A Suicide Pact?

Doug on February 9, 2010 at 8:17 PM writes: Regarding those who say "Constitutional rights are not automatically granted to anyone who attempts to enter our nation,"..... A person who would make a statement like that obviously knows nothing about the Constitution.... The document plainly in clear and simple words that human rights apply to everyone, not just citizens.

Yes and no Doug. The US Constitution recognises, as does US settled law going back to 1776 (until the insane Boumedienne decision of 2008) only two forms of US justice. Full rights under civilian trial or lesser rights under military justice in times of war or great public distress.

US law never gave enemy combatants, let alone terrorist combatants who are prima facie planning or committing war crimes ( deliberate attacks on US civilians) full constituional rights - but it does give them to peaceful Jose who jumps the border from Mexico, or even criminal Franco who illegally comes from Italy and commits civilian murders in the USA.

The Constitution and the law make a distinction Doug and many others fail to make. War is war and peace is peace. Obama says we are at war with ALQ and the Underwear bomber was sent by ALQ to commit war crimes on US territory.

In WW2 when Hitler sent Nazis to land by sub and commit sabotage on US soil, Roosevelt had them all before a summary Military Commission and  ( save two) executed. When the Supreme Court made noises they might object, Roosevelt sent word he would execute them anyway as CIC.

In the Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeus corpus.

The Nuremburg Trial was a modified Military Comission from which there was no right of appeal, and limited but fair rights for the accused.

If you think your human rights are infinite, I suggest Doug you join the military and star abusing your CO in public. Get a few other to join you too. See how fast your infinite rights of free speech and freedom of assembly evaporate and don't ask for a civilian lawyer, either! You won't get one.

Doug, you perhaps do not know the difference between war and peace and between a jihadi on a war crime mission and the guy who just mugged granny in the park. But the US Consitution and all US courts, since 1776 have. The sad thing is that unremitting LAWFARE by the left and international anti-Americans have totally hamstrung us in this regard. Enemies of the US are now mainstreamed and given F. Lee Bailey, a civilian pulpit and we get info out of them by plea bargaining.

Here is a plea bargain coming your way soon: "OK, if we give you shorter time for the 763 Americans you just killed in the NYC subway, will you Mr. Abdul/Mohammed/Said (whatever) speak to your lawyer as you may escape a heavy sentence if you strike a deal and tell us where that suitcase nuke we know is in Boston has been placed."

Here is another: US forces capturing ALQ in Yemen or anywhere can't interrogate them, even if their own units might suffer further losses, until they are Mirandized and have a lawyer flown into base for them.

A Supreme Court justice once said the Constitution is not a suicide pact. But Doug and others, well meaning as they may be, are making it one.

Torture,Bush and the Facts

It turns out that thousands of US military members and NATO soldiers have been routinely waterboarded, kept in cramped conditions, subjected to sleep deprivation, kept in the cold, played loud music to endlessly and every other technique now widely being trumpeted in the world media is "torture", admittedly inflicted during Bush's time on some top Al Qaeda members, like 911 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, by the CIA in 2001-2006.


The reason is that all the methods that are so-called "Bush torture" are actually used to train US and NATO troops to resist interrogation when captured.

In light of these facts, should NATO and US officers, including many generals and others, who devised and ordered waterboarding and more of their own soldiers for the past 30 years, be investigated and tried for "torture"?

After all, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. And if they should not be investigated, why should Bush or any of his officials be subject to retrospective prosecution for the same techniques applied to confessed terrorists and mass murderers- including those who killed the Kenyans in the 1998 embassy bombings?

If US and NATO officers are not to be prosecuted en masse for "waterborading", "sleep depriving" and so on thousands of troops, it can only be because (a) we would hold such techniques are not "real" torture but merely harshness (b) the techniques the US used on it's own soldiers really are torture, but were used in training for a "good end" -- i.e.not to cause pain for pain's sake.

If we argue (a): the techniques are "harmless" or merely "harsh interrogation", why is it called 'torture' when US citizens do it to non-Americans but not, as in the NATO/US Army training, to each other?

If hold to (b): why was the CIA "waterboarding" of Sheik Khalid Mohammed, which had him confessing to a plot to bomb Los Angeles and the arrest of the attack cell, not a "good end"?

The Unseen Victory

One of the most significant events post-911 has passed almost without notice by US and world media: the roundup of 1000 Al Qaeda suspects in Mosul Iraq, representing the final annihilation of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

At least the UK's Times has an article on this pounding of what once looked like an unbeatable terrorist force. Of course the same leftist media who parroted that " one can never win against terrorism by military force" now have nothing to say: their anti-American mascot Bin Laden lives in a cave in Waziristan, two thirds of his cadre of leaders is dead or captured and the branch in Iraq, the standard bearers for what Bin Laden called the most important fight against America, has been totally routed and the leadership killed.

