MAJOR AL QAEDA FIGURE ARRESTED

The Turkish police have apprehended Luai Sakra, a Syrian who once headed up an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and is a close confidant of Zarqawi. He also gave logistical support to 9-11, and apparently knew about the London bombings beforehand:

The Turkish interrogators in Istanbul's high-security prison wanted to be polite; they wanted to show respect for Islam. They offered their prisoner, an Islamist named Luai Sakra, 31, a chance to pray during a pause in questioning.

They'd done the same thing with earlier suspects. The move was supposed to establish trust.

But this prisoner reacted a bit differently. "I don't pray," Sakra answered politely, "and I like alcohol." When the baffled officials didn't want to believe him, he elaborated: "Especially whiskey and wine."

It wasn't the only surprise the Syrian-born suspect presented to investigators. Turkish anti-terror officials held the suspected al-Qaida member for four days. Just after his arrest two weeks ago, Sakra admitted to planning strikes against Israeli cruise ships; he hoarded 750 kilograms of explosives for the purpose. When some of those explosives went up in flames in his Antalya apartment, he fled.

What Sakra told officials during his interrogation suggests a deep jihadist career. The Syrian, who knows weapons as well as he knows his whiskey and wine, has obviously played a far more important role in the terrorist underground than officials first suspected. According to his own testimony, he knew about the London bombings before they happened, and supported the pilots on 9/11.

"I was one of the people who knew the 9/11 perpetrators," Sakra reportedly said in passing during the interrogation, "and I knew the plans and times beforehand." He claims to have provided the pilots with passports and money.

These details, if true, close some gaps in the narrative of the worst terrorist assaults in history -- and they raise a question which German investigators have wrestled with in past week: Did Sakra -- who lived from September 2000 to July 2001 with his wife and two small children as an asylum-seeker in the southern town of Schramberg -- work with anyone else in Germany? Are there any unknown contacts still out there who know what he knows?

Western investigators accept Sakra's claims, by and large, since they coincide with known facts. On September 10, 2001, he tipped off the Syrian secret service -- which had chased him since 1999 for his role in a revolt in a Lebanon refugee camp -- that terrorist attacks were about to occur in the United States. The evidently well-informed al-Qaida insider even named buildings as targets, and airplanes as weapons. The Syrians passed on this information to the CIA -- but only after the attacks.

Sakra has also apparently taken part in combat in Fallujah and caliphascist beheadings inside Iraq:

A video allegedly recorded in Fallujah played an important role for Turkish investigators: Sakra boasted to an Istanbul magistrate that he'd attended the execution of a kidnapped Turkish truck driver in Iraq.

The video shows the death of driver Murat Yüce in August 2004, at the hands of armed, masked fighters for Zarqawi. Sakra gave a running commentary with a slight smile and no remorse: "Look, now they'll cut off his head. Soon they'll take that pistol off the table, so the blood won't ruin it." And, like a ballistics expert: "Blood wrecks the insides of a pistol."

He was picked up by the Turkish MIT several times in 2000 and 2001, including once in August 2001. The story says that the CIA tried buying Sakra into becoming an informant within al Qaeda in 2000, but given his bloody history that wouldn't have sat well with the Clinton ethos of the time, which forbade our intel agencies from dealing with anyone with blood on their hands.

IRAQ BODY COUNT FRAUD CONTINUES

It started here. But now it's another day, another anti-war canard from the left.

The DailyKos and other left-wing bloggers are featuring the map below (from the invaluable website icasualties.org) in an attempt to make a point about the deaths of U.S. servicemen and women in Iraq. The point is not entirely clear, but Kos appears to be suggesting that areas that voted for John Kerry in the last election have suffered more deaths in the war than areas that voted for George W. Bush -- hence, the blue areas are more patriotic than the red.

It appears to be a wildly invalid point in many ways. To take just one example, the casualties map also resembles a map of the concentration of the U.S. population; it's no surprise they would be similar.

I guess it's an attempt to assure us that Democrats in general now have the "absolute moral authority" to speak out in solidarity with Cindy Sheehan in favor of the "freedom fighters" who killed her son and against da Jooos, the Bush criminal syndicate and his secret nuclear genocide of civilians in Iraq. Because that's what being patriotic is all about, right?

In response:

A reader has posted a chart of American servicemen and women deaths in Iraq ranked by deaths per 100,000 population by state. For what it is worth, eight of the ten states with the highest death rates are red (although the state with the greatest loss is very-blue Vermont). In general, and with some notable exceptions, red states tend to be in the top half of the list, with blue states nearer the bottom.

And for even more context on the MSM-left's Iraq death count fetish, Powerline has a great post:

We are conducting an experiment never before seen, as far as I know, in the history of the human race. We are trying to fight a war under the auspices of an establishment that is determined--to put the most charitable face on it--to emphasize American casualties over all other information about the war.

...Here's some context: between 1983 and 1996, 18,006 American military personnel died accidentally in the service of their country. That death rate of 1,286 per year exceeds the rate of combat deaths in Iraq by a ratio of nearly two to one.

That's right: all through the years when hardly anyone was paying attention, soldiers, sailors and Marines were dying in accidents, training and otherwise, at nearly twice the rate of combat deaths in Iraq from the start of the war in 2003 to the present. Somehow, though, when there was no political hay to be made, I don't recall any great outcry, or gleeful reporting, or erecting of crosses in the President's home town. In fact, I'll offer a free six-pack to the first person who can find evidence that any liberal expressed concern--any concern--about the 18,006 American service members who died accidentally in service of their country from 1983 to 1996.

The point? Being a soldier is not safe, and never will be. Driving in my car this afternoon, I heard a mainstream media reporter say that around 2,000 service men and women have died in Afghanistan and Iraq "on President Bush's watch." As though the job of the Commander in Chief were to make the jobs of our soldiers safe. They're not safe, and they never will be safe, in peacetime, let alone wartime.

What is the President's responsibility? To expend our most precious resources only when necessary, in service of the national interest. We would all prefer that our soldiers never be required to fight. Everyone--most of all, every politician--much prefers peace to war. But when our enemies fly airplanes into our skyscrapers; attack the nerve center of our armed forces; bomb our embassies; scheme to blow up our commercial airliners; try to assassinate our former President; do their best to shoot down our military aircraft; murder our citizens; assassinate our diplomats overseas; and attack our naval vessels--well, then, the time has come to fight. And when the time comes to fight, our military personnel are ready. They don't ask to be preserved from all danger. They know their job is dangerous; they knew that when they signed up. They are prepared to face the risk, on our behalf. All they ask is to be allowed to win.

