the idea that corporations won't be paying their fair share, that somehow they'll be getting away with something. In fact, they'll be getting away with precisely nothing. For, you see, corporations don't actually pay taxes. Only people pay taxes. This is an idea called "tax incidence". It means that people we think aren't being taxed are in fact coughing up the dough demanded by a specific impost.
Think of it this way. The money withheld from your paycheck for FICA and income taxes is in fact paid over to the IRS by the corporation that cuts your very paycheck, is it not? But no one thinks that it is the corporation actually paying those taxes, despite their name being on said check. Things become a little greyer with the corporations's own FICA payments for the joy and pleasure of employing you. Whether all of this comes from lower wages paid to you or whether at least some of it (but definitely not all of it) comes from the profits of the company depends on a few inelasticities which we'll not trouble ourselves to go into right now.
Yet we have established at least one point: whose name is on the check paying the taxes does not necessarily coincide with who is actually paying the taxes, yes? In the case of the corporate income tax we've also just been told who it is that really pays it and no, it isn't the company. Some of it is paid by the investors in the company, in the form of lower dividends or returns on their investment. But as a working paper from the Congressional Budget Office tells us:
"Burdens are measured in a numerical example by substituting factor shares and output shares that are reasonable for the U.S. economy. Given those values, domestic labor bears slightly more than 70 percent of the burden of the corporate income tax."
Now I do hope I don't have to point out that the CBO is in fact non-partisan, that they are the closest we get to an informed and non-ideologically driven examination of such matters?
There are other very good reasons for abolishing the corporate income tax, as this piece from Jane Galt a few years ago reminds us. One of the best is that it is hugely expensive to actually collect:
"The Corporate Income Tax brought in $204.9 billion in 1998. My tax professor (a Democrat) estimated the cost of corporate compliance in that year to be $300 billion. That's just the direct cost -- what corporations paid tax lawyers and accountants.
This labor is unproductive. It adds no new wealth to the economy; we are paying people simply to transfer money from one place to another, a net economic loss."
There are many alternative ideas about how we should best tax investment returns but the idea of abolshing this specific tax in order to stick it to the tax lawyers and accountants has its features, does it not? Plus, of course, we would be lifting a burden from the backs of the working people, for as our CBO report tells us, they in fact pay 70% of the tax through their receipt of lower wages.
As Wikipedia tells us, the corporate income tax is expected to raise $220.3 billion in fiscal year 2006. Abolition would mean that some $154 billion, 70% of that sum, would feed back in higher wages to the very working stiffs we all claim to be fighting for. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Given that this one tax raises some 10.1% of the federal budget, we would, by making this cut, in fact be returning 7% or so of that budget to precisely the group that our Democratic friends wish to aid: the workers.
It's extraordinarily difficult to see any one other thing in either the expenditure or revenue accounts of the federal budget that would in fact have an impact of anywhere near this sort of magnitude. So no doubt we'll be able to get them all on board to aid in taking this simple and obvious step? What's that? I'm insanely optimistic? Yes, I suppose I am, expecting anyone to be thinking about economic facts just two months before an election.
One final thought, there will be those who wonder how I would fill the revenue gap. No, I'll not make claims about the Laffer Curve, or increased dynamism, nor identify specific programs that should be cut, for after all, it is only 10% of federal revenue.
As O'Rourke's Law of Circumcision points out, you can take 10% off the top of absolutely anything.
Tim Worstall is a TCS Daiy contributing writer living in Europe."
Photo link found on another site.
Headlined story is in second section below with bold emphasis added being mine.
First section from Powerline. Generally if they pick up something you can consider it having legs and won't go away.
"Did the Dems Threaten ABC?
"There is no doubt about the fact that the terrorist menace grew and became increasingly obvious during the Clinton administration. To note just a few highlights: ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents#1992 )
* January 25, 1993: Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani, fired an AK-47 into cars waiting at a stoplight in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia, killing two CIA employees.
* February 26, 1993: Islamic terrorists try to bring down the World Trade Center with car bombs. They failed to destroy the buildings, but killed 6 and injured over 1000 people.
* March 12, 1993: Car bombings in Mumbai, India leave 257 dead and 1,400 others injured.
* July 18, 1994: Bombing of Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 86 and wounds 300. The bombing is generally attributed to Hezbollah acting on behalf of Iran.
* July 19, 1994: Alas Chiricanas Flight 00901 is bombed, killing 21. Generally attributed to Hezbollah.
* July 26, 1994: The Israeli Embassy is attacked in London, and a Jewish charity is also car-bombed, wounding 20. The attacks are attributed to Hezbollah.
* December 11, 1994: A bomb explodes on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman. It develops that Ramzi Yousef planted the bomb to test it for the larger terrorist attack he is planning.
* December 24, 1994: In a preview of September 11, Air France Flight 8969 is hijacked by Islamic terrorists who planned to crash the plane in Paris.
* January 6, 1995: Operation Bojinka, an Islamist plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean, is discovered on a laptop computer in a Manila, Philippines apartment by authorities after a fire occurred in the apartment. Noted terrorists including Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are involved in the plot.
* June 14—June 19, 1995: The Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, in which 105 civilians and 25 Russian troops were killed following an attack by Chechan Islamists.
* July—October, 1995: Bombings in France by Islamic terrorists led by Khaled Kelkal kill eight and injure more than 100.
* November 13, 1995: Bombing of OPM-SANG building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia kills 7
* November 19, 1995: Bombing of Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan kills 19.
* January 1996: In Kizlyar, 350 Chechen Islamists took 3,000 hostages in a hospital. The attempt to free them killed 65 civilians and soldiers.
* February 25 - March 4, 1996: A series of four suicide bombings in Israel leave 60 dead and 284 wounded within 10 days.
* June 11, 1996: A bomb explodes on a train traveling on the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line of the Moscow Metro, killing four and unjuring at least 12.
* June 25, 1996: The Khobar Towers bombing, carried out by Hezbollah with Iranian support. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed and 372 wounded.
* February 24, 1997: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from several countries. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".
* November 17, 1997: Massacre in Luxor, Egypt, in which Islamist gunmen attack tourists, killing 62 people.
* January 1998: Wandhama Massacre - 24 Kashmiri Pandits are massacred by Pakistan-backed Islamists in the city of Wandhama in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
* February 14, 1998: Bombings by Islamic Jihadi groups at an election rally in the Indian city of Coimbatore kill about 60 people.
* August 7, 1998: Al Qaeda bombs U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000.
* August 31 – September 22, 1998: Russian apartment bombings kill about 300 people, leading Russia into Second Chechen War.
* December 1998: Jordanian authorities foil a plot to bomb American and Israeli tourists in Jordan, and arrest 28 suspects as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.
* December 14, 1998: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States–Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.
* December 24, 1998: Indian Airlines Flight 814 from Kathmandu, Nepal to Delhi, India is hijacked by Islamic terrorists. One passenger is killed and some hostages are released. After negotiations between the Taliban and the Indian government, the last of the remaining hostages on board Flight 814 are released in exchange for release of 4 terrorists.
* January 2000: The last of the 2000 millennium attack plots fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.
* August 8, 2000: A bomb exploded at an underpass in Pushkin Square in Moscow, killing 11 people and wounding more than 90.
* August 17, 2000: Two bombs exploded in a shopping center in Riga, Latvia, injuring 35 people.
* October 12, 2000: AL Qaeda bombs USS Cole with explosive-laden speedboat, killing 17 US sailors and wounding 40, off the port coast of Aden, Yemen.
Between 1993 and 2000, everyone who was paying any attention knew that the threat from Islamic terrorism was grave and getting worse. The catastrophic losses that occurred on Septimeber 11, 2001, could just as easily have happened in 1993, when the first plot to destroy the World Trade Center was carried off successfully, but the terrorists had miscalculated the effect of their explosives, or in 1995, when the plot to destroy eleven American airplanes in flight was thwarted by counter-intelligence work in the Philippines. What did the Clinton administration do in response to this grave threat? Essentially nothing. Worse, Clinton tried to sweep the problem under the rug, lest it disrupt the surface calm and prosperity for which he was eager to claim credit.
However Path to 9/11 portrays the Clinton administration, it can be no worse than the reality.".........
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/015216.php
The fifth anniversary of the attacks on 9/11 has come and gone and Americans once again face the horrors surrounding this event and the ominous portent it conveyed. Yet, for some reason, one group of citizens has chosen to commemorate this solemn occasion by protesting an ABC miniseries documenting the history of this calamity.
Scheuer thinks Clarke is a risk-averse poseur who didn't do enough to fight bin Laden prior to September 11, 2001. At his breakfast with reporters, Scheuer said that on 10 separate occasions his unit, codename "Alec," provided key policymakers with information that could've lead to the killing or capture of Osama bin Laden. "In each of those 10 instances," Scheuer said, "the senior policymaker in charge, whether it was Sandy Berger, Richard Clarke, or George Tenet," resisted taking action, afraid it would result in collateral damage or a backlash on the Arab street. According to Scheuer, Clarke's story has changed in the time since.
A compound of about 80 concrete or mud-brick buildings surrounded by a 10-foot wall, Tarnak Farms was located in an isolated desert area on the outskirts of the Kandahar airport. CIA officers were able to map the entire site, identifying the houses that belonged to Bin Ladin’s wives and one where Bin Ladin himself was most likely to sleep. Working with the tribals, they drew up plans for the raid. They ran two complete rehearsals in the United States during the fall of 1997.
