Dick Cheney

The Sith Lord Endorsed Kamala Harris? LOL

Published by Papa Giorgio

My idea of Cheney is not like the Democrats, or even Charlie Kirk. YES! He is wrong on his views of Donald Trump, and, I have debunked many of these lies over the years stated in the video. However, the point is that DEMOCRATS BELIEVE THIS … until 2-seconds ago.

Here are some of my posts for the record:

  • Dispelling the “CIA Trained-Funded Bin Laden/Taliban” Myth/Mantra
  • Halliburton
  • WMD
  • “We Supplied Most Of Iraq’s Weapons” ~ Mantra
  • Was The Iraq War About Oil?
  • The Yellow Cake Uranium Mantra (YUGE UPDATE!)

All those are found linked HERE:

Conspiracies

 Another worth mentioning:

  • Playing a Little “Concepts” Catch Up (Romney and Torture):

Playing a Little “Concepts” Catch Up (Romney and Torture)

I will be fixing that post’s dead media soon

Water-Boarding Key For Actionable Intelligence (i.e., Liberal Fail)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Originally posted Dec 9, 2014 — Media refreshed and a few links updated)

Video cross-posted HERE at NewsBusters. On Sunday, NBC’s Meet the Press hosted former Vice President Dick Cheney to speak on the recent Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation tactics on suspected terrorists. While Cheney spoke out in defense of the program, moderator Chuck Todd asked his guest “when you say waterboarding is not torture, then why did we prosecute Japanese soldiers in World War II for waterboarding?” (MRCTV Dec 14, 2014)

CHUCK TODD: When you say waterboarding is not torture, then why did we prosecute Japanese soldiers in World War II for waterboarding?

(OVERTALK)

DICK CHENEY: For a lot of stuff. Not for waterboarding. They did an awful lot of other stuff. To draw some kind of moral equivalent between waterboarding, judged by our Justice Department not to be torture, and what the Japanese did with the Bataan Death March and the slaughter of thousands of Americans, with the rape of Nanking and all of the other crimes they committed, that’s an outrage. It’s a really cheap shot, Chuck, to even try to draw a parallel between the Japanese who were prosecuted for war crimes after World War II and what we did with waterboarding three individuals–

TODD: I understand.

CHENEY: –all of whom were guilty and participated in the 9/11 attacks.

TODD: Is there a reason these interrogations didn’t happen on U.S. soil? Was there concern that maybe these folks would get legal protections–

CHENEY: Well–

TODD: –from the United States and that’s why it was done at black sites?

CHENEY: We didn’t read them their Miranda Rights either. These are not American citizens. They are unlawful combatants. They are terrorists. They are people who have committed unlawful acts of war against the American people. And we put them in places where we could proceed with the interrogation program and find out what they knew so we could protect the country against further attacks. And it worked.

(NEWSBUSTERS)

To be clear, many think we did the same as the Japanese did regarding “water ‘torture'”, we did not. The Javanese method often killed their victims, as intended. (Via MDOLLA & READING SHOUTS):

This is the only non-medieval, European torture on our list. The water torture was a favorite among Japanese POW guards during WWII. The victim was first bound with barbed wire and his mouth stuffed with rags. Next, the guards would snake a tube down the victim’s nasal passage and bloat his belly with water. Once that was finished, the guards would kick and beat the poor sap’s midsection until his stomach lining burst and and death ensued.

(The following was originally posted in May of 2011 — edited slightly since)

In a Facebook conversation someone said the following:

Rumsfeld said point blank that they did not get this info from enhanced interrogation but through regular interrogation. I had a Newsmax link which I knew you’d like better but it did not want to post for some reason. I’ll try again.

The whole debate between the efficacious nature of enhanced interrogation is back in the news, thanks to the wonderful killing of Osama bin Laden. As the ATLANTIC JOURNAL notes well the politically charged topic this brings to the debate between Left and Right:

The shot-up corpse of Osama bin Laden was barely wet at the bottom of the sea when conservative heavyweights began praising Bush-era “enhanced interrogation” tactics as a big reason why U.S. soldiers were able to know in which multistory house in which million-dollar compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the al Qaeda leader was holed up. With a spectacularly successful “end” to the bin Laden story, the we-told-you-so crowd evidently now wants to go back and re-litigate the legitimacy of the “means” by which they claim it all came about.

And, in the absence of any other juicy political conflict surrounding the news of bin Laden’s death, serious journalists were only too happy to oblige the counterfact festival choreographed (typically without attribution, of course) mainly by the nation’s various spies and spooks. One earnest reporter after another, from the right and the left and in between, dutifully stoked the suddenly “reignited” fires of debate over the effectiveness of torture as a means of gathering material information from terror detainees.

On Monday into Tuesday, as a running sidebar to the main story about how the bin Laden assault took place, there were a slew of news articles arguing the back-and-forth of the torture meme as if the two sides to the argument came to this august moment in American history on equal footing in fact or law. For example, NBC’s mighty Michael Isikoff tried to finesse the matter by describing the torture of terror law prisoners as “aggressive interrogations” or “sometimes controversial interrogations.” And then he wrote:

The behind-the-scenes story of how bin Laden was finally located is yet to be fully told, but emerging details seem likely to reignite the debate over whether “enhanced interrogation” techniques and other aggressive methods that have been widely criticized by human rights groups provided useful – or timely — intelligence about al-Qaida. While some current and former U.S. officials credited those interrogations Monday with producing the big break in the case, others countered that they failed to produce what turned out to be the most crucial piece of intelligence of all: the identity and whereabouts of the most important figure in bin Laden courier’s network.

One of the “behind-the-scenes” nuggets apparently involves Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, who was said by some unidentified analysts to have given up the nicknames of some of bin Laden’s couriers only after being subjected to waterboarding. One of those couriers, we now know, was brilliantly tracked by American operatives to the Abbottabad hideout and thus to bin Laden himself. But here’s what the Associated Press had to say about that:

Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

Just exactly why the merits of waterboarding as an honorable tool of U.S. policy are “once again up for debate” based upon the Mohammed example was left unwritten by the AP.

(READ MORE)

Just to keep this quick… if one wants to stop reading here — Rumsfeld is a very specific dude… so when you ask his a specific question, he answers in a specific way. So if you ask him about “enhanced interrogations AT GITMO, he is going to respond to THAT question. And he did. But here is my overly long but in-depth post that Conservative Warriors can use in bits and pieces.

Marc Thiessen

  • FLASHBACK: Mark Thiessen Waterboarding (C-SPAN 2010)

  • FLASHBACK: Marc Thiessen Confronts CNN’s Waterboarding Propaganda (Jan 2010)

Firstly, a shout out to the many years from multiple administrations and the intelligence community and our boys in uniform.

Now down to business. I have gotten a couple of people pointing out some discrepancies in my previous post, Without Bush Implementing Water-Boarding and Guantanamo Interrogations, Osama Would Still Be Alive. What is actually happening – I believe – is a misconception of times and places on the part of the liberals entering into this discussion. It is important to know as well that “first reports” are always a bit confused.

As you read the following you will see that the Daily Kos, Huffington Post, and other liberal sites ran with responses to questions that don’t fit the outcome to the conclusions made. What the questions were that were originally posed to Rumsfeld seem to be a bit out of context, as we will see.

