REUTERS CITES "ABSOLUTE MORAL AUTHORITY" CINDY SHEEHAN ON BIKE RIDING

International Socialist cover girl, American Nazi Idol and new Reuters fitness expert, Cindy Sheehan, has spoken. She now wants the cycling of violence to end for the sake of peace.

Bush says exercise helps sharpen his thinking. ...

Sheehan, who left her vigil on Thursday to tend to her sick mother, has said she believes Bush should take fewer bike rides to have more time to focus on the "the nation's work."

When you have one man's mere opinion vs the media's supreme oracle of moral authority on all matters, it's just no contest.

Mr President, please repent of this sin according to the word of Cindy. While you're at it, please reduce the time with that Bible you're so obsessed with so you can meet with Mother Cindy (again), study Sheehanism and let her philosophy soak deep into your soul--just as her media cult followers have done as they've united to become one. Then you can finally begin to understand the error of your ways.

MORE: Ann Coulter on our Commander in Grief:

It's the strangest method of grieving I've seen since Paul Wellstone's funeral. Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn.

Call me old-fashioned, but a grief-stricken war mother shouldn't have her own full-time PR flack. After your third profile on "Entertainment Tonight," you're no longer a grieving mom; you're a C-list celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show.

Fortunately, the Constitution vests authority to make foreign policy with the president of the United States, not with this week's sad story. But liberals think that since they have been able to produce a grieving mother, the commander in chief should step aside and let Cindy Sheehan make foreign policy for the nation. As Maureen Dowd said, it's "inhumane" for Bush not "to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute."

I'm not sure what "moral authority" is supposed to mean in that sentence, but if it has anything to do with Cindy Sheehan dictating America's foreign policy, then no, it is not "absolute." It's not even conditional, provisional, fleeting, theoretical or ephemeral.

The logical, intellectual and ethical shortcomings of such a statement are staggering. ...

Dowd's "absolute" moral authority column demonstrates, once again, what can happen when liberals start tossing around terms they don't understand like "absolute" and "moral." ...

But now liberals demand that we listen to the same old arguments all over again, not because Sheehan has any new insights, but because she has the ability to repel dissent by citing her grief.

On the bright side, Sheehan shows us what Democrats would say if they thought they were immunized from disagreement. Sheehan has called President Bush "that filth-spewer and warmonger." She says "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started" and "the killing has gone on unabated for over 200 years." She calls the U.S. government a "morally repugnant system" and says, "This country is not worth dying for." I have a feeling every time this gal opens her trap, Michael Moore gets a residuals check.

Evidently, however, there are some things worth killing for. Sheehan recently said she only seemed calm "because if I started hitting something, I wouldn't stop 'til it was dead." It's a wonder Bush won't meet with her.

MORE: From Mark Steyn:

They're not children in Iraq; they're grown-ups who made their own decision to join the military. That seems to be difficult for the left to grasp. Ever since America's all-adult, all-volunteer army went into Iraq, the anti-war crowd have made a sustained effort to characterize them as "children." If a 13-year-old wants to have an abortion, that's her decision and her parents shouldn't get a look-in. If a 21-year-old wants to drop to the broadloom in Bill Clinton's Oval Office, she's a grown woman and free to do what she wants. But, if a 22- or 25- or 37-year-old is serving his country overseas, he's a wee "child" who isn't really old enough to know what he's doing.

I get many e-mails from soldiers in Iraq, and they sound a lot more grown-up than most Ivy League professors and certainly than Maureen Dowd, who writes like she's auditioning for a minor supporting role in ''Sex And The City.''

The infantilization of the military promoted by the left is deeply insulting to America's warriors but it suits the anti-war crowd's purposes. It enables them to drone ceaselessly that "of course" they "support our troops," because they want to stop these poor confused moppets from being exploited by the Bush war machine.

I resisted writing about "Mother Sheehan" (as one leftie has proposed designating her), as it seemed obvious that she was at best a little unhinged by grief and at worst mentally ill. It's one thing to mourn a son's death and even to question the cause for which he died, but quite another to roar that he was "murdered by the Bush crime family."

THE TWO ATTAS THEORY

Is is just me, or is this a stretch?

Using Google or Lexis Nexis to find another Mohammed Atta terrorist is interesting trivia, but seems to fall into the category of the rush to deny or explain away the Able Danger story. The world's most critical data mining surveillance program should be able to distinguish between two identically named people far better than any other method known to man. They would have flagged many unique indicators in order to profile personal preferences. And there would probably be scores of terrorist types developed so that mixing them up was much less likely even if they crossed paths.

Plus there's the Atta photo that was mentioned. Nobody else in the world looks like the 9/11 Mohammed Atta. He's a guy you could pick out of a lineup with his identical twin after seeing him only once in passing. He would be the evil twin of course.

UPDATE: Craig Henry agrees and points out this description of terrorist data mining. You can see why al Qaeda Atta should be easily discernable from Abu Nidal Atta.

I've also seen serious speculation that Lt Col Shaffer or others in Able Danger may have weird memory problems and are just imagining they remember Atta's name. I just don't get that one at all. I mean has anyone speculated yet that the 9/11 Commission avoided digging into Able Danger because of fears that they would all be killed by a Special Forces hit squad? Didn't they have witnesses saying Bush and Rumsfeld are evil murderous thugs running a totalitarian regime of terror? OK well, close enough. So that would explain everything too then. (Hat tip for inspiration on that idea goes to "soft-spoken" Cindy Sheehan.)

