Right Wing Nut House

The summer seems to have turned into a season of discontent for conservatives. As the President’s popularity plummets and support for the War in Iraq wavers, Administration policies that perhaps should have been questioned long ago but for the intervention of politics and the November election have come under attack. It’s hard to recall at this point the absolute necessity in supporting the President when the choice was between Bush and the conspiracists, fantasist’s, and simpering internationalists who wished to subsume American interests to the execrable anti-Americans at the United Nations

Far from being the monolithic entity we are accused of by our critics on the left, the center-right Shadow Media has been roiled in recent months by several high energy, high profile issues, revealing cracks and splits between religious conservatives, secular conservatives, neo-conservatives, and libertarians. The Terri Schiavo imbroglio was instructive in this regard in that it exacerbated tensions that already existed between the religious conservatives and libertarians while revealing the true fault lines in the conservative movement that exist between rationalists and theists.

But where these fault lines seemed to knit together and ultimately unite conservatives was at the water’s edge. Schiavo, intelligent design, the courts - all the issues that divided us were put aside once the debate turned to the War on Terror. The overarching need to support the President as Commander in Chief and our troops in the field against the hard left whose policy prescriptions would eventually lead, I believe, to an unthinkable terrorist attack on the homeland outweighed any quibbles we may have had with the Administration’s tactical and strategic thinking.

Sadly, this has now changed.

This was, perhaps inevitable. The rumbling on the right regarding the President’s less than conservative governance is nothing new and have recently exploded into full throated howls of protest about the President’s budgetary policies and social activism. And now, several high profile, influential conservatives have begun to desert the President on Iraq.

Greg Djerejian has recently written several scathing critiques of war policy both from a military and political standpoint. He’s called for the resignation of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and additional troops on the ground in Iraq in order to give the nascent Iraqi government a chance to succeed in a more secure environment.

John Cole and others (myself included) have broken with the Administration on their detention policies, believing them to be inhumane and political disastrous. And now one of the right’s more thoughtful and respected bloggers has pretty much come out and said the Iraq war is a failure and we need an exit strategy.

Professor Stephen Bainbridge doesn’t pull any punches in this critique of both the President’s policies and his leadership. The first shot across the bow is a doozy:

It’s time for us conservatives to face facts. George W. Bush has pissed away the conservative moment by pursuing a war of choice via policies that border on the criminally incompetent. We control the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and (more-or-less) the judiciary for one of the few times in my nearly 5 decades, but what have we really accomplished? Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected? Have we really set the stage for a durable conservative majority?

Meanwhile, Bush continues to insult our intelligence…

The good professor then lists the left’s talking points on Iraq and apparently adopts them whole hog:

After all, if Iraq’s alleged WMD programs were the casus belli, why aren’t we at war with Iran and North Korea? Not to mention Pakistan, which remains the odds-on favorite to supply the Islamofascists with a working nuke. If Saddam’s cruelty to his own people was the casus belli, why aren’t we taking out Kim Jong Il or any number of other nasty dictators? Indeed, what happened to the W of 2000, who correctly proclaimed nation building a failed cause and an inappropriate use of American military might? And why are we apparently going to allow the Islamists to write a more significant role for Islamic law into the new Iraqi constitution? If throwing a scare into the Saudis was the policy, so as to get them to rethink their deals with the jihadists, which has always struck me as the best rationale for the war, have things really improved on that front?

The trouble with Bush’s justification for the war is that it uses American troops as fly paper. Send US troops over to Iraq, where they’ll attract all the terrorists, who otherwise would have come here, and whom we’ll then kill. This theory has proven fallacious. The first problem is that the American people are unwilling to let their soldiers be used as fly paper.

First, as for WMD in Iran and North Korea, the professor’s question as to why we’re not at war with them will be answered soon enough. The mad mullahs in Tehran seem hell bent for leather on enriching enough uranium to build nuclear weapons. The fact that the Iranian theocracy has based it’s entire existence on the destruction of Israel has not gone unnoticed in Tel Aviv. I daresay it will become more and more difficult to restrain the IDF the closer Iran gets to realizing its nuclear ambitions. It should go without saying that any military action taken by Israel will by necessity embroil the United States in whatever crisis ensues. I would think that we’ll have more than enough war for anyone’s taste if that occurs.

As for Kim, he has impoverished his country to build a weapon that he can’t possibly use. North Korea’s improving trade relations with China as well as their dependence on Bejing’s food shipments may give enough leverage to the six party talks to pry those weapons from his hands. It’s still possible Kim will lash out at his neighbor to the south. But that eventuality is fading as both Russia and China - Kim’s major trading partners - follow the lead of the United States as we seek to make the Korean peninsula a nuclear free zone.

As for the justifications for war, Bainbridge uses the same narrow interpretation - the WMD argument - to take the Administration to task for changing the rationale for war as the left. In fact, UN Security Council Resolution 1441 lists a hosts of justifications for the invasion. The fact that some of our erstwhile allies whose assistance would have been appreciated and was much needed at the time were apparently bought off by Saddam’s oil for food bribery is not mentioned by the professor. Nor his well documented ties to terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden. Nor does the professor once mention 9/11 whose shadow will color American policy for the forseeable future.

On the subject of OBL, the professor channels John Kerry:

While we remain bogged down in Iraq, of course, Osama bin Laden remains at large somewhere. Multi-tasking is all the rage these days, but whatever happened to finishing a job you started? It strikes me that catching Osama would have done a lot more to discourage the jihadists than anything we’ve done in Iraq.

C’mon professor! We just lost 19 brave men in the mountains of Afghanistan who by most reports, were following up on a solid lead as to Bin Laden’s whereabouts. What would you want us to do? Send a couple of divisions into the mountains to tramp about aimlessly in some of the most forbidding terrain on the planet? Wherever Osama is hiding, he’s hardly inspiring anyone at this point. Consequently, his capture would not “discourage” the jihadists. And his death may in fact make him a martyr. Besides, he may very well be in an area where sending large bodies of troops would be politically impractical. General Musharaf of Pakistan has enough problems with restless provinces without allowing several thousand Americans to upset the delicate control he’s trying to maintain.

I will say that the professor’s take on the so-called “flypaper strategy” is spot on:

The second problem is that the fly paper strategy seems to be radicalizing our foes even more. For every fly that gets caught, it seems as though 10 more spring up. This should hardly come as a surprise to anybody who has watched Israel pursue military solutions to its terrorist problems, after all. Does anybody really think Israel’s military actions have left Hezbollah or Hamas with fewer foot soldiers? To the contrary, the London bombing suggests to me that it is only a matter of time before the jihadists strike in the US again, even though our troops remain hung out as fly paper in the Augean Stables of Iraq.

I agree that the fly-paper motif, while politically useful, has become a silly rationale for the reconstruction of Iraq. But this critique makes no sense:

Conversely, the latest news about that rocket attack on a US Navy ship in Jordan seems to confirm my concerns: “The Abdullah Azzam Brigades — an al-Qaida-linked group that claimed responsibility for the bombings which killed at least 64 people at Sharm el-Sheik in July and 34 people at two other Egyptian resorts last October — said in an Internet statement that its fighters had fired the Katyushas, bolstering concerns that Islamic extremists had opened a new front in the region.” Indeed, the NYT reports that: “The possible involvement of Iraqis and the military-style attack have raised fears that militants linked to Iraq’s insurgency may be operating on Jordanian soil.”

The very nature of our decision to take out Iraq presupposed an expansion of the war with jihadists. This was a given from the very start. We had a choice; we could have sat home and hoped against hope that radical Islamists would leave us alone or we could take the war to them and flush them out. Not flies to flypaper, professor but smoke to cockroaches. The expansion you speak of is the inevitable by-product of our success, however limited so far, in Iraq. Besides, the Islamist’s goal of destabilizing Arab regimes predates our involvement in Iraq. They hardly needed to be radicalized in that regard.

