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ith this headline, Salon launched its story about Obama’s executive orders yesterday directing that Guantanamo be closed within a year, ending the CIA’s use of secret overseas prisons, and banning “coercive” interrogation methods:

The Power of the Pen

When a nation is involved in fighting an enemy that has promised to destroy that nation, a pen can be powerful. It can sign acts of war and bigger military budgets, and can put into law new bills and executive orders that give the nation what it needs to execute its defense successfully.  It can even sign orders bestowing honors on its citizens who have given their lives in defense of the land they love.

But what power did Pres. Obama’s pen have yesterday as it took away some of the more extreme procedures we’ve  used in fighting the Islamists jihadists?  Perhaps Salon’s subhead can give us an idea:

On Day 2 of his administration, President Obama reverses key Bush “war on terror” policies, signing orders that end torture, close the CIA’s black sites and phase out Guantanamo

When did the war on terror get quotes around it? If they understand the subtleties of our language, jihadists around the globe must be firing off their Kalashnikovs with joy, especially when they realize that it’s not just Salon that’s used quotes to minimize our actions against their war. Here’s WaPo:

Bush’s ‘War’ On Terror Comes to a Sudden End

President Obama yesterday eliminated the most controversial tools employed by his predecessor against terrorism suspects. With the stroke of his pen, he effectively declared an end to the “war on terror,” as President George W. Bush had defined it, signaling to the world that the reach of the U.S. government in battling its enemies will not be limitless.

Apparently the WaPo editors can’t decide exactly where the quotes should go, as they’ve allowed different styles in the headline and the lead.  The headline, interestingly enough, makes the terror real, but the war against it somehow phony.

And how happy the bad guys of the world must be to learn that under Obama, all the powers of the American superpower will not be used to wipe them out.  But they’d better not let too much happiness seep into their dour, fatalistic selves because Scott Ott at Scrappleface has found some more quote marks:

‘War On Terror’ Ends, Obama Starts ‘Case Against Terror’

With the signing of executive orders to close the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, to prepare to grant full U.S. citizen legal rights to foreign enemy combatants, to end the threat to ‘high value targets’ of ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques, and to shutter so-called ‘black sites’ operated by the CIA in foreign countries, President Barack Obama sent a clear signal yesterday that George Bush’s ‘War on Terror’ is over, and Barack Obama’s ‘Case Against Terror’ has begun.

“America’s enemies should not view these moves as surrender,” said an unnamed White House spokesman, “but rather as an effort to level the playing field and to make sure that our enemies get a fair shake.”

“The battle will now be joined in the Case Against Terror,” he said, “not with lethal weapons, but with subpoenas and motions and detailed arguments. The next time one of these criminals destroys one of our skyscrapers, detonates himself in a shopping mall, poisons our water supply or unleashes a dirty bomb in a crowded subway station, he does so with the knowledge that the full power of the U.S. legal system will be unleashed on him, with no limit to the cash damages that his victims’ families can collect.”

Meanwhile, unless Barry & Michelle take in the Guantanamo detainees as West Wing house guests, signs are Obama’s lefty pen might just lead to some really big problems:

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

The militant, Said Ali al-Shihri, is suspected of involvement in a deadly bombing of the United States Embassy in Yemen’s capital, Sana, in September. He was released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 and passed through a Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists before resurfacing with Al Qaeda in Yemen. (source)

Wow. This guy got the best we and the Saudis had to offer and he still went back to the dark side, like he really believed in it or something. And:

Terror suspects who have been held but released from Guantanamo Bay are increasingly returning to the fight against the United States and its allies, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Sixty-one detainees released from the Navy base prison in Cuba are believed to have rejoined the fight, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, citing data from December. That’s up from 37 as of March 2008, he said. (Navy Times)

You know, this isn’t all that shocking.  What do you think our soldiers and Marines would do in similar circumstances?  Freed from enemy prison camps (yeah, that would happen!), do we really think they would docilely say that the jihadists aren’t all that bad and they’ll just sit this one out from now on?  Hardly! So why do we expect something different from jihadist enemy combatants?