To wit I have been given multiple articles to read, some from liberal sources, others from conservative source… sources rejected except in this singular instance – speaking here of the NEWSMAX article. In it NewsMax starts out with this:

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells Newsmax the information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden was obtained through “normal interrogation approaches” and says the notion that terrorist suspects were waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay is a “myth.”

Lets bullet point this for clarity sake:

1) information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden was obtained through “normal interrogation approaches

2) the notion that terrorist suspects were waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay is a “myth.”

Nothing I wrote or conservatives posted disagree with this notion, and it is beyond me why DailyKos, the Huffington post, and other sites take Rummies words and misconstrue them. A great post dealing with this issue is found over at SayAnythingBlog.com:

Liberals have been touting these comments from Donald Rumsfeld in which the former Bush administration Secretary of Defense says that the intelligence used to find Osama bin Laden wasn’t obtained through waterboarding because waterboarding didn’t happen at Guantanamo Bay:

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tells Newsmax the information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden was obtained through “normal interrogation approaches” and says the notion that terrorist suspects were waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay is a “myth.”

Rumsfeld also claims that elements of Pakistani intelligence could have been complicit in hiding the terrorist mastermind, asserts that his killing exonerates George W. Bush’s approach to fighting terrorism, and warns that terrorists will likely try to avenge bin Laden’s death with new attacks against America or its allies.

“Another wingnut myth bites the dust,” writes Bob Cesca, but I’m not sure this really disproves anything.

First, we know that Khalid Sheik Mohammed was interrogated not at Guantanamo Bay but at CIA detention centers in eastern Europe. We also know that KSM was subjected to so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” which is pretty much political speak for waterboarding.

Also, as Stephen Hayes notes on Twitter, the question isn’t whether or not KSM gave up the intelligence during a waterboarding session but whether or not the waterboarding we all know KSM went through made him compliant with his interrogators, something that lead to him giving up the intelligence at a later date.

Say Anything Blog goes on to point out that Congressman King still stands by the position that this beginning info came from those waterboarding moments. (See my combined RUMBLE video below)

(1st Video) Earlier today word surfaced from a senior intelligence official that critical information that ultimately led to the attack on Osama bin Laden’s compound came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Others, including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, hinted that some interrogation techniques at Gitmo may have contributed to the successful capture of bin Laden. During tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, guest Rep. Peter King (R-NY) claimed to host Bill O’Reilly that the information that led to bin Laden’s death came as a result of waterboarding. (May 2nd, 2011)

(2nd Video) House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-NY) spoke with Bill Hemmer this morning, saying that contrary to Donald Rumsfeld’s statement on Monday, waterboarding was indeed involved in obtaining the intel leading operatives to Osama bin Laden’s courier. (May 3rd, 2011)

However, even if we accept the liberal spin, Say Anything goes on to point out the following:

But really, this is all a moot point. Even it we stipulate that waterboarding, or “enhanced interrogation techniques,” had nothing at all do to with KSM giving up key details which lead to bin Laden’s capture the intelligence was still gathered at facilities (Guantanamo Bay and the CIA prisons in Europe) Obama wanted shut down.

No matter how this is spun, the reality of how the intelligence which brought down bin Laden was gathered is a black eye for President Obama and the liberals who spent years campaigning against the very policies which made that intelligence gathering possible.

Excellent points! Also, many sources in the prevailing articles coming out hourly is another indicator of the factual points of the varying sides of this argument. For instance, over at the Denver Post (was at the Charlotte Observer):

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, detainees in the CIA’s secret prison network told interrogators about an important courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti who was close to bin Laden. After the CIA captured al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, he confirmed knowing al-Kuwaiti but denied he had anything to do with al-Qaida.

Then in 2004, top al-Qaida operative Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Ghul told the CIA that al-Kuwaiti was a courier, someone crucial to the terrorist organization. In particular, Ghul said, the courier was close to Faraj al-Libi, who replaced Mohammed as al-Qaida’s operational commander. It was a key break in the hunt for in bin Laden’s personal courier.

“Hassan Ghul was the linchpin,” a U.S. official said.

Finally, in May 2005, al-Libi was captured. Under CIA interrogation, al-Libi admitted that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed, he received the word through a courier. But he made up a name for the courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti, a denial that was so adamant and unbelievable that the CIA took it as confirmation that he and Mohammed were protecting the courier. It only reinforced the idea that al-Kuwaiti was very important to al-Qaida.

If they could find the man known as al-Kuwaiti, they’d find bin Laden.

The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.

“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.

Mohammed did not discuss al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

(READ MORE)

Take note that the source that mentions that we did get the info via enhanced interrogations was sourced by name. Again:

The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.

“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.

The sources apparently saying different are simply referred to as former officials, But note that the article says this, “Mohammed did not discuss al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him many months later under standard interrogation.” In two separate posts on my FaceBook I pointed out the misunderstanding some seem to have:

The name of the courier did not come from KSM under enhanced interrogation. KSM cracked and agreed to share what he knew BECAUSE of enhanced interrogation. I don’t know how I can be clearer? …. ‎(I read the Newsmax article.) KSM, after many short intervals of water-boarding combined with sleep deprivation, caved in. And over many months/years of “tea and crumpets” he divulged names, places, tactics, and the like. This info led to many plots being foiled [like the planned attack on the Library Tower in L.A.]. The codename for the courier was one of the items given up during these talks AFTER they water-boarded him, which could have been months after or years after this initial event. Clear?

For those who have the time, I highly recommend Larry Elders dealing with this topic yesterday. I combine highlighted moments from his radio broadcast where he makes many similar point:

GATEWAY PUNDIT likewise deals with his topic in a way that refutes the many positions stated by my liberal friends:

Obama’s CIA chief admitted today that intelligence gleaned from enhanced interrogating techniques helped lead to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. (MY RUMBLE):

Intelligence garnered from waterboarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and kill him, CIA Chief Leon Panetta told NBC News on Tuesday.

“Enhanced interrogation techniques” were used to extract information that led to the mission’s success, Panetta said during an interview with anchor Brian Williams. Those techniques included waterboarding, he acknowledged.

Panetta, who in a 2009 CIA confirmation hearing declared “waterboarding is torture and it’s wrong,” said Tuesday that debate about its use will continue.

“Whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always gonna be an open question,” Panetta said.

Additionally, GATEWAY PUNDIT has video of Rumsfeld saying the same:

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:

“CIA Director Panetta indicated that one of the individuals who provided important information had in fact been waterboarded… There was some confusion today on some programs, even one on FOX I think, suggesting that I indicated that no one who was waterboarded at Guantanamo provided any information on this. It’s not true. No one was waterboarded at Guantanamo by the US military. In fact no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo period. Three people were waterboarded by the CIA away from Guantanamo and then later were brought to Guantanamo. And, in fact, as you pointed out the information from these individuals was critically important.”

Once again… Ace of Spades put together the timeline that started back in 2003 during the Bush years that led to Osama’s death on Sunday.

The Obama Administration is lying. They don’t want to give Bush credit for leading them to Osama’s compound. And, they don’t want to admit they were wrong about waterboarding.