So much for Republicans blocking Clinton’s antiterror legislation. "
About the Writer: Noel Sheppard is a frequent contributor to The American Thinker. He is also contributing editor for the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters blog, and a contributing writer to its Business & Media Institute. Noel welcomes feedback at ....."
The old adage "Bush was holding it when it broke on 9-11" isn't working anymore now that dates, times, events and documented facts are spilling out.
Blaming Clinton ....... It's placing responsibility on the correct shoulders. 
"Clinton’s Loss? A Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez Source National Review Online |
 |
Richard Miniter is a Brussels-based investigative journalist. His new book, has just been released by Regnery. He spoke to NRO early today about the run-up to the war on terror.
|
Kathryn Jean Lopez: What did the Clinton administration know about Osama bin Laden and when did they know it?
Richard Miniter: One of the big myths about the Clinton years is that no one knew about bin Laden until Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, the bin Laden threat was recognized at the highest levels of the Clinton administration as early as 1993. What's more, bin Laden's attacks kept escalating throughout the Clinton administration; all told bin Laden was responsible for the deaths of 59 Americans on Clinton's watch.
President Clinton learned about bin Laden within months of being sworn into office. National Security Advisor Anthony Lake told me that he first heard the name Osama bin Laden in 1993 in relation to the World Trade Center attack. Lake briefed the president about bin Laden that same year.
In addition, starting in 1993, Rep. Bill McCollum (R., Fla.) repeatedly wrote to President Clinton and warned him and other administration officials about bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists. McCollum was the founder and chairman of the House Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare and had developed a wealth of contacts among the mujihedeen in Afghanistan. Those sources, who regularly visited McCollum, informed him about bin Laden's training camps and evil ambitions.
Indeed, it is possible that Clinton and his national-security team learned of bin Laden even before the 1993 World Trade Center attack. My interviews and investigation revealed that bin Laden made his first attack on Americans was December 1992, a little more than a month after Clinton won the 1992 election. His target was 100 U.S. Marines housed in two towering Yemen hotels. Within hours, the CIA's counterterrorism center learned that the Yemen suspected a man named Osama bin Laden. (One of the arrested bombing suspects later escaped and was detained in a police sweep after al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in 2000.) Lake says he doesn't remember briefing the president-elect about the attempted attack, but that he well might have.
So it is safe to conclude that Clinton knew about the threat posed by bin Laden since 1993, his first year in office.
Lopez: What exactly was U.S. reaction to the attack on the USS Cole?
Miniter: In October 2000, al Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen. Seventeen sailors were killed in the blast. The USS Cole was almost sunk. In any ordinary administration, this would have been considered an act of war. After all, America entered the Spanish-American war and World War I when our ships were attacked.
Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke had ordered his staff to review existing intelligence in relation to the bombing of the USS Cole. After that review, he and Michael Sheehan, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, were convinced it was the work of Osama bin Laden. The Pentagon had on-the-shelf, regularly updated and detailed strike plans for bin Laden's training camps and strongholds in Afghanistan.
At a meeting with Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Attorney General Janet Reno, and other staffers, Clarke was the only one in favor of retaliation against bin Laden. Reno thought retaliation might violate international law and was therefore against it. Tenet wanted to more definitive proof that bin Laden was behind the attack, although he personally thought he was. Albright was concerned about the reaction of world opinion to a retaliation against Muslims, and the impact it would have in the final days of the Clinton Middle East peace process. Cohen, according to Clarke, did not consider the Cole attack "sufficient provocation" for a military retaliation. Michael Sheehan was particularly surprised that the Pentagon did not want to act. He told Clarke: "What's it going to take to get them to hit al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?"
Instead of destroying bin Laden's terrorist infrastructure and capabilities, President Clinton phoned twice phoned the president of Yemen demanding better cooperation between the FBI and the Yemeni security services. If Clarke's plan had been implemented, al Qaeda's infrastructure would have been demolished and bin Laden might well have been killed. Sept. 11, 2001 might have been just another sunny day.
Lopez: When the World Trade Center was first bombed in '93, why was it treated at first as a criminal investigation?
Miniter: The Clinton administration was in the dark about the full extent of the bin Laden menace because the president's decision to treat the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a crime. Once the FBI began a criminal investigation, it could not lawfully share its information with the CIA — without also having to share the same data with the accused terrorists. Woolsey told me about his frustration that he had less access to evidence from the World Trade Center bombing — the then-largest ever foreign terrorist attack on U.S soil — than any junior agent in the FBI's New York office.
Why did Clinton treat the attack as a law-enforcement matter? Several reasons. In the first few days, Clinton refused to believe that the towers had been bombed at all — even though the FBI made that determination within hours. He speculated a electrical transformer had exploded or a bank heist went bad.
More importantly, treating the bombing as a criminal matter was politically advantageous. A criminal matter is a relatively tidy process. It has the political benefit of insulating Clinton from consequences; after all, he was only following the law. He is not to blame if the terrorists were released on a "technicality" or if foreign nations refuse to honor our extradition requests. Oh well, he tried.
By contrast, if Clinton treated the bombing as the act of terrorism that it was, he would be assuming personal responsibility for a series of politically risky moves. Should he deploy the CIA or special forces to hunt down the perpetrators? What happens if the agents or soldiers die? What if they try to capture the terrorists and fail? One misstep and the media, Congress, and even the public might blame the president. So Clinton took the easy, safe way out, and called it a crime.
Lopez: Bill Clinton was actually offered bin Laden? Could you set the scene a little and clue us in on why, for heavens sakes, he would not take advantage of such opportunities?
Miniter: On March 3, 1996, U.S. ambassador to Sudan, Tim Carney, Director of East African Affairs at the State Department, David Shinn, and a member of the CIA's directorate of operations' Africa division met with Sudan's then-Minister of State for Defense Elfatih Erwa in a Rosslyn, Virginia hotel room. Item number two on the CIA's list of demands was to provide information about Osama bin Laden. Five days later, Erwa met with the CIA officer and offered more than information. He offered to arrest and turn over bin Laden himself. Two years earlier, the Sudan had turned over the infamous terrorist, Carlos the Jackal to the French. He now sits in a French prison. Sudan wanted to repeat that scenario with bin Laden in the starring role.
Clinton administration officials have offered various explanations for not taking the Sudanese offer. One argument is that an offer was never made. But the same officials are on the record as saying the offer was "not serious." Even a supposedly non-serious offer is an offer. Another argument is that the Sudanese had not come through on a prior request so this offer could not be trusted. But, as Ambassador Tim Carney had argued at the time, even if you believe that, why not call their bluff and ask for bin Laden?
The Clinton administration simply did not want the responsibility of taking Osama bin Laden into custody. Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger is on the record as saying: "The FBI did not believe we had enough evidence to indict bin Laden at that time and therefore opposed bringing him to the United States." Even if that was true — and it wasn't — the U.S. could have turned bin Laden over to Yemen or Libya, both of which had valid warrants for his arrest stemming from terrorist activities in those countries. Given the legal systems of those two countries, Osama would have soon ceased to be a threat to anyone.
After months of debating how to respond to the Sudanese offer, the Clinton administration simply asked Sudan to deport him. Where to? Ambassador Carney told me what he told the Sudanese: "Anywhere but Somalia."
In May 1996 bin Laden was welcomed into Afghanistan by the Taliban. It could not have been a better haven for Osama bin Laden.
Steven Simon, Clinton's counterterrorism director on the National Security Council thought that kicking bin Laden out of Sudan would benefit U.S. security since "It's going to take him a while to reconstitute, and that screws him up and buys time." Buys time? Oh yeah, 1996 was an election year and team Clinton did not want to deal with bin Laden until after it was safely reelected.
Lopez: This amazes me every time I hear it: You write, "When a small plane accidentally crashed into the White House lawn in 1994, West Wing staffers joked that it was [Jim] Woolsey trying to see the president..." How could the CIA director have that bad a relationship with his president? And this, after the first WTC attack. Did no one in the West Wing get it?
Miniter: Never once in his two-year tenure did CIA director James Woolsey ever have a one-on-one meeting with Clinton. Even semiprivate meetings were rare. They only happened twice. Woolsey told me: "It wasn't that I had a bad relationship with the president. It just didn't exist."
One of the little scoops in the book is the revelation that Clinton froze Woolsey out because the CIA director refused to put a friend of Bill on the agency's payroll. This account was confirmed by both Woolsey and the Clinton's consigliore Bruce Lindsey.
Considering the Justice Department's experience with Webster Hubbell, another Friend of Bill, Woolsey's decision may have done the CIA a great deal of good. But Clinton's pique did not make America any safer from bin Laden.
Another Clinton intelligence failure involved a refusal to help the CIA hire more Arabic language translators. In 1993, Woolsey learned that the agency was able to translate only 10 percent of its Arabic intercepts and badly wanted more translators. But Sen. Dennis DeConcini refused to approve the funds unless Clinton phoned him and said it was a presidential priority. Despite entreaties, Clinton never phoned the Democratic senator and the CIA didn't get those translators for years.
Lopez: In sum, how many times did Bill Clinton lose bin Laden?
Miniter: Here's a rundown. The Clinton administration:
1. Did not follow-up on the attempted bombing of Aden marines in Yemen.
2. Shut the CIA out of the 1993 WTC bombing investigation, hamstringing their effort to capture bin Laden.
3. Had Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key bin Laden lieutenant, slip through their fingers in Qatar.
