TravisBickle's Blog

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross


I have a new article in the Daily Standard today that examines the rash of "false alarms" on airlines since authorities announced that they foiled the transatlantic air terror plot on Aug. 10. In it, I argue that some of these false alarms may not have been false, and that open societies like the U.S. will inherently find it difficult to guard against casings and dry runs. An excerpt:

ALTHOUGH THERE WAS AMPLE REASON before the transatlantic plot to believe that flights were being cased, none of these incidents were remembered as casings. Likewise, the various incidents that have occurred since then may well be remembered as a rash of false alarms.
But some of these alarms may not have been false. In any dry run or casing, terrorists will engage in aberrant behavior similar to that displayed by the passengers aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 42 (or United Airlines Flight 925, for that matter). If terrorists engaged in a dry run or casing have a modicum of foresight, they'll have reasonable explanations for their travel and their behavior. They may in fact not even have to do that much: by August 25, the New York Times declared that the 12 Northwest Airlines Flight 42 passengers were "possibly unaware of international flight rules and security concerns." This seems overly assuming. Is it likely that a dozen international passengers were unaware that they shouldn't use cell phones after takeoff and walk in the aisles with the seatbelt sign still on?

If the terrorists have reasonable stories and don't possess weapons or the means to blow up a flight, their dry run or casing will likely be remembered as nothing more than a false alarm. Actions of this kind are fairly low-risk ventures for terrorists from which they derive two distinct advantages. One is that they can test the limits of our tolerance, determining what behavior will raise red flags and what will not. The second advantage is that, as an increasing number of law enforcement sources suspect, terrorists or their sympathizers may be trying to catch the Federal Air Marshals' attention in order to determine who the marshals are.

THE LIKELIHOOD THAT TERRORISTS can offer plausible excuses and walk away unscathed when caught in the midst of a casing or dry run points to an inherent point of vulnerability for open societies.
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The complete article is here: (scary)

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/0
00/000/012/691djxhx.asp

Remember this when all the politicians play "blame games" after the next hit.

No matter what he says, the record shows he failed to act against terrorism.

By Byron York

“I worked hard to try and kill him,” former president Bill Clinton told Fox News Sunday. “I tried. I tried and failed.”

"Him” is Osama bin Laden. And in his interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, the former president based nearly his entire defense on one source: Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, the book by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke. “All I’m asking is if anybody wants to say I didn’t do enough, you read Richard Clarke’s book,” Clinton said at one point in the interview. “All you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive systematic way to try to protect the country against terror,” he said at another. “All you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s findings and you know it’s not true,” he said at yet another point. In all, Clinton mentioned Clarke’s name 11 times during the Fox interview.

But Clarke’s book does not, in fact, support Clinton’s claim. Judging by Clarke’s sympathetic account — as well as by the sympathetic accounts of other former Clinton aides like Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon — it’s not quite accurate to say that Clinton tried to kill bin Laden. Rather, he tried to convince — as opposed to, say, order — U.S. military and intelligence agencies to kill bin Laden. And when, on a number of occasions, those agencies refused to act, Clinton, the commander-in-chief, gave up.

Clinton did not give up in the sense of an executive who gives an order and then moves on to other things, thinking the order is being carried out when in fact it is being ignored. Instead, Clinton knew at the time that his top military and intelligence officials were dragging their feet on going after bin Laden and al Qaeda. He gave up rather than use his authority to force them into action.

Examples are all over Clarke’s book. On page 223, Clarke describes a meeting, in late 2000, of the National Security Council “principals” — among them, the heads of the CIA, the FBI, the Attorney General, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the secretaries of State, Defense. It was just after al Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole. But neither the FBI nor the CIA would say that al Qaeda was behind the bombing, and there was little support for a retaliatory strike. Clarke quotes Mike Sheehan, a State Department official, saying in frustration, “What’s it going to take, Richard? Who the shix do they think attacked the Cole, fuxxing Martians? The Pentagon brass won’t let Delta go get bin Laden. Hell they won’t even let the Air Force carpet bomb the place. Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?”

That came later. But in October 2000, what would it have taken? A decisive presidential order — which never came.