Once Again, my Democrats and Liberal friends are wrong as well as major liberal sites such as the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post are wrong. Too bad, sooo sad. I wish to point out that many of the truther leftist out there seem to running into a wall of competing emotions and logical conclusions within their models. (Here I suggest my C-O-N-Debunker page for the truther.) For instance, one friend on FaceBook posted this in regards to Rossie O’Donnel:

The killing of Bin Laden must pose a dilemma for leftist truthers like Rosie O’Donnell, who think 9/11 was an inside job by the Bush administration. As a loyal liberal, she wants to praise Obama, but for what — killing the wrong guy?

Another person chimed in:

It’s worse than that Mike, if you include the rare bird known as the truther-birther. That guy not only believes the wrong guy was killed, but that the wrong guy ordered the killing. And now add the newly-minted, “deather,” who doesn’t believe OBL was really killed. Thus, you can in theory have someone who believes that the wrong guy issued an order to kill a guy that didn’t die for a crime he did not commit.

Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first try to deceive, which are what the conspiratorialists — of which I use to be one many years ago — are doing to themselves. But it sure is fun to watch.

(Another post dated May 2014)

I posted this on my FaceBook:

This capture and killing of Osama would not have been possible without Bush being in office. We water-boarded a handful of people, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being one. He is the guy who gave up the codename for the courier that led to this “justice being served.” …. Confirmation came through other interrogations at Guantanamo Bay — something Dems wanted to close as well.

Firstly, we know that Democrats/liberals are against water-boarding, except if it were done to Bush’s daughters. You think I am kidding? Stepephen King, novelist and outspoken Democrat, said this:

Someone in the Bush family should actually be waterboarded so they could report on it to George. I said, I didn’t think he would do it, but I suggested Jenna be waterboarded and then she could talk about whether or not she thought it was torture.

I agree with Stephen King, if Jenna Bush had detailed information about a plot that was already under-way to destroy the Library Tower in L.A., by all means, waterboard her. But don’t ask if it is torture after… one should, rather, ask her if she is allergic to peas. Because that’s one staple she will be getting with her meals a few times a week in her lifelong prison cell.

You see, Democrats have what Thomas Sowell calls first tier thinking, they never make it to the second tier. They simply act upon how something makes them feel: “this makes me feel uneasy, therefore, I will act against what engenders my feeling.” They do not make it to the second tier, which asks “how does this affect society and other people besides me.” Many do not understand even how they make decisions. Dr. Sowell isn’t worried as much about Johnny not being able to read, rather, he is worried about how Johnny makes decisions: “The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” This applies to Democratic decision making. It is this thinking that muddled the proper historical application of torture and the Geneva Convention (see: WWII, Nazi’s, Torture, & Rights (4 Imported Articles — Very Important Read To Formulate Proper Views of History and Responses to Revisionist History). One of my favorite lines from the linked post is comparing key information gotten from Nazi’s captured during WWII is this:

If anyone believes that SIS persuaded each of these 19 hard-bitten Nazi spies to fall in with Operation Fortitude by merely offering them tea, biscuits, and lectures in democracy, they’re being profoundly naïve.

One of the problems with Democratic thinking is in regards to “moral equivalency.” I point this out in a post about water-boarding and how the Democratic leadership views our military:

A Little Historical Angst

The Obama administration is backtracking on its statement that some may be open to legal prosecution for their involvement in the “torturing” three members of Al Qaeda. The problem of the Democrats is moral equivalency. While they say Republican see thing in black-and-white, and they see things in shades of grey (with thanks to Dennis Prager), they in fact see all torture techniques — putting a guy in a small cell with bugs — as morally wrong. They do not see gradations of “torture” like they do not see gradations between cultures and social-issues (moral equivalency of marriage, for instance).

See for instance Democrats calling our military Nazi’s and Terrorists:

♦John Kerry calls American troops terrorists
♦Durbin Compares U.S. Troops to Nazi’s, Soviets, & Pol Pot
♦Murtha calls Marines Murderers (of course these Marines were all acquitted because they were under fire from these places they fired on. I have to include a response by a Marine to Murtha, and a story on Murtha being sued for slander.)

I can here recommend a book by Michelle Malkin entitled,  “Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild“; and another book by an ex-dem entitled,  “Leaving the Left: Moments in the News That Made Me Ashamed to Be a Liberal.”

“His sufferings must be that of a man who is drowning, but cannot drown.” ~ Lt. Grover Flint

Later in this same post Peter Hoekstra points out that, “Perhaps we need an investigation not of the enhanced interrogation program, but of what the Obama administration may be doing to endanger the security our nation has enjoyed because of interrogations and other antiterrorism measures implemented since Sept. 12, 2001. “Thankfully we had a President that knew at what cost information comes and was willing to implement the program that stopped sooo many deaths! This can be exemplified in Marc Thiessen debating Democrats on the issue…

[seen near the top]

Waterboarding Success Stories: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Library Tower: (This excerpt is from a site that has lost this page, but the gist is found at NATIONAL REVIEW and FREE REPUBLIC)

The waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is often cited as one of the major waterboarding “success stories”. ABC News reporter Brian Ross credited waterboarding for the crucial information used to avert the destruction of Library Tower.

ROSS: That has happened in some cases where the material that’s been given has not been accurate, has been essentially to stop the torture. In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the information was very valuable, particularly names and addresses of people who were involved with al Qaeda in this country and in Europe. And in one particular plot, which would involve an airline attack on the tallest building in Los Angeles, known as the Library Tower.

The US Bank Tower plot was revealed to the public by President Bush on February 9, 2006 in a speech to the National Guard Association:

In the weeks after September the 11th, while Americans were still recovering from an unprecedented strike on our homeland, al Qaeda was already busy planning its next attack. We now know that in October 2001, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad — the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks — had already set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door, and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We believe the intended target was Liberty [sic] Tower in Los Angeles, California.

Rather than use Arab hijackers as he had on September the 11th, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad sought out young men from Southeast Asia — whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion. To help carry out this plan, he tapped a terrorist named Hambali [Riduan Isamuddin], one of the leaders of an al Qaeda affiliated group in Southeast Asia called “J-I” [Jemaah Islamiyah]. JI terrorists were responsible for a series of deadly attacks in Southeast Asia, and members of the group had trained with al Qaeda. Hambali recruited several key operatives who had been training in Afghanistan. Once the operatives were recruited, they met with Osama bin Laden, and then began preparations for the West Coast attack.

Their plot was derailed in early 2002 when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative. Subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations made clear the intended target, and how al Qaeda hoped to execute it. This critical intelligence helped other allies capture the ringleaders and other known operatives who had been recruited for this plot. The West Coast plot had been thwarted.

Which aspects of this plot could Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s waterboarding have revealed?

  • We learned about Al Qaeda’s interest in flying planes into buildings on September 11, 2001.
  • We knew about Al Qaeda’s use of shoe bombs from Richard Reid, captured in December 22, 2001.
  • We knew about Jemaah Islamiyah at least since the Bali Bomb attack on October 12, 2002.
  • The “key al Qaeda operative” and pilot for the plot, Zaini Zakari, was arrested by Malaysian authorities in December 2002.

“His sufferings must be that of a

man who is drowning, but cannot drown.”