Liberals, though, always expect the best from everyone, and always refuse to base their expectations on what history and experience have taught us.

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G

ood old Yankee know-how has been on display in Waziristan lately, as drone-fired missiles are slamming into rat-filled hovels. The latest report claims 20 “militants” – al-Qaeda and taliban terrorists – were killed.

A fine thing indeed, but what’s with this paragraph?

One attack in Mohammadkhel village about 28 miles west of Miran Shah, the region’s main town, killed about 19 people, most of them alleged militants but also including about a half-dozen foreigners, the officials said, citing agents in the field.

You mean the foreigners weren’t also terrorists? Were they perhaps European tourists on an eco-tour? Hollywood stars and Parisian fashion models on a round-the-world Smug Quest?

More likely they were jihadis from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, or Euro-Muslims on the only real kind of tour that reaches those parts, jihad madrassa tours. A half-dozen foreigners? A half dozen more dead terrorists, most likely.

Since this is evidence of stepped-up efforts to win the war in Afghanistan by taking  out the terrorist dregs that dragged that sorry butts back to the mountains after we took out most of their compadres in Iraq, one would think that Barack “The Kabul Kid” Obama will be singing the praises of the attack.  Bets anyone?  Anyone think he’ll actually praise a successful military action?

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A Mighty Wind

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s wind power ready to step up, step in and replace tried and trusted energy-producing technologies? Well, this photo seems to say maybe not. I am reminded of a Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live when Amy Poehler reported:

According to a new report by the Energy Department, wind turbines can produce a fifth of the nation’s annual electricity needs within about two decades. Which could drastically reduce our dependence on foreign wind.

Twenty percent in twenty years – oh, great! Let’s just shut down the oil biz now and twiddle our thumbs ’til 2028. As Dylan said (in a line William Ayres really, really liked), “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Hat-tip: Jim Continue Reading »

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Super Nan Readies For Denver Showdown

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est you think this week’s Democratic convention in Denver will be just a showcase for the pontificating and grandstanding leaders of the party that knows what’s good for us even if we don’t, Nancy Pelosi stands ready to set you straight. This is no small deal.

“We’ve got a planet to save. Nothing less is at stake other than civilization as we know it today.” (source)

Thank God we’ve got a proven, capable Dem savior like Barack Obama to get us through the fight with the super-nemesis, Maverick Man.

And Joe Biden? The perfect sidekick for The Mighty O and Super Nan, sez Madam Speaker:

“Joe Biden is the all-American boy.”

I’m sure he looks great in tights, too.

hat-tip: Urgent Agenda Continue Reading »

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I

t’s finally come out: the target of the most recent missile attack in the Pakistan border region is Abu Khabab al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s premier bomb and WMD techie, who was thought to have been killed at least once before. This time, it looks like we smoked him – but let’s wait for confirming evidence.

If al-Masari’s DNA is splattered about the bombed out target, the world is much better off without him. Counterterrorism blog says al-Masari, “an Egyptian also known as Midhat Mursi al Sayid Umar, ran Al Qaeda’s top training base in Afghanistan, and literally wrote ‘the book’ on chemical and biological warfare for terrorists worldwide.” He is credited with the design of the Richard Reid shoe bomb, and materminding a deadly attack on the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad in 1995.

Let’s hope he’s gone.

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L

ast night I headlined a report of a missile attack in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border area, saying it sounded like the sort of operation designed to take out Taliban leadership.

We have a confirmation of sorts … from the Taliban:

A missile apparently fired at a religious seminary in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal region early Monday killed seven people, a local Taliban leader said.

The pre-dawn attack was carried out at a ‘madrassa’ at the border region of Azam Warsak at 3 a.m., Maulavi Nazeer said.