The story was the same with the CIA. On page 204, Clarke vents his frustration at the CIA’s slow-walking on the question of killing bin Laden. “I still to this day do not understand why it was impossible for the United States to find a competent group of Afghans, Americans, third-country nationals, or some combination who could locate bin Laden in Afghanistan and kill him,” Clarke writes. “I believe that those in CIA who claim the presidential authorizations were insufficient or unclear are throwing up that claim as an excuse to cover the fact that they were pathetically unable to accomplish the mission.”

Clarke hit the CIA again a few pages later, on page 210, on the issue of the CIA’s refusal to budget money for the fight against al Qaeda. “The formal, official CIA response was that there were no funds,” Clarke writes. “Another way to say that was that everything they were doing was more important than fighting al Qaeda.”

The FBI proved equally frustrating. On page 217, Clarke describes a colleague, Roger Cressey, who was frustrated after meeting with an FBI representative on the subject of terrorism. “That fuxxer is going to get some Americans killed,” Clarke reports Cressey saying. “He just sits there like a bump on a log.” Clarke adds: “I knew he was talking about an FBI representative.”

So Clinton couldn’t get the job done. Why not? According to Clarke’s pro-Clinton view, the president was stymied by Republican opposition. “Weakened by continual political attack,” Clarke writes, “Clinton could not get the CIA, the Pentagon, and FBI to act sufficiently to deal with the threat.”

Republicans boxed Clinton in, Clarke writes, beginning in the 1992 campaign, with criticism of Clinton’s avoidance of the draft as a young man, and extending all the way to the Lewinsky scandal and the president’s impeachment. The bottom line, Clarke argues, is that the commander-in-chief was not in command. From page 225:

Because of the intensity of the political opposition that Clinton engendered, he had been heavily criticized for bombing al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, for engaging in ‘Wag the Dog’ tactics to divert attention from a scandal about his personal life. For similar reasons, he could not fire the recalcitrant FBI Director who had failed to fix the Bureau or to uncover terrorists in the United States. He had given the CIA unprecedented authority to go after bin Laden personally and al Qaeda, but had not taken steps when they did little or nothing. Because Clinton was criticized as a Vietnam War opponent without a military record, he was limited in his ability to direct the military to engage in anti-terrorist commando operations they did not want to conduct. He had tried that in Somalia, and the military had made mistakes and blamed him. In the absence of a bigger provocation from al Qaeda to silence his critics, Clinton thought he could do no more.

In the end, Clarke writes, Clinton “put in place the plans and programs that allowed America to respond to the big attacks when they did come, sweeping away the political barriers to action.”

But the bottom line is that Bill Clinton, the commander-in-chief, could not find the WILL to order the military into action against al Qaeda, and Bill Clinton, the head of the executive branch, could not find the WILL to order the CIA and FBI to act. No matter what the former president says on Fox, or anywhere else, that is his legacy in the war on terror.

The Democrats in the House of Representatives last week provided a good way to measure just how far left they have drifted, when they attempted to oppose legislation that would require would-be voters to provide a photo ID before voting in federal elections.

The most obvious explanation for the Democratic position on this issue is that they hope to benefit in future elections from illegal votes cast by some of the 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in the United States.

Last September, the Commission on Federal Election Reform, co-chaired by Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker, made a sensible proposal for stopping voter fraud—which, even at minimal levels, could alter the outcome of close elections such as the 2000 presidential contest.

"The electoral system cannot inspire public confidence if no safeguards exist to deter or detect fraud or to confirm the identity of voters,” said the Carter-Baker commission. “Photo IDs currently are needed to board a plane, enter federal buildings and cash a check. Voting is equally important.”

Every day millions of Americans show a photo ID to pay by check, board a plane or buy alcohol or tobacco. Surely the sanctity of the ballot warrants as much protection as these other activities.

Anticipating that some DEMOCRATS would claim this requirement amounts to a “poll tax,” placing an unfair financial burden on poor people who don’t drive and who wouldn’t otherwise secure a state-issued photo ID, Language was put in the bill requiring states to give the cards to the poor for FREE!

So DEMOCRATS could not complain about an unfunded mandate, the bill requires the federal government to REIMBURSE the states for the cost of handing out FREE ID cards to the "poor".