It is, I think, a reasonable request. It's the least that we--all Americans, including reporters and editors--can do.

But instead, these brave men and women are being nagged out of Iraq prematurely by the MSM-left's Nag-in-Chief and her gaggle of nagging supporters so the real torture and killing of civilians can safely take place once again.

MORE: Related hoax

For two years, Carbondale residents have been riveted by the writing of a little girl imploring her father in Iraq: "Don't die, OK?"

Only now are they learning there was never any danger of that.

The Daily Egyptian, Southern Illinois University's student-run newspaper, today will admit to its readers that the saga - of a little girl's published letters to her father serving in Iraq - was apparently an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a woman who claimed to be the girl's aunt. ...

Over the months, columns written by Kodee started to become a regular feature on the paper's editorial page. The columns, titled "Kenningsology," talked about her childhood, her newfound friends at the Daily Egyptian, her father, and even President Bush:

"I'm rily mad at you and you make my hart hurt,"' she purportedly wrote in one published letter to the president. "I don't think your doing a very good job. You keep sending soldiers to Iraq and it's not fair. Do you have a soldier of your own in Irak?"

WELDON DONS POKER FACE: ALL IN

When the Able Danger saga is done, Curt Weldon will deserve one of two things: a Congressional Medal of Freedom for his courage, or a straight jacket for his lunacy. There really isn't a middle ground for a man who says what he is now saying:

Rep. Curt Weldon predicted yesterday that members of the 9/11 Commission would have "egg all over their face[s]" when the truth comes out about briefings they received on an elite group of military intelligence analysts code named Able Danger.

"The 9/11 Commission is trying to spin this because they're embarrassed at what's coming out," Weldon told the Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" morning show.

"In two weeks with two staffers, I've uncovered more in this regard than they did with 80 staffers and $15 million of taxpayers' money!"

The Pennsylvania Republican said the truth would come out in hearings planned for this fall:

"This information will ultimately end up in a hearing. Senator Specter is preparing a hearing in the judiciary committee. I talked to Speaker Hastert yesterday on the House side. We will bring people in under oath, and they will swear and they will answer the questions."

Weldon also blasted Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita for repeatedly claiming he can't find any evidence to back up claims from Able Danger team members that they had identified lead 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta two years before the attacks.

Weldon said he told Di Rita: "Larry, don't ever go on national TV again and say what you said, when I know that [Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence] Steve Cambone is right now going through four boxes of materials."

"There's something very sinister that's going on here that really troubles me," Weldon complained.

And Weldon seems to be promising more to come. He just keeps putting up when shutting up would be the wise thing to do, if he doesn't actually have a there there. In poker terms, he has pushed all of his chips into the center of the table and is awaiting the skeptics' call or fold. You only do that when have a sure winning hand--or when you're bluffing mightily hoping to intimidate your opponent into folding his superior hand. But if Weldon is bluffing, so are two high-ranking military officers. Their motive, if they're not telling the truth, remains a mystery. Mac tried smearing them a couple weeks ago, but that went nowhere.

And the Pentagon remains bland, as predicted here. Its poker face betrays no hint of what's in its hand--yet.

BLUE STATE BLUES

I live in a blue state. On the way in to work every morning I drive through good neighborhoods, not so good neighborhoods, you name it. Just before getting to the office, I pull through a very upscale patch where the lawns are perfect, the cars are flashy and the houses are monstrous. Trophy wives jog through the neighborhood most good mornings, their perfect sweat never marring their perfect ensembles.

In that neighborhood, I don't recall seeing many, if any, American flags flying on any of the houses. Lots of Kerry signs and stickers--even some Kerry signs still planted as though the election didn't take place nearly a year ago now. But no American flags.

This morning, I did notice a new flag flying from one of the houses. No Old Glories in sight, mind you, but a pale blue thing now flies that wasn't there yesterday. It's the UN flag. Who in their right mind would fly a UN flag on their house?

That flag is a symbol of pettiness, lies and corruption, of world government by unelected bureaucrats, of giving a voice to tyrants and of troop misconduct during "peacekeeping" missions. It's the symbol of half-wars fought to stalemate in Korea and of Oil-For-Food payoffs to help Saddam. If any flag deserves burning, it's that one.

Yet it now flies in one of the swankest neighborhoods in the state, without a US flag in sight to counter it. Such are the values of the rich around here.

WAPO VS THE MULLAHS

A few days ago the Post caused a stir by reporting, based on anonymous sources, that Iran doesn't really have a nuclear weapons program:

Traces of bomb-grade uranium found two years ago in Iran came from contaminated Pakistani equipment and are not evidence of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, a group of U.S. government experts and other international scientists has determined.

"The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions," said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity.

Scientists from the United States, France, Japan, Britain and Russia met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to U.S. and foreign officials. Recently, the group, whose existence had not been previously reported, definitively matched samples of the highly enriched uranium -- a key ingredient for a nuclear weapon -- with centrifuge equipment turned over by the government of Pakistan.

The group that the Post is relying on is a creation of the IAEA, famous most recently for turning a blind eye to pretty much every nuclear weapons issue that arises from the Middle East:

The IAEA had put together the group of experts in an effort to foster cooperation but also to eliminate the possibility that its findings would be challenged by the White House, officials said. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion in March 2003, the White House rejected IAEA findings that cast doubt on U.S. assertions about then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's arsenal. The IAEA findings turned out to be correct, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

The scientists' paymaster may be relevant to the substance of their findings.

Meanwhile, if you actually listen to the mullahs themselves, you get an entirely different story.

The following are excerpts from an interview with Iran's chief nuclear affairs negotiator, and Supreme National Security Council member Hosein Musavian, which aired on Iranian Channel 2 on August 4, 2005. To view this clip visit http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=805. To view several MEMRI TV clips on Iran's Defense Program, visit http://memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S5&P1=135.

Musavian: "Those [in Iran] who criticize us and claim that we should have only worked with the IAEA do not know that at that stage – that is, in August 2003 – we needed another year to complete the Esfahan (UCF) project, so it could be operational. They say that because of that 50-day [ultimatum], we should have kept [the UCF] in Esfahan incomplete, and that we needed to comply with the IAEA's demands and shut down the facilities.

"The regime adopted a twofold policy here: It worked intensively with the IAEA, and it also conducted negotiations on international and political levels. The IAEA gave us a 50-day extension to suspend the enrichment and all related activities. But thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year, in which we completed (the UCF) in Esfahan.