ALI G SONG BECOMES POLICY IN GAZA?

I had a uncomfortable song recollection yesterday after seeing the recent events in Gaza and reading this:

The White House on Thursday praised Israel's pullout from the Gaza Strip as a bold move that will strengthen ties between Israel and the United States.

Bush sympathizes with Israeli settlers who are being forced to evacuate their homes, said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. But she said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was "very courageous" to carry out the withdrawal.

"We agree that the disengagement will make Israel stronger," Perino told reporters. "We agree with Prime Minister Sharon on that and the president has also said that this will bring our two countries closer together."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an interview with The New York Times, called the withdrawal a "dramatic moment" and said that soon after it is complete, Israel must take further steps, including loosening travel restrictions in the West Bank and withdrawing from more Palestinian cities.

Cue the soundtrack for Ali G's satirical Borat Doctrine:

Throw the Jew down the well
so my country can be free!
You must grab him by his horns
then we have a big party!

As you might guess, I think this Gaza policy is wrongheaded and basically racist. The message that peace and freedom is achieved in a nation only by tossing out the Jews is probably not the best message to reinforce for these guys. If you think the Jews can't be safe living in Gaza after a change of government, then it's obvious you have a bigger problem with your plan. An autonomous Nazi-like terrorist state for Palestinians is just the beginning of major problems, not the beginning of peace. And Condi Rice's comments there at the end were too reminiscent of the UN-funded Palestinian cheer: “Today Gaza, tomorrow Jerusalem and the West Bank.”

President Bush and Ariel Sharon mean well I'm sure, but they're unintentionally endorsing the message behind this Borat Doctrine. They're also selling out to the Islamic neo-Nazis who are the real problem, not Jewish farmers. Maybe the UN should instead fund a big sign to put on that green marble wall of theirs: "It's the ideology, stupid."

UPDATE: Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, makes his statement of thanks and leaves out Israel on what he called an historic day of joy:

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said Friday that Israel's Gaza pullout resulted from Palestinian "sacrifices" and "patience."

Abbas also promised to rebuild houses in Gaza destroyed by Israel. He made his comments before thousands of cheering Palestinians at Gaza's closed airport.

"This pullout is a result of our sacrifice, of our patience, the sacrifice of our people, the steadfastness, and the wise people of our nation," Abbas said.

I guess he figured, "the sacrifice of our children and the expertise of our bombmakers," would have been too much.

MORE: Details from the celebration speech:

The Palestinian leader said the withdrawal is a first step. “Tomorrow they will leave Jenin and after that the West Bank and Jerusalem,” he said.

Abbas also said that the withdrawal was made possible by the “sacrifice made by those who’s homes were destroyed, all those who were injured, and of course by the blood of the martyrs and our brave prisoners. We now must do everything to build our homeland.”

Abbas spoke to thousands of impassioned Palestinians. He was flanked by security minister Muhmmad Dahlan, who was giving Abbas tips during the speech.

Israpundit has more on the "blood of martyrs" banners being flown today.

MORE: I know lots of people say it just looks really bad, but that for long term regional peace and security it's the right thing to do. Although it's my sense is that Israel could pull out of Jerusalem (signing over control to the UN) with a signed peace treaty and it would still only be taken as an interim step towards their final destruction.

Maintenance Alert

UPDATED 9:39 PM EST 18 AUG 05 Comments are back, for now. I think the problem was the archive list in the left sidebar. I've removed it, which will hopefully fix the performance problems with the comments. It will return in some form in the near future once I figure out the best way to provide it without bogging down the server. We're having some hosting and comment spam attack issues right now and for that reason comments are currently disabled. Sorry for the inconvenience, we are working to get this resolved as soon as possible.

CLINTON'S U.S.S. COLE BLAMESHIFTING

Let's dissect this recent quote a bit:

"I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole," Clinton tells New York magazine this week. "Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early."

So if Al Gore would have been President then...nevermind. His comments are interesting though because of what Richard C. Clarke said:

Some also say that due to the Lewinsky scandal, more action perhaps was never undertaken. In your eyes?

The interagency group on which I sat and John O'Neill sat -- we never asked for a particular action to be authorized and were refused. We were never refused. Any time we took a proposal to higher authority, with one or two exceptions, it was approved....

But didn't you push for military action after the Cole?

Yes, that's one of the exceptions.

How important is that exception?

I believe that, had we destroyed the terrorist camps in Afghanistan earlier, that the conveyor belt that was producing terrorists sending them out around the world would have been destroyed. So many, many trained and indoctrinated Al Qaeda terrorists, which now we have to hunt down country by country, many of them would not be trained and would not be indoctrinated, because there wouldn't have been a safe place to do it if we had destroyed the camps earlier.

So that's a pretty basic mistake that we made?

Well, I'm not prepared to call it a mistake. It was a judgment made by people who had to take into account a lot of other issues. None of these decisions took place in isolation. There was the Middle East peace process going on. There was the war in Yugoslavia going on. People above my rank had to judge what could be done in the counterterrorism world at a time when they were also pursuing other national goals.