Finally, Bainbridge posits a bleak future for Republicans:

What really annoys me, however, are the domestic implications of all this. The conservative agenda has advanced hardly at all since the Iraq War began. Worse yet, the growing unpopularity of the war threatens to undo all the electoral gains we conservatives have achieved in this decade. Stalwarts like me are not going to vote for Birkenstock wearers no matter how bad things get in Iraq, but what about the proverbial soccer moms? Gerrymandering probably will save the House for us at least through the 2010 redistricting, but what about the Senate and the White House?

In sum, I am not a happy camper. I’m very afraid that 100 years from now historians will look back at W’s term and ask “what might have been?”

I’m happy to hear that the professor will refrain from totally abandoning the Republican party for the sandal wearers and incense burners of the left. That said, his analysis does not take into account that 2006 is still a long way off and 2008 may as well be in another quadrant of the universe. Unless something untoward happens to radicalize those soccer moms, demographics alone are trending so much the Republican’s way that it would take a seismic shift in the electorate for the kind of disaster predicted by the professor.

There is good sense to be found in the professor’s words. I’ve been writing for months that the President has taken a back seat on the war and it’s time for him to get out in front and lead again. The sporadic way in which Bush has gone about defending his policies has been his single greatest failing. And as many of us - including Professor Bainbridge - have been saying for months, it’s time to inject a dash of realism into the Administration’s war talk and start telling the American people exactly what the stakes are if we fail. The cost of defeat in Iraq is too horrible to contemplate. And while the professor’s critique does make some good points about the increasing sectarian nature of the Iraqi government, I believe we’re soon going to discover if some kind of liberal democratic system is compatible with Islamic law.

If as I suspect, it is, then the blood and treasure expended by the United States in Iraq will not be seen 100 years from now as a might have been but rather as the cheapest and most efficacious way to win the War on Terror.

Here’s a question for all my wonderful little trolls whose comments are not only getting more obscene (they know I’ll delete them if they use profanity) but also more desperate:

If Cindy Sheehan is the “Rosa Parks” of the peace movement, if she’s the second coming of Martin Luther King or the “tipping point” that will energize the anti war movement and turn it into a raging prairie fire that will sweep evil George and his neocons from office, how come there are less than 100 people camping out at salon de Cindee in Crawford?

For God’s sake, Waco, a city of more than 100,000, is just a hop skip and a jump from Crawford. Are you trying to tell me with a city of that size and that close that you can’t even get the local loonies to come out and show their support for Sheehan?

I hate to bring this up, but Rosa Parks brought the entire city of Montgomery Alabama to its knees. And she did it without PR flaks, the international press, or political advice from Joe Trippi. Good thing Trippi wasn’t there. Otherwise, the sainted Mrs. Parks and her cause would be in the same political graveyard occupied by other losing campaigns Trippi has masterminded. Trippi previously worked on the presidential campaigns of Edward Kennedy, Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and Dick Gephardt - losers all. In fact, looking at that list you realize not one of those worthies even got close enough to smell the oval office.

Hell, even for the daily demonstrations against the war the site doesn’t draw more than a couple of hundred people.

You’d think with all the ink spilled and pixels filled with Cindymania that there would be thousands of lefties down there, screaming their rage and anger at Bush for not doing what they want - which is basically roll over and die.

What’s the matter? Don’t have the courage of your convictions? Don’t want to camp out under the broiling west Texas sun and suffer for the cause? Is the issue of war and peace so unimportant to you that you’re not willing to leave your families, you jobs, all the comforts of home and endure the danger of tripping over a camera cable or getting hit by a speeding satellite truck? Are you afraid you’re going to get poked in the eye by a wayward reporter’s pencil? Does the prospect of being in such close proximity to a bunch of tobacco chewing, bible reading, shotgun toting, red state goobers give you the cold sweats? What’s the matter…

ARE YOU…CHICKENDOVES?

Where’s the spirit that brought us Lenin’s October Revolution? Where’s the courage that gave us Mao’s Long March? Where’s the defiance that fueled the Vietnamese in their quest to defeat the United States - a defiance made easier by your ideological ancestor’s cheering them on while calling for the defeat of the United States armed forces on the field of battle.

Face it. The reason there is no anti-war prairie fire sweeping the country is that you and your lefty friends are a pale imitation of the hard-eyed radicals that manned the battlements in the 1960’s. Those guys wanted a revolution. Your generation complains if there’s no wi-fi access. They wanted to foment mass protest. You people can’t function unless there’s a Starbucks within a couple of blocks. They were readers of Ginsberg, Sartre, and listened to songs by Joan Baez. You guys think addle brained Kurt Cobaine was a poet.

The whole world is watching and you’re sitting in front of your computer writing paeans to a witless, anti-semitic media glutton whose anti-American rants and conspiratorial flights of fancy have driven away all but the most willfully deluded among Democrats.

If you’re so all fired in love with what she’s doing, why aren’t you down there supporting her?

CHICKENDOVE! CHICKENDOVE! CHICKENDOVE!

Abbie Hoffman is turning over in his grave. The Berrigan brothers and other courageous anti-war leftists who were willing to go to jail for their beliefs are weeping in disgust (Note: Philip Berrigan died in 2002). You are shaming the legacy of these people with your cowardice and slavish devotion to comfort and luxury.

And what about your children? What’s the matter, are you afraid to send them to Crawford? Hah! Just as I thought. You’re perfectly willing to send other liberal’s children to stand out in the hot sun, get their mugs on TV day after day, and risk life and limb by taking the chance of having their tin foil hat fall off while mingling with the crush of media folk and other wild eyed leftists. But when it comes to making the ultimate sacrifice and send your kids to man the battlements of the anti-war movement, you balk like the chickendoves you really are.

Get serious, moonbats! Or didn’t you know? There’s a war on!

UPDATE

Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy knows there’s a war on.

With renewed scrutiny of the 9/11 Commission’s investigation due to the Able Danger revelations, several additional questions have been raised about why the Commission failed to include items in their timeline that seem relevant to the investigation as well as additional witnesses whose testimony was, for some reason, not taken.

Ed Morrisey has done a bang up job highlighting the arrest of Iraqi intelligence agents in Germany which occurred at the time that Mohammed Atta and other members of his Hamburg cell were planning the 9/11 attack in Germany. And two seperate memos - one from the State Department and one from the Department of Justice talk about the problems associated with the so-called “wall” set up between the Department of Justice and the FBI, something that many observers believe the Commission should have looked into by calling as a witness one of thier own members, Jamie Gorelick.

Now comes word that the Commission also failed to interview someone who could have told them much about Mohammed Atta. Rudi Dekkers owned the flight school where Atta and fellow hijacker Marwan al-Shehhi trained. Dekkers also notes another, more peculiar aspect of the Commission’s investigation; he says they got the dates wrong of Atta’s training:

Atta and al-Shehhi first came to Huffman Aviation on July 3, 2000, Dekkers said.

They trained there until Jan. 2, 2001. Each man logged 200 hours of flying time, including lessons in flying commercial airliners.

Dekkers said he is upset that the 9/11 Commission omitted Able Danger’s findings from its report.

Dekkers said he has suspected the 9/11 Commission, appointed by President Bush to investigate the attacks, did not get all the information and that some things reported were wrong.

“The funny thing about it is, if somebody does an investigation like this 9/11 panel, aren’t they supposed to talk to everybody?” Dekkers said. “They never talked to me. Never.”

Dekkers also said that the 9/11 report incorrectly states the dates that Atta spent in Venice.

“If my involvement in the 9/11 report is not accurate, I believe that there is more stuff written that is not accurate,” Dekkers said.

Dekkers has been at the center of conspiracy theorists claims about 9/11 since the first hours following the attacks. In truth, reading about him on the web, he comes off as one of the strangest characters in the 9/11 narrative.

