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efore you watch this, know that you may never, ever feel safe again.  You may also wonder how wise it is to put stuff like this up on YouTube – good thought. However, it’s likely the terrorists are far ahead of us.

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ob Woodward is on the anti-torture express, writing today about the case of Mohammed al-Qahtani, who, we are reminded way down in paragraph six, hoped to be the 20th highjacker, but his dreams of martyrdom were foiled when he was denied entry into the U.S. a month before the 9/11 attack.  He was later captured trying again to kill Americans, this time in Afghanistan.

As such, the Saudi national may have had important information about how the 9/11 plot was put together, who was involved, how the logistics were handled, and how financial payments were received. In other words, the information he was holding needed very much to become un-held.

To get that information, agents used nothing but legal methods: sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold. But, Woodward reports, Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority of military commissions, has found Qahtani’s treatment meets the legal definition of torture.

Her problem is not the methods, but the duration of the methods:

Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani’s health led to her conclusion. “The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. …

“For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators,” said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani’s interrogation records and other military documents. “Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister.”

At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani “was forced to wear a woman’s bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation” and “was told that his mother and sister were whores.” With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room “and forced to perform a series of dog tricks,” the report shows.

That’s it? That’s humiliation, and it might constitute torture for a pimply, chubby seventh grader, but not for the likes of Qahtani.  As for Crawford’s biggest grouse, that this led to physical danger for the man who wanted to cause thousands of Americans to suffer mortal physical danger, there’s this:

… Qahtani had to be hospitalized twice at Guantanamo with bradycardia, a condition in which the heart rate falls below 60 beats a minute and which in extreme cases can lead to heart failure and death. At one point Qahtani’s heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute, the record shows.

In other words, his health was carefully monitored, and when his heart rate slowed, he was hospitalized and treated.  That sounds like a carefully managed, intense interrogation, not torture.

As they say in the world of dealing with bloodthirsty, damned, America-hating, 7th century Islamist pigs, bring it on.  This is a case that should never have been brought but now it should be heard because our agents have to have clear direction – and, hopefully, courts will be wiser than Crawford and will allow the methods used on Qahtani.

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hat’s interesting about the dossier India presented to Pakistan today outlining evidence of Pakistani involvement in the Mumbai terror attack isn’t so much what the dossier contains, but its distribution list.

The dossier’s contents have not yet been released, but news reports say it contains the confession of lone terror force survivor Ajmal Amir Kasab, records of GPS and satellite phones used by the attackers and transcripts of conversations between the attackers and their handlers in Pakistan.

Its distribution includes Islamabad, of course, but much, much more:

Stepping up the diplomatic offensive, foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee said he has written to his counterparts around the world and that countries are being briefed separately giving details of the Mumbai attacks and its links in Pakistan.  …

“It is my hope that the world will unite to achieve the goal of eliminating the threat of such terrorism,” Mukherjee said.

The External Affairs Ministry will be briefing all heads of missions based in Delhi, with the briefings to be concluded by Tuesday, and Indian ambassadors and high commissioners will be doing the same in their host countries around the world.

Seeing the reprehensible world response to Israel’s measured response to terrorist aggression against it, India’s diplomatic initiatives look quite savvy.  Pakistan is no Israel in the world’s perception – which as a powerful proof of how wrong the world’s perception of Israel is – but India’s diplomatic push assures that when Islamabad responds, world leaders will be able to measure that response against the dossier’s contents and judge accordingly.

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errorist POWs don’t deserve trials in US courts when they’re caught trying to kill our troops or destroy our country, but terrorists who are American citizens and resident aliens certainly do have the right, and we saw today that our courts can do the job:

Five Muslim immigrants accused of scheming to massacre U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were convicted of conspiracy Monday in a case that tested the FBI‘s post-Sept. 11 strategy of infiltrating and breaking up terrorist plots in their earliest stages. The men could get life in prison when they are sentenced in April.