---

Host: "Mr. Musavian, there is a point that our viewers might find interesting - the comparison between Iran's nuclear activity dossier and North Korea's.

[...]

"There is a belief that if we adopted the North Korean model, we could have stood much stronger against the excessive demands of America and Europe.

[...]

Musavian: "During these two years of negotiations, we managed to make far greater progress than North Korea. North Korea's most important achievement had to do with security guarantees. We achieved the same thing a year ago in the negotiations with the Europeans. They agreed to give us international guarantees for Iran's security, its national rule, its independence, [and] non-intervention in its internal affairs, [as well as] its national security, and for not invading it."

Esfahan is the site of Iran's largest nuclear facility, and is probably a nuclear weapons development center. The mullahs are playing the Europeans and the IAEA like a fiddle, using delaying tactics to keep the development program on track. Or at least that's the story they're peddling for domestic consumption.

Bottom line: The WaPo story is most likely bunk, crafted by the IAEA to discredit the US.

(thanks to Greg)

EVIL UNCHALLENGED

gets stronger.

1974 REDUX

Our leftist media gets beamed right into Iraq, to misinform them as much as it misinforms us. How much Reuters must love reporting the effect:

ROME, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Iraqi leaders are closely watching the growth of the anti-war movement in the United States and understand that Americans will become frustrated without more progress, Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Thursday.

Our allies aren't the only ones noting the anti-war movement. You can bet Zarqawi and bin Laden are enjoying the spectacle as well.

Zebari, on a two-day trip to Italy, also said the next few months would "make or break" Iraq but that allies should stick together and not send what he called mixed or confused signals.

He said he sympathised with anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan and others who have lost loved ones in Iraq but that it would be "disastrous" if the protests led to any cracks in the coalition or premature withdrawal.

Zebari is right about what a disaster withdrawing from Iraq prematurely would cause, but Sheehan and the media and the Democrats don't care. They don't care. To them this entire war is nimby--not in my back yard--even when it was right down the street from their swank Manhattan pads. They're the party of billionaires and heiresses--if Iraq goes belly up, who cares? They never wanted to go there anyway. If the US gets blown up, who cares? They'll just move to Paris. If Paris gets blown up, who cares? They'll just move to Canada. Etc. They have disconnected themselves from any consequences their rhetoric might cause, as much as they are disconnected from reality and the plight of average people. If a million Iraqis died because these snooty leftists convinced enough Americans to demand a premature exit, these leftist elites would learn nothing from it and would not care at all. They would blame Bush and then just MoveOn to some other campaign of canards.

(thanks to Chris)

WHAT A WASTE OF TIME

Victor Davis Hanson will debate U.S. Foreign Policy with Arianna Huffington. If that harpy stays true to form, the debate will go something like this:

HANSON: Now Mrs. Huffington, your friend Cindy Sheehan has called President Bush "the world's biggest terrorist" while also calling the insurgentst in Iraq, whose crimes include driving bombs into crowds of Iraqi children, "freedom fighters." Is that your position as well?

HUFFINGTON: Let me tell you, dahling, that as a mother Cindy has the absolutel moral authority to speak. She has the freedom to speak. And she must be heard.

HANSON: But again, if I may, do you agree with Sheehan's characterization of the insurgents as "freedom fighters?"

HUFFINGTON: This President's lies took us to war! It is about time we heard an authentic voice, grounded in real moral clarity, speak the truth to this criminal administration and its horrible policies.

HANSON: Could you just answer the question?

MODERATOR: I'm afraid your time is up, Dr. Hanson. Your question, Mrs. Huffington.

Ad nauseum. That's nearly a word-for-word exchange that took place on Hannity today--him trying in vain to get her to answer a simple question, her letting those questions pass between her ears as she lurched from one idiotic talking point to another. I kept urging Hannity to just hang up on her, ban her from his show for life, etc, but of course I was only talking to myself. And he kept her on the show and let her keep spouting enemy bullet points and nonsense.

That's pretty much how the Hanson debate will go too. And it's a shame, really, that a real scholar such as Hanson has to debate someone whose sole qualification to opine is the fact that she's rich beyond most people's wildest dreams. She has no actual qualifications, just opinions. And money.

The debate is September 14 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Blue state. No matter who says what, the audience will come away feeling that she won the dumb thing.

(via Ace)

BREAKDOWN

I was going write a long, careful post about this, but the truth is hardly anyone reads long posts all the way to the end. So I'll keep it short, knowing that I'll miss salient facts and side arguments. So be it.

Everyone on the right is worried, angry, and frustrated that the Bush administration isn't making the case for the war, that he's letting a very strange woman with a loose cannon mouth dictate his comings and goings, and that the war itself is in jeopardy. And it is. A majority now thinks the Iraq was was a mistake, and a significant plurality thinks Mr. Bush lied our way into that war.

That their beliefs are based on equal parts ignorance of history and the effect of the steady drip of lies from the Democrats, media and the left is largely irrelevant. That Mr. Bush could detonate the entire "Bush lied, people died" crapola with a simple request--have everyone with internet access Google "Clinton Iraq 1998" and see what they find--is true but meaningless. He's never made that request. He never will. I don't know why, and frankly I'm tired of carrying the administration's water on the war. And with this little blog I can only carry so much. All blogs put together, from InstaPundit to Michelle Malkin, can only do so much.

During the lowest points of the Clinton years, that scoundrel had about a half dozen surrogates who were everywhere, all the time, 24/7 it seemed, crafting clever lies and half-truths that kept Clinton in office. They literally kept the man in office. Polls showed at the outset that if it were proved that Clinton had done what he was accused of doing with Monica, never mind the subornation of perjury and the rest, he would have to leave office. His response was "Well, we have to win then." So he got his surrogates out and they won.

President Bush, who is ten times the man of Clinton with a hundred times the courage, has done some big, noble, courageous things on our behalf. We bloggers have tried to maintain support for him but most Americans still don't read blogs. We in the alternative press have tried to keep telling his story, but most Americans don't read the alternative press. What we can do is piddly stuff compared to what needs to be done.

What needs to be done? Well, the administration needs some big gun surrogates. It needs its aggressive spokesmen who, like Carville and Begala and their comrades, stick to a small set of talking points and hammer them 24/7 on the airwaves. These big guns must be already famous conservatives who can articulate the cause with passion and conviction, not a gaggle of bloggers and hangers on no one's ever heard of. Bloggers aren't enough. CNS News reporting the Code Pink attacks on Walter Reed aren't enough. We need bigger guns in this battle, or we'll lose.