4. Did not militarily react to the al Qaeda bombing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
5. Did not accept the Sudanese offer to turn bin Laden.
6. Did not follow-up on another offer from Sudan through a private back channel.
7. Objected to Northern Alliance efforts to assassinate bin Laden in Afghanistan.
8. Decided against using special forces to take down bin Laden in Afghanistan.
9. Did not take an opportunity to take into custody two al Qaeda operatives involved in the East African embassy bombings. In another little scoop, I am able to show that Sudan arrested these two terrorists and offered them to the FBI. The Clinton administration declined to pick them up and they were later allowed to return to Pakistan.
10. Ordered an ineffectual, token missile strike against a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory.
11. Clumsily tipped off Pakistani officials sympathetic to bin Laden before a planned missile strike against bin Laden on August 20, 1998. Bin Laden left the camp with only minutes to spare.
12-14. Three times, Clinton hesitated or deferred in ordering missile strikes against bin Laden in 1999 and 2000.
15. When they finally launched and armed the Predator spy drone plane, which captured amazing live video images of bin Laden, the Clinton administration no longer had military assets in place to strike the archterrorist.
16. Did not order a retaliatory strike on bin Laden for the murderous attack on the USS Cole.
Lopez: You sorta defend Clinton against "wag the dog" criticisms in regard to that infamous August 1998 (Monica times) bombing of a pharmaceutical factory in the Sudan and some bin Laden strongholds in Afghanistan. That wasn't the problem, was it — that we fired then?
Miniter: Certainly the timing is suspicious. The day before the East African-embassy bombings, Monica Lewinsky had recanted her prior affidavit denying a sexual relationship with Clinton. The sex scandals kicked into overdrive.
Still, the president wasn't doing too much in combating bin Laden because of his sex scandals — he was doing too little. He should have launched more missile strikes against bin Laden and the hell with the political timing. Besides, after the East African-embassy bombings, any president would have been negligent not to strike back. If he had not, it would be open season on Americans. He would have been as ineffectual as Carter was during the Tehran hostage crisis. Indeed, this was the mistake made following the attack on the USS Cole.
But Clinton was distracted by sex and campaign-finance scandals and his political support was already heavily leveraged to get him through those scandals. If he fought bin Laden more vigorously, the leftwing of the Democratic party might have deserted him — which could have cost him the White House.
Instead Clinton's token, ineffectual missile strikes that only emboldened bin Laden. He believed that America was too intimidated to fight back — and was free to plan one of the most-murderous terrorist attacks in history.
Lopez: How did George Tenet perform during the Clinton years vis-à-vis al Qaeda/bin Laden?
Miniter: Tenet seemed to take a too legalistic view of CIA operations. He was risk-averse, wanting almost absolute certainty before recommending action, focused on safeguards against error and unintended consequences. Tenet seemed more concerned with not getting in trouble rather than relentlessly pursuing results to safeguard Americans against terrorism, the focus of a warrior.
Each time U.S. intelligence pinpointed bin Laden, Tenet was against a missile strike on the grounds that the information was "single threaded" — a pet phrase of the director which means single source. The predator was armed and fitted with video cameras mostly to overcome Tenet's objections to taking out bin Laden.
Lopez: Madeline Albright — frequently called upon expert nowadays — what's her record vis-à-vis al Qaeda?
Miniter: Albright always insisted that diplomatic efforts would best yield results on bin Laden. Even after the Cole bombing, Albright urged continued diplomatic efforts with the Taliban to turn him over, even though that effort had been going on for two years with no progress. Two simple facts should have made Albright aware that the Taliban would never turn over bin Laden: Osama had married off one of his sons to Mullah Omar's daughter. The Taliban weren't about to surrender a member of the family — especially one that commanded thousands of armed fighters who helped maintain Omar's grip on power.
Lopez: What exactly is the Iraq-al Qaeda connection?
Miniter: Osama bin Laden's wealth is overestimated. He had been financially drained during his years in Sudan and financing terrorist operations in dozens of countries, including training camps, bribes, etc., requires a large, constant cash flow. Saddam Hussein was unquestionably a generous financier of terrorism. Baghdad had a long history of funding terrorist campaigns in the bin Laden-allied region that straddles Iran and Pakistan known as Beluchistan. Documents found in Baghdad in April 2003 showed that Saddam funded the Allied Democratic Forces, a Ugandan terror group led by an Islamist cleric linked to bin Laden since the 1990s. Saddam openly funded the Iraqi Kurdish Group and its leader, Melan Krekar, admitted that he met bin Laden in Afghanistan. George Tenet testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Iraq had provided training in forging documents and making bombs. Farouk Harazi, a senior officer in the Iraqi Mukhabarat reportedly offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq. Salah Suleiman, an Iraqi intelligence operative, was arrested in October 2000 near the Afghan border, apparently returning from a visit to bin Laden. One of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, Abdul Rahman Yasin, reportedly fled to Baghdad in 1994. Iraq ran an extensive intelligence hub in Khartoum; Sudanese intelligence officers told me about dozens of meeting between Iraqi Intel and bin Laden. Tellingly, reports that Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence agents in Prague several times in 2000 and 2001 have not been disproved. I have far more on this in Appendix A of Losing bin Laden.
Lopez: What most surprised you to learn about the Clinton years and terrorism?
Miniter: Three things:
1) That the Sept. 11 attacks were planned in May 1998 in the Khalden Camp in southeastern Afghanistan, according to American and British intelligence officers I interviewed. In other words, the 9/11 attacks were planned on Clinton's watch.
2) The sheer number of bin Laden's attacks on Americans during the Clinton years.
3) And how much senior Clinton-administration officials knew about bin Laden and how little they did about it.
Lopez: This sounds like this could all be right-wing propaganda. How can you convince readers otherwise?
Miniter: Most of my best sources were senior Clinton officials, including both of his national-security advisers, his first CIA director, Clinton's counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, Madeline Albright, and others. Plus, I interviewed scores of career federal officials. None of them are card-carrying members of the vast right-wing conspiracy.
And, while I shine the light on Clinton's shortcomings in dealing with bin Laden, I also give credit where it is due. Chapter nine is all about one of the greatest (and least-known) Clinton victories over bin Laden — the successful thwarting of a series of plots to murder thousands of Americans on Millennium night, 1999.
If anyone has any doubts about the credibility of this book, they should read the acknowledgements, which list many of my sources. Or peruse the more than 15,000 words of footnotes, that allow the reader to see exactly where information is coming from. Or examine the intelligence documents reproduced in Appendix B. Or pick a page at random and read it. Any fair-minded reader will see a carefully constructed and balanced account that attempts to lay out the history of Clinton and bin Laden."
http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/interrogatory091103b.asp
*
“While the nation was having a good laugh at the expense of Florida’s hanging chads and butterfly ballots, Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi were there, in Florida, learning to drive commercial jetliners [and ram them into the World Trade Center towers]. It will take a novelist to paint that broad canvas properly. It will take some deep political thinking to understand how the lackadaisical attitude toward government and the world helped leave the country so unready for the horror that Atta and Shehhi were preparing.”
— Michael Oreskes, New York Times, October 21, 2001.
Six Palestinian and Egyptian conspirators responsible for the attack were tried in civil courts and got life sentences like common criminals, but its mastermind escaped. He was identified as Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, an Iraqi intelligence agent. This was a clear indication to authorities that the atrocity was no mere criminal event, and that it involved more than individual terrorists; it involved hostile terrorist states.
Yet, once again, the Clinton administration’s response was to absorb the injury and accept defeat. The president did not even visit the bomb crater or tend to the victims. Instead, America’s commander-in-chief warned against “overreaction.” In doing so, he telegraphed a clear message to his nation’s enemies: We are unsure of purpose and unsteady of hand; we are self-indulgent and soft; we will not take risks to defend ourselves; we are vulnerable.Berger had also been a member of “Peace Now,” the leftist movement seeking to pressure the Israeli government to make concessions to Yasser Arafat’s PLO terrorists. Clinton’s first National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake was a protégé of Berger, who had introduced him to Clinton. All three had met as activists in the 1972 McGovern presidential campaign, whose primary conclusion was the “arrogance of American power,” rather than Communist aggression, fueled the Vietnam War.
Anthony Lake’s own attitude towards the totalitarian threat in Southeast Asia was displayed in his March 1975 Washington Post article, “At Stake in Cambodia: Extending Aid Will Only Prolong the Killing.” The prediction contained in Lake’s title proved exactly wrong. It was not a small mistake for someone who in 1992 would be placed in charge of America’s national security apparatus. Lake’s article was designed to rally Democrat opposition to a presidential request for emergency aid to the Cambodian regime. The aid was required to contain the threat posed by Communist leader Pol Pot and his insurgent Khmer Rouge forces.President Bashir sent key intelligence officials to Washington in February 1996. Again, according to Mansoor, “the Sudanese offered to arrest bin Laden and extradite him to Saudi Arabia or, barring that, to ‘baby-sit’ him—monitoring all his activities and associates.” But the Saudis didn’t want him. Instead, in May 1996 “the Sudanese capitulated to U.S. pressure and asked bin Laden to leave, despite their feeling that he could be monitored better in Sudan than elsewhere. Bin Laden left for Afghanistan, taking with him Ayman Zawahiri, considered by the U.S. to be the chief planner of the September 11 attacks….”
One month after Clinton let him go, the U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia was blown apart by a 5,000 lb. truck bomb. Clinton’s failure to grasp the opportunity, concludes Mansoor, “represents one of the most serious foreign policy failures in American history.”At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan.