— Lt. Grover Flint —

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003 — after the plot was discovered, after the plot was “derailed”, after the pilot of the plane was captured. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed could not have “provided valuable information and saved lives” when all aspects of the plot were well-known and the attack had been foiled prior to his capture. Coercive interrogation is extremely effective at obtaining confessions. Evidence obtained from coercive interrogation is highly dubious and must be corroborated with reliable sources. The claims of interrogators who coerce their prisoners should be treated with as much skepticism as the claims of the prisoners themselves.

You can add the death of a terror mastermind (Osama) to the above list of positives!

The Yellow Cake Uranium Mantra (YUGE UPDATE!)

Published by Papa Giorgio

a YUGE update

HOT AIR catalogs Judith Miller’s comments:

Former NY Times reporter Judith Miller’s testimony played a significant role in the case of Scooter Libby both when she originally made it and later when she recanted it. Now that Libby has officially been pardoned, Miller talked to Fox News to explain why she believes this was the right decision.

“I think it’s long overdue,” Miller said. She continued, “Ever since I got out of jail and began trying to look into the details of the Scooter Libby case…I became persuaded that my testimony had been in error and that he, in fact, had done nothing wrong.

“I decided to go back and correct the record in my own book, which I did, and when Scooter Libby was given his law license back a year and a half ago, the judge specifically cited my testimony, the recantation of my testimony, as one of the factors in his decision.”

All of this stems from a note Miller wrote about a conversation with Scooter Libby. She wrote “(wife works in bureau?)” in reference to Joe Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame. That was taken as proof that Libby must of have raised Plame’s work at the CIA. But as Peter Berkowitz explained in a piece for the Wall Street Journal back in 2015, Miller later decided her note probably hadn’t been a reference to Plame’s work at the CIA at all, but was more likely a question about her cover working at the State Department:

Ms. Miller’s new memoir recounts that after her conditions had been met and Mr. Fitzgerald asked the court to release her from jail in September 2005, she was summoned to testify before the grand jury. While Mr. Fitzgerald prepared her, she recalls, his pointed queries led her to believe that a four-word question regarding Joseph Wilson surrounded by parentheses in her notebook—“(wife works in Bureau?)”—proved that Mr. Libby had told her about Ms. Plame’s CIA employment in a June 23, 2003, conversation (well before Mr. Libby’s phone conversation with Russert). She so testified at trial in 2007.

Three years later, Ms. Miller writes, she was reading Ms. Plame’s book, “Fair Game,” and was astonished to learn that while on overseas assignment for the CIA Ms. Plame “had worked at the State Department as cover.” This threw “a new light” on the June 2003 notebook jotting, Ms. Miller says, since the State Department has “bureaus,” while the CIA is organized into “divisions.”…

Mr. Fitzgerald, who had the classified file of Ms. Plame’s service, withheld her State Department cover from Ms. Miller—and from Mr. Libby’s lawyers, who had requested Ms. Plame’s employment history. Despite his constitutional and ethical obligation to provide exculpatory evidence, Mr. Fitzgerald encouraged Ms. Miller to misinterpret her ambiguous notes as showing that Mr. Libby brought up Ms. Plame…

If Ms. Miller had testified accurately, she would have dealt a severe blow to Mr. Fitzgerald’s central contention that Mr. Libby was lying when he said he was surprised to hear Russert mention Ms. Plame.

Fitzgerald knew all along that someone else, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, had leaked Plame’s name. Armitage was never charged with anything and an investigation found the leak did no harm to national security. Libby’s conviction hinged largely on Miller’s testimony which should have made her recantation significant….

MORE AT LEGAL INSURRECTION!

And… BTW – Governor Huckabee agrees with me the “Dubya” had no balls!

OLDER POST BELOW

Did Cheney Lie? Did Libby Lie? No, Wilson Did!

This post is an import of an older post of mine dated July of 2007 (posted here April of 2015). It will be connected with my WMD page. I may update it a bit, as I go along.

Some seem to forget, conveniently, that the only person that lied in the Wilson case was, well, Wilson. Libby “lied” about when he found out Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA. She wasn’t “covert,” nor did he leak the name to the press. Libby simply forgot when he first found out about her CIA job and testimony showed that he talked about that fact before he said he talked about that fact. That’s the facts.

Yet after two years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame’s name. In fact, he learned early on that Mr. Novak’s primary source was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, an unlikely tool of the White House. The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity — and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert….

Washington Post, Wednesday, March 7, 2007; Page A16

A great summation of the above article is found at Yahoo Answers:

A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false — and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms. Plame’s name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson.

The partisan furor over this allegation led to the appointment of special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. Yet after two years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald charged no one with a crime for leaking Ms. Plame’s name.

Update: “The trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity — and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.” -Washington Post
Update 2: I cited an editorial from a liberal newspaper. Read the entire bipartisan senate intelligence report (if you can handle reading many pages detailing how the Wilson’s lied).
Update 3: I cited an editorial from a liberal newspaper. Read the entire bipartisan senate intelligence report (if you can handle reading many pages detailing how the Wilson’s lied).

I could defend Libby further here, but I have already done that. This is not the purview of this post. This post is to clearly show that Joe Wilson lied. I do need to — however — settle one other area here before we go any further, that is the “Yellowcake” ruse the Left often use.

You may want to watch an NPR liberal, a NYT’s lefty, one neo-con, and one Reaganite go at it on this very topic (video to the right).

FactCheck.org says this:

  • Both the Butler report and the Senate Intelligence Committee report make clear that Bush’s 16 words weren’t based on the fake documents. The British didn’t even see them until after issuing the reports — based on other sources — that Bush quoted in his 16 words.

Bush’s “sixteen word” statement in his State of the Union speech has been shown to be correct. People keep speaking about forged documents, however no one in the Bush administration or in print uses these forged documents as their source to say Iraq was looking to purchase yellowcake uranium. Sheeeesh! The British have consistently stood by that conclusion. In September 2003, an independent British parliamentary committee looked into the matter and determined that the claim made by British intelligence was “reasonable” (the media forgot to cover that one too). Indeed, Britain’s spies stand by their claim to this day. Interestingly, French intelligence also reported an Iraqi attempt to procure uranium from Niger.

Yes, there were fake documents relating to Niger-Iraq sales. But no, those forgeries were not the evidence that convinced British intelligence that Saddam may have been shopping for “yellowcake” uranium. But that’s not all. The Butler report, yet another British government inquiry, also concluded that British intelligence was correct to say that Saddam sought uranium from Niger. The Financial Times has reported that illicit sales of uranium from Niger were indeed being negotiated with Iraq, as well as with four other states.

According to the FT: “European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq.”

There’s still more: As Susan Schmidt reported in the Washington Post: “Contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence.” She goes on to report that the bi-partisan Senate Intelligence “panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.”

Score ONE for radioactive material, ZERO for the Liberal bloggers out there who cannot see past there MoveOn.org/Keith Olbermann/Nancy Pelosi brown stained noses.

Okay, on we trudge.

…After a whirl of TV and radio appearances during which he received high-fives and hearty hugs from producers and hosts (I was in some green rooms with him so this is eyewitness reporting), and a wet-kiss profile in Vanity Fair, he gave birth to a quickie book sporting his dapper self on the cover, and verbosely entitled The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife’s CIA Identity: A Diplomat’s Memoir.