David Frum--you criticized the administration's war communication. You're a famous former member of the administration. Well, if you believe in the war put your good name to work and help us win it. Our pundits are letting us down. They're letting the administration down, and they're letting our troops down.

I'm serious. Making comments on blog posts and syndicated columns is good, but not enough. Most Americans don't read that much, and they're certainly not reading political blogs. So get off your backsides and put your mouths and your brains to work. A breakdown of the entire war effort seems like it's on the horizon now, with the president's approval ratings at rock bottom and a majority turning, perhaps irrevocably but perhaps not, against the war. In the age of punditry and information when we're fighting a post-modern war, surrogates for the president are vital. So get out there and get yourselves into America's living rooms however you have to do it.

MORE: Powerline is wrong, O'Reilly is right. The President does not have until January 2009 to patch up Iraq enough to satisfy the American people. He has until next summer at the most, and here's why. There's a midterm next year. The Democrats are more vulnerable in both the House and Senate, but if the war's unpopularity continues to slide candidates and incumbents in both parties will be running away from it. They're running away from it now for the most part--when was the last time you heard either a GOP congressman or senator stand up unequivocally with the president on the war? Most of them have been mostly silent lately. Next year if we're hitting more than 60% thinking that we should withdraw, party won't matter all that much. The GOP will probably still control both houses, but their local polls will tell them that staying the course is politically problematic. So they'll start voting to defund the war, either by defunding training for the Iraqi security forces or be defunding the deployment itself, forcing DoD to bring the troops home.

Think it can't happen? It happened in 1974. And we were out of Vietnam a year later, and our South Vietnam allies, defunded and defanged, were overrun by the Communists.

It can happen next year, and if the administration doesn't turn the PR infowar around in the US fast, it probably will. The mediacrat left will see to it however they can.

One thing I think a lot of us pro-war bloggers misunderstood in 2003--I know I misunderstood it at the time--was that when the mediacrat left said Iraq would be another Vietnam, that wasn't a forlorn prediction. It was a threat. And they are making good on that threat.

(hat tip Robert)

SCOTT OTT

should become President Bush's next speechwriter.

RED STATE, BLUE STATE: COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Missouri (Bush 53%, Kerry 46% in 2004 election): Missouri Welcomes Home a Hero.

Washington State (Kerry 53%, Bush 46% in 2004 election): Caught on Tape: Soldiers Beaten in Seattle.

MORE: Saddamite UK MP George Galloway just announced a speaking tour of the US. Or, more precisely, parts of the US:

Starting September 13, Galloway will appear in Boston, New York, Madison, Wisconsin, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles before ending his tour, on September 24, in Washington, where he will speak at George Washington University.

All of those sites are blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue, blue.

THE ACLU AND THE 'LIVING CONSTITUTION'

Stop the ACLU sifts ACLU statements and history to determine what Roger Baldwin's creation really thinks of democracy:

What the majority thinks doesn’t matter anymore. Former ACLU Executive Director Ira Glasser made that clear when he said in an ACLU press release after Alaska voted for a constitutional amendment to preserve the traditional definition of marriage, “Today’s results prove that certain fundamental issues should not be left up to a majority vote.”

Rtwt.

REVIEWING THE NATIONAL REVIEW CRUISE

by Keith Curtis [I hope he's right about Hillary in '08--ed.]

I went on a cruise around the UK from the 10th to the 21st of July with my parents and the National Review. It had a bunch of great panelists, William F. Buckley, Robert Bork, editor Rich Lowry, NRO creator Jonah Goldberg and his cute daughter we’ve read about periodically in the G-File, and too many others to name. Each night we sat at a different table of 8 for dinner and got to meet different guests and 2 of the nights we sat with somebody ‘famous.’

It was on a 4 star cruise ship around the UK, starting at the white cliffs of Dover and stopping at 6 different places. On the days at sea, we had 4 hours of panels and an evening get-together. There were 450 of us on a boat of 1000, and we dominated the ship. I would tell the other guests that we were planning Jeb Bush’s election and the invasion of Syria. (It was amazing how many people hadn’t heard of National Review.) My mom retells the story of how she almost got into a fight with some rube lib about the Clintons on a cruise in the 90s and had to move tables, so it was refreshing that every guest you met was like-minded but also as interesting as the last.

The days at sea panels covered everything from the mainstream media, to then-upcoming Supreme Court nomination, the recent Britain bombings, and many other interesting topics. The topic discussed most was Hillary Clinton in 2008. Paul Johnson reminded everyone that a week is a long time in politics, but I don’t think it was appreciated by the crowd or even the NR folks.

I am very optimistic and went around telling everyone that Hillary won’t run because I don’t think she wants to re-live through the 1990s. What I can tell you about HillaryCare can fit in a thimble other than the memories of the deliberations being secret and her wanting to appease the insurance companies, but if she runs for President, I’ll get to hear about it, and she’ll get to defend it and it will be very boring for us and pointless for her. She must realize this, though we should remind her at every turn.

Furthermore, I told people not to worry because the way Bush is going, there won’t be any issues left to discuss in 2008. People on the cruise don’t realize this, but Bush’s successor, whoever he is, will be operating on a completely different set of issues as we are discussing today. Bush has 3.5 more years, with hopefully a more conservative Senate in 2006, and in that time, he and the Republican party, are going to pass tons of legislation on every issue which has been festering for the last 40 years or more in America today. People don’t seriously consider what Congress will be talking about this fall, but immigration and tax reform, medical malpractice, expanded HSAs, maybe NASA. And what about next spring and summer and fall? In 2008, we will have discussed and the Congress will pass legislation on most or all of the domestic issues of our time. Notice how we aren’t talking about the Death Tax or Forest Fires or whether nuclear power anymore? Bush will get through at least a version 1 of the backlog of legislation people have been talking for as long as anyone today has been in Washington. This means two things.

I believe Bush is failing for not spending enough time talking to the intellectuals from his base. The New York Times drives the agenda and if they want to talk about Abu Ghraib, then we all talk about it, but National Review and the rest of the intellectuals in our party have our own level of understanding and perspective and Bush needs to understand how we think and communicate with us on our level.

It is a tragedy how little support Bush’s domestic agenda got from the panelists. Jonah gave a very funny tirade about the flaws in Bush’s domestic agenda, from prescription drugs to No Child Left Behind and certainly everyone include Bush would agree that his legislation has flaws, but you get the feeling that they aren’t on board with most of it.