When the president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky became public in January 1998, and his adamant denials made it a consuming public preoccupation, Clinton’s normal inattention to national security matters became subsumed into general executive paralysis. In Dick Morris’s judgment, the United States was effectively “without a president between January 1998 until April 1999,” when the impeachment proceedings concluded with the failure of the Senate to convict. It was in August 1998 that the al-Qaeda truck bombs blew up the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Attacks He Could Have Prevented
They need never have been struck. In February 1998—six months before the bombing of the U.S. embassies—the CIA had arranged for an indigenous Afghan militia to raid Osama's compound, Tarnak Farms; take him alive; and deliver him to the FBI to face criminal charges in the United States. However, the Clinton administration aborted the raid that May for fear Osama would be killed before facing a jury of his peers. Another time, Washington vetoed agents in the field, who had tracked Osama for days, fearing civilian collateral damage. A February 1999 missile strike in the desert south of Kandar was nixed because, although bin Laden was clearly in the crosshairs, he was traveling with several members of the United Arab Emirates' royal family. Richard Clarke telephoned the UAE, apparently without permission, on March 7 to discussion the royals's cozy relationship with the Saudi scion; the 9/11 Report reports "less than a week after Clarke's phone call the camp was hurriedly dismantled, and the site was deserted."
At least three times following the U.S. embassy bombings, the Clinton administration held up imminent missile strikes on Osama bin Laden, deeming the intelligence insufficient but those on the ground say the administration set the standards of "actionable intelligence" unreachably high. In what the 9/11 Commission dubbed "the last, and most likely the best, opportunity" to get bin Laden, in Kandahar in May 1999, the Clintonistas again choked; the Commission noted, "If this intelligence was not 'actionable,' working-level officials said at the time and today, it was hard for them to imagine how any intelligence on Bin Ladin in Afghanistan would meet the standard." Another said, "This was in our strike zone. It was a fat pitch, a home run." Again, the Left refused to swing. Bill Clinton did strike back on August 20, 1999, bombing a Sudanese medicine factory and an empty tent. Clinton often boasts he missed Osama by mere hours; he does not disclose that, following Richard Clarke's sterling example, his administration notified Pakistan of the coming missile attack, allowing the Pakistanis to notify bin Laden, who escaped unharmed.
In the fall of 2000, the unmanned Predator drone captured video of Osama bin Laden training his terrorist guerrillas in Afghanistan. Yet the Clinton administration did nothing. As NBC's Brian Williams put it, "Weeks later, bin Laden's attack on the USS Cole killed 17 sailors." No retaliation followed.
Ignoring “Able Danger”Not only did Osama bin Laden remain free to kill Americans overseas, his minions were able to plot the worst act of terrorism in American history from within our own borders. More than 100 Islamist operatives participated in the attack on the Twin Towers. They did so over a period of several years, often eliciting the notice of military intelligence officers. However, Clinton-era policies ensured those officers could not ask for the FBI to follow-up on the 9/11 hijackers then preparing to strike at the heart of the infidel.
Not everyone responded to Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman’s 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center with blithe indifference. Five years later, Army Intelligence and the Special Operations Command launched an investigation into potential Islamist terrorists living in the United States. This operation was named “Able Danger.” Using “data mining” techniques to track Muslims associated with radical mosques, agents identified 9/11 mastermind Mohammed Atta and three of his fellow hijackers as members of a New York City-based al-Qaeda cell (codenamed “Brooklyn”). Three witnesses—Lt. Col. Anthony Schaffer, Captain Scott Philpott, and Defense contractor J.D. Smith—have come forward to verify that “Able Danger” identified Mohammed Atta as a potential al-Qaeda threat by name as early as 1999. However, when officers asked permission to inform the FBI of their findings and request they closely supervise “Brooklyn,” military lawyers prevented from them sharing this information on three separate occasions.
The trouble, the attorneys told the intelligence agents, stemmed from federal guidelines prohibiting various agencies from sharing intelligence or coordinating investigations across bureaucratic lines. The Legal Left had claimed this practice violated civil liberties and, with an advocate in the White House, existing barriers were raised ever higher.
This barrier, which kept federal officials from monitoring a tragedy in progress, came to be known as “The Wall.” Although restrictions had existed since the Carter administration, in the summer of 1995 Bill Clinton’s deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, drafted a memo raising the wall well beyond existing guidelines. U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, who was based in New York City, protested the infringement on terrorist investigations, writing:
It is hard to be totally comfortable with instructions to the FBI prohibiting contact with the United States Attorney's Offices when such prohibitions are not legally required…These instructions leave entirely to OIPR [the Office of Intelligence and Policy Review] and the [Justice Department’s] Criminal Division when, if ever, to contact affected U.S. attorneys on investigations including terrorism and espionage…The most effective way to combat terrorism is with as few labels and walls as possible so that wherever permissible, the right and left hands are communicating.
When Gorelick ignored her suggestions, White warned the new federal guidelines “will cost lives.” She proved no mean prophet.
The Clinton administration placed the aforementioned OIPR, for the first time in its history, under a political appointee: Richard Scruggs. The “wall memo” and the politicization of intelligence were only the first step. The Clinton Justice Department brought all intelligence under increasingly centralized control in order to discourage investigations. At this time, agents were looking into allegations that Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign had accepted substantial amounts of illegal campaign contributions originating in the People’s Republic of China. To insulate himself against “overzealous” federal investigators, he effectively saw to it all inquiries had to receive approval from high-level political appointees under his management. Not only did Bill Clinton’s policies keep Army Intelligence from informing the FBI about the brewing al-Qaeda threat in New York City—which was then finalizing plans for the terrorists’ most successful assault against the “Great Satan” and give al-Qaeda an invaluable recruiting tool—it seems to have done so in order to protect Bill Clinton from his own unseemly deeds.
The Lost Plotters
The fig leaf Clinton thatched about his campaign finance donors concealed a multitude of al-Qaeda's sins. The Wall shielded at least two actual hijackers and a third potential hijacker, aside from the Able Danger debacle.
According to many journalists, the CIA had tapped the telephone of 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi before they attended the January 2000 al-Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur, where the terrorists fixed many of the details of 9/11. Although the CIA photographed the pair at this meeting, they were able to return to the United States and settle in San Diego under their given names for another year, because the Agency did not share its intelligence with the FBI until shortly before 9/11. In the meantime, al-Midhar had returned to Saudi Arabia to recruit willing martyrs for his strike. When he returned, the FBI—at last alerted of the danger he posed to the United States—begged for other law enforcement agencies to track down and interdict both plotters, only to have their pleas bounce off The Wall. Denied the ability to pursue the terrorists, an agent e-mailed his superior these prophetic words: "Whatever has happened to this—someday someone will die—and wall or not—the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain problems. Let's hope the National Security Law Unit will stand behind their decisions then, especially since the biggest threat to us now, [bin Laden], is getting the most 'protection.'" Weeks later, the men joined 17 of their co-religionists in an act of jihad.
The FBI fared little better when it actually arrested its suspects. An agent nabbed "20th Hijacker" Zaccarias Moussaoui for immigration violations on August 16, 2001; suspicions ran high as he had told his flight instructor he wanted to learn how to steer an airplane—but not take-off or land. Agents asked and were denied permission to search his computer, told doing so would appear to violate the sacrosanct Wall. Twenty-six days later, the error of Gorelick's ways would visit itself upon the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.
The Failure to Take Security SeriouslyIn 1994, Republican Porter Goss, a former CIA official and member of the House Intelligence Committee who later became CIA Director, warned that because of inflation, the cuts now proposed by Sanders-Owens amounted to 16 percent of the 1992 budget and were 20 percent below the 1990 budget. Yet this did not dissuade Dellums, Bonior, and roughly 100 Democrats from continuing to lay the budgetary axe to America’s first line of anti-terrorist defense. Ranking Committee Republican Larry Combest warned that the cuts endangered “critically important and fragile capabilities, such as in the area of human intelligence.” In 1998, Osama bin Laden and four radical Islamic groups connected to al-Qaeda issued a fatwa condemning every American man, woman, and child, civilian and military included. Sanders responded by enlisting Oregon Democrat Peter DeFazio to author an amendment cutting the intelligence authorization again."
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=24328Large clips, slow load.
Saw on another site that it aired in full in Australia so we're seeing in the US that freedom of speech is upheld so long as the left is talking.Sent by a friend who found the links.
"ABC's "Path to 9/11": The Video Democrats DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE
By Art Moore
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
 Buzz Patterson with President Clinton |
In an interview with WND, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson said producer and writer Cyrus Nowrasteh called him the morning of Sept. 1, explaining he had used Patterson's book "Dereliction of Duty" as a source for the drama.
Later that day, Nowrasteh brought a preview copy of "The Path to 9/11" to Patterson for him to view at home. Patterson, who says he has talked with the director seven or eight times since then, also received a phone call from an ABC senior vice president, Quinn Taylor.
Patterson told WND he recognizes the television production conflates several events, but, in terms of conveying how the Clinton administration handled its opportunities to get bin Laden, it's "100 percent factually correct," he said.
"I was there with Clinton and (National Security Adviser Sandy) Berger and watched the missed opportunities occur," Patterson declared.
The five-hour drama is scheduled to air in two parts, Sunday night and Monday night, Sept. 11.
As a military aide to President Clinton from 1996 to 1998, Patterson was one of five men entrusted with carrying the "nuclear football," which contains the codes for launching nuclear weapons.
Reached by phone at his home in Southern California, Nowrasteh affirmed to WND he consulted with Patterson and gave him a preview of the drama.
 Lt. Col. Robert "Buzz" Patterson (FrontPageMagazine.com) |
During the interview this morning, Nowrasteh took a moment to watch as President Clinton's image turned up on his nearby TV screen to criticize the movie. The director did not want to respond directly to Clinton's comments, but offered a general response to critics.