The book jacket talks of his “fearless insight” (whatever that’s supposed to mean) and “disarming candor” (which does not extend to telling readers for whom he has been working since retiring early from the Foreign Service).

The biographical blurb describes him as a “political centrist” who received a prize for “Truth-Telling,” though a careful reader might notice that the award came in part from a group associated with The Nation magazine — which only Michael Moore would consider a centrist publication….

(National Review, preserved at Foundation for Defense of Democracies)

Unfortunately for Wilson, the bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report concluded that it is he who was telling lies. (See the Wall Street Journal)

Wilson claimed quite clearly in the press and in his book that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, was not the one who came up with the brilliant idea that the agency send him to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had been attempting to acquire uranium.

“Valerie had nothing to do with the matter,” Wilson says in his book. “She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.” In fact, the Senate panel found, she was the one who got him that assignment. The panel even found a memo by her.

Here is part of the Washington Post’s article:

…Wilson’s assertions — both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information — were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson’s assertions and even the government’s previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address…

[….]

…The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because “the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.”

“Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the ‘dates were wrong and the names were wrong’ when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports,” the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have “misspoken” to reporters. The documents — purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq — were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq — which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that “although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq.”

According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.

Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.

The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has “not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa.”

So does Wilson lose his “truth telling” awards? No.

Again…

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

FactCheck.org had this to say about Wilson’s report:

The Intelligence Committee report said that “for most analysts” Wilson’s trip to Niger “lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal.”

What you have – in fact – is a Looney Left who affords murderers and terrorists the benefit of the doubt over a President they cannot stand. They choose Saddam over Bush, they support Afghanistan over America (yes, Democrats are starting to say “get us out of Afghanistan” as well). It was the same during the Reagan years as well. Reagan and the U.S. were the bad guys for putting ICBM’s along the borders of Western/Eastern Europe. The horrible things that were said about Reagan and the United States by Democrats and the left leaning media are well documented. The same would be true but for the increased platitudes.

Montage of Media Parrots from 2000 (Bush/Cheney)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Rush Limbaugh discusses journalistic “parroting” talking points. He takes us back to June of 2000 when “Dubya” announced Dick Cheney as his VP — the montage is from 2:00-to-2:55, and the voices heard in it are listed on Rush’s site as well as belolw. Great stuff, I missed this montage from soo many years ago, even Conan O’Brian used it (January 2014). See more at NEWSBUSTERS.

Here are the montage voices:

  • AL HUNT: He meets all of George W’s weaknesses, lack of gravitas.
  • JUAN WILLIAMS: We see the son, who is seeking some gravitas.
  • CLAIRE SHIPMAN: They were looking at candidates with gravitas.
  • STEVE ROBERTS: But he has the gravitas and you can sum it up in one word, stature.
  • VIC FAZIO: It may go to the gravitas.
  • JEFF GREENFIELD: We’re to use the favorite phrase, gravitas.
  • LESTER HOLT: This is a vice president who brought gravitas.
  • WOLF BLITZER: This will give some gravitas, add some credibility.
  • ED ROLLINS: I think the gravitas that Cheney brought to the ticket.
  • JONATHAN ALTER: What he gets is gravitas, a sense of weight.
  • BOB KERREY: He does not need anybody to give him gravitas.
  • MARGARET CARLSON: It means that, you know, gravitas.
  • MIKE MCCURRY: I think he also needs some gravitas.
  • SAM DONALDSON: To give gravitas.
  • ELEANOR CLIFT: Well, he brings gravitas.
  • WALTER ISAACSON: He does seem to bring some gravitas.
  • AL HUNT: It’s called gravitas.
  • MARK SHIELDS: A little gravitas!
  • JUDY WOODRUFF: You certainly have gravitas tonight.
  • SAM DONALDSON: He displayed tonight a certain gravitas.
  • MARIO CUOMO: I think gravitas is the word. Unfortunately for the Governor, you can’t graft gravitas. … He has gravitas.

Larry Elder Puts Democrats “War on Terror” In the Bastille

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is classic Larry Elder! He takes us on a whirlwind tour of Democratic hypocrisy and dangerous foreign policy positions for political expediency.

Here is the Bush “quote” used in the audio.

[fbvideo link=”https://www.facebook.com/TheKellyFile/videos/1541262019421991/” width=”698″ height=”540″ onlyvideo=”1″]

 

Concepts: Are We Insane? Nope, Just You Van Huizum (Updated)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Yet another unfounded swipe at the Iraq War. John Van Huizum lives in a bubble where if he has come to a conclusion years ago… that’s it! History forever stays right where John wants it to stay. Here is an excerpt of John’s (click to enlarge it) article shows a complete lack of history. 

I doubt he think any differently about Vietnam based on his 1970’s conclusions. It wouldn’t matter that after 1990 — the fall of the Wall — 100,000 of thousands of Soviet era documents were now being translated and reviewed by military historians and good books based on MORE historical documents. Because these new documents support the traditional (and not the Left’s reasoning) for entering and fighting this proxy war of WWIII (the Cold War), this new information is rejected from the matrix of the left’s consciousness. But that is neither here-nor-there.

So, let’s deal with some of the contentions in John’s excerpted article. Firstly he notes that there were insufficient reasons for going to war.

May I remind him there were many U.N. Resolutions against Iraq that were almost all not met:

  1. UNSCR 678 – November 29, 1990
  2. UNSCR 686 – March 2, 1991
  3. UNSCR 687 – April 3, 1991
  4. UNSCR 688 – April 5, 1991
  5. UNSCR 707 – August 15, 1991
  6. UNSCR 715 – October 11, 1991
  7. UNSCR 949 – October 15, 1994
  8. UNSCR 1051 – March 27, 1996
  9. UNSCR 1060 – June 12, 1996
  10. UNSCR 1115 – June 21, 1997
  11. UNSCR 1134 – October 23, 1997
  12. UNSCR 1137 – November 12, 1997
  13. UNSCR 1154 – March 2, 1998
  14. UNSCR 1194 – September 9, 1998 (“Condemns the decision by Iraq of 5 August 1998 to suspend cooperation with” UN and IAEA inspectors, which constitutes “a totally unacceptable contravention” of its obligations under UNSCR 687, 707, 715, 1060, 1115, and 1154.)
  15. UNSCR 1205 – November 5, 1998
  16. UNSCR 1284 – December 17, 1999

….See Additional UN Security Council Statements…

Official U.N. resolutions aside, Bush went to Congress and made his case with these and many other points. One point being that Iraq was firing almost everyday on our fighter pilots in the no-fly zone. In the cease fire of the First Gulf War, this was enough — under international law — to RESUME aggression.

But I also argue very forcefully that WMDs (and AMDs) were found in Iraq. And I made a case for it via a debate with a professor of history from the University of Michigan. The ever growing case for it can be found here on my WMD PAGE. Another site that is more in-depth than my own is this one. On it we find an even more in-depth quoting of Democrats — in other words, not Cheney — making Bush’s case:

  • “One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line.”

~ President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998.