Court Of Fools

Reading the impassioned and often wrong comments following this link on the Supreme Court Boumedienne decision led me to the following response:

"It is sad to read here people speculating as to why the Bush admin neither wanted the captured terrorists to be treated as Prisoners of War under Geneva Conventions, not executed summarily as the laws of war and Geneva would have allowed. Many seem baffled by this. The answer is surely, that POWS cannot, under Geneva, be interrogated beyond "name,rank,serial number". And if they are summarily executed on or close to the battlefield they would neither be interrogated to give information. They would be dead. If the asymetrical war against international WMD seeking terrorists is not to be conducted by the shadows, the questioners, the isolation of the suspected, by harsh and secret methods, just who will conduct it? The San Francisco circuit of judges? The FBI? How about the UN? Wait, let's call on the ICC in the Hague.

The Bush admin did the world a huge service by trying to act on what waffling bodies like the UN have been paralysed over for decades - the treatment of terrorists and "unlawful combatants" or the new breed of mega-terrorists. It is indeed Bush's brilliance, not his detriment, that he realized the old Geneva Rules were useless in the face of a conspiracy so vast as Al Qaeda. If international terrorism had not been stopped cold by America's aggression post 911, the EU and others would probably be asking George Bush for the Gitmo blueprints long ago.

For those as naive as Obama,who trumpet how civilian courts dealt with the 1993 WT bombings, one has only to ask: just how effective were those civilian trials in stopping attacks on the USA and US citizens? Not at all, if we go by the Africa Embassy bombings, the USS Cole and of course the whole run in to 9/11.

Contrast the Bush approach when, with every fanatic in the world supposedly desperate to attack the American heartland, not a single attack has taken place. rather, the terrorists have been constrained, or sucked into killing fields like Iraq and slaughtered, so that Osama now hides in a Waziristan cave and most of his deputies are dead or in Gitmo. This, we are told ,is a failure. The blind sheik rotting in a New York jail after the 1993 attacks who gave us no information on the holocaust of Americans that was to come, is one learns, a success.

If America's standing in the world is low, it is largely because of the dismal and disloyal role of media, American included, in not explaining what is patently explainable: that WMD seeking mega-terrorists do not fall whatsoever under any of the protected categories of combatants under the Geneva Conventions and Rules and Conventions of War. According to the Geneva Conventions, they are war criminals and subject to summary justice.

With the terrifying possibilities of nuclear and bio-terrorism around us, which our enemies have assured us over and again they will use the minute they can obtain the weapons, to give foreign terrorists superior access to US justice than Nazi Werewolf partisans, foreign spy saboteurs in the Revolutionary War, German saboteurs on US soil in WW2 and a host of other examples including captured Barbary pirates if we go so far back, is an act of unbelievable stupidity and nothing more than a Supreme Court supremely out of touch with reality."

The Truther Fairy

Despite every evidence to the contrary, people who have nothing in common except a lazy mind or a streak of the paranoid continue to believe in "9/11 Conspiracy" theories. Someone who might know is Al-Queda No 2 Ayman Al-Zawahiri who speaks here on the BBC. Ayman is a little upset at Iran's President Mr. Armouredinnerjacket for joining the "truther" ranks that are illuminated by such intellectual giants as Hollywoord film stars and Euro Members of Parliament - not to mention 70% of Frenchmen. Says The Beeb;

"Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has blamed Iran for spreading the theory that Israel was behind the 11 September 2001 attacks.

In an audio tape posted on the internet, Zawahiri insisted al-Qaeda had carried out the attacks on the US. He accused Iran, and its Hezbollah allies, of trying to discredit Osama Bin Laden's network."

Come on Ayman, even though you planned 9/11, get with the programme, dammit. Everyone knows it was Booooooosh and the Joooooos.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up #321

According to The Times of the UK:

The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday.

Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme to prepare London-based Muslim youths for jihad, was described as a “cockney comic” by a BBC producer.

Mr Hamid denies providing weapons training, five charges of soliciting murder and three of providing training for terrorism. The other men deny a series of charges related to training.It becomes downright bizarre, as if someone was trying to parody the perfect genteel, clueless BBC leftist twit-of-the-year. The Times reports on the BBC producer, Phil Rees, take on Hamid, the terrorist trainer:

He said: “I think he had a comic touch and he represented a strand within British Muslims. I took it as more like a rather Steptoe and Son figure rather than seriously persuasive. I saw him as a kind of Cockney comic.” Mr Rees, who now works for the Arabic TV station al-Jazeera, gave Mr Hamid a signed copy of his book "Dining With Terrorists".