"Everybody's got to calm down and watch the movie," Nowrasteh told WND. "This is not an indictment of one president or another. The villains are the terrorists. This is a clarion bell for people to wake up and take notice."
Patterson pointed out the Bush administration also is depicted in an unfavorable light in the months before 9/11.
An ABC executive who requested anonymity told the Washington Post the network has made "adjustments and refinements" to the drama that are "intended to make clearer that it was general indecisiveness" by federal officials that left the U.S. vulnerable to attack, and "not any one individual."
Yesterday, the New York Post reported Clinton wrote to ABC officials, complaining the "content of this drama is factually and incontrovertibly inaccurate and ABC has the duty to fully correct all errors or pull the drama entirely." Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, according to the Washington Post, has described a scene, in which she is depicted, as "false and defamatory."
Democrats have been particularly critical of a scene that depicts Berger refusing to authorize a mission to capture bin Laden after CIA operatives and Afghan fighters had the al-Qaida leader in their sights.
Nowrasteh acknowledges this is a "conflation of events," but Berger, in a letter to Robert Iger – president and CEO of ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Co. – said "no such episode ever occurred, nor did anything like it."
Patterson contended, however, the scene is similar to a plan the administration had with the CIA and the Afghan Northern Alliance to snatch bin Laden from a camp in Afghanistan.
 |
The scene in "The Path to 9/11," as Patterson recalled from the preview version, unfolds with CIA operatives at the camp on the phone with Berger, who is expressing concern that an attack could result in innocent bystanders being killed. An agent says he sees swing sets and children's toys in the area. The scene ends with Berger hanging up the phone.
Patterson says his recollection is that Clinton was involved directly in several similar incidents in which Berger was pressing the president for a decision.
"Berger was very agitated, he couldn't get a decision from the president," Patterson said.
Patterson noted wasn't sure what Berger wanted to do – whether the national security adviser wanted the answer to be yes or no – but the frustration, at the very least, was based on the president making himself unavailable to make a decision.
In "Dereliction of Duty," Patterson recounts an event in the situation room of the White House in which Berger was told by a military watch officer "Sir, we've located bin Laden. We have a two-hour window to strike."
Clinton, according to Patterson, did not return phone calls from Berger for more than an hour then said he wanted more time to study the situation.
Patterson writes: "We 'studied' the issues until it was too late-the window of opportunity closed."
 Harvey Keitel plays counter-terrorism expert John O'Neill in ABC's "The Path to 9/11 |
In another "missed opportunity," Patterson writes, Clinton was watching a golf tournament when Berger placed an urgent call to the president. Clinton became irritated when Patterson approached him with the message. After the third attempt, Clinton coolly responded he would call Berger on his way back to the White House. By then, however, according to Patterson, the opportunity was lost.
As WND reported, Berger was the focus of a Justice Department investigation for removing highly classified terrorism documents before the Sept. 11 Commission hearings that generated the report used for the television program.
FBI agents searched Berger's home and office after he voluntarily returned some documents to the National Archives.
Berger and his lawyer told reporters he knowingly removed handwritten notes he made while reading classified anti-terror documents at the archives by sticking them in his clothing. They said he also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.
Patterson said Berger's response to the "The Path to 9/11" is similar to his response to the accounts in "Dereliction of Duty," insisting the incidents attributed to him "never occurred."
Patterson said his book put him under intense pressure from Clinton officials – an aide even spoke of taking away his military retirement benefits – but when the title reached No. 1 on Amazon.com, "they shut up."
There are others who can corroborate his accounts, Patterson insisted, but they are still in military service and therefore legally bound not to come forward and make statements.
Three of the four other military aides who rotated being at the president's side were additional sources for his book, Patterson affirmed."
Timeline of events leading up to 9-11, found on another site. Let us not forget the wall built between the CIA and FBI where they couldn't communicate evidence comparison .... no doubt so they couldn't find him complicit for signing executive waivers to sell top secret dual technology .... against the advice of the Pentagon .... to China. It's on the books and hit the news when it happened.
1993 WTC-Treated as a "crime" with no foreign terrorist involvement. However, Blind Islamic Radical Sheik is convicted for conspiracy. Bin Laden named as an "un-indicted co-conspirator" in 1996.The same year he is offered to the Clinton Administration by the Sudan and refused saying they don't have enough evidence to convict him. Bill Clinton never visits site.
1993-18 Soldiers killed in Somalia and 84 wounded in attack planned by bin Laden. Clinton pulls troops out of Somalia. bin Laden claims victory and gains status with his followers as one who is able to make the "Great Satan" run. Somalia falls into a chaos that remains to this day.
1993- the FBI identified three "charities” connected to the terrorist organization Hamas. Clinton ignored pleas that he create a "President’s List” of extremist and terrorist groups. He feared the political fallout of "profiling” Islamic charities. Money continues to flow freely to terrorist organizations for the next 8 years.
1993-The Srebrenica Report (Dutch) revealed in 1993 Clinton embarked on an Iran/Contra like affair with Islamic Terror groups in Bosnia. In both Afghanistan and the Gulf, the Pentagon had incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans. Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia. a mysterious fleet of black C-130 Hercules aircraft appeared and Mojahedin fighters
were also flown in. This report has just recently been made public.
1994- Algerian terrorists attempt to hijack French Airliner to fly into the Eiffel Tower. Plane is stormed by French police.
1994-"Terror 2000" was distributed to the Defense Department, State Department, FEMA, intelligence communities and members of Congress. "Targets such as the World Trade Center not only provide the requisite casualties but because of their symbolic nature provide more bang for the buck. In order to maximize their odds for success, terrorist groups will likely consider mounting multiple, simultaneous operations with the aim of overtaxing a government's ability to respond, as well as to demonstrate their professionalism and reach." At the State Department's request, it was "scrubbed" of some details, including how to hit the Pentagon or White House by airplane using the Washington Monument as a landmark.
1995- Then-Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., made secrets public at the behest of left-wing activist Bianca Jagger, his girlfriend at the time. The secrets suggested that the CIA had on its payroll one or more unsavory characters who had been involved in murder. He compromised American intelligence-gathering abilities around the world, adding that numerous CIA sources had decided to stop giving information for fear they would be outed by a congressman. Torricelli efforts paid off with the Clinton administration, which moved to ban the use of spies or the recruitment of spies that had any involvement with criminals or terrorists. Torricelli effectively blinded the CIA.
1995-5 U. S. soldiers killed in Saudi Arabia in bombing.
1995-Oklahoma City Bombing. 168 dead. Domestic terrorists blamed. Jayna Davis, Oklahoma investigative reporter attempts to turn over evidence she has in the form of security videos and witness testimony to the FBI, but after checking with his superior, the evidence is refused. A Justice Department inspector, one of Clinton's own, admitted that the Oklahoma City bombing investigation "offered one of the worst examples of de facto evidence tampering by the FBI crime labs."
1995-"Operation Bojinka" plot hatched by an al Qaeda cell with an eye toward blowing up 12 American airliners. Some would be booby-trapped with bombs, like Pan Am 103, others hijacked like the four U.S. jets commandeered on 9-11 and crashed into buildings.
1996-CIA and FBI warn Clinton they have uncovered plot of al Qaeda "Martyrdom Battalion" terrorists to hijack planes and use them as missiles. This apparently is never passed on to the Congress.
1996-Philippine authorities warn the FBI they have received credible information that al Qaeda is planning on hijacking planes and flying them into Federal Buildings. Again, this information apparently stops with Bill Clinton and is never passed on to the proper Congressional Intelligence Committees.
1996-The downing of TWA Flight 800. 230 dead. Mechanical Failure blamed. Hundreds of eyewitnesses ignored as they claim they saw a surface to air missile launch and destroy the plane. Bill Clinton issues Executive Order 13039 to keep all involved in recovery process silent. Pilots Union claims FAA report on mechanical failure "bogus". FBI tells witnesses what they saw was a single "fireworks" display. Read "Oklahoma City Bombing and TWA Flight 800" for more on these
1996-Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 and injured 200 military personnel.
1996-Sudan offers to turn over bin Laden to US through negotiator and Clinton supporter Mr. Mansoor Ijaz. He warns them not to slight the Intelligence Officer in the Sudan by sending an aide to the Sec. of State. They ignore him and send an underling. Insulted by the slight, the Sudan refuses to speak to him. Clinton blows off offer saying they don't have enough evidence to indict bin Laden.
1996-bin Laden leaves Sudan and goes to Afghanistan as a "guest" of Mullah Omar, head of the
Taliban.
1997-UNOCAL brought members of the Taliban here to the States to wine and dine them, take them to beach, show them their U.S. offices and take them to Washington to meet with the Clinton State Department. The fact they are harboring a wanted terrorist, bin Laden, is ignored.
1997- Final report of the Gore Commission on Aviation Safety comes out. The DNC received at least $498,000 from the airline industry. There was no deadline by which those requirements would have to be implemented and 2) there was no funding mechanism for ensuring that they were enacted. This insured that none of the recommendations would ever be implemented. Boston Globe, a known liberal newspaper, says Gore, “failed conspicuously to address airline safety.” That failure was traced directly to a series of campaign contributions from the airlines to the DNC.
1997- Warren Christopher resigns as Sec. of State over a conflict with Clinton over the removal of top secret defense technology from the realm of the State Department, with Congressional oversight, to the hands of Ron Brown and the Department of Commerce. He stated that that the president's actions were reckless and may jeopardized the military defense of this nation. Admonished Clinton for planning to hand over to the Communist Chinese, American missile guidance programming source codes embedded in commercial U.S. satellites. Christopher, is said to have told Clinton, the Brown deal could jeopardize "...significant military and intelligence
interests..." of the United States missile guidance system. Clinton quietly put out a post dated Executive order protecting the two companies under Congressional investigation from any criminal prosecution.