  • “Together we must also confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons, and the outlaw states, terrorists and organized criminals seeking to acquire them. Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade, and much of his nation’s wealth, not on providing for the Iraqi people, but on developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to deliver them.”

~ President Clinton, Jan. 27, 1998.

  • “Fateful decisions will be made in the days and weeks ahead. At issue is nothing less than the fundamental question of whether or not we can keep the most lethal weapons known to mankind out of the hands of an unreconstructed tyrant and aggressor who is in the same league as the most brutal dictators of this century.”

~ Sen. Joe Biden (D, DE), Feb. 12, 1998

  • “It is essential that a dictator like Saddam not be allowed to evade international strictures and wield frightening weapons of mass destruction. As long as UNSCOM is prevented from carrying out its mission, the effort to monitor Iraqi compliance with Resolution 687 becomes a dangerous shell game. Neither the United States nor the global community can afford to allow Saddam Hussein to continue on this path.”

~ Sen. Tom Daschle (D, SD), Feb. 12, 1998

  • “Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.”

~ Madeleine Albright, Feb. 18, 1998.

  • “He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.”

~ Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb. 18, 1998.

  • “We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”

~ Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, John Kerry, and others Oct. 9, 1998.

  • “As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”

~ Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998.

  • “Hussein has … chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies.”

~ Madeleine Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999.

  • “This December will mark three years since United Nations inspectors last visited Iraq. There is no doubt that since that time, Saddam Hussein has reinvigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to refine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.”

~ Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL) and others, Dec, 5, 2001.

  • “We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.”

~ Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 19, 2002.

  • “We know that he has stored away secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.”

~ Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

  • “Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.”

~ Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002.

  • “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction.”

~ Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002.

  • “The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons…”

~ Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002.

  • “My position is very clear: The time has come for decisive action to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. I’m a co-sponsor of the bipartisan resolution that’s presently under consideration in the Senate. Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave threat to America and our allies…”

~ John Edwards (D, NC), Oct. 7, 2002

  • “I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.”

~ Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002.

  • “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years …. We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.”

~ Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002.

  • “He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and any nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do.”

~ Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002.

  • “In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members…. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”

~ Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct. 10, 2002.

  • “We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.

~ Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002.

  • “Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime …. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation … And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction …. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ….”

~ Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003.

Nope, no one named Dick Cheney there.

Now, on to my second grievance with John’s ignorance of history. And it has to do with God’s existence and war. While I will grant him that Islam has inherent to it properties that make them go to war… constantly, their whole history.

John Quincy Adams is worth reading at greater length on the topic, as he provides some insight into what has been going on in Iraq now that Obama has prematurely removed our troops:

▼ In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar [i.e., Muhammad], the Egyptian, […..] Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST. – TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE…. Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. The war is yet flagrant … While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men.

Winston Churchill deserves a longer hearing too:

▼ “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries, improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement, the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.

Islam has not changed over the centuries. All that has changed is that never before have we been ruled by people who take Islam’s side against us.

(Click to enlarge)

Other religions do not. But the Left typically will think religion is the main catalyst for war throughout history. This is not the case. Let me repeat that, this is NOT the case.

A recent comprehensive compilation of the history of human warfare, Encyclopedia of Wars by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod documents 1763 wars, of which 123 have been classified to involve a religious conflict. So, what atheists have considered to be ‘most’ really amounts to less than 7% of all wars. It is interesting to note that 66 of these wars (more than 50%) involved Islam, which did not even exist as a religion for the first 3,000 years of recorded human warfare. Even the Seven Years’ War, widely recognized to be “religious” in motivation, noting that the warring factions were not necessarily split along confessional lines as much as along secular interests.

  • Alan Axelrod & Charles Phillips, Encyclopedia of Wars, Facts on File, November 2004
  • John Entick, The General History of the Later War, Volume 3, 1763, p. 110.

So I would argue the further you get from the Judeo-Christian ethic/God, the more violent a culture gets. As we become more secularized, we (Judeo-Christian adherents) meet snorts and ridicule: 

“No culture is perfect – far from it. But all healthy cultures reward virtue and punish vice, encourage what is noble and beautiful and discourage what is base and tawdry, promote liberty, and restrain license. [Every young man] must now dwell in a perverse anti-culture in which his attempt to practice the demanding virtue of purity meets less than approval. It meets snorts of disdain and ridicule.”

Anthony Esolen, Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity (Charlotte, NC: Saint Benedict Press, 2014), 54.

We know that our Constitution was founded for a particular people, which is what the left want a “living/breathing” constitution which is based in a different worldview than those who wrote it: “Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and practice” ~ Woodrow Wilson.

“…we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

  • John Adams, first (1789–1797) Vice President of the United States, and the second (1797–1801) President of the United States. Letter to the Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts, 11 October 1798, in Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull (New York, 1848), pp 265-6.

All this is lost on John however… it is like teaching a new trick to a very old dog. But people are entitled to their opinions… just not their own facts.

The White House Welcomes An ARMY Deserter As Hero

Published by Papa Giorgio

Watch Bowe Bergdahl’s unit team leader tell Jake Tapper that Bowe actively sought out the Taliban, HERE.

Via CNN

Just when you think that Obama and his admin couldn’t do anything so egregious as it has already has… Obama and Co. go and do something so jaw dropping that you would think it is fiction. Really. For those that are not aware of the story, lets start with Twitchy catching us up:

An American soldier, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been held prisoner in Afghanistan since 2009, has been released from captivity after successful negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban:

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was handed over to U.S. special forces by the Taliban Saturday evening, local time, in an area of eastern Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border. Officials said the exchange was not violent and the 28-year-old Bergdahl was in good condition and able to walk.

The announcement of Sgt. Bergdahl’s release was made earlier today (click to enlarge):

 

We traded five senior [again, senior] Taliban prisoners for a single soldier. Before we get to who the five Taliban prisoners were we should ask who the soldier is and how he was captured. CNN did a great job in telling the story at the top, likewise, Larry Elder catches us up with a Military Times article where he quotes from some of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s compatriots who served HONORABLY next to this deserter:

John Lilyea, over at This Ain’t Hell, smartly comments on the situation:

Since Bergdahl was “captured” or whatever happened, I took the position that we should all shut up about the speculation of the circumstances involving his capture. I heard rumors early in the news of his capture, but I always figured that if he had value to whoever who was holding him, he’d be kept alive – and no matter what he did, he probably didn’t deserve to be beheaded for it.

But, that’s all changed now that he’s in US hands and no longer in danger. I’ve been reading all of the reports on the internet from folks who claimed to serve with Bergdahl and I’ve read the lists of names of troops who lost their lives searching for him. But, I’m in the business of doubting everything I read that is related to the military on the internet. So, I’ll wait for the trial and/or the inquiry. You know there will have to be a 15-6 investigation (for an Article 32 hearing – a military grand jury).

I suspect that Bergdahl is a stank-ass hippie who accidentally joined the Army and decided to smell some Afghan flowers one night. I have no doubts that he thought that the Taliban or Haqqani Network would welcome him open arms, you know because of his inherent stank-ass hippie naivete. I have no doubts that he tried to escape from them at some point because, he escaped from the Army when things weren’t what he thought they’d be.