To take education as an example, we can’t do, as National Review presumably proposes, to just abolish the Department of Education tomorrow and make all schools private. However, we could ensure that we don’t have a generation where 20% of high-school educated kits cannot read by by having states create tests. Liberals believe you can fake tests which is why we haven’t had them up till now, but Bush has fought and won on that issue, one of the many many unrecognized achievements of his administration. And now that we have tests we can put our collective brainpower to building better tests. And now that we have tests, we can talk about why schools are failing which could eventually even lead to the abolishment of schools run by the State.

We also talked a lot about immigration. Here is another example where the level of understanding among even the panelists is very limited--no one had any actual ideas other than putting heat-seaking missiles onto UAVs. I believe we should have started with the premise of: what kind of economic incentives can we create in a guest worker program to make sure people return at the end? What about a 50% tax whose benefits they get only while they prove residence back in their home country? If the Right were on board, they could be arguing for stronger economic incentives, for perhaps also changing the rule which says that children of illegals are citizens, for removing certain levels of access to social services to whatever else we can think of which would cure any of the egregious abuses in the system.

And so my second point is that Bush is going to pass immigration, more Medicare, more education policy and a ton of other domestic legislation between now and 2008 because that is what he was built to do. We should understand the diamonds in the rough and work to get it more polished rather than only snarkly complaining from the sidelines.

In a sense there is a self-fulfilling prophecy from the Right about Bush’s agenda. Without all of us constructively discussing it, there will only be a small number of people in Bush’s administration and in Congress which will be making these decisions, and so the legislation ends up being less ambitious as it could be. Bush’s agenda could be even more successful if we accepted his (I believe correct) premises and added our great ideas.

In sum, I left depressed, but all in all it was very nice to be amongst so many funny conservatives, to sample a bunch of different charming cities in the UK, to eat like a king for 3 meals a day, and to have created so many memories, like one of watching Mark Steyn's sing "Hey, Big Spender!" I have a bunch of non-political pictures (including one of Mark singing) I have posted to http://keithcu.com/NRCruise.

IRAQI TET OFFENSIVE RUMOR

The Mesopotamian reports what might be the most disturbing thing I've read about the war in a while--the jihadis and Baathist bitter enders in Iraq are planning a Tet-style offensive:

As the dialogue between the different political blocks intensify concerning the Constitution and the noticeable shift in the Sunni mood towards the political process; the real enemy: Hard core Saddamists, Foreign Al-Qaeda type terrorists and the criminal local Mafia; are getting really desperate. There are rumors in the air about an impending massive terrorist campaign – massive number of car bomb attacks, mortar attacks, and sabotage of the basic services, water, electricity etc.

This threat of possible escalation must be taken seriously; because in the present situation on the ground it is not difficult to carry out, if the enemy decides to concentrate all his forces for one massive short campaign. Although we don’t like to compare with Vietnam but it is Tet-Offensive style of thinking.

On the one hand, attempting a Tet might result in catastrophic losses for the enemy, which would be to the good. But on the other hand, such a broad and lethal series of attacks would probably kick up the anti-war movement here and dishearten our allies in Iraq. The press would undoubtedly spin its outcome--however things turn out--as a serious defeat for the US and for President Bush. The 1968 Tet Offensive played out according to that script--big battlefield wins for the US and the near total destruction of the Vietcong, but a media-made defeat for the US from which we never recovered.

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of the original Tet Offensive and about whom I've written much before, has written several books about his guerilla strategies and is still alive. He's about 92 years old. I've often wondered if the insurgents in Iraq and al Qaeda itself haven't at least read his work, and might be communicating with him.

(thanks to Chris)

TRAITORS TAUNT WOUNDED G.I.'S

But we won't question their patriotism:

Anti-war protestors besieged wounded and disabled soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C, a new web report will claim!

CNSNews.com is planning to run an expose featuring interviews with both protestors and veterans, as well as shots of protest signs with slogans like “Maimed for a Lie.”

The conservative outlet will post video evidence of the wounded veterans being taunted by protesters, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Nope. Wouldn't want to question their patriotism at all.

(thanks to Chris)

GREATEST. MOVIE LINE. EVER.

Download it. Watch it. Laugh. Pass it on.

(thanks to JS)

SPECIAL INTEREST ALIENS

I have a new post up over at Immigration Blog about illegals other than Mexicans who are taking advantage of our insane border policies.

SUMMER OF SHEEHAN: ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER OUTRAGEOUS QUOTE

Democrats, do you think the head-choppers who are planting bombs near schools in Iraq are "freedom fighters?" Your new heroine does:

[CBS NEWS' MARK] KNOLLER: You know that the president says Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism, don't you believe that?

[CINDY] SHEEHAN: No, because it's not true. You know Iraq was no threat to the United States of America until we invaded. I mean they're not even a threat to the United States of America. Iraq was not involved in 9-11, Iraq was not a terrorist state.

But now that we have decimated the country, the borders are open, freedom fighters from other countries are going in, and [U.S. troops] have created more terrorism by going to an Islamic country, devastating the country and killing innocent people in that country. The terrorism is growing and people who never thought of being car bombers or suicide bombers are now doing it because they want the United States of America out of their country. (my emphasis)

"Freedom fighters?" She's talking about the people who killed her son. She's talking about the people who go out of their way to kill civilians, who behead civilians and make snuff films for worldwide consumption. She's talking about the people who turned Fallujah into one gigantic death house.

If it wasn't clear before, it's clear now why the President is disinclined to meet with her again. She's on the other side in this war now. She's completely unhinged and, frankly, capable of attempting just about anything to get revenge for the death of her son. And she blames George W. Bush for that death--not the "freedom fighters" who actually killed him.

THANK YOU, MICHELLE

I just wanted to say a big thank you to Michelle Malkin for allowing me to guest blog for her for a couple of days. It was, as Rush often says, more fun than a human being should be allowed to have. Thank you, Michelle!

ILLEGALS TRESPASS, SUE, WIN PROPERTY OF U.S. CITIZENS

Details on that and other outrages are posted at Immigration Blog.

PAT ROBERTSON, IDIOTARIAN

A week or so ago I defended Pat Robertson from a lefty assusing him of being a wannabe head-chopper. Then the Rev has to go off and say that the US should assassinate Hugo Chavez.

Nice going, Pat. Did you ever stop to think that your comments will be used by the left and the media to portray all Christians as a bloothirsty mob? Thanks a lot. "Living down the idiotarian comments of Rev. Robertson" has just jumped up a few notches on my to-do list.