Revelations regarding a loose connection of Huffman Airlines to a CIA proprietary airline (a maintenance company for the CIA asset had a hanger at the same airport and Dekkers had a shadowy relationship with said maintenance company) as well as speculation regarding drug running by clients of Huffman (including an actual bust involving 43 lbs. of heroin found on a Huffman Lear Jet) have set the tin foil hat crowd all atwitter. And as this writer points out, there are several very strange coincidences involving Dekkers that could - maybe - lead one to believe that the CIA in fact was engaged in a covert operation to penetrate al Qaeda by sponsoring flight training for Muslim students. It’s a stretch, but the evidence “fits.” All that means, of course, that if you have a pre-concived idea, you can pick and choose your evidence to prove just about anything.

This brings us back to the 9/11 Commission and why they won’t talk to Dekkers. From reading about this fellow, it becomes apparent that he’s a pretty shady character. He was arrested and charged with fraud in 2003. And there’s been considerable speculation about where Dekkers got the money to buy Huffman in the first place. Rather than sounding like a CIA operative, he appears to be someone who could have been duped (or bribed) into aiding American intelligence.

As John Patten points out in his article, there certainly are some questions that need answering regarding Rudi Dekkers. However, none of those questions relate to any additional role Huffman Airlines played in the 9/11 narrative beyond the two hijackers taking flight training with the company. And this testimony by Dekkers before the House Judiciary Committee pretty much sums up whatever information he could have given to the Commission.

Should the Commission have interviewed Dekkers? If they were trying to do a thorough job the answer would have to be yes. But as we look closer at the Commission’s work in the wake of revelations about Able Danger, it’s becoming more apparent that the Commission in fact did a sloppy and slipshod job in tying up loose ends.

For that reason alone, Senate hearings may be necessary.

NOTE: One other fascinating aspect of Huffman Airlines has to do with the FBI being on their doorstep about 4 hours after the buildings came down on 9/11. I looked for the “FBI Investigative Timeline” mentioned in the 9/11 report to see if that document could have shed light on this rather curious bit of information. However, it was not in the report itself nor could I find an independent rendering of it. Perhaps it’s classified. If not and if you know a link to it, I’d appreciate it if you dropped me a note in the comments or email me.

Someone may want to explain how the FBI was able to trace Atta to the flight school so quickly. What piques my interest is that this would be the kind of information that Able Danger would have had at its fingertips. Did someone slip the FBI Able Danger findings immediately after 9/11?

As I said…curious.

Starting Sunday night at 8:00 PM central time and concluding on Monday evening in the same time period, The National Geographic Channel will air what promises to be an extraordinary fourt part mini-series entitled “Inside 9/11.”

Relying on video clips, audio, documents, and expert commentary, the show promises to be the most in-depth look at the attack to date. From what I’ve seen, the report pulls no punches about culpability. It skewers the FBI, CIA, DoD, FAA, both the Clinton and Bush Administrations, and makes clear that because very little has changed in the way we go about protecting ourselves, the probability is we’re going to be hit again.

The link above has a preview of the documentary.

They’ve been after George Bush almost since day one. He was “The Accidental President,” “The Smirking Chimp,” “Bushitler,” and worse. They whined like 12 year old girls when Bush used their weak stance on national security against them in the mid term elections of 2002 as a club to beat them soundly. They grumbled like curmudgeons as Bush achieved one legislative success after another on taxes, defense, homeland security, and the budget. They squealed like stuck pigs when the President’s popularity soared after the initial invasion of Iraq. And even now, with the President’s popularity at an all time low, their “issues” are not getting any traction. I’m being sarcastic of course. The only issue the left has had for 5 years had been its unreasoning and unbalanced hatred of George Bush.

Let’s face it; if the left were a baseball team, my Chicago Cubs would have competition for being the worst team in the sport’s history. They can’t play defense. Their pitcher’s lob the ball up to the plate and the Republicans and Bush keep hitting one home run after another. When they get a chance in the field, they end up fumbling the ball, dropping it, and then kicking it for good measure. On offense, they’re pathetic. They just keep swinging and missing. In fact, things are so bad for the left, that lately when they swing they let go of the bat and it sails into the stands, injuring the very people who should be rooting for them.

But, like the swaggering buffoons they are, they talk a good game but never deliver. At least 4 times in the last year they’ve confidently predicted the end of George Bush. And each and every time they’ve predicted it, they haven’t only been wrong, they’ve been comically self deluded.

With a batting average like that, it’s no wonder they’ve never been in the game.

It’s really been a question of wishful thinking. The left thinks that if they can only believe hard enough, their dream of bringing down the President will come true. Sort of like saving Tinkerbell in Peter Pan by averring your belief in her existence but without the magic fairy dust. This has led to some of the most farcical and convoluted campaigns in American political history, each one confidently predicting the end of the Bush Presidency and each one in its turn fizzling out like a wet firecraker on the Fourth of July.

In doing a little research for this post, I googled up “Bush is finished,” Bush will be impeached,” and “Bush will resign.” It didn’t take me long to find a few hilarious examples of why the left is so divorced from reality and why, as D.J. Drummond likes to point out, “Liberalism isn’t an ideology, it’s a mental disorder.”

Did George W. Bush - and/or other top White House officials - have sexual relations with that man, James Guckert?

Lest you think this is an absurd question, I’ll refer you to the widespread rumors that Bush had a long-term sexual relationship with his Ambassador to Poland (”don’t forget Poland!”), former Yale classmate and Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe. As with every other Bush scandal (AWOL, Bulgegate, Harken Energy, etc.), the Victor Ashe scandal has been blacked out by the LRWM. [Lazy Right Wing Media]

Last week, we posted a petition for a Special Prosecutor for “Jeff Gannon.” (So far, we’ve collected nearly 8,000 signatures - please sign it if you haven’t yet.) Reps. Louise Slaughter and John Conyers asked Plame-gate Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to expand his investigation to include Guckert/Gannon’s access to secret CIA documents about Valerie Plame. Fitzgerald has subpoena powers, so he’d have no trouble tracking down Guckert/Gannon’s clients from his pager records.

Guckert/Gannon is at the center of what may be the biggest sex/spy scandal in American history.

Watching the left go ballistic over the Gannon/Guckert affair was almost as much fun as watching them throw a tantrum when nobody listened to them. The plaintive wails about their left wing friends in the media not covering “the biggest sex/spy scandal in American history” reminded me of a 5 year old bursting into tears upon discovering there is no Santa Claus.

Their cries about Gannon were nothing compared to the biblical angst displayed following Bush’s victory in November. And this occurred even after Michael (”I don’t care; Supersize me) Moore came out with what they were absolutely sure would ring in the death knell of the Bush Administration; the release of Fahrenheit 911.

They were so sure that this tissue of lies, half truths, out of context quotes, and proven falsehoods would defeat Bush that even mainstream Democrats came to the Washington, D.C. premier to ride that pony to victory. Even after brilliant writers like Christopher Hitchens and John Podheretz had taken the movie apart piece by piece and exposed it for what it was; a film worthy of Hitler’s favorite propagandist Leni Riefenstahl who, by the way, the left found it within themselves to forgive following World War II.

This was typical analysis of the impact the film had on the American public:

Michael Moore’s triumph in “Fahrenheit 911″ is a measure of Jay Rosen’s observation that “the terms of authority are changing in American journalism.” In 1968 after the North Vietnamese Tet offensive, it was the CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite who signaled “enough” to the American TV audience, and to Lyndon Johnson. In 2004, it is the freelance camera dude and eternally unmade bed from Flint, Michigan who has cut through all the embedded blather about G. W. Bush and the so-called war on so-called terrorism. It’s a great country, and a great moment, in which one man can make the networks, the New York Times, the very best of our old institutional media (try the babbling David Brooks this morning) look so foolish, so irrelevant to the truth we really need to know

The swooning by the left following the release of that movie and the certitude with which they believed that Bush was finished as a candidate gave way to gloom and doom after the Republican convention. It was left to Michael Moore to rally the troops and in the process, reveal an inability to face reality:

WAKE UP! The majority are with us! More than half of all Americans are pro-choice, want stronger environmental laws, are appalled that assault weapons are back on the street — and 54% now believe the war is wrong. YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO CONVINCE THEM OF ANY OF THIS — YOU JUST HAVE TO GIVE THEM A RAY OF HOPE AND A RIDE TO THE POLLS. CAN YOU DO THAT? WILL YOU DO THAT?