I also think that Shinseki resigned, along with Jay Carney yesterday because they knew the news would be swallowed up by the news that Bergdahl was released – I’m sure the news on tomorrow’s Sunday shows will be about the release of Bergdahl and how the President pulled off this great victory, and it will all be an attempt to cover up the scandals which are legion. By Monday, there will be no scandal about the VA – because Shinseki resigned and because “Bergdahl!”

…read more…

The Daily Surge also weighs in on the issue:

He had been acting strange, telling people in his unit he wanted to “walk the earth,” and kept a journal writing about how he was meant for better things. No one thought anything about it. He was considered a little “out there”.

He detailed his disillusionment in an email to his parents three days before he went missing. “I am sorry for everything here,” he wrote, “these people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them they are nothing and they are stupid.”

In another email he wrote, ” I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools,” he concluded, ” I am sorry for everything. The horror that is America is disgusting.”

Later he took some water, a compass and a knife, left his weapon, and departed. Later that day, a drone and four fighter jets began to search for him.

Weeks of searching turned into months. The military pushed his parents and fellow soldiers to sign non-disclosure agreements. The US government knew full well that he had deserted.

There is no way to know what he told the Taliban. The truth is we lost good men trying to find him. PFC Matthew Michael Martinek, Staff Sgt. Kurt Robert Curtiss, SSG Clayton Bowen,PFC Morris Walker, SSG Michael Murphrey, 2LT Darryn Andrews were all KIA from his unit.

Sgt. Bergdahl should be tried under UCMJ for being a deserter and judged for what he did. Bergdahl is not a hero, he is not a soldier. He failed his brothers. Now sons and daughters are growing up without fathers who died because of him and he will have to face the truth someday.

…read more…

Dick Cheney Weighs In

Stephen Hayes over at the Weekly Standard interviewed many of Bergdahl’s mates, and ALL of them he talked to consider him a traitor. In fact, in an Interview on the Hugh Heweitt Show about the below excerpted article said that he doesn’t know of anyone from Bergdahl’s unit who disagrees with the position that he is a traitor:

In an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, National Security Adviser Susan Rice claimed that Bergdahl “wasn’t simply a hostage, he was an American prisoner of war, taken on the battlefield.” She added: “He served the United States with honor and distinction.”

“That’s not true,” says Specialist Cody Full, who served in the same platoon as Bergdahl, and whose tweets over the weekend as @CodyFNfootball offered an early firsthand account of Bergdahl’s departure.

“He was not a hero. What he did was not honorable. He knowingly deserted and put thousands of people in danger because he did. We swore to an oath and we upheld ours. He did not.”

“He walked off—and ‘walked off’ is a nice way to put it,” says Specialist Josh Cornelison, the medic in Bergdahl’s platoon.

“He was accounted for late that afternoon. He very specifically planned to walk out in the middle of the night.” “He was a deserter,” says Specialist Full. “There’s no question in the minds of anyone in our platoon.”

[….]

“You don’t mail all your personal belongings home, especially your computer. It’s not like you can go to a sports bar — there’s no sports bars over there,” says Specialist Full. “You just wouldn’t give up your computer if you weren’t planning to leave. He knowingly deserted and he put countless fellow Americans in danger — not just his platoon mates.”

[….]

One uncomfortable question that has vexed those involved in the Bergdahl case: Was Bergdahl merely a deserter or was he, possibly, a Taliban collaborator?

…read more…

Okay. This gets us caught up with who Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl is, and how his actions have made him the bane of HONORABLE military men and women all across our nation. This next part has me wagging my head in disbelief. Walid Shoebat enlightens us on the matter. Obama had a Rose Garden press conference about the release that included Bowe Bergdahl’s father, Robert Bergdahl, giving an Arab prayer:

People are making an issue of the smile from Obama. They have valid points. It could also be a nervous reaction as Obama is flipping-out in his head about the disaster he knows is coming because of this call to arms in Arabic. Yes, call to arms. Shoebat:

…While the Obama administration is proudly touting how it was able to free an American soldier who was captured by the Taliban, what no one picked is the fact that Obama SMILED as soon as he heard the most famous war cry of Islam, “bismillah al-rahman al-rahim,” Arabic for “in the name of Allah the most gracious, the most merciful.”

[….]

The “basmallah” is the Islamic expression for victory and only indicates that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s father is a Muslim. Think that the man is acting as “Muslim” for a stealth operation to rescue his son who is already in good hands in Germany?

And what is with the long beard and trimmed mustache?

No this is not a bum, biker, or a Santa Clause fan. When one gives the basmallah, trims his mustache and elongates his beard, its the first sign of a convert to Islam, j

[….]

EVIDENCE THAT BERGDAHL CONVERTED TO JIHADI ISLAM 

We were first hit with news from Brietbart that the Taliban said that Robert Bowe Bergdahl’s son, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, converted to Islam, changed his name to Abdullah, and even trained the Taliban in bomb making techniques.

And like father like son, the young Bergdahl, also trims his mustache and extends his beard, as [this picture to the right shows]:

[….]

But is it the speech with the Basmallah, the beard and the trimmed mustache, the testimonies from his colleagues on his desertion, that confirm our suspicion that these men are Jihadi converts? Hardly.

What no one in the media captured was Robert Bowe Bergdahl’s favorites on his Youtube account. It reveals a dark mind, a collector of a litany of ‘terrorist favorites’, videos from training on how to become Muslim Jihadist to urging American troops to desert and even favorite speeches by confirmed terrorists like Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki, condemning America as a terrorist state:

WTF!?

This guy, who deserted his post, who has a whacked Islamic father, is who our men in the military died for!? We lost these HEROES…

  • PFC Matthew Michael Martinek, Died September 11, 2009 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom 20, of DeKalb, Ill.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Sept. 11 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, of wounds sustained in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Sept. 4 when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised-explosive device followed by a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire.
  • Staff Sgt. Kurt Robert Curtiss, Died August 26, 2009 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom 27, of Murray, Utah; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Aug. 26 in Sar Howzeh, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when he was shot while his unit was supporting Afghan security forces during an enemy attack.
  • SSG Clayton Bowen, Died August 18, 2009 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom 29, of San Antonio; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Aug. 18 in Dila, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. Also killed was Pfc. Morris L. Walker.
  • PFC Morris Walker, Died August 18, 2009 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom 23, of Chapel Hill, N.C.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Aug. 18 in Dila, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle. Also killed was Staff Sgt. Clayton P. Bowen.
  • SSG Michael Murphrey, Died September 6, 2009 Serving During Operation Enduring Freedom 25, of Snyder, Texas; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division, Fort Richardson, Alaska; died Sept. 6 in FOB Sharana, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit with an improvised explosive device. were ALL KIA FROM OUR UNIT WHO DIED LOOKING FOR Bergdahl.
  • Many others from various units were wounded or killed while actively looking for Bergdahl.

(Gateway Pundit)

…for THAT guy!? And Obama has a Rose Garden victory lap where a guy spouts an Islamic prayer?! I say again,

WTF!?

And, since when did the Taliban become anything but terrorists? Libertarian Republican reminds us of something:

From the NYTimes 2007, “Obama: Man of the World”:

  • Mr. Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent. In a remark that seemed delightfully uncalculated (it’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks), Mr. Obama described the call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”

Something Shoebat also notes in his post:

Obama has never declared the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and has no real testimony of converting to Christianity, as his pastor Jeremiah Wright stated:

  • I made it easy for him to come to an understanding of who Jesus Christ is and not feel that he was turning his back on his Islamic friends and his Islamic traditions and his understanding of Islam From the Obama Admins love of the Muslim Brotherhood, to this… please tell me how this helps American security and moral? Now the Taliban are official “enemy combatants?”