Hollywood Drops Bombs

Very good news that Hollywood's latest bout of nasty anti-American, pro-terrorist movies are totally bombing at the box office.

Brian dePalma's "Redacted" which naturally won rave reviews and awards from the chatterati, Hollywood flakes and Euro-wimps (standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival, Gold Medals in Venice etc) is typical. It cost $5 million and depicts US soldiers as thugs and beasts - it's wildly anti-troops ( whilst pretending to "support them") theme has so far , after weeks of major release and publicity, brought just just $23,000 total box office. It's delightful to learn the scumbag producers of this shit-flick have lost 99.5% of the millions they spent slandering those who defend their right to show offensive garbage.

On the other hand, "Outside The Wire", a hand made documentary by an ex-Marine depicting an hour of true footage and stories by vets cost $35,000 and has made back $27,000. It's only available on DVD via the internet but it's managed to out gross the hugely advertised multi-theatre showing of "Redacted".

Also bombing at the box office are "Rendition", "Lions for Lambs" (Redford and Streep no less) and "Valley of Elah" - all on the same theme of USA= Al Qaeda and what's the difference between a US soldier and a terrorist ( basic answer, none). These have collectively lost the Hollywood set tens of millions of dollars.

When I was in the angry 60's Bob Dylan had a wonderful line in one of his best songs that sums it all up: "Something is happening, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?" It seems the majority of America does know but Mr. Jones is stuck in Los Angeles.

The War Against Something or Other

The British government has abandoned the phrase of a 'war on terror.' It's so Tony, so old fashioned. New Labour is famous being a party of Newspeak and the cherished leftist belief that by language manipulation you can change a core of human or social behaviour.

Orwell made clear Newspeak's basic theory: if something cannot be said, then it cannot be thought, and if it cannot be thought, it could never be done. If you can manipulate the meaning of words, then you can control the thoughts and actions of others.

Such manipulations by the left range from the gross, as in a North Korean radio broadcast to the subtle, as in the utterances of rising New Labour apparatchik Hilary Benn, son of famed loony-tune radical Tony Benn. To Benn the Younger, a phrase like "War on Terror" is doubleplusungood.

In a recent speech that shows the next generation of New Labour thinking, Benn informs us that if we use terms like "war on terror" we will aggrandize terrorists. Being careful to avoid the "I" word, Benn tells us the current state of world terrorism is not a war or struggle, just most individuals in the world "against",

a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common apart from their identification with others who share their distorted view of the world and their idea of being part of something bigger.

What these groups want is to force their individual and narrow values on others, without dialogue, without debate, through violence. And by letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength

Though some might see contradiction between the “disparate” groups with “shared" views, Benn postulates that by invoking a ‘war on terror’, we are actually strengthening terrorists. He does not explain how you combat people who will not debate or indulge in dialogue and only use violence. Presumably, once you have “a majority of people against loose, disparate groups” instead of a “war on terror”, the problem will ameliorate..

No doubt, this airbrushing will impact on the “disparate groups” self-esteem, that other beloved Newspeak creation of the left. In this thinking, you don’t have to have achievements or character as a person or group. You must simply believe you are an achiever and have others tell you so, even when you are a total tosspot or wastrel. If this fatuity were true then the reverse holds. Once Islamic terrorists are no longer told they are part of a big worldwide movement, their morale will crumble.

This is like the theory of modern nursery school teachers: if a child does not start every day yelling , “I’m good, I’m clever, I’m meeeeeeee…..” in assembly, they will suffer irreversible socio-psychic harm for life.

You can read all of Benn’s ramblings here. Meanwhile it is comforting to know that Osama Bin Laden in his cave, Hizbollah in their bunkers and Islamic terrorists cells everywhere are discussing surrender or disbandment as they realise they are merely “disparate groups” with “little in common” facing the mighty majority of the world’s people who are armed with “values and ideas”.

With the EU having banned all thoughtcrime phrases like "Islamic terror" and "jihad" from official discourse, and with rampaging Muslims from Sweden to Belgium to Paris now called "youths", the Australians are not to be left out. During the Cronulla riots in 2006 , police were not able to issue bulletins describing Middle Easterners as other than "youths" with a "mullet hairstyle". Where I come from a mullet is something you eat.

Benn's terminology joins this honourable list of descriptors that have so enriched our language. We await the future headline: ' Youthful disparate groups of fish blow up the House of Commons".