The missile attack also injured three others, he said.

Locals said that the missiles struck seminary belong to a local cleric Maulana Jalail, who is considered to be linked with Taliban.

Locals believe that the missiles were fired from Afghanistan to hit a house in the Pakistani area near the border with Afghanistan.

The army spokesman confirmed the incident but did not say if it was missile strike or a bomb blast.

He said the coalition forces exchange intelligence with Pakistani forces before their actions. (Global Security/IRNA)

Al Jazeera adds:

Residents said the house where the missiles struck belonged to local tribesman Malik Salat and that suspected pro-Taliban fighters used to stay there.

Several villagers said they heard jets approaching from Afghanistan before the strike.

Still waiting for something official … and that’s interesting. In some earlier attacks, there were immediate outraged charges of civilian deaths and mutterings from the DoD about investigations. Reaction to this attack is muted … as if we hit what we wanted to hit.

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T

he Washington Post editorial page is not where you’d expect to see an essay that condemns the Dem prez nominee as hopelessly confused and wrong-footed, but there it is, Mr. Obama in Iraq.

The editorial stands out on a day that finds much of the media trying valiantly, but not too effectively, to cover their O-swoon – see Mo Doud’s Cocky or Commander-in-Chiefly? in today’s NYT for an example – or are focused on McCain’s criticism of Obama on the surge (that “he’d rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign”), like this from Joe Klein:

I can’t remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

What do you say we measure Klein’s criticism of McCain against WaPo’s criticism of Obama? The editorial winds up for several paragraphs before delivering this closer:

Yet Mr. Obama’s account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is “the central front” for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country’s strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world’s largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama’s antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

Other than choosing the word “eccentric” when so many other words would have worked better (thick-headed, flabbergasting, laughable, cro-zo), that pretty much nails it. You have in Obama a candidate who is clueless regarding the threats we face and the best means to face them, who wants so much to not be Bush that he refuses to acknowledge reality.

I for one would rather have a president who makes the mistake of calling out a fool all by himself instead of assigning the task to a surrogate, than one who tramples over Pakistan – a nuclear-armed nation that’s just barely holding off an Islamist uprising – to hunt for Osama bin Laden, who latelyhas done nothing more threatening than issuing tapes that are, to borrow a word from above, cro-zo.

Photo: AP

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S

eymour Hersh, who ever since Vietnam has fathered stories supportive of whatever enemy America is fighting, has done it again, blowing the cover on a Presidential Finding in support of new, aggressive efforts to gather intelligence on and destabilize Iran’s ruling Islamo-oligarchs.

The New Yorker story leads off with:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Hersh admits that such Presidential Findings are “highly classified,” with distribution limited to “Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees – the so-called Gang of Eight.” He does not, of course, hint at his source for the treasonous leaking of the document.

Hersh’s intent is clear: To do all he can to demonize Bush, even at the risk of increasing the chances that the truly awful people who rule Iran may be able to thwart (i.e., torture, kill) the truly valiant Iranians who are risking all in the name of that quaint concept called freedom – particularly the Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups Hersh specifically called out. Proof? Look no further than this:

United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. (emphasis added)

“The President’s war on terror?” The whole thing – Beirut, Khobar, the African embassies, the Cole, 9/11, Bali – is just the President’s war on terror to Hersh and his ilk, who, in their hatred of any American government that chooses war, believe no external threat really involves us, and that there’s no one out to harm us but our president.

Hersh will continue to live his comfortable, coddled life, wooing his fellow traveler sources, while in Iran the mad Mullahs and Mah – I’m in the – moud – for counterintelligence Ahmadinejad (rhymes with “Hersh? There’s a Jew who’d not all bad!”) will step up their efforts to seek out and exterminate any Ahwazi Arab, Baluchi or other groups or individuals who pose a threat to their jihadist ambitions.

Sedition, thy name is Seymour Hersh.

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