UPON FURTHER REVIEW: If Pat Robertson is an idiotarian, then so is George Stephanopolous:

Philosophers have long argued that there are times when murdering a murderer is not only necessary but noble. "Grecian nations give the honors of the gods to those men who have slain tyrants," wrote Cicero. Targeting Saddam also seems in accord with the "just war" principles first developed by Augustine and Aquinas. We've exhausted other efforts to stop him, and killing him certainly seems more proportionate to his crimes and discriminate in its effect than massive bombing raids that will inevitably kill innocent civilians. To those who argue that assassination is the moral equivalent of terrorism, Michael Walzer's "Just and Unjust Wars" reminds us that "randomness is the crucial feature of terrorist activity." Terrorists kill the innocent to coerce the powerful. Assassination, by contrast, is the least random act of war. Relaxing the moral norm against it is a regrettable but justifiable price to pay when confronted with someone like Saddam who is unique in his capacity to inflict evil on his own people and the rest of the world. It's one of the extremely rare circumstances where killing can be a humanitarian act that saves far more lives than it risks....

....Overcoming the practical difficulties is much more problematic. Experts like former CIA director Robert Gates have said that assassination is a "non-option" because Saddam is so elusive and well protected. That's the strongest argument against assassination. But it loses some force when stacked against the alternatives: an indefinite extension of the sanctions that punishes the most vulnerable Iraqis without weakening Saddam or eliminating his ability to build weapons of mass destruction; or a massive military campaign that will crack the gulf-war coalition, risk allied troops and kill innocent Iraqis without ensuring Saddam's fall.

That's from an article Stephanopolous wrote in 1997. Ain't it curious how the media trumps up the comments of a guy who isn't even connected with the administration when that administration happens to be Republican, but never makes much of similar comments made by a guy who had until recently been a high-ranking member of a Democrat administration?

True, Chavez isn't Saddam, but it's also true that Chavez isn't Saddam mostly because he hasn't been in power long enough to show his true Saddamite colors in full yet. Chavez is if anything a Castro in charge of a larger, richer country--he's going to be trouble for us as long as he's in office. It's a little weird for preachers to be calling for assassinations, but at least unlike Air Ameriscam's Randi Rhodes who called for assassinating our own President, Robertson's target is an actual enemy of the United States.

MORE: Brian Maloney and John Hawkins make some good, interesting points too. What's hilarious is that now that Robertson has publicly called for Chavez's head, lefties are scrambling to defend Chavez. Talk about true colors coming out! Chavez is a Communist dictator who has aligned himself with Castro, the ChiComs and al Qaeda. Yes, even al Qaeda. He'll take anyone who hates the US. And now the left is taking him, even though he already has quite a nasty human rights record and has repeatedly made remarks that define him as an enemy of the United States.

The left defended Saddam. Now they're defending Chavez. While your heroes call terrorists "Minutemen" and "freedom fighters." You people are piling up quite a record. The old habits of nuclear freeze, disarmament and Soviet appeasement die hard.

THE PROBLEM WITH ROBERTSON'S COMMENTS, aside from the spectacle of a televangelist calling down the ninjas on a foreign head of state, is that to the extent they could have any effect on policy at all, it would be to save Hugo Chavez's life. Over the past year, Chavez has been accusing the US of plotting against him, planning to invade Venezuela to steal his oil, even planning to kill him. I don't think any such plans are on the drawing board, but let's suppose they were. Let's suppose SOCOM was putting a SEAL team together to slip into Caracas and cause Chavez a series of unfortunate events. Now that Robertson has made such a stink by publicly calling on the administration to kill Chavez, those plans would have to be called off. They would have to be--should they go to fruition, the entire world would immediately conclude, correctly, that we had killed Chavez. If you think our public image has suffered for Iraq, just image the bad PR from being exposed in near real time for killing a foreign leader--no matter how bad he is.

So thanks, Pat. You've just extended Chavez a free life insurance policy.

ABLE DANGER FOUND ATTA BY MINING 1993 WTC BOMB PLOT CONNECTIONS

AJ's Strata-sphere has a good AD round-up today. He notes some interesting info in this story about Capt Phillpott showing just how far back they were finding clues on Mohammad Atta:

Weldon’s claims also seem to be backed up by a defense contractor who says he worked on Able Danger and for the first time has offered an explanation of how Atta’s name surfaced in the investigation. J.D. Smith told FOX News that he coordinated the information sources, reported to the government on the project’s spending and generated some of the charts, including the “Al Qaeda Global Map” that had Atta’s name on it. He added that he saw Atta’s photo during the unit’s investigation.

Smith said one way the unit came to know Atta was through Omar Abdul Rahman, part of the first World Trade Center bomb plot in 1993. Smith said Able Danger used data mining techniques — publicly available information — to look at mosques and religious ties and it was, in part, through the investigation of Rahman that Atta’s name surfaced.

That isn't to say that we should have known anything more in the early 90's. There was limited computer power and software available to mine connections before Able Danger came along and exploited modern technology. And that only happened once the administration saw terrorism more as a national security threat than a criminal act. Able Danger theoretically could have been set up earlier, got more priority attention and used the NSA's bleeding-edge supercomputers.

UPDATE: I sent this info to a former prosecutor of the Blind Sheik, Andy McCarthy, and he now has a post on it over at NRO's Corner. Also check out his other new post about the Atta and Prague timeline.

STEVEN VINCENT'S WIDOW SPEAKS

And she vivisects the very odious and obnoxious Juan Cole for suggesting that Vincent's murder was some kind of "honor killing."

I'm not posting this link for entertainment, though Cole richly deserves what Mrs. Vincent gives him. I posted to make a point about the left, of which Cole is a member in good standing. The left seems to be in death fetish mode these days--Cole posted his accusations regarding Steven Vincent a few days after Vincent's death, in an apparent attempt to smear Vincent and score a couple of cheap political points against his journalism from Iraq. Vincent obviously was in no position to defend himself from the smear; his wife wrote to Cole to set the record straight and lecture Cole about everything he got wrong about Vincent, which was pretty much every single thing he could possibly have gotten wrong.

Likewise, it's clear that Casey Sheehan was an adult who volunteered for the Army and died honorably in Iraq performing a mission he supported, yet his mother is using his name and his sacrifice to spread a message he did not agree with. She has also put the names of other war casualties on crosses at her Crawford camp, though she never received permission from families to use those names. Like Vincent, Casey Sheehan is in no position to defend himself from the way his mother and her hangers-on are abusing his name. His extended family have stepped up to defend him, but the media is pretty much pretending that they're not relevant. They don't have the "absolute moral authority" that Cindy Sheehan has, even though one of them happens to be Patrick Sheehan--Casey's father.