ITerrorists Use Poison Gas - MSM Yawns

The BBC reports that Iraqi terrorists are using a banned chemical weapon from WW1, Chlorine gas. This it seems only "concerns" them and the rest of the MSM are silent. Can we imagine the outrage if the coalition even released a whiff of Mustard gas, Phosgene and other WW1 horrors? Chlorine gas kills or maims by burning victims lungs. A whole truckload was found wired to go and obviously more is on the way.

Seemingly MSM and The Beeb's bland reporters can't be bothered to look up Wikipedia here.

What's worse is it's use against civilians in Baghdad. Just imagine if they got ahold of Sarin!

Yankee Come Home

Confirmation about something many suspected and which our blatantly anti-American big media has hardly commented on: the BBC undertook a worldwide sample of some 29,000 respondents showing Kenyans have the highest positive view of the USA of any country surveyed, a stunning 70% rating.

Compare this to the miserly 16% of Germans who believe the USA has a mainly positive role in the world. The Germans got magnanimity after World War II in the Marshall Plan, and an underwriting for the cost of their defence against communism, allowing them to concentrate on becoming rich and peaceful, thanks to America. Despite the unspeakable atrocities the Germans visited on the world with their war, less than 20 of it’s worst leaders were hung as war criminals. Forgive and rebuild was the watchword. As we say in Kiswahili, asante ya punda ni teke; the thanks of a donkey are kicks.

Here in Kenya, our local newspapers also own TV and radio outlets. The biggest is the Nation Group comprising daily papers, the business tabloid The East African and broadcast media. It’s owned by Muslims, albeit the moderate Aga Khan Foundation. The Standard Group undersells it considerably, and both exhibit unrelenting anti-Americanism from the editors downwards.

Kenyans are bombarded with stories written by Islamists, tranzis and anti-democrats. In the Standard last year, a column on the “only hope” for Iraq was, wait for it, to have the UN reinstate Saddam. Jihadi journalist Salim Lone informs readers in The Daily Nation that “hardly anyone” believes in Islamist plots to blow up airliners and that these are “inventions of Bush and Blair”. The recent collapse of the Somali Islamists (fervently wished for by Kenyans) was greeted with serious media alarm, followed by derision directed at the USA.

This is the normal journalistic meal served up to Kenyan readers, a country where Christians are the overwhelming majority and print is still king. The blogosphere has hardly any readers at all. All the more surprising then that Kenyans have weathered this propaganda effort and still favour the USA.

Gunship Hash Fry-Up

The January 13^th issue of The East African editorializes; “US Makes A Hash Of It Again” referring to Somalia. Claiming the "US adventure is Somali is going off the rails, raising fears of another Iraq being enacted right here in East Africa", it minimizes the Islamist support o'f Eritrean and foreign mercenaries, the long history of Somali-Ethiopian wars, the massive influx of arms into Mogadishu from mischievous countries and Kenya’s own interests in eradicating terrorists. It’s all Uncle Sam’s blunder, again.

Facts are abandoned. There are no reports, as the editor would have it, of “US fighter jets” or “Blackhawk helicopters” operating in Somalia. There was a solitary AC-130 gunship that could have done many favours if it had eradicated the Al-Qaeda cell leaders. Their attacks killed hundreds and wounded thousands in Kenya. This nearly bankrupted our tourist industry and entire economy twice. There are a few Special Forces boots on the ground and these, plus the British SAS , have been welcomed by all parties except the Islamists and their allies and dupes in the Kenyan media.

Also, since it does not fit The East African’s favoured anti-American narrative, the paper fails no mention the ICU attacked Baidoa and the TNG on December 16^th despite endless international warnings and thus sealed their own fate.

The US has publicly stated it is willing to work with non-Al Qaeda Islami c Courts Unionparties in Somalia – a big shift in policy. It strongly backs an AU force and stays as much in the background as possible – unlike for example Eritrea or Al-Qaeda itself, which called for global terrorists to come to the ICU’s aid. The US has kept it’s military footprint very small. No doubt most regional countries would like to see the irredentist ICU dismantled. Moderate Somalis in Hargeisha and Puntland are whooping with delight.

Rather than “hashing” the job, it is more likely the US has learned valuable past lessons and kept the problem at arm’s length. One is not sure why The East African would want to inflame jihadi passions by asserting otherwise.

Somalia is both an inter-African and regional failure. America is justifiably interested in the capture or death of a limited group of Al-Qaeda terrorists. The US left Somali alone for a dozen years after “Blackhawk Down”. During this time did Africans solve their own problems? Did the EU or UN come to rescue the country? Not at all.