1997-The Northern Alliance threatens to overrun the Taliban and is poised to remove them from power. The Clinton Administration imposes a cease fire that both sides agree to. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan use this opportunity to re-arm the Taliban army. Clinton knows this is happening, but withholds that information from the Northern Alliance and Congress. This action assures that the Taliban will solidify their power and push back the Northern Alliance.
1997-Madeleine Albright becomes Sec. Of State. She later states, after the attacks, in her defense of Bill Clinton: "This is hard to say and I haven't found a way to say it that doesn't sound crass, but it is the truth that those {attacks before Sept. 11} were happening overseas and while there were Americans who died, there were not thousands and it did not happen on U. S. soil."
1998-Bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa, which killed 224 and injured 5,000.
1998- bin Laden issued his fatwa urging his followers to target the U. S. and all Americans.
1998- Sudan offered to extradite Sayyid Iskandar Suliman and Sayyid Nazir Abbass to the U.S. for trial. They were wanted by the US for being directly involved in the bombings of its embassy in Kenya and they had intimate knowledge of the operations of the alleged guerrilla chief Osama bin Laden. The State Department, in blocking the FBI from pursuing the lead, noted that Sudan has been listed for over a decade as a state sponsor of terrorism. Yet Sudan, the official said, had asked only for a “dialogue” with the United States toward restoring a more normal diplomatic relationship. Their offer was completely ignored and Clinton instead bombed the al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum.
1998- UNOCAL gave up all hope of a pipeline across Afghanistan and pulled out. Not because of Afghanistan harboring a terrorist, but from pressure from the Women's Rights groups over the Taliban's treatment of women in Afghanistan.
1998-Missile strike against bin Laden's Khost, Afghanistan training camp and a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory to take Monica off the front pages is a total failure. Clinton lobs over $70 million dollars worth of Cruise Missiles at Sudan and Afghanistan hitting nothing but tents, camels and the only pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan. Done without consulting his Joint Chiefs. He informs them of his plans one half hour prior to the attack. Their pleas for him to stop the attack due to inadequate intelligence, are ignored. They later distance themselves from the attack by admitting they were not consulted. The Military Commander in that area said it "would have been a million to one shot."
1999-Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian, is arrested trying to cross the Canadian Border with explosives.
1999-Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, (R-Cal), who has spent time in Afghanistan fighting with the Northern Alliance, received credible information as to the whereabouts of bin Laden in Afghanistan. He immediately contacted the CIA with this information. The Information was never acted on. During the Clinton Administration the Voice of America became known, within Afghanistan, as the Voice of the Taliban. “People go berserk when I say that Clinton supported the Taliban, but that is the truth.” says Rohrabacher.
1999-Gen. Pervez Musharraf overthrows Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Oct. 12 in a military coup. Clinton later claims his plans to obtain bin Laden through millions in pay-offs to the Sharif Government collapse with the coup, which is very odd story since the Sharif Government was a supporter of the Taliban and bin Laden. Indeed, even the Musharraf Government supports the Taliban until after the 9/11 attacks when it becomes healthier to deal with the Taliban than an angry and hostile American military. He sees this as a chance to rid his country of the Islamic radicals that he says are the 1% of the population holding the other 99% hostage.
1999-Clinton’s own secretary of defense, William Cohen, in a July 1999 op-ed piece in the Washington Post, predicted a terrorist attack on America’s mainland.
1999-"Project Megiddo" goes public on FBI website. It is a directive, given in 1995 to FBI from Bill Clinton to direct their investigative efforts towards only domestic terrorism such as the Christian Right and militias. In short, foreign involvement is to be ignored which now explains why no evidence of foreign terrorists involvement was accepted in the Oklahoma City Bombing and downing of TWA Flight 800.
1999-A report, titled "Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?," cautioned that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network might seek revenge for the 1998 U.S. air strike on bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan. It is ignored as merely a psychological report, with no credible sources.
1999- the U.N. imposes sanctions to cut off funds for Taliban arms.
1999-the U.S. finally added bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization to its list of “foreign terrorist organizations”. Still, they did not single out Afghanistan or the Taliban nor add Afghanistan to the list of countries that harbor terrorists, despite the fact bin Laden is harbored there.
1999-Mullah Khaksar, then the Taliban regime's deputy interior minister, met with U.S. diplomats Gregory Marchese and J. Peter McIllwain in Peshawar, Pakistan, in April 1999 and told them he wanted to oust Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar because of his support for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network. The offer was ignored by Bill Clinton. Bill told him, through his people, that "he didn't want to get involved in internal Afghani matters".
1999 - The Transportation Security Administration altered a terrorist report to exclude any and all references to foreign terrorists. David Holmes, head of the Commerce Department zeroed in on white militia groups in a 1999 threat analysis. Commerce officials who worked on the case say Holmes' exclusion of every threat group that wasn't white was in keeping with what they say was a broader Clinton administration policy of focusing on domestic threats from white militia groups, rather than Islamic groups, in combating terrorism. "Holmes made us take out every group that wasn't white – no minority groups allowed," "He was toeing the liberal line" of the Clinton administration.
July 2000 – three months before the deadly attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen another plausible offer to deal for bin Laden. The offer required only that Clinton make a state visit there (Yemen) to personally request bin Laden's extradition. But senior Clinton officials sabotaged the offer.
2000-Bombing of the USS Cole. 17 sailors killed, 39 injured. Millions will be spent repairing the ship. bin Laden and the al Qaeda are the foremost suspects.
2000-Clinton orders the remains of TWA Flight 800 destroyed thus ending any possible further investigation into the downing.
2000-Bill Clinton has successfully cut the military in half over his eight years in office and blinded and effectively neutered our intelligence gathering ability.
2000-The Intelligence community around the world reports an "increase in traffic", which means more than usual interaction between terror cells which usually is a precursor of an attack somewhere in the world.
2001-Bill Clinton leaves office. Does he brief Bush on all the foreign terror information he has? Only they know.
2001-George W. Bush has 8 months in office before bin Laden launches his next attack on the US.
2002- Many Democrats start asking "What did the President know and when did he know it" ala Watergate, implying that GW knew the attacks were imminent and did nothing...ignoring all the attacks and warning signs that occurred under Bill Clinton.
2002- Bill Clinton continues to try and re-write history. Claiming he was "obsessed" with bin Laden. His aides and those that know him, say differently.
Wow, the Clintonistas are having a cow over airing of a docudrama about what lead up to 9-11 and want it censored. Bet they had a party when they watched Fahren-hype 9-11 which is a compilation of conspiracy theories, the majority of which have been debunked especially how a plane hitting each of the twin towers brought them down. There's even been a documentary on PBS which explains the physics of why.
Anyway back to the howling...... Seems what's fair for a seated President should be just fine for a has-been bunch of residents whose actions clearly precipitated 9-11.
Just perhaps the ABC docudrama strikes too close to the heart of the truth damage control has been done to bury. 
Next section in Clinton's own voice AND TRANSCRIPT OF HIS WORDS .... has been voice printed and verified and there exists a video of the speech too ... he explains not extraditing bin Laden when offered by the Sudan. If he took bin Laden into custody 9-11 wouldn't have happened on American soil and history would be on a different track right now.
TRANSCRIPT:
Ex-President Clinton's Remarks on Osama bin Laden
Delivered to the Long Island Association's Annual Luncheon
Crest Hollow Country Club, Woodbury, NY
Feb. 15, 2002
Question from LIA President Matthew Crosson:
CROSSON: In hindsight, would you have handled the issue of terrorism, and al-Qaeda specifically, in a different way during your administration?
CLINTON: Well, it's interesting now, you know, that I would be asked that question because, at the time, a lot of people thought I was too obsessed with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
And when I bombed his training camp and tried to kill him and his high command in 1998 after the African embassy bombings, some people criticized me for doing it. We just barely missed him by a couple of hours.
I think whoever told us he was going to be there told somebody who told him that our missiles might be there. I think we were ratted out.
We also bombed a chemical facility in Sudan where we were criticized, even in this country, for overreaching. But in the trial in New York City of the al-Qaeda people who bombed the African embassy, they testified in the trial that the Sudanese facility was, in fact, a part of their attempt to stockpile chemical weapons.
So we tried to be quite aggressive with them. We got - uh - well, Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1991, then he went to Sudan.
And we'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again.
They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.
So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan.
We then put a lot of sanctions on the Afghan government and - but they inter-married, Mullah Omar and bin Laden. So that essentially the Taliban didn't care what we did to them.
Now, if you look back - in the hindsight of history, everybody's got 20/20 vision - the real issue is should we have attacked the al-Qaeda network in 1999 or in 2000 in Afghanistan.
Here's the problem. Before September 11 we would have had no support for it - no allied support and no basing rights. So we actually trained to do this. I actually trained people to do this. We trained people.
But in order to do it, we would have had to take them in on attack helicopters 900 miles from the nearest boat - maybe illegally violating the airspace of people if they wouldn't give us approval. And we would have had to do a refueling stop.
And we would have had to make the decision in advance that's the reverse of what President Bush made - and I agreed with what he did. They basically decided - this may be frustrating to you now that we don't have bin Laden. But the president had to decide after Sept. 11, which am I going to do first? Just go after bin Laden or get rid of the Taliban?
He decided to get rid of the Taliban. I personally agree with that decision, even though it may or may not have delayed the capture of bin Laden. Why?