Finally, to make sure people who "forget" or "misplace" their IDs on Election Day are not disenfranchised, the bill allows voters to cast “provisional ballots” without a photo ID so long as they come back within 48 hours and present one to an election official.

DEMOCRAT Nancy Pelosi (Calif) did not agree, citing a long list of liberal organizations opposed to the bill. Among them: the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Democratic Action, Common Cause, Emigrantes Sin Fronteras, the National Council of La Raza, the National Center for Transgender Equality and People for the American Way.

Pelosi feigned outrage that people should be required to demonstrate they are U.S. citizens when voting in U.S. elections.

Even though photo IDs will be GIVEN to the 'poor' for FREE, she shamelessly made the “poll tax” argument. “By forcing voters to undergo time-consuming, burdensome and expensive attempts to secure documents, this Republican voter-suppression bill is a modern-day poll tax,” she said.

"Integrity?” Pelosi said. “It is not about integrity. It is about a tawdry attempt by Republicans to suppress the votes of millions of Americans.”

Common sense, however, swayed almost no members of the Pelosi Party. Only four Democrats—Melissa Bean (Ill.), Jim Marshall (Ga.), Collin Peterson (Minn.) and Gene Taylor (Miss.)—voted for it.

The bill passed 228 to 196.

Here is a clear and significant divide between the parties. Republicans backed a sensible means for stopping illegal aliens from corrupting U.S. elections. Democrats DID NOT.

Demcrats have lost yet another seedy component of their toolkit that torques the poor and disenfranchised to believe the shameful lies perpetrated on them by the moonbat left for decades.

The Democrats welcome voting discrepencies and fraud so as to fight and attempt to overturn their losses.

Witness the lack of "fraud" in the last Presidential elections.
Democrats couldn't because Colin Powell called in the International Community to monitor them.

Sad, really.


From:
Human Events online

Thought I'd pass on an e-mail-

Dear Mr. Ex President Clinton:

I recently saw a bumper sticker that said, "Thank me, I voted for Clinton-Gore."
So, I sat down and reflected on that, and I am sending my
"Thank you" for what you have done, specifically:

1. Thank you for introducing us to Jennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Dolly Kyle Browning, Kathleen Willey, and Juanita Broderick. Did I leave anyone out?

2. Thank you for teaching my 8 year old about oral sex. I had really planned to wait until he was a little older to discuss it with him, but now he knows more about it than I did as a senior in college.

3. Thank you for showing us that sexual harassment in the work place (especially the White House) and on the job is OK, and all you have to know is what the meaning of "it" is. It really is great to know that certain sexual acts are not sex, and one person may have sex while the other one does NOT have sex.

4. Thank you for reintroducing the concept of impeachment to a new generation and demonstrating that the ridiculous plot of the movie "Wag the Dog" could be plausible after all.

5. Thanks for making Jimmy Carter look competent, Gerald Ford look graceful, Richard Nixon look honest, Lyndon Johnson look truthful, and John Kennedy look moral.

6. Thank you for the 73 House and Senate witnesses who have pled the 5th Amendment and 17 witnesses who have fled the country to avoid testifying about Democratic campaign fund raising.

7. Thank you, for the 19 charges, 8 convictions, and 4 imprisonment's from the Whitewater "mess" and the 55 criminal charges and 32 criminal convictions (so far) in the other "Clinton" scandals.

8. Thanks also for reducing our military by half, "gutting" much of our foreign policy, and flying all over the world on "vacations" carefully disguised as necessary trips.

9. Thank you, also, for "finding" millions of dollars (I really didn't need it in the first place, and I can't think of a more deserving group of recipients for my hard-earned tax dollars) for all of your globe-trotting.
I understand you, the family and your cronies have logged in more time aboard Air Force One than any other administration.

10. Now that you've left the White House, thanks for the 140 pardons of convicted felons and indicted felons-in-exile. We will love to have them rejoin society. (Not to mention the scores you pardoned while Governor of Arkansas)

11. Thanks also for removing the White House silverware. I'm sure that Laura Bush didn't like the pattern anyway. Also, enjoy the housewarming gifts you've received from your "friends."