The five, who lived in and around Philadelphia for years, were found guilty of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel. But they were acquitted of attempted murder, after prosecutors acknowledged the men were probably months away from an attack and did not necessarily have a specific plan. Four defendants were also convicted of weapons charges. (source)

The convicted wannabe terrorists are were: Mohamed (natch!) Shnewer, a Jordanian-born cab driver; Turkish-born convenience store clerk Serdar Tatar; and brothers Dritan, Eljvir and Shain Duka, ethnic Albanians from the former Yugoslavia, who had a roofing business.

Kudos to Reuters for getting this fantastic photo of Faten Shnewer, mother of Mohamed.  We the people won  today. They, the outsiders, lost.

Michelle Malkin reminds us to thank Brian Morganstern, the Circuit City employee who saw a training video shot by the terrorists and notified authorities, as all good citizens would.

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ou decide – were the failed terrorists who planted dynamite in a Parisian department store followers of the Religion of Peace … or followers of the professor of education?  Here’s the news, from the Int’l Herald Trib:

French police found a package of explosives at the Printemps department store complex in central Paris on Tuesday, a spokeswoman at Paris police headquarters said. …

The French news channel LCI reported that the explosives, planted at the height of the Christmas shopping season, had been discovered in a rest room on the third floor of the Printemps men’s store, one of three Printemps buildings in the complex. All three stores were evacuated by the police and the area around them, on the elegant Boulevard Haussmann, was cordoned off.

LCI said a group calling itself the Afghan Revolutionary Front claimed in a statement to AFP that it had planted the explosives. The statement said the group was demanding the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan, LCI said. France has about 3,000 troops deployed with the NATO-led force in Afghanistan. French news reports said that the French intelligence services had no previous knowledge of the group.

AP reported that “sticks of ‘relatively old’ dynamite tied together but without a detonator” were found in the store.

Let’s analyze.  The target was at least somewhat symbolic of the Christian faith, as the target was Christmas shoppers.  Score one for the Islamists.

But the bombers were inept, not good at making bombs, had lousy equipment and called themselves revolutionaries, not mujahedin.  Score four for the Weather Underground.

So all in all, I’d say these weren’t Islamists, but rather spoiled white kids who don’t have a clue how valuable a society that honors freedom is, and are stupid enough to kill to make their pathetic point.  Ayresians.

But there’s this:  They called first.  That makes them moderately less disgusting than either the jihadists or Bill Ayres … at least for now … and opens the door to the possibility that they’re homegrown jihadists not schooled in the element of blood and gore surprise.  Let’s pray they get caught before taking it to the next level.

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here are some powerful punches and head-clearing uppercuts among this week’s champion sluggers of the blogosphere, as presented by the Don King of Blogs, The Watcher of Weasels.

In the Watcher’s Council corner, newcomer Right Truth scored a TKO with P.C./D.C., a rather long-ish but spot on piece on the difficulties we find ourselves in because we fight under PC rules, while our opponents from Islam don’t. (See how the boxing images all tie together?). Here’s the ring girl, strutting a particularly good paragraph from the piece:

Now, here’s where political correctness comes into play. We cannot fight the war on terrorism by singling out Arabs or other Muslims. We must consciously give “equal consideration” to that old lady in the wheelchair during airport screenings. We must conclude that openly hostile and questionably patriotic Dearborn, Michigan does not engage in terrorist recruitment or support. We must always address the “Palestinian Question” whenever we seek reasons why some people are quite prepared to blow themselves up in order to kill us. And, the grand finale, we cannot undertake diplomacy without somehow laying the blame for world destruction squarely upon the Israelis. Do you detect a trend here?

Runner-up Joshua Pundit also wrote on our war against the jihadists in Defeating the Death Cult, which got the most points on my score card for its analysis of how existing laws could be used to suppress eager jihadists at home:

As for legislating dangerous ideologies, our courts have been down this road before when faced with the communist conspiracy here in America in the 1940′s and 1950′s. Those laws exist and are quite plain and provide a firm and above all constitutional foundation when it comes dealing with most to the problems we have in the US with some practitioners of Islam and the people overseas who export jihad into America. And a few perfectly constitutional tweaks would cover the rest.