The result was the ICU and more civil war, with the possibility of an Afghanistan- in Africa. This was intolerable to all in Kenya except a handful of Islamists and their mouthpieces like jihadi supporter Salim Lone of The Daily Nation. In truth there is no simple solution in Somalia and making people believe that the American bogeyman is behind all the woe implies it will vanish should the US ignore Somalia for another decade. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A week after this "editorial", which reads more like a shill for the ICU, the moderate leader of the ICU surrendered peacefully to Kenyan authorities and was reported headed for Nairobi for talks with US State Department officials. The real question is, why do Kenyans have to read over and again these hopelessly biased and innacurate anti-American rants, in the guise of "editorials"?

EU Issues Shock Christophobia Report

The EU nomenklatura is at it again with a new report that claims a rise in "Islamophobia" in Europe. However the Brussels mob have yet to issue any report on rising "Christophobia" in Europe by Muslim immigrants, evidence for which is more than just a matter of feelings or perceptions.

The very solid grounds for rising Christophobia in Europe includes multiple suicide bombings in London last summer, increasing calls for Sharia law, the small matter of the Danish Mohammed cartoons and wordwide bloody riots that ensued, let alone numerous thwarted plots involving dozens of Islamic terrorists. The latter extended to countries which had become anti-US in their foreign policy, such as Spain, Germany and France. Even Sweden experienced riots.

Fear of Islamic violence caused the cancellation of many arts events in 2006, including a performance of Mozart in his homeland. A French Jew was tortured to death in Paris for no other reason than his religion.

Meanwhile, Muslims in Europe threatened to kill the Pope, behead homosexuals and declare Muslim "no-go" areas in various European cities. Honour killings, often involving cross-religious love relationships, increased.

The same EU politicians that issued the "Islamophobia" report are the ones who in 2004 supressed an EU report of rising anti-Semitic attacks because it named young Muslim Europeans as the chief perpetrators.

Somalia Cooks Up Trouble

The reports of 3 suicide car bombs detonated in the Somali town of Baidoa bring a new and ominous escalation in the growing threat of Islamism in Eastern Africa. Though fanatically brave and careless of their lives in battle, Somalis have never been known as methodical suicide jihadis. Newswire suggestions than non-Somalis were captured at the site indicate Al-Qaeda involvement. As is usual with Somalia, the situation is endlessly opaque and confusing, with the ICU going so far as to invite the USA to officially visit Mogadishu for talks!

Kenya is a non-aggressive nation, known for the excellent professionalism of it's armed peacekeepers in Bosnia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere with a foreign policy that stresses regional dialogue and agreed solutions. Kenya has been instrumental in helping end the genocidal Southern Sudan conflict, among many. For years Kenya coaxed the quarrelsome and boisterous Somalis into forming their Provisional Government. All that work is undone by the advance of the shadowy, sinister Islamic Courts Union forces.

The Guardian and other leftist MSM outlets repeat the clueless canard that somehow, when the US gave cash to non- ICU warlords in a futile attempt to stem the ICU takeover of Mogadisu last summer, this "exacerbated" the Islamist advance. Such thinking blames America-as-usual, forgetting that the groundwork of trained forces, superior weapons, advanced tactics and foreign cadres of the ICU took months, if not years, of careful planning. The blame game also ignores the most likely cause of the Islamist assault: it coincided with and would plainly forestall, the final establishment of the internationally backed, African Union approved Provisional Somali Government.

While ideologues look to their bogeyman in the USA, others note that Islamism in Somalia could revive the murderous regional violence of the 1960's and 70's when Somali nationalists tried to take over territory in Kenya and Ethiopia. These have large ethnic Somali minorities. There are uncomfortable signs that "Greater Somalia" is longed for by some of the ICU top leadership. It's hard to see how the ICU will not eventually go for the racial expansion of Somalia, which would have disastrous repercussions in Kenya's north east, heavily populated by native and refugee Somalis. Throw in the ICU acting as proxies for Eritrea, Ethiopia's belligerent refusal, backed by a huge army, to countenance Islamist takeover, Iranian mischief, Al-Qaeda elements, mystery arms flights into Mogadishu, new suicide bombers and one has a cauldron of bitter ingredients that could scald an entire region.

Kenya meanwhile tries to play the peaceful middleman, desperate to avoid being caught in any situation that would demand it abandon perceived neutrality in face of a need to balance acute national interests. It's something Kenya diplomats are very skilled at, but for how much longer before somthing lights the fire and the Somali pot finally boils into open regional conflict?