12. Thanks to you and your staff in the West Wing of the White House for vandalizing and destroying government property on the way out. I also appreciate removing all of that excess weight China, silverware, linen, towels, ash trays, soap, pens, magnetic compass, flight manuals, etc. out
of Air Force 1. The weight savings means burning less fuel, thus less tax dollars spent on jet fuel. Thank you

13. Also finally, please ensure that Hillary enjoys the $8 million dollar advance for her "tell-all" book and you, Bill, the $10 million advance for your memoirs. Who says crime doesn't pay!

14. The last and most important point - thank you for forcing Israel to let Mohammed Atta go free. Atta blew up a bus in Israel in 1986. The Israelis captured, tried and imprisoned him. As part of the Oslo agreement with the Palestinians in 1993, Israel had to agree to release so-called "political prisoners". However, the Israelis would not release any with blood on their hands. Bill Clinton, and his Sect'ry of State, Warren Christopher, "insisted" that all prisoners be released. Thus Atta was freed and eventually thanked the US by flying an airplane into the WTC.
This was reported by many of the American TV networks at the time that the terrorists were first identified. It was censored in the US from all later reports. Why shouldn't Americans know the real truth?

Oh yea, Vince Fosters family thanks you too!

What a guy!!

If you agree that the American public must be made aware of these facts,
pass this on. God bless America and THANK YOU (once again) for spending my
taxes so wisely and frugally.

SINCERELY,
A US Citizen

France to probe bin Laden death report leak
Sat Sep 23, 2006 5:34am ET


PARIS (Reuters) - France's Defense Ministry said on Saturday a secret service report saying al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had died could not be confirmed but said it would launch an inquiry into the leak of secret documents.

"The information published this morning in the L'Est Republicain newspaper relating to the supposed death of Osama bin Laden cannot be confirmed," the Defense Minsitry said in a statement.

"The Defense Minister has asked that an inquiry be carried out to determine the origin of the leak that can be punished by criminal charges."


Hmmm sounds phishy, but who knows?


www.christianaction.org

OUTRAGE OVER 'MEXICAN FLAG PLEDGE' RECITAL AT TX GRADE SCHOOL

FREEPORT — Velasco Elementary School’s principal said he has been taken aback by a controversy that has arisen from his campus’ Mexican Independence Day celebration, and he apologizes for offending parents.

During a short school assembly Friday, several parent volunteers read a pledge of allegiance to the Mexican flag. Since a parent complained on the Chris Baker show on NewsRadio 740 KTRH that afternoon, the issue has become a focal point of some Houston talk radio shows.

“It’s been overwhelming,” said longtime Principal Sam Williams. “It’s been a real trying ordeal and all I can say is I deeply apologize if anyone was offended by it — and I can see that they are.”

In hindsight, he said, the program should have been presented differently.

“If I had it to do all over again, we would revamp it,” Williams said. “There’s no way that we would repeat it.”

Velasco Elementary has 635 students in prekindergarten through fourth grade, 65 percent of whom are Hispanic. Williams, who is black, has served as principal of the school for 18 years.

“We have stated in our mission statement that we are a campus that is a beacon of hope for a culturally diverse population,” Williams said.

At about 10 a.m. Friday, students and parents gathered in the gym for an assembly commemorating Diez y Seis de Septiembre, Sept. 16, when Mexico celebrates its independence from Spain. The school’s bilingual classes from different grade levels performed songs, Williams said.Everyone was given a small Mexican flag and a group of six or seven parents recited the pledge from a script, Williams said. The students did not recite it, he said.

“My students don’t even know the Mexican pledge,” Williams said. “In the minds of my little kids here at the elementary school ... they were simply holding a flag.”

He said the audience did stand as a sign of respect because that is the custom with which students are familiar.

“What we normally do is we stand for any pledge that’s given,” he said. “They can only relate to the U.S. pledge and the Texas pledge.”

Baker continued talking about the incident during his radio show Tuesday afternoon. He criticized the principal for allowing anyone to recite a pledge to the Mexican flag in the midst of a national debate over illegal immigration. He also called for the principal’s demotion.