Is this what the left has come to now? Is it fair game to smear the dead if they disagree with you, and is it now ethical and honorable to use fresh corpses to make political statements? Coupled with the left's attitudes toward euthenasia (and Howard Dean's promise to "use Terry Schiavo" against Republicans in next year's midterms), abortion and its near religious faith in unproven embryonic stem cell research (which John Edwards promised would enable people like the late Christopher Reeve to walk again), it seems to me that we're crossing a serious line here. The left is now so detached from any objective belief in right and wrong that turning the dead into political props has become perfectly acceptable.

I find it sickening.

THANK YOU, CINDY SHEEHAN

For proving me right.

A year ago March, I predicted:

I can imagine the scenario a year or more from now. A young Lieutenant, perhaps an Army tank officer or a Marine platoon leader and an Iraq war veteran, testifies before the Senate, or these days, makes his stand on 60 Minutes or with Barbara Walters. With the serious tones of a young idealist chastened by war, he will deliver a stone-faced diatribe against President Bush, against Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, against Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and anyone else who led us into or supported the war that ended Saddam Hussein's brutal reign. The decorated veteran will lie through his teeth about America's actions and interests, about the Iraqi people's opinion of us and our intentions--just like Kerry did in 1971 about Vietnam--and will lead some kind of Iraq veterans' effort to cut and run from Iraq--just like Kerry advocated abandoning South Vietnam in 1971. Kerry's advocacy succeeded a few years later, and the Communists overran our former allies.

Well, I got the prediction sort of right and sort of wrong. We have a Lt. Kerry redux, but she never served in Iraq--she's deriving her authority to speak from her son who did serve in Iraq, voluntarily enlisting and then re-enlisting, and who died in a rescue mission for which he volunteered. Say whatever you want about the war, but it's clear that 21 year old Casey Sheehan didn't behave in a fashion reminscent of Jenghis Khan. It also seems pretty clear that anyone--anyone--on the anti-war side doesn't speak for him. Just like John Kerry didn't really speak for the soldiers he claimed to represent back in 1971.

Cindy Sheehan is behaving in a fashion reminscent of John Kerry circa 1971. And she's getting the same obsequious fawning from the left and the media now that Kerry got back then. When most people think of Kerry's anti-war stance, they think of his Senate testimony or his tossing medals over a fence back then, but they forget about all of the political theatre he and his cohorts created. Kerry and friends staged all kinds of bizarre protests for the media's benefit, including digging fox holes on the National Mall, smearing themselves with camo face paint and dressing in surplus military garb, taking up toy arms and mock attacking the actual United States Capitol building. No kidding. That's what Kerry's awful Vietnam-era book is all about, with pictures of the strange spectacles.

Kerry had his foxholes; Sheehan has her ditch. Kerry had his Dewey Canyon II invasion of the Capitol; Sheehan has her Crawford squat.

Sheehan and the left are partying like it's 1971.

Jane Fonda is out agitating for the enemy. Just like she did back in the day.

Joan Baez is out entertaining war protestors in some kind of Sheehanstock Revival Road Show. Just like she did back in the day.

And we have, instead of the absolute moral authority of a former Navy lieutenant accusing the US military of behaving in a fashion reminscent of Jenghis Khan, we have another "absolute moral authority" accusing the President of the United States in engaging in terrorism. Both Kerry and Sheehan made up tall tales. Both of them smeared this country. And the actions undertaken by both of them help the enemy. If he were leading the insurgents in Iraq as he led the VC, General Giap would be as appreciative of Sheehan today as he has long been of John Kerry.

I knew we would eventually get some kind of Kerry repeat--the left hasn't really come up with a new play since Marx. And here we are.

NO ATTA, NO STORY? COME ON NOW

The Pentagon, as we predicted here, is so far downplaying the Able Danger story. They can't find even one Atta so far, let alone two Attas.

The Pentagon has been unable to validate claims that a secret intelligence unit identified Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta as a terrorist more than a year before the attacks, a Defense Department spokesman said Monday.

Larry Di Rita said that some research into the matter continues, but thus far there has been no evidence that the intelligence unit, called ''Able Danger,'' came up with information as specific as an officer associated with the program has asserted.

''What we found are mostly general references to terrorist cells,'' Di Rita said, without providing detail.

This new info, while it may be truthful, seems to be just another premature Able Danger statement. We're getting a lot of that from the 9/11 Commission, Congressmen, the military, the MSM, and bloggers (left, right, and center). People in each category have blown transmissions by repeatedly jumping forward and back on this story. Many are now just waiting for the Pentagon tow truck to rescue them and be done with it.

But our curiosity shouldn't die so quickly or be artificially limited to details about specific 9/11 perps. This story shouldn't be about how many Attas can dance on the head of a pin. Don't we want to know all the details behind Able Danger now? Who did what, who didn't do what and who was blocked or ignored? And why are we now showing so much more investigative curiosity than the 9/11 Commission Talking Heads Against Bush did? Is is just the Atta name, or is it more than that?

I noticed the AP reporter in the story quoted above didn't even ask the Pentagon about reports that they originally couldn't find most of the documents related to Able Danger. Were they ever misplaced? Have they now been found? Did a friend of Sandy Berger have them stored at home under a pile of socks? Or did they suddenly just show up on a table in the Pentagon like some missing billing records? Inquiring and skeptical minds want to know.

As Mickey Kaus said last week:

Strange New Retreat: Right-wing bloggers (John Podhoretz, Jim Geraghty) now appear to be in semi-full retreat on Able Danger (i.e., on whether a secret data-mining program had in fact fingered Mohammed Atta prior to 9/11.) Podhoretz, who only last week wrote "This is clearly becoming the biggest story of the summer" now says:

none of this passes the smell test. And an apology is due the 9/11 Commission staff at the very least ...

And here we all thought Andrew Sullivan was excitable! ... I claim to have been skeptical of Doug Jehl's initial NYT front-page report making the charge--but I'm also skeptical of the sudden right-wing pullback. Maybe Atta's name was on a huge list of false positives. Maybe not. Don't we want to find out--and shouldn't the 9/11 commission have wanted to find out, and at least dropped a footnote mentioning the program (and the sensational charge made to the Commission by at least one officer that Atta had in fact been identified)? Rep. Curt Weldon doesn't seem to be Mr. Credibility on this issue, but the Department of Defense--the apparent source for Geraghty's "guy I trust"--may have its own reasons for wanting to snuff out inquiries into Able Danger--for example, covering up its own mistakes. ... Andy McCarthy, who's skeptical but hasn't heard the GOP dog-whistle sounding retreat, appears to have the better of the argument for now.