Just for me, please? Buck up. The country is almost back in our hands. Not another negative word until Nov. 3rd! Then you can bitch all you want about how you wish Kerry was still that long-haired kid who once had the courage to stand up for something. Personally, I think that kid is still inside him. Instead of the wailing and gnashing of your teeth, why not hold out a hand to him and help the inner soldier/protester come out and defeat the forces of evil we now so desperately face. Do we have any other choice?

And now here, in the dog days of summer, the hopes of the left have been dashed. Not once, but twice. First, the Rove-Wilson-Plame scandal has just never panned out the way they had hoped. Their hero, Joe Wilson, has been so thoroughly discredited that even the media won’t touch him anymore. And as the scandal has turned toward people in the press like Judith Miller who may or may not have had independent knowledge of Plame’s “secret” identity as a CIA agent, it becomes clearer that while acting despicably, Rove probably did nothing illegal. But that didn’t stop months of speculation that finally, once and for all, this would bring the President down

As with most of the dirty doings of the current administration, the Plame Affair has been buried, put through bureaucratic processes to buy time for Bush. But nothing stays buried forever. The blatant criminality of their actions are now bubbling back to the surface, and Bush’s Numero Uno, Karl Rove, affectionately known to George as “Turd Blossom” looks ready to take the fall for the capital offense of treason.

The significance of this latest development will not likely appear in the headlines for a few weeks yet, but it cannot be over-emphasized. Karl Rove (nee Roverer) has been, more than any other individual, the architect of what the world has suffered in these last years of the Bush presidency. These treasonable offenses, revealed thanks to Time Inc. are indefencible. The effects of this will rock the empirical plotting of George W. Bush and his accomplices, if given enough exposure.

Funny how these stories just seem to dissipate like clouds that never quite form, are never quite there. It’s symptomatic of the vacuity of the left’s intellectual engagement that they cannot grasp how truly out of touch with average Americans they really are.

Finally, there’s the Queen of Grief whose one woman vigil at the President’s ranch was supposed to “change the dynamic” of the anti war debate in favor of the those who wish to cut and run in Iraq. They called her “Rosa Parks” and an “icon” of the anti-war movement.

She turned out to be a loon.

Mainstream Democrats have been edging away from Mrs. Sheehan for days, something that the moonbat left hasn’t taken notice of yet. Judging by the number of posts at Huffington, they’re like beheaded chickens running around the barnyard not yet realizing that saner Democrats have abandoned this “icon.”

In fact, she hasn’t changed a thing. For all the millions of words written about Cindy Sheehan, there are still less than 100 people who have joined her little encampment. And while the press pumped up the “nationwide protest” the other night, the facts are a little grimmer for the loony left. Despite massive publicity, there was no massive turnout. Even in Hollywood they could only get about 700 people to stand for a few hours and relive the glories of Viet Nam era protests.

Face it. While many people are unhappy with the war and disapprove of the President’s job in handling Iraq, that simply doesn’t translate into the American people agreeing with the hard left that we should leave now. The war has transcended the President’s popularity. And while they may end up punishing Republicans in 2006 unless there’s some improvement, the left has once again handed the Republicans a gift. They have painted such an awful picture of the situation in Iraq that even modest improvement will seem like victory. They have made it easy for Republicans to claim progress simply by pointing to the left’s rhetoric and saying “See how things have improved?”

Once again, the left has been hoisted on its own petard. Their contempt for the intelligence and good sense of the American people has been on display for all to see. And it will cost them again in 2006.

From the looks of things, the government of the United States - you know, the one that is currently fighting a very public and very noisy War on Terror - is playing legal games with the immigration case of one Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA asset, admitted terrorist, and slimeball of the first order.

Mr. Posada Carriles, 77, entered this country illegally in April of this year and has requested asylum from the government. Both Cuba and Venuezala have different plans for the old spook. They both want to extradite Posada and try him for crimes in their countries. Given the reputation of both Castro and Chavez, my guess is those plans include plenty of truth serum and a long, painful session on the rack. And this represents a huge problem for the US government. Posada knows a lot of the dirty little secrets that the US would rather not have appear on 60 Minutes, or Dateline NBC, or even Entertainment Tonight. Posada knows where a lot of bodies are buried - literally.

He was convicted of blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976 killing all 73 people aboard. This was at a time when he was still a working CIA asset and FBI informant as declassified files make clear. In the 1980’s, he played a role in the US government’s war against communism in Central America. He was tangentially involved in training El Salvadoran death squads. He helped run guns to the contras in Nicaragua. He assisted with putting down leftists in Guatamala and Honduras. There is also some evidence - circumstantial at best - that he has profited in running drugs. In all of these endeavors, Mr. Posada was of great assistance to the United States government. Although not a paid CIA asset at this time, he worked closely with the agency in all of these countries.

The problem of course, is that there was very little effort made to differentiate between communists and run of the mill moonbat socialists or leftist radicals. In civil war, if you’re not supporting the government, the unfortunate result is that you’re seen as being on the other side. Many innocent people went to their deaths during that bloody period - people who had no ties to communist guerillas but who opposed the repressive methods of their governments. For this, Posada has much to answer for.

Posada’s real interest lay in getting rid of Fidel Castro. A Cuban by birth, he’s made numerous attempts to kill the dictator as well as being involved in several assassination plots. He was convicted in Panama of plotting to kill the Cuban dictator in 2000 and was later pardoned. That’s when he decided to retire and snuck into the United States, hired a lawyer, and evidently now believes he should be rewarded for his service to the government by being granted political asylum.

At a bond hearing in July, the Judge pretty much threw the book at the aging terrorist:

An immigration judge on Monday rejected a request by Luis Posada Carriles to be released on bond, ruling the Cuban exile must remain in detention until his case is resolved.

Judge William L. Abbott cited allegations that Posada is a terror suspect and concerns he would flee if granted bond.

Listing a series of terror allegations against Posada over the years, Abbott said even Posada’s participation in operations against Cuba in the early 1960s could be considered terror under today’s standards.

Abbott’s statement seemed to catch by surprise Posada’s lawyer, Matthew Archambeault, who interpreted it to mean the judge would include the Bay of Pigs invasion — sponsored by the U.S. government — as an act of terror under today’s definition of terrorism.

The judge came down hard on Posada. He said he would likely consider Posada’s conviction in Panama on charges of possessing explosives as a valid prior criminal record barring him from admission to the United States — despite a Panamanian presidential pardon last year that enabled Posada and three other exiles to walk free after being arrested in connection with an alleged plot to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Under immigration law, a foreign pardon does not protect a foreign national from being denied admission into the country.

The Department of Homeland Security has apparently just recently handed Posada’s attorney a victory of sorts by dropping some subpeonas against the New York Times for notes relating to an interview with the old terrorist in which he admitted setting off a series of bombs at Havanna hotels in 1997 that resulted in the death of 1 Italian tourist and injuring serveral others:

The Department of Homeland Security has dropped subpoenas against The New York Times and one of its writers that sought tapes of an interview with Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles in which Posada admitted masterminding the bombings of tourist sites in Cuba.

Withdrawal of the subpoenas amounted to a victory for the newspaper and for Ann Louise Bardach, who had refused to produce tapes, notes or transcripts related to the 1998 interview. George Freeman, the Times’ attorney, told The Herald Tuesday that Homeland Security ”just withdrew the subpoenas” and that no deal was struck between the newspaper and the government.

”It’s a huge relief,” Bardach said in a telephone interview.