Priorities, priorities, Mr President. So it doesn't look like lack of legal proof was the problem. By the way, some people knew immediately that it had to be a bin Laden operation based on both common sense and a specific intel indication prior to the bombing.

FBI Agent Clint Guenther says:

With the Cole investigation, that attack occurred, I think, 11:20 in the morning Yemen time, which would have been about 3:00 in the morning New York time. By the time we realized what was happening, 6:30-7:00 in the morning, that it was another terrorist attack, that it very well could be something perpetrated by the bin Laden group, John [O'Neill] immediately seized on the opportunity to say, "New York should have the team going." ...

I was the team leader of the rapid deployment team in New York. "Get out people ready. Get our equipment ready. We're going." That was like 7:00 in the morning.

So throughout the day, I'm moving to get our people identified, who they're going to be in the various components and get them suited up and ready to go. John spent the remainder of the day fighting with headquarters in Washington about the fact that Washington wanted to send the Washington field office, their rapid deployment team. So those folks were going through the same process of standing up, getting their people and their resources together. This food fight went on all day long.

It wasn't until later in the afternoon when O'Neill was able to convince FBI headquarters that, yes, there was intelligence out there prior to the event from bin Laden's organization that, yes, they were going to attack a U.S. ship in such a manner. They finally relented and said, "OK, if it's a bin Laden event, it should be New York."

Unfortunately the Cole investigation in Yemen was tied up from the start by the President's representative there from the State Dept, Ambassador Barbara Bodine, the Jamie Gorelick "wall of terror" and to a lesser extent the Yemeni government.

But President Clinton had the power to influence all of them for national security reasons any time he wanted to put on his Commander in Chief hat and simply defend America. Instead he's pushing blame off on the women who were faithfully protecting his misguided political interests at the time.

Come on Bill, why is it always her fault?

UPDATE: We can even have Bill Clinton make my argument and show how deceptive he's being about what was clearly common knowledge in his adminstration the moment the U.S.S. Cole was bombed. What is said here applies to a massive attack on a U.S. warship as well:

Let's turn back the hands of time. September 3rd, 2002, Larry King Alive, the guest is former President Clinton and former Senator Bob Dole, and King says to Clinton, "You remember what you were thinking, Mr. President? What would go through the mind of the immediate former president watching this?" He's talking about 9/11 and bin Laden.

CLINTON: I remember exactly what happened. Bruce Lindsey said to me on the phone, "My God, a second plane has hit the tower," and I said, "Bin Laden did this." That's the first thing I said. He said, "How can you be sure?" I said, "Because only bin Laden and the Iranians could set up the network to do this, and they wouldn't do it because they have a country and targets. Bin Laden did."

All you have to do is eliminate Iran and you can greenlight an attack on bin Laden in Afghanistan. Even if you suspect Iran (or Iraq) may have given him some assistance, you still can attack bin Laden's operations in Afghanistan ASAP while you keep investigating. Just like the decision after 9/11, it's not rocket science (literally...no ICBMs involved). It's one of the easiest decisions a Commander-in-Chief could make when we we're already basically at war with al Qaeda. And you don't need Congress, lawyers or grand juries to make it. You just need the guts to "go it alone" on principle, since no one else really cared that the U.S. military was attacked. I'm sure they figured we knew how to defend ourselves.

MORE: OK, this has to be the story that defines the Clinton terrorism legacy:

The CIA's former Bin Laden desk chief revealed Thursday night that Clinton administration lawyers warned counterterrorism agents that Osama bin Laden had to be kept as comfortable as possible if they captured him during planned raids into Afghanistan.

"We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, [for] special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair," Scheuer explained. "They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn`t irritate his beard."

"The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community," the former CIA man lamented.

Concerns like that, as well as foot dragging by the White House, resulted in one missed opportunity after another to get the al Qaida terror mastermind, Scheuer said.

"We had at least eight to 10 chances to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 1998 and 1999. And the government on all occasions decided that the information was not good enough to act," he claimed.

Although sharply critical of President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq , the CIA counterterrorism specialist put the blame for bin Laden's escape firmly on Mr. Clinton.

"In terms of which administration had more chances, Mr. Clinton`s administration had far more chances to kill Osama bin Laden than Mr. Bush has until this day," Scheuer said.

THE PENTAGON IS INVESTIGATING

Lt Col Shaffer's Able Danger revelations:

Lt. Col. Chris Conway, a Pentagon spokesman, said Wednesday an investigation into Able Danger was under way.

The department "has been working to gain more clarity on this issue. Accordingly, we continue to interview a number of individuals associated with Able Danger," Conway said.

Conway said it was too soon to comment on findings related to the program.

I predicted blandness from the Pentagon, and blandness is what we will get. Food for thought--who's looking into this within the Pentagon? Some of the same lawyers who bottled up Able Danger when it might have made a difference? Others with a vested interest in this story, one way or the other? Could be, could be. We have no way of knowing yet.