The one thing I can pretty comfortably say no matter what is that Lt Col Shaffer is not delusional or making everything up and that the 9/11 Commission was a sham. So we can at least put those two together and keep digging. And let the poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld guide us in our Able Danger quest:

The Unknown

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Happenings

You're going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don't happen.

It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't—
It's printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.

Everyone's so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story's there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven't happened.

All I can tell you is,
It hasn't happened.
It's going to happen.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

Clarity

I think what you'll find,
I think what you'll find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect clarity
As to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,
But it will be known.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

UPDATE: Back to a more serious note, I found something here where the deputy director of the FBI from 1997-99, Robert Bryant, mentions what looks like a critical attempt to interface with the CIA/NSA/Able Danger? in 1999.

Interview joined in progress:

You mean was there a general consensus that Al Qaeda was a threat to the United States of America? Yes, I think so. We saw the attacks, and particularly after the Cole and some of the other issues. I mean, this was all falling in a line of pattern.

Were there points of disagreement at the upper echelon of the FBI about all of this?

I don't think there was too much disagreement. It was a question of what are we going to do about it? How do you leverage a domestic agency that 80 percent of its resources go to domestic law enforcement, and probably 15 percent to 20 percent of it go to terrorism and counterintelligence? How do you protect America?

You do that by trying to build a better analytical piece, by basically making sure you have liaison with the CIA and the NSA and trying to make sure that you're there to develop predictive intelligence. And it's hard for the FBI to do that. The FBI's probably the greatest collector of information in the world. But its analysis and dissemination needs a lot of help, needs money.

What did O'Neill argue for?

Sometimes, there was relationship issues with other agencies where he was disliked, and he was a very strong personality. There were some of those issues. Certainly he wanted resources, and I think he primarily got them. But the question was where they were going to use them. That was always an issue I had -- whether they used the resources they had. But the thing that was needed was really an analysis in automation. You're trying to fight an international fight on information systems that were 10-12 years old.

We reorganized the FBI in 1999. We made counterintelligence and counterterrorism the top priority. We created basically a collection mechanism, and it was, frankly, never funded. John understood that if you're going to do predictive intelligence, you've got to have the automation, you've got to have the analysts, and you've got to have the information pulled together. You've got to have people that look at it that are not tied to investigation, but have a free range of thought as to what's going on here.

So what happened to that idea?

I think it was never funded. It was put in the back burner somewhere. I left in December 1999.

Hmmm. So was the FBI itself planning to get critical intel from an interface with Able Danger's counterparts in the CIA/NSA before the idea was shelved? It sounds like it's roughly the same idea and that the Able Danger team would have been working with the same people. Who made the decision to kill the FBI program and why? Gorelick's lawyers? And is this covered at all in the 9/11 Commission report?

MORE: Allowing the FBI, and specifically John "The Man Who Knew" O'Neill, access to some kind of high-tech information analysis in 1999 would have gone a long way to uncovering the players in the 9/11 plot, Atta or no Atta.

The story of this intelligence failure begins with a 1999 CIA breakthrough -- the interception of communications from an Al Qaeda logistics center in Yemen about a meeting of operatives that would take place in January 2000 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The names of two of the participants were mentioned: Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi.

The CIA tracked Almidhar on his way to Malaysia. An agent told FRONTLINE that during a passport check at a stopover, the CIA even got access to his Saudi Arabian passport and learned Almidhar had been issued a multiple-entry visa to the U.S.

Once in Kuala Lumpur, the Al Qaeda operatives were photographed -- at the CIA's request -- by Malaysian authorities at a series of meetings. Reportedly, no sound recordings were made, but intelligence sources now believe the meetings were held to plan future Al Qaeda attacks. Among the men captured in the surveillance photos were:

Almidhar and Alhazmi (later hijackers of American Flight 77 which flew into the Pentagon on Sept. 11);
Ramzi bin al-Shibh (a Sept. 11 co-conspirator and Mohamed Atta's roommate. It would not be until after Sept. 11 that bin al-Shibh would be identified in the Malaysia surveillance photos);
Tawfiq bin-Atash -- AKA "Khallad" (a suspected intermediary between bin Laden and plotters of the October 2000 USS Cole attack).

The CIA maintains that it did notify the FBI by e-mail of the Malaysia meetings soon after they occurred -- and that it did mention Almidhar had a U.S. visa. The FBI, however, states they have no record of this notification.

The CIA admits that it did not inform the bureau that after the Malaysia meetings ended, it tracked Almidhar and Alhazmi to Los Angeles. The CIA further admits that it failed to warn the INS or the State Department, and as a result, the men's names were not added to a terrorist watch list.

Not one of the men who attended the Malaysia meetings was, at the time, known to have been involved in any crime against the United States, so it is perhaps understandable that the CIA missed the full significance of the meetings. ...

One investigator admitted to FRONTLINE that al-Quso's connections to the 9/11 conspirators was a staggering revelation, and he still had nightmares about it. When asked what might have been discovered if they'd learned of al-Quso's connections earlier, he responded, "the possibilities are mind-boggling."

So there was the trail -- the pieces of information linking the Malaysia meetings in January 2000, to the USS Cole attack of October 2000, to the 9/11 plot. At those meetings in Malaysia, it's believed both the 9/11 and Cole plots were planned, their operatives met with each other, and investigators suspect one or more Al Qaeda operatives at the meetings worked both the Cole and 9/11 plots.

The stunning and logical question that hangs in the air about John O'Neill's compromised USS Cole investigation in Yemen is, "What if?"

UPDATE: Well, well, well. It's looking like more non-official confirmation is rolling in on Atta and Able Danger. We may soon find additional infamous terrorist names that Able Danger flagged well before Oct 2000 when the USS Cole was attacked. Then a new question will be: Might John O'Neill have used this info to help uncover and stop the Cole bombing plot instead of investigating it after the fact and missing the 9/11 connection?

MINDS, METRICS AND THE WAR

I have a new post up over at Michelle's place.

GUEST BLOGGING

Michelle Malkin is away on vacation, and was kind enough (brave enough, whatever) to allow me and several other great bloggers to guest blog for her while she's gone. My first post is up--it's a guest fisking of sorts.