“To blow it off as quote-unquote ‘historical teaching methods’ either shows complete arrogance or a lack of the ability to grasp the seriousness of the illegal immigration issue to Americans,” Baker said at the beginning of his show.

The audio of Baker’s broadcast is stored online at www.ktrh.com. According to the recording, on Friday a woman who said her name was Amy called in about the assembly at her daughter’s school. She claimed everyone there was asked to pledge allegiance to the Mexican flag.

“Where is the sensitivity to the country and to the troops and the men and women that have fought and died for this country?” she said.

The woman said her husband served three tours of duty in Vietnam and she has a son in the war now.

“We absolutely refuse to stand up and pledge allegiance to another country’s flag,” she said.

Williams said he was “devastated” that the parent who objected to the program called a radio show rather than approaching him with her concern.

“I would have graciously visited with that parent and explained on-site what the intent was,” he said. “I would have been open — I still remain open — to the parent or the parents that were in attendance for the presentation on Sept. 15, to explain.”

Brazosport ISD spokesman Stuart Dornburg pointed out that Sept. 15 through Oct. 15 is considered national Hispanic Heritage Month and Velasco’s assembly was a cultural educational activity. The district values and respects diversity, he said.

“We study different cultures, that’s part of the educational process,” Dornburg said. “And we do do a pledge to the American and the Texas flag every morning.”

Jen Sansbury
"The Facts"
Brazoria County News Outlet
http://thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=3227734224e7fb1cr>

... and then say, 'What should be the reward of such sacrifices?' ... If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom...crouch down and lick the hands, which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"
-Samuel Adams

Dear Reader,

As another anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone, I view with horror as our countrymen here at home seem to put more energy into fighting each other than to the real task at hand.

As another election year arrives, I view with horror as our leaders and media continue to politicize our very survival.

I share with you today a link that will contain few words to read, it'll have no flashy pictures, music or endless stats and diatribes.
It only requires 2.5 minutes of your time to see and SIMPLY LISTEN to the "tics".
I recommend that you open to Full Screen so as to keep an eye on the clock.


http://www.obleek.com/iraq/


"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their Nation."
-George Washington

(On October 22, 2002, Oriana Fallaci, then 73, addressed an audience at the American Enterprise Institute. Following are short excerpts from her talk. Ms. Fallaci, a native of Florence, Italy and a life-long journalist, caused turmoil across Europe with the publication of her book "The Rage and the Pride", calling the West to stand up to the Islamic world.)


I don’t hide. I never have. I stay at home because I like to stay at home, and at home I work. I have not appeared in public for at least ten years. No interviews, no TV.

Why am I here, then? Because, since September 11, we are at war. Because the front line of that war is here, in America. Because when I was a war correspondent, I liked to be on the front line. And this time, in this war, I do not feel as a war correspondent. I feel as a soldier. The duty of a soldier is to fight. And to fight this war, I deploy a personal weapon. It is not a gun. It’s a small book, The Rage and The Pride.

My soldier weapon is the weapon of truth. The truth that begins with the truth I maintain in these pages:

From Afghanistan to Sudan, from Palestine to Pakistan, from Malaysia to Iran, from Egypt to Iraq, from Algeria to Senegal, from Syria to Kenya, from Libya to Chad, from Lebanon to Morocco, from Indonesia to Yemen, from Saudi Arabia to Somalia, the hate for the West swells like a fire fed by the wind. And the followers of Islamic fundamentalism multiply like a protozoa of a cell which splits to become two cells then four then eight then sixteen then thirty-two to infinity. Those who are not aware of it only have to look at the images that the TV brings us every day. The multitudes that impregnate the streets of Islamabad, the squares of Nairobi, the mosques of Tehran. The ferocious faces, the threatening fists. The fires that burn the American flag and the photos of Bush.

“The clash between us and them is not a military clash. Oh, no. It is a cultural one, a religious one. And our military victories do not solve the offensive of Islamic terrorism. On the contrary, they encourage it. They exacerbate it, they multiply it. The worst is still to come.”

President Bush has said, “We refuse to live in fear.”