This has been a very interesting couple of weeks, culminating in what amounts to a docu-dump today. Lt Col Shaffer is now front and center risking his career on this story, and Rep. Weldon has been hinting that more officers may come forward to shed yet more light on Able Danger. We've had the State Dept's 1996 warning about al Qaeda come out on the same day that Mary Jo White's second Gorelick Wall memo surfaced, both of which point at the various reasons al Qaeda survived the 1990s with sufficient strength to attack us on 9-11. Those reasons turn out to be, unsurprisingly, that the Clinton administration created an atmosphere of legalese that hindered the prosecution of what should have been a war all along, and that the chief architect of that atmosphere was none other than 9-11 commissioner Jamie Gorelick. Foolishly violent prosecution at Waco and its fallout seem to have played their role in all of this too--the Pentagon's posse comitatus fears seem to have had more to do with Waco hangover than the Wall. And in the midst of all of this, we had Clinton's incredible statement that he wished the Cole bombers would have been identified on his watch so he could have had the satisfaction of striking at bin Laden himself. As though it wasn't obvious from the get-go that the Cole was an al Qaeda operation...? As though Clinton hadn't already bombed that factory in Sudan on much flimsier reasoning...? As though Clinton himself hadn't declared war on al Qaeda long before he even left office, only to do next to nothing about the actual problem...? Clinton's latest lie doesn't pass the laugh test. He's losing his touch.

Clinton knows his legacy is going up in flames. The rest of his former administration are running for cover--where have Sandy Berger and Jamie Gorelick been lately, anyway? Shouldn't they be talking to some sympathetic reporter by now, if only to defend their reputations?

SCHAFFER ON SAVAGE RADIO

I honestly wish Lt Col Shaffer hadn't made Savage Nation a top radio appearance, but he did and that's that. QT Monster has the transcript of the conversation online.

UPDATE: Shaffer is generally regarded as a straight-shooting, highly credible officer by his former colleagues.

(via The Captain)

ACLU STANDS WITH CHILD PORNOGRAPHERS

This is neither new nor news, but it still has the power to turn the stomach.

MORE: When the ACLU isn't busy locking arms with deviants, they're accusing police of "spying" when they're doing nothing more than setting up a neighborhood watch program.

Let's tally up recent ACLU activity:

Evidence of religion anywhere in public view = intolerable violation of separation of church and state (unless Christianity isn't involved; then it's ok)
Religion = terrorism
Child porn = fine and dandy
Gitmo = gulag, should be closed and terrorists there freed to kill again
Border security = human rights violation
Racial profiling to deter terrorists = unfair discrimination
Neighborhood watch to deter crime = police state with neighbor spying on neighbor

I DON'T SEE A NEED TO CRITICIZE CINDY SHEEHAN ANYMORE

Sometimes the best thing to do with a political opponent is simply let them speak for themselves:

[CHRIS] MATTHEWS: All right. If your son had been killed in Afghanistan, would you have a different feeling?

[CINDY] SHEEHAN: I don't think so, Chris, because I believe that Afghanistan is almost the same thing. We're fighting terrorism. Or terrorists, we're saying. But they're not contained in a country. This is an ideology and not an enemy. And we know that Iraq, Iraq had no terrorism. They were no threat to the United States of America.

MATTHEWS: But Afghanistan was harboring, the Taliban was harboring al-Qaida which is the group that attacked us on 9/11.

SHEEHAN: Well then we should have gone after al-Qaida and maybe not after the country of Afghanistan.

MATTHEWS: But that's where they were being harbored. That's where they were headquartered. Shouldn't we go after their headquarters? Doesn't that make sense?

SHEEHAN: Well, but there were a lot of innocent people killed in that invasion, too. ... But I'm seeing that we're sending our ground troops in to invade countries where the entire country wasn't the problem. Especially Iraq. Iraq was no problem. And why do we send in invading armies to march into Afghanistan when we're looking for a select group of people in that country?

So I believe that our troops should be brought home out of both places where we're obviously not having any success in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and that's who they told us was responsible for 9/11.

She's batty on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. First, al Qaeda and the Taliban had a symbiotic relationship with respect to terrorism and running Afghanistan that, to any sane person, made invasion the only available choice. You couldn't do anything to al Qaeda without going through the Taliban, which was the closest thing to a national government Afghanistan had at the time, and given the fact that al Qaeda controlled the Taliban to a great extent, there was no daylight between the two to exploit. But of course, she's not even really in favor of doing much of anything serious about terrorism at all, and she hasn't given the entire issue much more than a minute's worth of serious strategic thought, which isn't even that unique a position on the left. Absent her connection to a fallen soldier, she would be just a garden variety moonbat--clueless, impervious to logic, and ultimately anti-American. Yawn.

She also says "Iraq was no problem" prior to 2003. Then why had we spent more than a decade enforcing no-fly zones over two-thirds of it and trying to keep the inspections regime going? Does a regime that's "no problem" try to assassinate former Presidents of the United States? Does a regime that's "no problem" create a multibillion dollar scam to buy off businessmen and politicos around the world? Does a regime that's "no problem" harbor the likes of Abu Nidal and pay honorarium money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers? Does a regime that's "no problem" go around invading its neighbors on a quest to establish a nuclear armed neo-caliphate with a latter day Hitler at the helm? Etc.

Like her new friends in the UtterlyUnableToMoveOn.org crowd, Cindy Sheehan is simply too ill-informed to be worth talking about anymore.