Because, first of all the Taliban was the most reactionary government on earth and there was an inherent value in getting rid of them.
Secondly, they supported terrorism and we'd send a good signal to governments that if you support terrorism and they attack us in America, we will hold you responsible.
Thirdly, it enabled our soldiers and Marines and others to operate more safely in-country as they look for bin Laden and the other senior leadership, because if we'd have had to have gone in there to just sort of clean out one area, try to establish a base camp and operate.
So for all those reasons the military recommended against it. There was a high probability that it wouldn't succeed.
Now I had one other option. I could have bombed or sent more missiles in. As far as we knew he never went back to his training camp. So the only place bin Laden ever went that we knew was occasionally he went to Khandahar where he always spent the night in a compound that had 200 women and children.
So I could have, on any given night, ordered an attack that I knew would kill 200 women and children that had less than a 50 percent chance of getting him.
Now, after he murdered 3,100 of our people and others who came to our country seeking their livelihood you may say, "Well, Mr. President, you should have killed those 200 women and children."
But at the time we didn't think he had the capacity to do that. And no one thought that I should do that. Although I take full responsibility for it. You need to know that those are the two options I had. And there was less than a 50/50 chance that the intelligence was right that on this particular night he was in Afghanistan.
Now, we did do a lot of things. We tried to get the Pakistanis to go get him. They could have done it and they wouldn't. They changed governments at the time from Mr. Sharif to President Musharraf. And we tried to get others to do it. We had a standing contract between the CIA and some groups in Afghanistan authorizing them and paying them if they should be successful in arresting and/or killing him.
So I tried hard to - I always thought this guy was a big problem. And apparently the options I had were the options that the President and Vice President Cheney and Secretary Powell and all the people that were involved in the Gulf War thought that they had, too, during the first eight months that they were there - until Sept. 11 changed everything.
But I did the best I could with it and I do not believe, based on what options were available to me, that I could have done much more than I did. Obviously, I wish I'd been successful. I tried a lot of different ways to get bin Laden 'cause I always thought he was a very dangerous man. He's smart, he's bold and committed.
But I think it's very important that the Bush administration do what they're doing to keep the soldiers over there to keep chasing him. But I know - like I said - I know it might be frustrating to you. But it's still better for bin Laden to worry every day more about whether he's going to see the sun come up in the morning than whether he's going to drop a bomb, another bomb somewhere in the U.S. or in Europe or on some other innocent civilians. (END OF TRANSCRIPT)
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 7, 2006; A09
Top officials of the Clinton administration have launched a preemptive strike against an ABC-TV "docudrama," slated to air Sunday and Monday, that they say includes made-up scenes depicting them as undermining attempts to kill Osama bin Laden.
Former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright called one scene involving her "false and defamatory." Former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger said the film "flagrantly misrepresents my personal actions." And former White House aide Bruce R. Lindsey, who now heads the William J. Clinton Foundation, said: "It is unconscionable to mislead the American public about one of the most horrendous tragedies our country has ever known."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/06/AR2006090601819_pf.htmlIf this is correct it is probably one of their smartest moves this year. They also need to realize the momentum is NOT going to go quietly away after elections either. Polls show around 67% of Americans want the border sealed and something done about immigration so it's far from over.... way too many grassroots organizations busy which likely explains their "change of heart."
WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 — As they prepare for a critical pre-election legislative stretch, Congressional Republican leaders have all but abandoned a broad overhaul of immigration laws and instead will concentrate on national security issues they believe play to their political strength.
With Congress reconvening Tuesday after an August break, Republicans in the House and Senate say they will focus on Pentagon and domestic security spending bills, port security legislation and measures that would authorize the administration’s terror surveillance program and create military tribunals to try terror suspects.
“We Republicans believe that we have no choice in the war against terror and the only way to do it is to continue to take them head-on whether it is in Iraq or elsewhere,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader.
A final decision on what do about immigration policy awaits a meeting this week of senior Republicans. But key lawmakers and aides who set the Congressional agenda say they now believe it would be politically risky to try to advance an immigration measure that would showcase party divisions and need to be completed in the 19 days Congress is scheduled to meet before breaking for the election."...............
He makes a very valid point about the left press in the US, that they don't take Islamafascist demands seriously, so what if they demand we convert ... no big deal.
However, once you convert to Islam you can never go back to your former status under penalty of death.
Yes, our own leftie moonbats are making decisions for us without having a fragment of a clue as to the path they're committing us to by making nice-nice negotiating with Islamafascists.
Would you want someone without a brain making life impacting decisions for your life? I don't because they don't have enough information and don't take seriously obvious facts which have been in place since the 7th century .... convert, be enslaved or die.
"Why abduct us? We cede our values for free
September 3, 2006
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Source Chicago Sun Times
Did you see that video of the two Fox journalists announcing they'd converted to Islam? The larger problem, it seems to me, is that much of the rest of the Western media have also converted to Islam, and there seems to be no way to get them to convert back to journalism.
Consider, for example, the bizarre behavior of Reuters, the once globally respected news agency now reduced to putting out laughably inept terrorist propaganda. A few days ago, it made a big hoo-ha about the Israelis intentionally firing a missile at its press vehicle and wounding its cameraman Fadel Shana. Shana was posed in an artful sprawl in a blood-spattered shirt. But it had ridden up and underneath his undershirt was spotlessly white, like a summer-stock Julius Caesar revealing the boxers under his toga. What's stunning is not that almost all Western media organizations reporting from the Middle East are reliant on local staff overwhelmingly sympathetic to one side in the conflict -- that's been known for some time -- but the amateurish level of fakery that head office is willing to go along with.
Down at the other end of the news business, meanwhile, one finds items like this snippet from the Sydney Morning Herald:
"A 16-year-old girl was tailed by a car full of men before being dragged inside and assaulted in Sydney's west last night, police say . . .
"The three men involved in the attack were described to police as having dark 'mullet-style' haircuts."
Three men with "mullet-style" hair, huh? Not much to go on there. Bit of a head scratcher. But, as it turned out, the indefatigable Sydney Morning Herald typist had faithfully copied out every salient detail of the police report except one. Here's the statement the coppers themselves issued:
"Police are seeking three men described as being of Middle Eastern/Mediterranean appearance, with dark 'mullet-style' hair cuts."
That additional detail narrows it down a bit, wouldn't you say? The only reason I know that is because the Aussie Internet maestro Tim Blair grew curious about the epidemic of incidents committed by men of no known appearance and decided to look into it. One can understand the agonies the politically correct multicultural journalist must go through, distressed at the thought that an infelicitous phrasing might perpetuate unfortunate stereotypes of young Muslim males. But, even so, it's quite a leap to omit the most pertinent fact and leave the impression the Sydney constabulary are combing the city for mullets. The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby wrote the other day about how American children's books are "sacrificing truth on the altar of political correctness." But there seems to be quite a lot of that in the grown-up comics, too. And, as I've said before, it's never a good idea to put reality up for grabs. There may come a time when you need it.
It's striking how, for all this alleged multiculti sensitivity, we're mostly entirely insensitive to other cultures: We find it all but impossible to imagine how differently they view the world. Go back to that video in which Fox's Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig announced their conversion to Islam. The moment the men were released, the Western media and their colleagues wrote off the scene as a stunt, a cunning ruse, of no more consequence than yelling "Behind you! He's got a gun!" and then kicking your distracted kidnapper in the teeth. Indeed, a few Web sites seemed to see the Islamic conversion routine as a useful get-out-of-jail-free card.
Don't bet on it. In my forthcoming book, I devote a few pages to a thriller I read as a boy -- an old potboiler by Sherlock Holmes' creator, Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1895 Sir Arthur had taken his sick wife to Egypt for her health, and, not wishing to waste the local color, produced a slim novel called The Tragedy of the Korosko, about a party of Anglo-American-French tourists taken hostage by the Mahdists, the jihadi of the day. Much of the story finds the characters in the same predicament as Centanni and Wiig: The kidnappers are offering them a choice between Islam or death. Conan Doyle's Britons and Americans and Europeans were men and women of the modern world even then:
"None of them, except perhaps Miss Adams and Mrs. Belmont, had any deep religious convictions. All of them were children of this world, and some of them disagreed with everything which that symbol upon the earth represented."
"That symbol" is the cross. Yet in the end, even as men with no religious convictions, they cannot bring themselves to submit to Islam, for they understand it to be not just a denial of Christ but in some sense a denial of themselves, too. So they stall and delay and bog down the imam in a lot of technical questions until eventually he wises up and they're condemned to death.
One hundred ten years later, for the Fox journalists and the Western media who reported their release, what's the big deal? Wear robes, change your name to Khaled, go on camera and drop Allah's name hither and yon: If that's your ticket out, seize it. Everyone'll know it's just a sham.
But that's not how the al-Jazeera audience sees it. If you're a Muslim, the video is anything but meaningless. Not even the dumbest jihadist believes these infidels are suddenly true believers. Rather, it confirms the central truth Osama and the mullahs have been peddling -- that the West is weak, that there's nothing -- no core, no bedrock -- nothing it's not willing to trade. In his new book The Conservative Soul, attempting to reconcile his sexual temperament and his alleged political one, Time magazine's gay Tory Andrew Sullivan enthuses, "By letting go, we become. By giving up, we gain. And we learn how to live -- now, which is the only time that matters." That's almost a literal restatement of Faust's bargain with the devil:
"When to the moment I shall say
'Linger awhile! so fair thou art!'
Then mayst thou fetter me straightway
Then to the abyss will I depart!"