Beautiful sentence, very beautiful. I loved it! But inexact, Mr. President, because the West does live in fear. People are afraid to speak against the Islamic world. Afraid to offend, and to be punished for offending, the sons of Allah. You can insult the Christians, the Buddhists, the Hindus, the Jews. You can slander the Catholics, you can spit on the Madonna and Jesus Christ. But, woe betide the citizen who pronounces a word against the Islamic religion.

My small book is not tender with Islam. In certain passages, it is even ferocious. But it is much more ferocious with us: with us Italians, us Europeans, us Americans.

I call my book a sermon—addressed to the Italians, to the Europeans, the Westerners. And along with the rage, this sermon unchains the pride for their culture, my culture. That culture that in spite of its mistakes, its faults, even monstrosities, has given so much to the world. It has moved us from the tents of the deserts and the huts of the woods to the dignity of civilization. It has given us the concept of beauty, of morals, of freedom, of equality. It has made the unique conquest in the social field, in the realm of science. It has wiped out diseases. It has invented all the tools that make life easier and more intelligent, those tools that our enemy can also use, for instance, to kill us. It has brought us to the moon and to Mars, and this cannot be said of the other culture. A culture, which has produced and produces only religion, which in every sense imprisons women inside the burkah or the chador, which is never accompanied by a drop of freedom, a drop of democracy, which subjugates its people under theocratical, oppressive regimes.

Socrates and Aristotle and Heraclitus were not mullahs. Jesus Christ, neither. Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo, and Galileo, and Copernicus, and Newton and Pasteur and Einstein, the same.

My book is also a j’accuse. To accuse us of cowardice, hypocrisy, demagogy, laziness, moral misery, and of all that comes with that. The stupidity of the unbearable fad of political correctness, for instance. The paucity of our schools, our universities, our young people, people who often don’t even know the story of their country, the names Jefferson, Franklin, Robespierre, Napoleon, Garibaldi. And no understanding that freedom cannot exist without discipline, self-discipline.

I accuse ourselves also of another crime: the loss of passion. Haven’t you understood what drives our enemies? What permits them to fight this war against us? The passion! They have passion! They have so much passion that they can die for it!

Their leaders, too, of course. I met Khomeini. I discussed with him for more than six hours in calm, and I tell you that that man was a man of passion. I never met bin Laden. But I have well observed his eyes. I have well listened to his voice. And I tell you that that man is a man of passion. We have lost passion.

Well, I have not. I boil with passion. I, too, am ready to die for passion. But around me, I see no passion. Even those who hate me and attack me and insult me do this without passion. They are mollusks, not men and women. And a civilization, a culture, cannot survive without passion, cannot be saved without passion. If the West does not wake up, if we do not refind passion, we are lost.

To quote from my book:

“The problem is that the solution does not depend upon the death of Osama bin Laden. Because the Osama bin Ladens are too many, by now: as cloned as the sheep of our research laboratories…. In fact, the best trained and the more intelligent do not stay in the Muslim countries... They stay in our own countries, in our cities, our universities, our business companies. They have excellent bonds with our churches, our banks, our televisions, our radios, our newspapers, our publishers, our academic organizations, our unions, our political parties…. Worse, they live in the heart of a society that hosts them without questioning their differences, with- out checking their bad intentions, without penalizing their sullen fanaticism.

If we continue to stay inert, they will become always more and more. They will demand always more and more, they will vex and boss us always more and more. ’Til the point of subduing us. Therefore, dealing with them is impossible. Attempting a dialogue, unthinkable. Showing indulgence, suicidal. And he or she who believes the contrary is a fool.”


Born on June 29, 1929, Oriana Fallaci lost her long battle with breast cancer on September 15, 2006.

The Free World lost a true Freedom Fighter.

She once said "I leave a shred of my soul on every experience"

To read the "The Rage and the Pride" online, go to:

http://www.borg.com/~paperina/fallaci/fallaci_1.html>
It'll be 9 of the most riveting (revealing) pages on Islam and the impending death of the West you'll have ever read.

I guarantee it.


A short bio:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriana_Fallaci

One of my dad’s more memorable lines was his response to the question about what his strategy was for fighting the Cold War. Simple, he said, “We win, they lose.”

That’s the way it worked out; we won, they lost.