A U.S. Attorney’s Office letter, dated Monday, did not rule out issuing new subpoenas “at a future point in time.

While DHS has filed copies of the articles in court and they’re technically admissable as hearsay evidence, many observers believe that Posada’s attorneys will challenge their legality anyway.

More delays, more foot dragging.

In the meantime, Posada is reportedly suffering from skin cancer and a bad heart. It would appear that the government may be dragging the case out in hopes that the old terrorist will succumb before they have to face what could only be described as a Hobbesian choice; do we extradite him to Venezuala or hand him over to Castro?

Back in May, Castro organized a “spontaneous” demonstration demanding the US hand Posada over to the tender mercies of the Cuban secret police. And President Chavez in Venezuala must be licking his chops at the prospect of getting his hands on Posada. The pure propaganda value of a show trial in which both the United States government and Posada could be put on trial has every leftist in Latin America swooning in anticipation.

In the meantime, our credibility on the terrorism issue is taking a huge hit. Not with the strutting peacock in Caracas or the murderous thug in Havanna, but with governments and citizens in the rest of Latin America. As I said back in May when Posada was first arrested, perception is reality:

There’s no doubt this is a lose-lose situation for the American government. There quite simply can be no good outcome to their dilemma. If we hand the old terrorist over to Chavez, his secret police will go to work on him and probably extract some extraordinarily damaging information about his unholy deeds done on behalf of the American government during the last 40 years. The resulting firestorm would ignite protests from Mexico City to Havana and severely damage our already tarnished image in Latin America.

In this case, I think the Bush Administration is going to have to bite the bullet and hand Posada over to Chavez. Better the strutting peacock than the thug in Havana. Before honoring any extradition treaty with regards to Posada however, the Administration should get an assurance from Chavez that the Venezuelans will not hand him over to Castro. That would truly be a disastrous turn of events and must be prevented.

The people of Latin America are watching this case very closely. And unless we start moving the legal process of Posada’s deportation along, we will leave ourselves wide open to charges of being hypocrites in the War on Terror.

At this point, that’s something we just can’t afford.

Watching Anderson Cooper interview Cindy Sheehan last night brought back fond memories of my childhood. I must have been about 6 years old and my father was taking part in the ageless ritual of teaching his son the finer points of baseball.

It must have looked like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Young, tow-headed boy trying to swing a bat that was bigger than he was. The father, standing a few feet away and tossing the ball underhand trying very hard to make hitting the ball very easy, aiming the ball carefully so that it would hit the boy’s bat when he swung.

That pretty much describes Cooper’s cheerleading for Cindy Sheehan last night. The entire hour-long show was devoted to Mrs. Sheehan and her quixotic and dishonest quest to “just ask the President a few questions.” And during that entire hour, not one word about her anti-semitic rants was uttered. The pro-Palestinian Crawford Peace House was described as “a liberal meeting place.” Not a word about her statements that we shouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan. No questions about her recent contention that we’ve “contaminated” Iraq with nuclear radiation. Not a peep about her kooky conspiracy theories about 9/11.

She was a simple mother who just wanted to ask the President a few questions. And despite a promise on Anderson’s part to determine whether Sheehan lied to him during an interview on Monday about authorship of a letter she wrote to ABC last March in which she accused the President of going to war in Iraq as part of an Israeli-Neocon conspiracy, Cooper failed to deliver. On Tuesday, this is what Cooper had to say about the letter:

So we contacted ABC News today about it. They said they had received a letter on behalf of Cindy back in March. They said took it seriously enough that they responded to it, but so far they cannot find the actual e-mail, they say. They say they’re trying to find it, they’re investigating.

Bottom line, ABC News right now does not seem to be confirming this is what Cindy Sheehan wrote to them, so stay tuned. We’ll continue to follow.

Yesterday, ABC apparently demanded a correction by Cooper:

ABC News also said they spoke to CNN to see if they are going to run a correction about the statement Anderson Cooper made that “ABC News does not seem to be confirming this is what Cindy Sheehan wrote to them.” In fairness to CNN, that conclusion seemed reasonable yesterday. Today, the most likely conclusion is that Cindy Sheehan is making up totally implausible excuses for lying on TV.

And this proves that if you’re going to lie, make sure there’s no evidence on the internet:

Let’s give Mother Sheehan the benefit of the doubt and presume she’s been driven mad by the Texas heat on top of her grief. Because the letter was posted on usenet on March 18, 2005. At that time nobody, including Tony Tersh who posted it, had ever heard of Cindy Sheehan… Notice that Tony sent her a copy of the letter he posted — for her approval. There is no record of Cindy complaining about it having been edited. In fact, she and Tony have continued their correspondence ever since. In fact, Cindy sent Tony numerous e-mails about her public appearances and asked him to promote her website

Did Cooper ask one single question about the letter after saying that his show as going to get to the botton of it?.

Here’s the closest Cooper got to being confrontational:

COOPER: Do you consider yourself a radical? I mean, some have been calling you a radical. And clearly, some of the essays you’ve written — I mean, you’ve called President Bush a terrorist, the worst terrorist in the world. You’ve called the war in Iraq blatant genocide. That’s pretty radical.

SHEEHAN: I think I am pretty radical, but only on this issue. You know, this is my issue. I just want the killing to stop. I don’t want any other mother to go through what I’m going through, Anderson, whether she be Iraqi or American.

In the immortal words of Defense Secretary Alfred Nimziki from Independence Day, “That’s not entirely accurate.”

In fact, Mrs. Sheehan is radical about a whole host of issues. Here are some choice words she delivered at San Francisco State University in support of terrorist enabler, attorney Lynne Stewart:

America has been killing people . . . since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible for death and destruction. I passed on that bullshit to my son and my son enlisted. I’m going all over the country telling moms: “This country is not worth dying for.

But we were not attacked by Iraq. We might not even have been attacked by Osama bin Laden if 9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through and, if I would have known that before my son was killed, I would have taken him to Canada. I would never have let him go and try and defend this morally repugnant system we have. The people are good, the system is morally repugnant. . . . What they’re saying, too, is like, it’s okay for Israel to have nuclear weapons. But Iran or Syria better not get nuclear weapons. It’s okay for the United States to have nuclear weapons. It’s okay for the countries that we say it’s okay for. We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now. It’s okay for them to have them, but Iran or Syria can’t have them. It’s okay for Israel to occupy Palestine, but it’s–yeah–and it’s okay for Iraq to occupy–I mean, for the United States to occupy Iraq, but it’s not okay for Syria to be in Lebanon….

Don’t reporters like, you know, do research before they interview a subject anymore?

The rest of the interview was equally nauseating. Cooper would toss a softball, Sheehan would hit it out of the park. This exchange was typical:

COOPER: You know, Senator Joe Biden, who has been critical of President Bush for quite some time, he doesn’t say we should pull-out. He says, in fact, it would be a mistake to pull-out. John Kerry says that it would be a mistake, as well.

COOPER: Cindy Sheehan, I appreciate you joining us tonight.

The rest of the hour was full of mostly flattering, some downright gushy stories about Camp Casey and how this one, lone woman only wants a few questions answered.

Bulls**t!.

Anyone who thinks that hasn’t been paying attention to what Mrs. Sheehan is really after; a “Chief Brody Slap” moment:

THE CHIEF BRODY SLAP is based on the infamous scene in Jaws when a distraught mom slaps Roy Scheider across the face. Her son was eaten by a shark, but she blames the sheriff. Because he didn’t do enough. It’s not the shark, it’s the sheriff. It’s like me blaming Arianna for Christine Lahti’s post. But unjustified. And with a shark.

THE CHIEF BRODY SLAP (CBS) is a chief staple in an any liberal diet: a fiery mix of outrage, self-rightious indignation and condemnation delivered from a moral highground so lofty it gives you a nosebleed. The Brody Slap is predicated on the idea that you don’t need a solution, only blame. Who needs a real alternative when you’re already outraged? It’s easy!