MORE: Still not criticizing. Just letting her speak for herself:

"We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We’re waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush!"

So declared Cindy Sheehan earlier this year during a rally at San Francisco State University.

Sheehan, who is demanding a second meeting with Bush, stated: "We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now."

Sheehan unleashed a foul-mouth tirade on April 27, 2005:

"They’re a bunch of fucking hypocrites! And we need to, we just need to rise up..." Sheehan said of the Bush administration.

"If George Bush believes his rhetoric and his bullshit, that this is a war for freedom and democracy, that he is spreading freedom and democracy, does he think every person he kills makes Iraq more free?"

"The whole world is damaged. Our humanity is damaged. If he thinks that it’s so important for Iraq to have a U.S.-imposed sense of freedom and democracy, then he needs to sign up his two little party-animal girls. They need to go to this war."

"We want our country back and, if we have to impeach everybody from George Bush down to the person who picks up dog shit in Washington, we will impeach all those people."

Classy. And so...reasonable. Dontcha think?

9/11 COMMISSION: "GO TO HELL...AND STAY OUT OF OUR BUSINESS"

For those of you thinking you have some kind of right to question the 9/11 Commissioners today, here's what they had to say last time the lights were turned on their lack of professionalism:

"We don't want to get in a fight with the attorney general, and I hope he doesn't want to get in a fight with us," said commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. But "people ought to stay out of our business."

"Mitch McConnell is the Republican whip of the Senate and he's accusing us of being too partisan? He can go to hell for all I'm concerned." — 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey to the New York Times, after McConnell complained the panel was growing partisan.

Just fyi.

UPDATE: We aren't the only ones who remember some of the shadier actions that commission members undertook when they were in full dudgeon:

But just read the PDB. You don't have to be James Bond to see there is no actionable intelligence there at all. Not a shred.

This needless declassification of a Top Secret document was the result of a stunt by Richard Ben-Veniste, a member - as unbelievable as it sounds - of the 9/11 Commission.

When it was his turn to query Condoleezza Rice during Thursday's public hearings, Ben-Veniste brought-up the PDB. He said, "Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6th PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB."

Rice replied, "I believe the title was, Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

Immediately after she finished her sentence, Ben-Veniste tried to cut her off. Clearly, his intent was not to ask a question, but simply to force Rice into publicly speaking the words of the title, thereby inflicting political damage on a war-time President.

Rice would have none of it. She verbally pushed Ben-Veniste aside, explaining the PDB piece was synthesized from historical intelligence and written in response to questions the President had asked. The article was not a threat report, said Rice.
However, it was to no avail. Ben-Veniste's words had done their work.

The next day's press was filled with reports on the 'secret warning.' The Los Angeles Times, for example, carried a front page story about "disclosures from the commission that President Bush was warned in a highly classified intelligence briefing five weeks before the attacks..."

Whatever else you can say about Able Danger, you can confidently say this: The 9-11 commission did not earn the trust of the American people, and on several occassions actively surrendered any trust it might have ever gained. The benefit of the doubt in the Able Danger affair should therefore go to Lt Col Shaffer and just about any other credible witness challenging the commission's findings and conclusions.

UPDATE: That's this Richard Ben-Veniste? I'm shocked.

A special counsel to a congressional investigative committee is supposed to be a fact-finder first and foremost. But Richard Ben-Veniste's curiosity about the facts of Whitewater seems to have been a bit selective. In particular, he seems to have gone into overdrive to try to shut down what may have been the most potentially damaging line of inquiry Republican investigators were pursuing.

On February 7, 1996, majority counsel Michael Chertoff posed a series of eerily prescient questions to Webster Hubbell in a televised hearing before the Senate Whitewater committee. Chertoff asked Hubbell, who had been brought up from prison in Maryland to testify, about his employment prospects following his release from prison.

"Are you familiar with a group called the Lippo Group?" Chertoff asked. This was the first public inquiry into a matter that would, seven months later, break out into the Clinton campaign-finance scandal. In February 1996, no one outside the financial community knew much about the Indonesian conglomerate run by Mochtar Riady and his son James. And no one outside the Clinton Arkansas circle knew much about the many, many connections between Lippo and the Clinton crowd--connections apparently based on the flow of Lippo-linked cash into Democratic political operations and rewards for it from the Clinton team in the form of access and influence.

Hubbell responded that an affiliate of the Lippo Group had been a client of his between his resignation from Justice and his guilty plea. ...

Some Democrats may have had an inkling, but Republican staffers on the Whitewater committee, sources say, had no idea what a gold mine Chertoff had stumbled onto. Which is where Richard Ben-Veniste comes back in.

It wasn't until June 1996, about a week before the Whitewater committee's authorization would run out, that Republican investigators returned to the question of Hubbell's employment. Ben-Veniste put on an extraordinary show during a deposition of Bruce Lindsey in which he acted more like a defense counsel than an investigator, trying to run out the clock on an inquiry due to close up shop a week later. ...

The transcript is altogether a remarkable document--not because of anything Lindsey said, but because it shows Ben-Veniste doing everything he could to shut down Giuffra's line of inquiry. Says a Democratic staffer who professes admiration for Ben-Veniste's performance in general, "When the administration was on the ropes, he'd throw them a life raft." ...