We won because the Reagan strategy was to apply relentless pressure on the Soviets with unflinching resolve, to never let up, and to grind the Communists’ faces in the mud at every opportunity while the world looked on, no matter how much it shocked the media and the go-easy-on-the-Kremlin liberals who feared giving offense to our sworn enemies by treating them unkindly and incurring the condemnation of the world’s wimps.

We are now fighting a war that demands similar resolve and a rigid determination to defeat the enemy, whatever it takes, without regard to how it will shock the media and the anti-war left.

We are not meeting those demands and as a result the mightiest nation on the face of the earth -- with the finest military force ever assembled in all the world’s history -- is losing the war, not by being defeated in combat, but by default.

In Afghanistan, as both the media and the Defeatocrats have joyfully proclaimed, the Taliban we drove out is back and giving the NATO and coalition forces arrayed against them a very hard time.

Nothing could drive a stake in the heart of that reborn Taliban insurgency better than the killing of their top leadership, yet when faced with a golden opportunity to do just that we did nothing but stand by and watch.

According to NBC, 190 top Taliban leaders attending a funeral and packed in a tight formation were seen by an eye-in-the-sky drone, presenting an easy target for a quick air strike that could have decimated the Taliban leadership and perhaps brought an end to the insurgency in Afghanistan.

A black and white photo published on the front page of the New York Post shows what NBC told the Associated Press are the Taliban militants standing in several rows, like cattle being led to the slaughter pens.

It would have been an easy kill and a major victory in the fight against the Taliban, yet our military were forced to sit and do nothing but watch because the oh-so-sensitive rules of engagement forbid attacking cemeteries.

And that’s not all. While U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan were still raging about the lost opportunity, the military brass was up in arms - not because of a missed chance - but because the embarrassing drone photo was leaked to the media.

According to the Associated Press, Lt. Tamara Lawrence, a spokeswoman with the U.S. military in Kabul, said the photograph was released to NBC by someone who did not have the clearance to hand it out.

"It is an operational security issue and the photo was released at an inappropriate level," she sniffed to the AP. "Inquiries are being made into how it was released."

This incident is an example of the out-of-control political correctness that is driving the U.S. strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. Out of fear of offending the people whose freedom we are fighting to ensure, we are waging a war by half-measures.

Our enemy is a furtive force lurking hidden among the civilian population, using civilians as human shields. The only way to deal with these fanatical insurgents is to kill them all, and in order to kill them all you have to be willing to inflict unintended damage on the civilian population, just as we did when we bombed Berlin and Tokyo and Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

When you fight this kind of war, you incur the wrath of the media and the anti-war left, who remain ever-alert for any chance to charge the U.S. with committing “atrocities.” When you allow fear of their reaction to dictate the rules of engagement, you allow them to lead you to defeat.

“War is Hell,” Sherman once said. It still is, and always will be. Live with it, or go hide someplace and hope the victorious enemy won’t find you and cut your head off, a form of political incorrectness that doesn’t bother them one bit.

-Michael Reagan son of former President Ronald Reagan

Among the left, there seems to be a great deal of consternation when discussing the current situation of the world and the issues that populate it. Much of the discussion centers on two-term President George W. Bush.

Even now, as Bush approaches official “lame duck” status in the White House, the hardcore and bombastic left have trouble separating any presidential contest from Bush in 2008 -- even though the man is all but officially out of office.

But leave it to the wild-eyed among the leftists to spread their toxic brand of liberalism to the somewhat more sanguine and sensible membership of Party-Democrat.

As a result, the uber-liberals among the left have bloodied the Democratic Party in a big way. Three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman, (D-Conn.) became a victim of the malady known as “McGovernitis, 2006.” For the less seasoned reader who is unfamiliar with whom George McGovern was, take a look at the former senator’s presidential run in 1972, and it’s easy to understand why the Democratic Party as an institution has ever since been running away from the liberal label ever since.

But maybe, the running away from the erratic and dangerous liberalism showcased within the Democratic Party has slowly changed to that of cautious acceptance.

Lieberman lost the Democratic primary to political newcomer Ned Lamont, whose only real campaign issue was that of tying Lieberman to Bush and Iraq. Lamont needs nothing else to get the support of the vituperative left. Bashing Bush over Iraq and equating Lieberman with it, is all the left needs to hear.