He cites, for example, how US code of justice, TITLE 18, PART I, CHAPTER 115, § 2385, § 2385. Advocating overthrow of Government is applicable and could be used to make the imams of the Saudi-funded Wahhabist mosques shut up.

My piece, Jihad’s Phony Hostages, on the Jew massacre in Mumbai the MSM continually called a hostage-taking, came in fourth.

And in the non-Council corner, we have a somewhat clear winner, and first on my non-Council score card, Elder of Ziyon’s Islamist strategy vs. Western tactics, an essay on a familiar theme that needs repeating:

The West is attuned to short-term thinking. Perhaps this is because of the need to elect new leaders every few years, but it sacrifices long-term strategy for vaporous short-term gains. It would be laughable to even consider that the West has a plan to defeat the Islamist world that spans more than a decade.

The Arab and Muslim psyche, on the other hand, is very much attuned to long-term trends. A hundred years is but a blip in Islamic history and, from their perspective, Israel has not yet lasted as long as the Crusades. The battle takes decades and centuries; it is not something that has to be mopped up by the next election cycle.

As a result, every Western concession to the Islamic world is tactical from the Western perspective and strategic from the Islamic perspective. Tactics without strategy is a loser’s game.

Note that I said a “somewhat clear winner.” I didn’t vote for my own entry, Stratfor’s Strategic Motivations for the Mumbai Attack, because my free subscription had apparently timed out and I got a different page from the link. Assuming all Council members got this page, I voted first place to the Elder; had I realized others were seeing the Stratfor page, I would have voted it into first, giving it 2/3 more points and the Elder 1/3 less, and we would have had a different winner. The piece states early on:

More important than the question of the exact group that carried out the attack, however, is the attackers’ strategic end. There is a tendency to regard terror attacks as ends in themselves, carried out simply for the sake of spreading terror. In the highly politicized atmosphere of Pakistan’s radical Islamist factions, however, terror frequently has a more sophisticated and strategic purpose. Whoever invested the time and took the risk in organizing this attack had a reason to do so. Let’s work backward to that reason by examining the logical outcomes following this attack.

Then it looks at four different strategic/geo-political ramifications of the attack and leaves you pretty much gasping for breath by the time it’s all wrapped up.

Also in second place was American Thinker’s The Legacy of Jihad in India, a rather dry but very important historic analysis of Islam’s ongoing attacks on Hindus, stretching back nearly 1500 years.

The 570 year period between the initial Arab Muslim razzias (ordered by Caliph Umar) to pillage Thana (on the West Indian coast near Maharashtra) in 636—637 C.E., and the establishment of the Delhi Sultanate (under Qutub—ud—din Aibak, a Turkish slave soldier), can be divided into four major epochs: (I) the conflict between the Arab invaders and the (primarily) Hindu resisters on the Western coast of India from 636—713 C.E.; (II) the Arab and Turkish Muslim onslaughts against the kingdom of Hindu Afghanistan during 636—870 C.E.; (III) repeated Turkish efforts to subdue the Punjab from 870 C.E. to 1030 C.E. C.E. highlighted by the devastating campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni (from 1000— 1030 C.E.); and finally (IV) Muhammad Ghauri’s conquest of northwestern India and the Gangetic valley between 1175 and 1206 C.E.

I hate the PC C.E. designation, BTW. Give me AD any day, and praise the Lord. But that (and the dryness of the piece) aside, you need to know the awful barbarism Islam has thrust on India for no reason other than India is peopled with Hindus. Only then can you really understand the Mumbai attack.

See all the winners at Watcher of Weasels. And Watcher, you need a bit more pomade.

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ere’s Azam Amir Kasav, 21, as far as we know the sole surviving terrorist from the Mumbai terror attacks.