The depositions took place on June 8, 1996. The Senate Whitewater committee went out of business June 15. The relevance of the payments to Hubbell is no longer a matter of dispute. Nor is the relevance of the Lippo Group or John Huang. They have been the subjects of front-page headlines in all the major newspapers for months. They might have been so in June 1996 had Ben-Veniste devoted half as much energy to the pursuit of this line of inquiry as he did to shutting it down.

Looks like we may owe Jamie Gorelick an apology for suggesting that she was the only Clinton hack put on the 9/11 Commission to obstruct a real investigation.

BALI BOMBERS' SENTENCES CUT

Indonesia has an odd way of celebrating its independence day. It cuts prison sentences pretty much across the board, and this year the cuts included the terrorists who planned and carried out the 2002 Bali bombing:

The Indonesian government Wednesday reduced prison sentences for 19 people, including the alleged spiritual head of an al-Qaida-linked group, convicted in the Bali nightclub bombings that killed 202 people. One other person was freed.

The reductions were met with dismay in Australia, home to most of the victims of the 2002 attacks.

Cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who originally was sentenced to 30 months in prison for his role in the 2002 attacks, had his sentence reduced by 4 1/2 months, said Dedi Sutardi, chief warden at Cipinang Prison in Jakarta.

The reduction, which came on Bashir's 67th birthday, means he could be released from prison in June 2006. Bashir is believed to be the spiritual leader of the Jemaah Islamiyah militant group.

He will have spent only four years in prison for masterminding a massacre in which 202 people died violently. It's Reason #2453 not to treat terrorism as just another crime--you can't count on prisons to keep the convict behind bars for very long, especially in places like Indonesia where sympathy for the terrorists' cause, if not the terrorists themselves, reaches the top levels of the government.

LT COL SHAFFER: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

JPod and Jim Geraghty rightly called for someone within Able Danger to come forward with what he or she knew, and now someone has. He's Lt Col Anthony Shaffer, and if he's right the weeks leading up to the fourth anniversary of 9-11 are going to be turbulent:

A military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly. The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the F.B.I.

A word about the risk to Shaffer's career and its relevance to the story. Shaffer, it's clear by now, worked for a very, very secretive unit. It was under Special Operations Command, and in all likelihood interfaced not only with the Defense Intelligence Agency but also with the National Security Agency. His position was one of special trust, a position few in the military have the privilege of attaining. As an Army rep in this mix, it makes perfect sense that he was loath for several years to come forward, and it likewise makes sense that his fellow soldiers hold a similar attitude. The last thing Shaffer would want to do, other than fail in his assigned tasks, would be to make the Army look bad in any way, through bullheadedness or perceived conflicts with others in the mix. The context, in other words, matters a great deal here, and I seriously doubt that many who have never been in the military or around intel operations will understand it But there it is.

Colonel Shaffer said in an interview that the small, highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger had identified by name the terrorist ringleader, Mohammed Atta, as well three of the other future hijackers by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the F.B.I.'s Washington field office to share the information.

But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 plot was still being planned.

"I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued," Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.

And there that is. Here's something else. The current Chief of Staff of the US Army is Gen. Peter Schoomaker. He rose through the ranks of Special Operations Command, and was in charge of that command at MacDill Air Force Base at the time Able Danger did its work. If the Pentagon is reticent to confirm Lt Col Shaffer's story, you have two data points to consider as reasons why. One, the likely involvement of NSA, the most secretive and most effective (largely because it's so secretive) intel agency we have. They stay out of the limelight and generally because of that run rings around the CIA. Anything that puts a spotlight on NSA is bad, so that in and of itself could be a reason to pour cold water on Able Danger. The second data point is that it could boomerang around on the Army Chief of Staff if he was in any way involved in bottling up Able Danger in his old command. The Pentagon does not want this scandal, not now and not ever. So I'll be surprised if they say anything interesting anytime in the next hundred years about Able Danger.

He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Defense Department's Special Operations Command had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States. "It was because of the chain of command saying we're not going to pass on information - if something goes wrong, we'll get blamed," he said.

The Defense Department did not dispute the account from Colonel Shaffer, a 42-year-old native of Kansas City, Mo., who is the first military officer associated with the so-called data-mining program to come forward and acknowledge his role.

At the same time, the department said in a statement that it was "working to gain more clarity on this issue" and that "it's too early to comment on findings related to the program identified as Able Danger." The F.B.I. referred calls about Colonel Shaffer to the Pentagon.

Bland enough for ya? These two graphs make perfect sense:

In a statement issued last week, the leaders of the Sept. 11 commission said the panel had concluded that the intelligence program "did not turn out to be historically significant." The statement said that while the commission did learn about Able Danger in 2003 and immediately requested Pentagon files about the program, none of the documents turned over by the Defense Department referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers.

Colonel Shaffer said that his role in Able Danger was as the program's liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, and that he was not an intelligence analyst. The interview with Colonel Shaffer on Monday night was arranged for The New York Times and Fox News by Representative Curt Weldon, the Pennsylvania Republican who is vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and a champion of data-mining programs like Able Danger.