But really, that is all that is needed to appease the “I hate Bush and his mother” crowd. This bunch of thirtysomething leftist kooks who are still living with mommy and daddy would sooner kiss a crocodile on the lips then ever let Bush just fade out of his presidency. It is an obsession that has overtaken anything positive the Democratic Party ever had planned for the country.

But didn’t you know? The left has good reasons -- very good reasons -- to hate George W. Bush.

After all, everyone knows that on January 20, 2001, the world as we know was forever transformed, and in some areas, created, by America’s 43rd President.

For instance, before Bush was even comfortably seated in the same Oval Office in which former President Bill Clinton worked with plump White House interns, Bush created the dysfunctional and dangerous tyrannies of North Korea, and Iran, and heck, let’s say Iraq too, and call it a day, or better still, an “Axis of Evil.”

Surely, here were three of the world’s leading lights. North Korea is legendary for its “compassion” for the less fortunate among its own people, and Iran, of course, is a “paragon” of religious freedom. Iraq was certainly the most democratically run Muslim state in the East under Saddam, right? Yet, as reported by the media and echoed by elected Democrats in Congress, that all changed when Bush took office.

Didn’t you know that?

And, of course, those two edifices to America’s capitalistic genius, the twin towers, would have stood for a thousand years … if only Bush hadn’t been elected.

Saddam Hussein had WMD’s? And he used them on his own people? Preposterous!

Everybody, from France and the rest of the European Union, to most liberal members of Congress, know that if there were any truth at all to those rumors, it was certainly perpetrated by one carrying the initials GWB.

Hurricane Katrina, the Duke lacrosse team’s raping of a defenseless woman, the space shuttle exploding over Texas, global warming, the death of Coretta Scott King, McDonald’s french fries being cooked in pork grease. It is all the doing of one George W. Bush.

Didn’t you know that?

But, of course, you did. And now, you want to know just what it is that Bush plans for the future, don’t you?

Naturally, no one knows the future (except Bush), but if I were a betting man, I would say that as long as journals like the New York Times have anything to say about it, more bad news is on the way, no matter what the reality of the situation is.

The War on Terror was started on President Bush’s watch, but it should have been started long ago. America has been a victim of terrorism as far back as 1961, when the first U.S. aircraft was hijacked by Puerto Rican born Antuilo Ramierez Ortiz, who “forced at gunpoint a National Airlines plane to fly to Havana, Cuba, where he was given asylum.”

Other more serious, and deadly, incidents followed, like the Iranian hostage crisis in November of 1979. Then-President Jimmy Carter agreed to admit the Shah of Iran into the U.S. Iranian radicals seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 American diplomats hostage. Thirteen hostages were soon released, but the remaining 53 were held until January 20, 1981.

In 1983, a 12,000-pound bomb destroyed the U.S. compound, killing 242 Americans in Beirut, Lebanon. Earlier that same year, sixty-three people, including the CIA’s Middle East director, were killed when the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed. In both instances, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

More recently, the first World Trade Center bombing that killed six and left 1,000 injured, and the summit of Islamofascism, 9/11, which, in case you have forgotten (and far too many of us have) killed 3,025 U.S. citizens and other nationals.

Since 1961, the U.S. State Department has kept a chronology of terrorist attacks that have been perpetrated against the world. At the end of 2003, some 241 terrorist acts had been committed against the world community, with thousands killed, and tens of thousands injured. Since then, further terrorist attacks have killed hundreds more.

President Bush did not invent terrorism, nor enable it. He simply does what others before him have not done: He fights it. While Bush has dropped the ball on many domestic issues here at home, he has been shown a warrior’s zeal in fighting this modern-day Nazism that we call Islamofascism.

It is a fight that will surpass the Bush presidency, and probably several more. Future administrations, be they Republican or Democrat, will have to deal effectively against terrorism, and essentially, kill or be killed.

President Bush seems to grasp this concept of us-versus-them, but that is not the case for many on the left, and a goodly sized plurality of the voter at large. Whether it likes it or not, America is in this fight for the long haul.

Or didn’t you know that?

Written by-
Vincent Fiore