Does he look a bit dazed to you? It might be the painkillers he’s been given, or the interrogations he’s been through, or the awesome knowledge that he’s now a hero to millions of Muslims … or it might be this:

The Mumbai terrorists may have pumped themselves full of drugs to keep going during their murderous three-day rampage.

Indian police sources say tests on the bodies of dead Islamic fanatics revealed traces of stimulant drugs.

One said: “We found injections containing traces of cocaine and LSD left behind by the terrorists and later found drugs in their blood.

“There was also evidence of steroids, which isn’t uncommon in terrorists. These men were all toned, suggesting they had been doing some heavy training for the attacks. (Source)

Gosh, and here I thought all-powerful Allah gave his terrorist warriors all the special powers they need to carry out despicable, sinful, stomach-turning acts in his name. (Not really. It’s long been common knowledge that Islam’s suicide bombers and terror commandos are hopped up and stoned out when they go to their glorious martyrdom Hell. That is, if they’re not mentally retarded or unknowing children.)

And here’s one more thought about the photo: It’s a testament to the higher status of most civilizations, and the lower status of nearly all Islamic nations, that the photo exists at all. We see Kasav’s face wound treated, and his body hooked up to a medical device. If Kasav had been an American soldier captured in any of the fronts of Islamist terror’s war on us, we would see only a picture of him beheaded, or him mutilated, or his corpse dragged through the streets to the hysterical cheers of onlookers.

But it wasn’t the other way around, so we can look directly into the dazed eyes of horrific Islamist evil. And we can pray for his eternal soul.

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hile watching the Mumbai terror attacks on Fox last week, I heard a Fox anchor, safely ensconced in NYC, interview a frightened Indian man who was hiding in the Taj hotel. He was like a golf announcer, all whispers, and she was the soccer announcer, loudly leading the terrorists to their GOOOAAAL. It went something like this:

He (whispering into his cell phone): It’s very frightening, but I think I’m safe.

She: Are you safe? How? Where are you?

He: I’m in my room.

She: How terrible. Are you sure your safe? Where are you?

No kidding. She actually asked twice where he was, as if it never occurred to her that the terrorists might be monitoring the media to find more hostages people to torture and kill. And, it turns out the terrorists were doing just that, and Fox was hardly alone:

A SOUTH Wales couple caught in the Mumbai terror attacks claimed last night that CNN put their lives at risk by broadcasting where they were.

Lynne and Kenneth Shaw, of Penarth, warned that terrorists were listening in to the media to pinpoint Western victims.

Mrs Shaw claimed the American cable TV channel had broadcast details of where they were at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. …

From her home in Penarth yesterday, Mrs Shaw said: “We have been asked by the British terror police not to talk to the press.

“But the reason I would not want to talk to anyone is because our safety was actually compromised by CNN, which broadcast where we were.

“The terrorists were watching CNN and they came down from where they were in a lift after hearing about us on television. For that reason I would appeal to the media to be very careful about what they broadcast.

“When we left Mumbai there were still around 100 people trapped there.” (Wales Online)

The great war correspondents of WWII understood war and enemies and good guys. They were, by and large, discrete when it was important to be discrete, and honest journalists the rest of the time. With Vietnam, we got a new kind of war correspondent, becoming more anti-war as the war moved along, until they became a powerful force for our abandonment of the war. Their reporting may also have helped the North Vietnamese understand our troop movements and strategies.

Now we have a new generation of war correspondents, many of whom never leave their air conditioned suites, few of whom accept that we really are at war. They’re reporting incidents not battles, and they proved last week that they’re not to be trusted with sensitive information.

CNN, of course, denies the Shaw’s claim and I’ve heard no discussion whatsoever of Fox’s dangerous foible.

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ot surprisingly, when I think of what I’m thankful for at this time of year, family rises to the top. I felt it this morning when I had a long conversation with my Inside-the-Beltway mom and we talked for a half hour, artfully skirting our differences and thoroughly enjoying our telephonic time together. And I’m thinking it now as our house hums with feast-making activities.