As a liaison, Shaffer would never have had the kind of detailed knowledge that the commission apparently expected. That was an unreasonable expectation, though, both because he was a year removed from the program, never had the detailed knowledge and was at the time of the interview in the middle of a war zone. The commission should have followed up with Shaffer later. They apparently didn't, and there's not a good excuse for that.

Shaffer says Able Danger used internet searches, Lexis Nexis and immigration records--all open source--and identified Atta and linked him up with other al Qaeda operatives prior to 9-11. Bottom line:

Colonel Shaffer said he assumed that by speaking out publicly this week about Able Danger, he might effectively be ending his military career and limiting his ability to participate in intelligence work in the government. "I'm proud of my operational record and I love what I do," he said. "But there comes a time - and I believe the time for me is now -- to stand for something, to stand for what is right."

I believe him. His story is internally consistent and passes the smell test as far as I'm concerned. I also expect Washington to become a city awash in bland as everyone runs as far away from Shaffer as they can.

(thanks to Chris)

THE CAPTAIN also finds Shaffer credible, and fires a volley at the 9-11 commission.

RE THE "PENTAGON GOES BLAND" THEORY, well...

A good guy (I know you guys don’t like an unnamed sources, but this guy wants to keep his job) told me, “Pentagon’s addressing this tomorrow. They’re not going to say anything big.”

Boring has become a virtue.

LET ME BE CLEAR: I'm not saying saying the Pentagon is covering anything up. I am saying that its hesitance to say anything until all the t's can be crossed makes sense and is to be expected. The whole government is probably about to go into CYA mode, to be followed by a robust round of fingerpointing follies. The Pentagon will be no exception to that, unless and until it determines that its top soldier isn't about to become radioactive. Let's hope he isn't, btw. I'd much prefer a storyline involving lawyers below him bottling Able Danger up because of posse comitatus concerns derived from the Gorelick Wall than anything involving senior soldiers. So we'll see what happens now.

LET'S SKIP THE BLAND AND GO RIGHT TO THE FINGER-POINTING: This salvo probably has the virtue of getting ahead of the rest of Washington, and of being true:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16 - State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden's move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam "well beyond the Middle East," but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show.

In what would prove a prescient warning, the State Department intelligence analysts said in a top-secret assessment on Mr. bin Laden that summer that "his prolonged stay in Afghanistan - where hundreds of 'Arab mujahedeen' receive terrorist training and key extremist leaders often congregate - could prove more dangerous to U.S. interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum," in Sudan.

The declassified documents, obtained by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch as part of a Freedom of Information Act request and provided to The New York Times, shed light on a murky and controversial chapter in Mr. bin Laden's history: his relocation from Sudan to Afghanistan as the Clinton administration was striving to understand the threat he posed and explore ways of confronting him.

Before 1996, Mr. bin Laden was regarded more as a financier of terrorism than a mastermind. But the State Department assessment, which came a year before he publicly urged Muslims to attack the United States, indicated that officials suspected he was taking a more active role, including in the bombings in June 1996 that killed 19 members American soldiers at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

This was also around the time Mansour Ijaz was negotiating with Sudan to hand bin Laden over to the Clinton admin--a fact Clinton himself has admitted once, only to adamantly deny it ever since. In 2003 and 2004, Ijaz publicly all but begged the 9-11 commission to have his testimony regarding bin Laden's move from Sudan to Afghanistan. He was rebuffed; Clinton's admission ended up more or less scrapped by the commission.

But that's not what's important about this story. What's important is that State is showing some pre-emptive qualities in getting out ahead of other agencies to get its version into play first. This behavior shows an intense level of worry about the Able Danger fallout in Washington (as did Clinton's own "I would've attacked bin Laden if I'd had the chance" comments). That State is pointing directly at the Clinton admin is, well, not surprising based on the facts but shocking based on how well that administration has gotten away with its malfeasance re terrorism up to now.

SPEAKING OF WARNING THE CLINTONISTAS that their policies would lead to catastrophe, don't forget about Mary Jo White. Like State, she warned the admin higher ups that their policies were disasters in the making. 9-11 proved her right. She barely got a footnote in the 9-11 commission report, though she explicitly warned that the Gorelick Wall would lead to very bad things.

Iirc, it was conventional wisdom shortly after 9-11 that a) everyone was glad the Democrats wouldn't be in charge of the response to it and b) Clinton admin terrorism policies had played a major role in allowing the attacks to happen in the first place. The second half of that old CW has largely been overtaken by events and was evidently papered over by the 9-11 commission, but if nothing else Able Danger and its fallout are bringing us right back to that starting point. Treating terrorism like any other criminal enterprise was the pre 9-11 way of doing business, the Clinton admin was warned that it was a dangerous way to deal with the problem from multiple angles, yet the admin stubbornly held to its law enforcement view. As the cliche says, the rest is history.

HOT SUMMER MELTS BRAINS

I'm finally convinced that clear thinking is dying a cruel death this summer. If it's not the John Cole thing (see below) or the way certain pundits are dancing around Able Danger in order to maintain their access to Beltway cocktail parties, it's Roger Simon of all people misunderstanding caliphascism.