There was also the obligatory “Iraq is actually Viet Nam in disguise” story with CNN’s ace political reporter Bruce Morton drawing the necessary analogies to the 1970’s,

To be fair (even though I don’t want to be) there was a smattering of reaction from parents who lost a loved one in Iraq and supported both the President and the mission. But they were overshadowed by the moonbats.

Sheehan’s PR handlers are doing a good job. They’re keeping her on message and keeping the press from concentrating on her anti-semitic rants.

Whatever Ben Cohen of Truthout is paying them, they’re earning every penny.

News on Able Danger this morning centers on an article in the New York Times that seems to indicate that the 9/11 Commission will target the Pentagon for blame if Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer’s story checks out.

Shaffer was a liason officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency and worked with the top secret data mining team in 1999-2000. He has come forward to confirm that Able Danger had 3 of the 4 main 9/11 hijackers pegged as a threat a full year prior to the attacks.

Commission Co-Chair Thomas Kean is asking the Pentagon to quickly assess the credibility of Col. Shaffer and hand over any relevant information:

The chairman of the Sept. 11 commission called on the Pentagon on Wednesday to move quickly to evaluate the credibility of military officers who have said that a highly classified intelligence program managed to identify the Sept. 11 ringleader more than a year before the 2001 attacks. He said the information was not shared in a reliable form with the panel.

The chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, offered no judgment about the accuracy of the officers’ accounts. But he said in an interview that if the accounts were true, it suggested that detailed information about the intelligence program, known as Able Danger, was withheld from the commission and that the program and its findings should have been mentioned prominently in the panel’s final report last year.

“If they identified Atta and any of the other terrorists, of course it was an important program,” Mr. Kean said, referring to Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian ringleader of the attacks. “Obviously, if there were materials that weren’t given to us, information that wasn’t given to us, we’re disappointed. It’s up to the Pentagon to clear up any misunderstanding.”

Democratic Commission member Richard Ben-Veniste said something similar yesterday:

A Democratic member of the commission, Richard Ben Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor, said in an interview today that while he could not judge the credibility of the information from Colonel Shaffer and others, the Pentagon needed to “provide a clear and comprehensive explanation regarding what information it had in its possession regarding Mr. Atta.”

“And if these assertions are credible,” he continued, “the Pentagon would need to explain why it was that the 9/11 commissioners were not provided this information despite request for all information regarding to Able Danger.”

This is the kind of “bloodletting” that John Podheretz speculated would occur:

“…if the Defense Department withheld critical information on this matter, it’s almost impossible to imagine the intensity of the bloodletting that will follow.

The blame game has begun and the Commission would seem to have the Pentagon in its sights. So the focus now shifts to what a possible response by the Pentagon would be?

1. Tell the truth. Admit it made a mistake due to a paperwork snafu. Apologize.

Yeah…right. Next.

2. Smear Colonel Shaffer. Stonewall on the paperwork. Trot out Able Danger team members to refute Shaffner’s assertion.

I’m afraid this would be a more likely scenario. Taking out the whistleblower has a long, dishonorable history in government and the tactics to do so have been honed and refined to perfection. In Col. Shaffner’s case, he has been on “administrative leave” for the last 16 months and has had his security clearances suspended. His lawyer claims it’s Pentagon petifogging over a cell phone bill coupled with his superior’s displeasure over Shaffer’s speaking with the 9/11 Commission staff. It will be interesting to see what the Pentagon says about that.

As far as the Able Danger paper trail, the Pentagon will suddenly discover thousands of more pages of Able Danger documents and curiously, not a one will mention Atta, hijackers, or anything related to a “Brooklyn cell.” And there definitely will be no mention of any attempts to bring anything to the attention of the FBI that was shot down by DoD lawyers.

Or, the Pentagon will say that they gave the Commission everything. Either way, Colonel Shaffer is screwed.

Finally, as I speculated yesterday, the Pentagon may make Able Danger team members available to select national security correspondents. I would further speculate that those team members memories will be suitably vague as in “I don’t recall any mention of Mohammed Atta in any of the reports.”

These tactics will satisfy the 9/11 Commission and perhaps even the Washington Post and the New York Times. They will, of course, have the effect of hanging Colonel Shaffer out to dry. Unless other team members come forward to corraborate his story, Shaffer’s career could become another casualty in the War on Terror.

One thing about Colonel Shaffer’s interviews that have puzzled me has been the reason for the reluctance of DoD attorneys to make Able Danger findings available to the FBI. This interview with Shaffer is from the Delaware County Daily Times (via Laura Rozen):

Yet when he tried to share this information with the FBI, he said he was blocked from doing so by Department of Defense. Part of the reason was recent history and the lack of trust that existed between the federal agencies.

The Branch Davidian debacle in Waco that left 70 people dead was still in the memory banks of all those who had been involved in it, including the U.S. Army Delta Force that advised the siege team.

When it came to al-Qaida, Shaffer believes the mindset of the military was “if we pass the information on to the FBI and they do something with it and if something goes wrong (we’re) going to get the blame for it.”

Ms. Rozen asks “What do we know about the US military’s role at Waco?”

This reference to Waco as it related to the military always confused me. We knew that Special Forces Command had trained Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents in assault techniques leading up to the BATF original raid. We were also aware of military assistance in planning the ultimate attack by the FBI. But that assistance was limited to offering technical advice.

Is it just me or does it seem to you that such minor assistance by the Pentagon was hardly a reason for the skittishness on the part of DoD attorneys. Could there be something else there?

If you allow me to adjust my tin foil hat, we can descend together into the fever swamps of both the right and left to examine the issue of military involvement in the FBI action that ended up tragically killing 70 people.

From Alexander Cockburn’s Counterpunch:

The two Army officers at the Justice Department that day were Colonel Gerald Boykin, and his superior, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the head of Special Forces at Fort Bragg. Though Clark (who had served with Schoomaker) was not directly involved in the onslaught on the Branch Davidians, the role of the US Army in that affair throws into harsh relief the way prohibitions against the use of the US military for civilian law enforcement can be swiftly by-passed.

After energetic use of Freedom of Information Act enquiries, plus research in three repositories in Texas holding evidence from the Waco inferno, plus other extensive investigations, McNulty and his team have put together an explosive file:

28 video tapes from the repositories show that in the final onslaught on the Waco compound were members of the US military in special assault gear and with name tags obscured. As noted above, Clinton’s revocation of the Posse Comitatus Act made this presence legal. McNulty isolates Vince Foster as the White House point man for the Waco operation.

General Shoomaker is currently the Army Chief of Staff. Things that make you go mmmmmmm…

And this from the Dallas Morning News (1999):

A former CIA officer said Thursday that he learned from Delta Force commandos that members of the secret Army unit were “present, up front and close” in helping the FBI in the final tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound.

The former officer, Gene Cullen, told The Dallas Morning News that he heard the detailed accounts of the military’s active involvement from “three or four” anti-terrorist Delta commandos as he worked with them on an overseas assignment in 1993.

While he was deployed overseas on an assignment, Mr. Cullen said, Delta operators told him that the unit “had 10 operators down there, that they were involved in the advanced forward stages of [the FBI's April 19] operations.”

“When they explained to me the depth to which they were involved down in Waco, I was quite surprised. They said basically they were out there in the vehicles, the Bradley [fighting vehicles], the CEV [tanks],” he said. “They were active.”

The chairman of the Texas Department of Public Safety on Thursday told The News that evidence in the hands of Texas law enforcement personnel may support the account given to Mr. Cullen.

“I’m advised there is some evidence that may corroborate” the allegation that Delta Force participated in the assault, said James B. Francis Jr., the DPS official.

This puts a whole new spin on the reason why DoD lawyers were so reluctant to accede to Col. Shaffer’s request to get the FBI involved. Either the attorney’s were gun shy because of Special Operations Command direct participation the Waco disaster or more restrictions had been placed on military involvement in law enforcement matters. In effect, the “wall” was nothing new but rather a well considered policy of interpreting the Posse Comitatas law more literally.