And while my relations with my father were strained for years and stay so – to my shame and regret – as he slips deeper into the fog of Alzheimers, I also remembered him with great thanks in my heart today, thanks to a flood of memories unleashed by the Mumbai terror disaster.

During my brief unhappy stint working for my Dad’s import/export company, he gave me a gift of a lifetime: A business trip around the globe, visiting his suppliers in Tokyo, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Portugal and England. That was over 25 years ago and the thousands of memories and images are with me still … as is the recognition that Dad refused to allow me to visit one country he did business with:  Pakistan.

There wasn’t anything in particular going on in Pakistan at the time; just its normal nastiness. It is not a coincident that of all the countries I could have visited, it was the only Islamic one I was cautioned away from. It may not be PC, but it’s undeniable: The Islamic religion does not foster friendly, high-functioning nations.

India has the great misfortune of having a long, negative history with Islam, and Mumbai has the added misfortune of being close to Pakistan and more accessible than Delhi, due to its seaside location – definitely not something to be thankful for. The Times of India is pretty straightforward in its low opinion of its neighbor to the west:

Strategic gurus and security analysts in the US and from across the world are examining Pakistan’s role in terrorism following yet another terror episode in India ending with fingers pointed at its widely-reviled neighbour.

“Widely reviled” would be edited by worrisome editors here in the States, but it’s much more straightforward at the copy desk of the Times of India – as it was with India’s “normally cautious and restrained” prime minister, Manmohan Singh, who bluntly said the attackers were “based across the border,” an obvious reference to Pakistan. Singh’s comments, according to the India Times, has triggered yet another Indian investigation into Islamabad’s role in using terror tactics against India.

This attack was different in many ways from the other recent terror attacks by Islamists in India, none more important to us than the so-called Deccan Mujaheddin’s deliberate targeting of American and British citizens. This was not the normal “I’m ticked over Kashmir” or “I want India to be an Islamic nation” motivations of the jihadists – this was a message to Barack Obama that continued access to Afghanistan via Pakistan is not going unnoticed by the Islamists.

So, what is there to be thankful for in this? First, of course, for the exquisite beauty of our Christian faith, and for the promise of salvation and the peace during crisis it offers all, so unlike vicious Islam. Then, for the valor and power of our military, which will protect us. For the geographic separation we enjoy still, even post-9/11, offering us more protection than countries like India have. And, as awful as the attack was, we can be thankful that the terrorists’ wildest vision of chaos and carnage was not fully realized in Mumbai, and that there are many more survivors than they hoped.

Finally, I’m thankful I smell the turkey cooking, I hear the laughter of daughters in the kitchen, that friends are on their way over, that our afternoon and evening will be full of friends, food and peace, and that you, dear reader, are well.

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The latest news tonight from The Times of India has six foreigners dead among the 101 killed by the Mumbai terrorists, and up to 40 Brits and other foreign nationals as hostages. Faced with this,

President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday condemned the Mumbai attacks and said the United States must work to strengthen ties with India and other nations to “root out and destroy terrorist networks.”

“These coordinated attacks on innocent civilians demonstrate the grave and urgent threat of terrorism,” Obama’s chief national security spokesperson, Brooke Anderson, said in a statement.

“The United States must continue to strengthen our partnerships with India and nations around the world to root out and destroy terrorist networks.”

I’m all for closer ties with India; it’s a must-do.  The problem is, these attacks could well pit India against Pakistan – that’s clearly a strong possibility for the ultimate rationale behind the attacks.  India uncovers ties between the terrorists and Pakistan’s closet jihadist intelligence agency behind the attacks, things heat up, more evidence, more attacks, more heat.

And so it may quickly come down to India and Pakistan looking to Obama and asking, “Who’s side are you on?”

If Obama wants to keep his one macho card, his one rattling saber, his commitment to more war in Afghanistan, he’s going to have to go with Pakistan.  No Pakistan, no route for materiel to Afghanistan.  So working to strengthen ties with India is a nice idea but a dangerous bit of wording that won’t fly far in Islamabad.

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