Women's rights are the very center of the War on Terror. In fact I would argue Islamofascism at its core is more than anything else an expression of rage against women and that Islam itself is not much better on that score. That is why to me Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of the great positive figures of our time, a modern Joan of Arc who surpasses the original Joan in a moral sense and is at least her equal in pure guts.

To me, the problem with the above is the characterization of Islamofascism as "more than anything else an expression of rage against women." Not true. Doesn't anyone actually listen to what the caliphascists--a more accurate term than Islamofascists, btw, since it reflects what drives these nutjobs--to hear what they want?

Osama bin Laden has made it clear that he wants a couple of things to happen, which he believes will bring about a third thing. First, he wants all non-Islamic influences, all foreign troops and all foreign people out of dar-al-Islam--the "house of Islam," or the Middle East. Second, he wants a restored caliphate that will unite dar-al-Islam against dar-al-Harb, the "house of war." He sees himself playing the role of caliph, naturally, because he's one of those will to power types, but he'd probably be fine if his martyrdom somehow leads to the resurrection of the caliphate. He figures Allah will reward him handsomely either way, supposing he actually believes in Allah. These will to power types don't usually believe in much beyond their own will, though they're more than happy to use whatever philosophy seems most useful to them. I always find it fascinating that the bin Ladens and the Abu Nidals and the Arafats never strap on the bomb belt for themselves. Why should they, when the world is full of useful idiots?

Third, once all foreign influences have been scoured from the Middle East and once the caliph sits atop his regional throne ruling a united Arabia, dar-al-Islam should overcome dar-al-harb. Meaning the true fulfillment of the term Islam--the "submission" meaning, not the "peace" bromide caliphascist apologists like to say in front of cameras--will be fulfilled and Islam will be the world's sole religion. Everyone else with either submit or die. One turban to rule them all, if you will. Islam's structure, its history and its founding text are especially useful to an ambitious Arab who isn't satisfied merely with being the son of a rich industrialist. So he uses it without apology. If bin Laden found something else more useful, I have no doubt that he would use that, so long as it put him where he believes he should be: king of his world, exterminating the kaffirs.

That's what he wants. Rage against women is a manifestation of caliphascism, but I don't think it's the core, at least not to the movement's leadership. Racism is another manifestation of it, too, but not the core imho. The core of this toxic ideology is the same core that has driven every other totalitarian ideology--the desire to make the world bend to the will of a man or a small group of them. The caliphascists are Nazis without the swastikas (but with the same salutes and racist ideas) and they are the Soviets without the academic trappings. But the caliphascists are no less ambitious than any of their predecessors, and given the chance to operate they are probably more dangerous. Like Hitler and Stalin and countless tyrants before him, Osama bin Laden is the ambitious devil of our age.

YOU WANT PROOF OF WHAT THE TERRORISTS WANT? Ok. Here you go.

ACLU SPOKESMAN: RELIGION = TERROR

Critics of the ACLU have long suspected that the organization hates Christians. Well, one ACLU official does his best to prove it:

It's in the choice of words, but you decide.. is American Civil Liberties Union chief Joe Cook calling the Tangipahoa Parish School Board members a bunch of terrorists?

Cook was asked about a meeting Monday, during which the school board spoke to all teachers and workers about policy for this year, and had been asked by the ACLU to remind teachers to be extra careful not to allow prayer at school functions. This is what the ACLU chief had to say:

"They believe that they answer to a higher power, in my opinion. Which is the kind of thinking that you had with the people who flew the airplanes into the buildings in this country, and the people who did the kind of things in London."

Tangipahoa school officials tell reporters it's ludicrous to compare the Tangipahoa school board's "fight for religious freedom and freedom of expression in schools" with terrorist motivated attacks.

(via BOTW)

SO

I finally get around to reading this tripe, and all I can say is "John Cole, it was nice knowing you." Like many, many bloggers you have no understanding of the relevance of one fact to another, no mind to assemble facts into a coherent post and you often see fit to string together obscenities rather than thoughts and ideas.

Do you actually think Michelle Malkin deserves all of the racist and misogynistic garbage that's thrown her way every day by the left? You wrote that she deserves it--do you believe that? If not, do what you ordered Michelle to do--take down your post and apologize. Now. If you do believe it, you need help.

Do you actually think you've been fair to her, when half a dozen actual news outlets posted the same story she reported--the one about the Sheehan divorce that got you so hot and bothered? And do you see no relevance to the Sheehan saga, a saga based on family connections, when the family involved is dissolving because they don't agree on what is being done to Casey Sheehan posthumously? Does a grieving father have any less right than a grieving mother to make his opinion known? Does Mr. Sheehan have to stand by and watch his son's name and heroism turned into a prop for MoveOn, CodePink and other assorted leftwing nutjobs? Does he have to stand by silently while his wife figuratively hangs their precious son's body from a tree in Crawford?

Sheehan made her family life fair game when she made her family connection to a fallen soldier her calling card. She has become a media celebrity by flogging her dead son. Her husband evidently sees that, and disagrees with her behavior. That they're divorcing is sad, but that Cole thinks it's now fair to abuse a blogger for reporting the divorce is just unhinged.

COLE APOLOGIZES. Good for him. Lesson from this fiasco--think before pushing the "Publish" button. It'll save everyone a ton of grief and embarassment.