What ever the reason, I found the participation of Delta Force - even if it was only on the periphery of the FBI operation at Waco - a curious side bar to this story. Anyone who has ever seen the documentary Waco: Rules of Engagement knows that there are many extraordinarily curious aspects to that tragedy that have never been satisfactorily explained. Many of the victims died of gunshots. The tank used by the FBI to punch holes in the walls of the compound for the purpose of initiating tear gas into the structure has disappeared therefore not allowing an examination to determine if it was fired upon as the FBI claims. Also missing is the door to the compound that would have shown who fired first in the initial confrontation between the Christians and BATF.

Just one more curious aspect to a story that may get even more strange over the next few days.

UPDATE

The Captain has a slightly different take on the Kean statement:

The Pentagon, meanwhile, has not yet issued any definitive statement on Able Danger. Media outlets and anonymous sources have expected one since last weekend, always speculating that the statement would come out the next day. It appears that the Pentagon also has been taken by surprise and may need more time to unravel Able Danger, or it may just need more time to establish the authorization and funding for such an extensive data-mining program. My guess is that Congress never authorized such a program, and probably neither did the Clinton White House. That will make Able Danger somewhat embarrassing to top brass and may also explain their reluctance to coordinate information between Able Danger and law-enforcement agencies.

That’s something I hadn’t considered. Will it make it more likely the Pentagon will do their best to get to the bottom of the story? Not likely, I’m afraid.

The irresponsibility of the Chinese government in combating an outbreak of bird flu in Yushu in northwestern Qinghai is almost incomprehensible. Rather than cooperate with international health officials to determine the extent and seriousness of the flare up of the disease, Chinese bureaucrats closed off that part of the country to all foreigners. What happened next could have come out of a monk’s account of epidemic disease from the middle ages:

When natives living further from the area made a trip to the farming community, they discovered that it had “vanished” together with 3 of its surrounding villages. Only some ruins, blocks from collapsed walls, remained. Apparently, the farms and villages had been flattened and there were signs that they had been razed.

It is believed that some inhabitants from those 3 villages were workers in the farm. Around 200 people were estimated to have inhabited or worked in those 3 villages and the farm. There whereabouts are, as yet, unknown.

The above translation of a boxun report suggest that three villages were razed in response to unrest linked to a forced bird flu quarantine in Yushu in northwestern Qinghai in China. China has imposed news blackouts and arrested reporters in the past, so verifiable news from the area is difficult to obtain.

If true, the razing of villages and disappearance of 200 people may point to other, more serious problems. Has the epidemic spread to humans and the Chinese government doesn’t want anyone to know?

This is from a translated page on a Chinese message board. It is completely unconfirmed but at the least, it demonstrates what happens in a society when the free flow of information is impeded by government:

News outside of China however, points toward a virulent strain of H5N1 linked to Qinghai Lake has killed ducks and geese in several areas of southern Siberia in Russia as well as the adjacent region in Kazakhstan. There are now reports of five suspected cases of H5N1 in Kazakhstan linked to infected geese, suggesting many similar cases would be possible in Qingahi and Xinjiang provinces in China, where there have been three outbreaks linked to migratory birds and all involved dead geese.

Although it is possible that the ability to infect humans has been recently acquired, boxun reports in May and June described human fatalities in the Qinghai Lake region. In addition, several strains of H5N1 capable of infecting humans were also described.

The news blackout in China as well as additional suspect cases in neighboring Sichuan province which may be spreading further south to Yunnan province has suggested that a raging H5N1 pandemic in China is being covered-up.

The fact that the government has prevented international officials from visiting the province is extremely troubling. It suggests that the bird flu epidemic is out of control in one and perhaps two provinces.

The avian flu outbreak at Lake Qinghai was first identified by Chinese wildlife officials at the end of April. Initially it was confined to a small islet in the huge salt lake, where geese suddenly began to act spasmodically, then to collapse and die. By mid-May it had spread through the lake’s entire avian population, killing thousands of birds. An ornithologist called it “the biggest and most extensively mortal avian influenza event ever seen in wild birds.”

Chinese scientists, meanwhile, were horrified by the virulence of the new strain: when mice were infected they died even quicker than when injected with “genotype Z,” the fearsome H5N1 variant currently killing farmers and their children in Vietnam.

Yi Guan, leader of a famed team of avian flu researchers who have been fighting the pandemic menace since 1997, complained to the British Guardian newspaper in July about the lackadaisical response of Chinese authorities to the unprecedented biological conflagration at Lake Qinghai.

“They have taken almost no action to control this outbreak. They should have asked for international support. These birds will go to India and Bangladesh and there they will meet birds that come from Europe.” Yi Guan called for the creation of an international task force to monitor the wild bird pandemic, as well as the relaxation of rules that prevent the free movement of foreign scientists to outbreak zones in China.

(HT: The New Editor)

In fact, as mentioned above, thanks to the inaction of Chinese officials, the pandemic has spread to Siberia:

Russia said on Tuesday an outbreak of bird flu in Chelyabinsk was dangerous to humans, as teams of sanitary workers destroyed birds in Siberia in an attempt to prevent the westward spread of the deadly virus.

The H5N1 strain of bird flu is behind the outbreak in Chelyabinsk, a city in the Ural mountains, the Emergencies Ministry said in a statement.

It said no cases among humans have been confirmed in Russia.

“Measures are being taken to prevent the spreading of the infection among domestic birds and to exclude the possibility of the infection moving to humans,” the statement added.

Russia is battling to contain a bird flu outbreak, which top health officials say has killed more than 11,000 birds countrywide and could spread westwards to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

So what are the chances of avian flu morphing into a strain that can be transmitted human to human? According to Science Magazine, 100%:

The new US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt told the Associated Press in early August that an influenza pandemic was now an “absolute certainty”, echoing repeated warnings from the WHO that it was “inevitable”. Likewise, Science magazine observed that expert opinion held the odds of a global outbreak as “100%”.

In the same grim spirit, the British media revealed that officials were scouring the country for suitable sites for mass mortuaries, based on official fears that avian flu could kill as many as 700,000 Britons. The Blair government is already conducting emergency simulations of a pandemic outbreak (”Operation Arctic Sea”) and is reported to have readied “Cobra” - a cabinet-level working group that coordinates government responses to national emergencies, like the recent London bombings, from a secret war room in Whitehall - to deal with an avian flu crisis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, bird flu is now “endemic” to fowl in Southeast Asia. In other words, no local eradication efforts will be able to stem the tide of disease as it makes its way across the continent of Asia. Also according to the CDC, the bug is mutating to the point where it’s becoming easier to infect mammals as well as developing a resistance to some anti-viral medication:

New research suggests that currently circulating strains of H5 viruses are becoming more capable of causing disease (pathogenic) for mammals than earlier H5 viruses and are becoming more widespread in birds in the region. One study found that ducks infected with H5N1 are now shedding more virus for longer periods of time without showing any symptoms of illness. This has implications for the role of ducks in transmitting disease to other birds and possibly to humans as well. Additionally, other findings have documented H5 infection among pigs in China and H5 infection in felines (experimental infection in housecats in the Netherlands and isolation of H5N1 viruses from infected tigers and leopards in Thailand ), suggesting that cats could host or transmit the infection. These finding are particularly worrisome in light of the fact that reassortment of avian influenza genomes is most likely to occur when these viruses demonstrate a capacity to infect multiple species, as is now the case in Asia.