In other words, if Faust becomes so enthralled by "the moment" that he wants to live in it forever, the devil will have him for all eternity. In the Muslim world, they watch the Centanni/Wiig video and see men so in love with the present, the now, that they will do or say anything to live in the moment. And they draw their own conclusions -- that these men are easier to force into the car than that 16-year-old girl in Sydney was. It doesn't matter how "understandable" Centanni and Wiig's actions are to us, what the target audience understands is quite different: that there is nothing we're willing to die for. And, to the Islamist mind, a society with nothing to die for is already dead.
© Mark Steyn, 2006
http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn03.html#
Found this on Powerline. Hey at least Nazi-spawn-Islamafascists are telling the truth for a change .... Islam ruling the entire world.
Al Qaeda has released a new video, with an introduction by Zawahiri, that stars an American formerly known as Adam Yehiye Gadahn. Gadahn, who has been featured in al Qaeda videos before, urges all Americans to avoid the wrath of al Qaeda by converting to Islam.
Al Qaeda's public relations efforts have always been a little clumsy, in part, I think, because the terrorists follow Western media so closely. Their videos tend to echo Democratic Party talking points--the famous bin Laden effort just before the 2002 Presidential election was straight out of Michael Moore--and it's understandable that, based on what they see in American media, they expect the American people to be persuaded.
This time, Gadahn's message is conversion: "..................
From NumbersUSA.org email
Miller Beer Phone Numbers
____________________
Milwaukee: 414.931.2000
Miller corporate headquarters) [takes you to a recording; callers should press "0" to talk to operator>
Eden, NC: 336.627.2100
(Miller regional brewery)
Trenton, OH: 513.896.9200
(regional brewery) [get recorded list of departments {e.g., plant mgr., brewing, etc.}
Albany, GA: 229.420.5000
(regional brewery) [takes you to a recording; callers should press "0" to talk to operator>
Ft. Worth, TX: 817.551.3300
(regional brewery) [press "1" to get list of departments>
Irwindale, CA: 626.969.6811
(regional brewery) [get recorded list of departments>
Chippewa Falls, WI: 715.723.5558/888.534.6437
(LEINIES) (Leinenkugel brewery ["Leinie's Lodge">)
THE MILLER STORY
The Chicago Tribune seems to have broken the story this morning.
The background is that the illegal-alien marchers last spring discovered that Miller had given a small campaign contribution to a fellow Wisconsin resident, Rep. Sensenbrenner, who was the father of the H.R. 4437 enforcement bill that the marchers were protesting.
The marchers called for a nationwide Hispanic boycott of Miller beer.
Miller immediately caved and said their corporation is against H.R. 4437.
Now, it seems that Miller thinks it has more to gain from illegal alien supporters than from the majority of Americans who want illegal immigration ended (and unrewarded). Just read the Tribune story. You'll be amazed.
Why this immigrant rights march is brought to you by Miller
By Oscar Avila
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 1, 2006
Marchers had to duck into fast-food restaurants for water when they first took to Chicago's streets in support of illegal immigrants five months ago. At the next two marches, family-owned grocery stores offered free bottled water from trucks emblazoned with their names.
This time, as demonstrators march from Chinatown to House Speaker Dennis Hastert's (R-Ill.) Batavia office this weekend, they will have Miller Brewing Co., as a sponsor. The brewer has paid more than $30,000 for a planning convention, materials and newspaper ads publicizing the event.
The support of a major corporation for a controversial political cause shows how fierce the competition has become to woo the growing market of Latino consumers.
For Miller, the march offered a special chance to catch up. This spring the brewer drew the ire of pro-immigrant forces over contributions to U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), who sponsored legislation that would crack down on illegal immigrants. That prompted a short-lived boycott by some Latino groups.
Now, march advertisements feature not just the organizing committee's trademark blue globe but Miller's logo and a Spanish translation of its "Live Responsibly" slogan, a company effort to build goodwill among Latinos.
But this march is no Cinco de Mayo parade. The politically charged event will promote a controversial plan to end deportations and offer legal status for all 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants. That creates potential pitfalls for any businesses lending support, experts say.
At the same time business sponsorships have forced activists to confront whispers that they are commercializing their movement when they accept much-needed donations.
"We would love to have 20 corporate logos. It doesn't mean we are selling the movement out," said Jorge Mujica, a member of the March 10 Committee. "The principles and demands remain the same. They are helping out this movement and we are happy with that."
Labor unions remain the movement's backbone with four major unions bringing at least 600 marchers on buses from throughout Chicago. Religious groups have been key too. Some marchers will bed down in churches and a mosque.
But businesses have become vital to this weekend's Immigrant Workers Justice Walk, which will cover 45 miles to Hastert's district office. Hundreds of marchers plan to cover the entire span from Friday through Monday, and organizers need food and water for them.
Sometimes political and commercial messages are mingled.
At a July march, Chicago-based food producer V&V Supremo printed signs with its logo that urged "Moratorium Now, Legalization Yes."
Jimenez Market, an area chain, had its sign on display as workers passed out more than 5,000 bottles of water and other supplies worth nearly $17,000. Co-owner Jose Perez acknowledged it is good publicity but stressed that "we are supporting our people. Without them, our business would go downhill."
This weekend, the Los Comales restaurant plans to donate 500 tortas, Mexican sandwiches filled with steak, ham and other toppings. The Laredo Bakery is donating bread while other restaurants are donating water, fruit and other supplies, organizers said.
Those businesses are natural allies--"part of the same brotherhood," as one marketer put it.
But the presence of Miller at a welcoming reception the day before the Aug. 12-13 planning convention raised eyebrows.
The convention brought together labor unions, anti-war groups, immigrant service organizations and even socialist political candidates.
Hours before bashing NAFTA and U.S. foreign policy, participants at the Aug. 11 reception mingled with the Miller Girls, the company's public relations ambassadors, amid a display of Miller logos.
That Miller was involved in the first place is one measure of the growing power of immigrants. After the boycott announcement, the company approached march organizers to try to find common ground, and agreed to back the march organizers' efforts.
Miller is also bankrolling informational ads in Voces Migrantes, or Migrant Voices, a community newspaper in Chicago, and has promised scholarships for area Latinos.
Mathew Romero, the company's local market development manager, said Miller felt it was important to speak out against Sensenbrenner's legislation, though his campaign was one of many the company supported.
Romero noted that company founder Frederick Miller was a German immigrant and many current executives are foreign nationals. Miller is now part of London-based SABMiller.
Romero said he wasn't worried that some opponents of illegal immigration would be upset at the company's support of "the free movement of people, labor, goods and services."
"As long as you are stacking facts against facts, they are free to make their own decisions. We will stand by our positions," he said.
George San Jose, president of the San Jose Group, a Chicago-based marketing company specializing in the Hispanic market, said he understands why companies chase Hispanic purchasing power, which tops $700 billion annually in the U.S. Brewers, he said, have been especially aggressive.
But San Jose would advise clients that there are better ways.
"A company sponsoring one of the two sides of the immigration debate is no different than a company sponsoring groups for or against abortion [rights>. It's one of those heated political debates that companies should stay clear of," he said.
At the request of march organizers, media executive Robert Armband sent e-mails to thousands of business contacts, asking if they would consider helping the March 10 Committee.
"It certainly is an opportunity to reach the masses, but it might not be the right vehicle to come out as a sponsor," said Armband, publisher and chief executive of La Raza, a Chicago newspaper.
March organizers say they have not made any full-fledged sales pitches to major corporations and are having internal discussions about whether they should make a real push. That can be a tough decision, according to march organizer Gabe Gonzalez.
Gonzalez said he represents those in the movement--maybe half the total, he thinks -- who don't even consider themselves capitalists. Many have been involved with labor campaigns targeting specific companies.
March organizers shot down a suggestion that they approach Coca-Cola, for example, because of what they perceive as the company's labor abuses in the developing world, a cause celebre among liberal activists.
Although immigrant activists see legalization as an issue of social justice, Gonzalez said corporations might back the idea as a way to protect their bottom line. Whatever the motivations, Gonzalez said he would cooperate with almost any company willing to back the cause.
"That's the nature of politics. You form coalitions based on mutual self-interest," Gonzalez said. "So will we work with corporations? We will work with anyone who will work with us."
Interesting spin on terms .... shoving amnesty in every orifice is now being PC sanitized as ...."securing a migration accord with the U.S. Notice the word migration.
Also interesting how that loving, benevolent, peaceful, socialist faction saying they're going to ignore election results and have plans to create a parallel government and rule from the streets."
Seems we've already had a flashing neon preview of that exact mindset during the immigration rallies last spring.
Washington is attempting to sell us a blivet all wrapped up with a pretty bow on top.
"Mexican Lawmakers Block Fox's Speech
By JULIE WATSON
Associated Press Writer
<excerpt>
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Vicente Fox was forced to forego the last state-of-the-nation address of his presidency Friday after leftist lawmakers stormed the stage of Congress to protest disputed July 2 elections.".......
.........."The standoff came six days before the top electoral court must declare a president-elect or annul the July 2 vote and order a new election. So far, rulings have favored ruling party candidate Felipe Calderon, who was ahead by about 240,000 votes in the official count.
Lopez Obrador has already said he won't recognize the electoral court's decision, and he plans to create a parallel government and rule from the streets."..........
.........."Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive, ushered in economic stability and brought inflation to record lows, but he has been unable to secure a migration accord with the U.S. or significantly reduce poverty. "
April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 January 2013 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 March 2011 January 2011 December 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 March 2005 November 2004 October 2004