So where would the “tipping point” occur? There have already been 17 cases of known human to human contact, most of those occurring in Viet Nam. And recently, there was a scare in Indonesia as three people died of bird flu who lived in the same house:

There is also a question as to whether those 3 victims were exposed to the source at the same time or whether one of them was the index case and transmitted the virus to the other close family members sharing the same genetic susceptibility to the virus. As we know, the 2nd case showed symptoms 10-11 days after the 1st, the 3rd case a few days later: an unusual incubation period for avian influenza if they were exposed at the same time. My hypothesis is that they were grossly exposed to a (so far unknown) source, possibly repeatedly. Alternatively, one victim could have become a new infection source for the others who have similar genetic susceptibility.

Some health professionals point to Viet Nam as a possible starting point for the pandemic. But Viet Nam has been tremendously cooperative with international health officials in cataloging and studying the virus.

Not so China. This report was from July 20 in the Washington Post:

World Health Organization officials and other international health organizations have asked the Chinese government for details about three outbreaks in the remote western provinces of Qinghai and Xinjiang. In seeking to head off a potential human pandemic, international health experts said they require samples of the bird flu virus, analyses of its genetic makeup and specifics about the extent of the infection and efforts to contain it.

“It is a matter of urgency,” said Julie Hall, coordinator of communicable diseases in WHO’s China office. “It is an outbreak of potential international importance. We’re looking for China to share the information as quickly as possible and as much as possible.”

While Chinese authorities allowed a team of investigators from WHO and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization to visit Qinghai last month, the government has yet to respond to a June 17 request by international health experts to travel to Xinjiang, U.N. officials said. The Chinese officials, saying the infection in Xinjiang has been contained, have given no indication they will authorize the trip.

U.N. officials and independent scientists said they were reluctant to publicly discuss their frustrations with China for fear the government would shut them out of the country. But officials and researchers said they were dismayed with the government’s secrecy, especially after China ran afoul of international agencies for its response to the SARS epidemic that began in 2002. China’s health minister was fired after the government acknowledged it covered up the SARS outbreak.

Viet Nam apparently learned its lesson from the SARS outbreak and have provided all the cooperation that the WHO has asked of them. But the Chinese government is suffering what can perhaps best be described as a hangover from the secretive society created by Mao and brutally enforced by Deng Xiaoping. Despite all the economic reforms, China still has a long way to go before becoming a grown up and responsible member of the international community.

Given this mindset, it’s entirely possible that the first cases of human to human transmission by casual contact could occur in China - it could occur and we wouldn’t realize it until it had already spread to other countries. By then it would be too late. Given the fact that we live in an age where international travel is commonplace, bird flu could be in half a dozen countries before the world would be able to react.

Glenn Reynolds for one, is still being cautious about pushing the panic button. I love Glenn Reynolds to death but for God’s sake Mr. Instapundit! When people whose job it is to calm us down start talking about “inevitable” pandemics with “100%” certainty, isn’t about time to hit the red button and raise the alarm? The government should be mobilizing every information source they have access to and start getting the word out now. There are steps people can take to minimize the risk of catching the bug. Those measures should be pounded home on every news channel every day from here on out.

Time may be running out. And most of us have done precious little to protect ourselves.

Is anybody keeping track of the number of revelations coming out in recent days on what the 9/11 Commission failed to include when giving us what was supposed to be the “definitive narrative” of the events leading up to that tragic day?

Bill Clinton’s team ignored dire warnings that its approach to terrorism was “very dangerous” and could have “deadly results,” according to a blistering memo just obtained by The Post.
Then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White wrote the memo as she pleaded in vain with Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to tear down the wall between intelligence and prosecutors, a wall that went beyond legal requirements.

Looking back after 9/11, the memo makes for eerie reading — because White’s team foresaw, years in advance, that the Clinton-era wall would make it tougher to stop mass murder.

“This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities,” wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee.

Mary Jo White you may recall is the same former US Attorney whose memo to Janet Reno about the danger represented by the “wall” set up by the Department of Justice between intelligence and law enforcement went unheeded:

White knew that prevention should take place over prosecution if the US intended on keeping its citizens safe. She wrote her first memo objecting to the political decision to create an almost-insurmountable barrier that far exceeded the requirements of FISA as interpreted by earlier administrations. When that got her nowhere, she wrote a second memo, giving specific and prescient warnings about what would happen as a result:

That memo surfaced during the 9/11 hearings. But The Post has learned that White was so upset that she bitterly protested with another memo — a scathing one — after Reno and Gorelick refused to tear down the wall.
With eerie foresight, White warned that the Reno-Gorelick wall hindered law enforcement and could cost lives, according to sources familiar with the memo — which is still secret.

The 9/11 Commission got that White memo, The Post was told — but omitted any mention of it from its much-publicized report. Nor does the report include the transcript of its staff interview with White.

And here the Commission engages in its second covert act of omission in order to protect those who made it impossible for the intelligence community to act on its findings. What happened to the second White memo? Mary Jo White gets three mentions in their final report, all of them in the footnotes, and none of them refers to her warnings to Gorelick or Janet Reno. Nowhere does the Commission reveal her objections to the wall or her efforts to reverse the Gorelick decision.

What makes the discovery of this second memo so damaging to the 9/11 Commission is that the warnings contained in it were so spot on, so prescient of exactly what was going to happen if the Department of Justice continued with this idiocy that it’s an outrage both documents were not included in the 9/11 Commission Final Report.

Captain Ed:

Mary Jo White had a good understanding of the consequences of the 1995 policy change. She predicted this outcome five years before it happened. Second, if the policy was indeed misunderstood, who had responsibility for implementing it correctly and ensuring that the FBI understood it properly? The Department of Justice, of which the FBI is a part, and its leadership — Janet Reno and Jamie S. Gorelick.

Mohamed Atta and the other hijackers were able to fly under our intelligence radar precisely because the FBI was prevented from sharing information with the CIA and vice versa about the terrorist’s movements. And the evidence that a Clinton appointee realized the consequences of the wall only serves to open the floodgates to more questions about the author of the policy, 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, and why the Commission went out of its way to avoid criticizing both the wall and its enabler.

The question now has to be what’s the next step?

Clearly some kind of Congressional hearings are in order with the Commission itself on trial. Should all revelations about the Commission’s inadequacies be included in the hearing process? What about Able Danger? Or even more explosively, should the entire question about Iraq-al Qaeda connections be re-opened?

Captain Ed has coined the term “Omission Commission” to describe the current state of the 9/11 Commission’s credibility. I sincerely hope that these omissions are explainable due to sloppiness or shallow thinking and not some kind of cover-up or worse, an effort to discard information that did not fit into pre-conceived conclusions.

If the latter were the case, the Commission’s entire effort would have been a waste. This would necessitate the formation of a completely new panel to try and get at all the facts relevant to the attack and draw new conclusions and recommendations accordingly.

UPDATE

Austin Bay weighs in:

I’ll defer to my wife — who is a lawyer– on this point. [objections raised by DoD lawyers] She says attorneys are trained to say no and raise objections. They’ll hesistate because they anticipate an ACLU law suit and a DC political firestorm. A senior military commander will focus on the potential for attack — he knows the American people are “the final client” and will weigh the data with that in mind. So far there is no evidence that says any discussion between attorneys and senior commanders took place.

It’s time for the President to make a statement about Able Danger, even something as simple as “the lieutenant-colonel’s statements require further investigation.” Then, let’s investigate, with presidential authority.

Also, check out AJ’s fantastic AM roundup of the latest on Able Danger at The Strata-Sphere.. I have a feeling he’s going to be adding to it as the day goes on.

GOP Bloggers:

Remember, this was a Clinton appointee! And to whom did this memo go? Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, Clinton’s #2 at Justice and, incredibly, a member of the September 11 commission - a very conflicted member.

The Clinton administration clearly had a preference for inhibiting government intrusiveness, even in national security cases. As this story develops, its impact on Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions will be interesting to watch.

This brings up a general question of how much will Hillary’s chances be affected by Bill’s shennanigans? I tend to discount much impact for the simple reason most people have made up their minds already about the Clintons which, ironically, could be the biggest obstacle to Hillary even getting the Democractic nomination much less win the Presidency.