The next step in this saga, then, is to ask the question about who we are trading that are non-terrorists and what the consequences of such actions may be. The Daily Beast has identified them a bit:

According to a 2008 Pentagon dossier on Guantanamo Bay inmates, all five men released were considered to be a high risk to launch attacks against the United States and its allies if they were liberated. The exchange shows that the Obama administration was willing to pay a steep price, indeed, for Bergdahl’s freedom. The administration says they will be transferred to Qatar, which played a key role in the negotiations.

In the initial statements released about the deal, the White House declined to name the detainees who would be leaving the Cuba based prison Obama has been trying to close since his first day in office.

A senior U.S. defense official confirmed Saturday that the prisoners to be released include Mullah Mohammad Fazl, Mullah Norullah Noori, Abdul Haq Wasiq, Khairullah Khairkhwa and Mohammed Nabi Omari.

[….]

“They are undoubtedly among the most dangerous Taliban commanders held at Guantanamo,” said Thomas Joscelyn, a senior editor at the Long War Journal who keeps a close watch on developments concerning the detainees left at the Guantanamo Bay prison. Fazl, for example, was the Taliban’s former deputy defense minister and is wanted by the United Nations for his role in massacres targeting Afghan’s Shi’ite Muslim population.

According to the 2008 Pentagon’s dossier on Fazl disclosed by Wikileaks (PDF), Noori also was a senior Taliban military figure and, according to his Pentagon dossier, was asked personally in 1995 by Osama bin Laden (PDF) to participate in an offensive against northern alliance warlord Rashid Dostum.

Wasiq, a former deputy minister of intelligence, at one point tried to cooperate with U.S. forces in Afghanistan and asked for a GPS system as well as a special radio to communicate with the U.S. military after the U.S. invasion in 2001. His dossier (PDF) says that he was a crucial liaison between the Taliban and other Islamic fundamentalist groups while he was deputy intelligence minister. But the 2008 report also said he was holding out information he had on other top al Qaeda and Taliban leaders during interrogations.

Khairkhwa, a former Taliban governor of Herat, was considered by the Pentagon’s 2008 dossier to be a likely heroin trafficker (PDF). That dossier also says he likely participated in meetings with Iranian officials after 9-11 to help plot attacks on U.S. forces following the invasion.

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Here is more from Fox News:

Abdul Haq Wasiq

Thought to be in his early 40s, Wasiq served as the Taliban deputy minister of intelligence and “had direct access to Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin leadership,” according to an internal memo that assessed risk at Guantanamo. He reportedly used his office to support Al Qaeda “and to assist Taliban personnel elude capture.” He also reportedly arranged for Al Qaeda personnel to train Taliban intelligence staff. Wasiq belongs to the Khogyani Tribe and began his religious training under his father, Muhammad Saleem, who died in 1981.Three years later, he went to study Islam at Warah, a school located on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border near the Khyber Pass. When the Taliban assumed control in Afghanistan, a number of Islamic students, including Wasiq, went to Kabul. Wasiq has been accused by Human Rights Watch of mass killings and torture. According to a report by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, Wasiq “arranged for Al Qaeda personnel to train Taliban intelligence staff in intelligence methods.”

Mullah Norullah Noori

As a senior Taliban military commander, Noori has been described in government reports as a military mastermind of sorts who engaged in hostilities “against U.S. and Coalition forces in Zabul Province.” Noori, who is estimated to be around 46 or 47 years old, has developed close ties to Taliban leader Mullah Omar and other senior Taliban officials, according to a JTF-GTMO report. Noori, who was named as the Taliban governor for the Balkh and Lagman provinces, is wanted by the United Nations for war crimes including the murder and torture of thousands of Shiite Muslims. Noori has been able to remain a “significant figure” to Taliban supporters and sympathizers. According to government records, which are based on conversations with Noori, he grew up in Shajoy where he learned to read and write at a mosque in his village. His father was the imam at the mosque. As a boy, he worked as a farmer on his father’s land. In March 1999, he traveled to Kabul where he met with Mullah Yunis, the commander of the Taliban security base, and expressed interest in joining the Taliban. After the Taliban front lines fell in November 2001, Noori traveled to Konduz where he was trained and worked with Omar. Noori has been implicated in the murder of thousands of Shiites in northern Afghanistan. When asked about the killings, Noori “did not express any regret and stated they did what they needed to do in their struggle to establish their ‘ideal state.’”

Mullah Mohammad Fazi

As the Taliban’s former deputy defense minister, Fazi was held at Guantanamo after being identified as an enemy combatant by the United States. Fazi is an admitted senior commander who served as chief of staff of the Taliban Army and as a commander of its 22nd Division. He’s also wanted by the United Nations on war crimes for the murder of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Afghanistan. According to documents, Fazi “wielded considerable influence throughout the northern region of Afghanistan and his influence continued after his capture.” The Taliban has used Fazi’s capture as a recruiting tool. “If released, detainee would likely rejoin the Taliban and establish ties” with other terrorist groups, the Guantanamo report says.

Mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa

Khairkhwa is the former governor of the Herat province and has close ties with Usama bin Laden and Mullah Omar. According to the Joint Task Force Guantanamo file, Khairkhwa “represented the Taliban during meetings with Iranian officials seeking to support hostilities against US and coalition forces.” Khairkhwa and his deputies are suspected of being associated with an extremist military training camp run by the Al Qaeda commander Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was killed in 2006. U.S. authorities have also accused Khairkhwa of becoming a powerful opium trafficker.

Mohammad Nabi Omari

As a senior Taliban leader, Nabi Omari has held multiple leadership roles in various terror-related groups. Pre-9/11, Nabi, who is estimated to be in his mid-40s, worked border security for the Taliban – a position that gave him “access to senior Taliban commander and leader of the Haqqani Network, Jalaluddin Haqqani,” according to the JTF-GTMO report. Born in the Khowst Province of Afghanistan, Nabi Omari and his family were forced to resettle as refugees though In Miram Shah, Pakistan after the Soviet Union’s occupation in Afghanistan. In the late 1980s, Nabi Omari returned to Afghanistan where he fought with the mujahideen against the Soviets. During the early 1990s, he ping-ponged between Taliban-related positions and others, including a stint as a used car salesman. In August 2002, Nabi reportedly helped two al Qaeda operatives smuggle missiles in Pakistan. The weapons were smuggled in pieces and the plan was to reassemble the missiles once all of the pieces had been brought across. Nabi was caught in September 2002 and eventually moved to Guantanamo.

All this to say that these guys are really-bad-bad-guys, and that Bergdahl collaborated with the followers of these monsters. Besides becoming living martyrs in the Islamic world, what other deleterious effects does such a release entail for our military men and women? Dennis Prager opines well on the topic, mentioning that even if Bowe Bergdahl had served honorably, the idea that we negotiate with terrorists only increases the danger our military and citizens must deal with already:

This stuff makes you sick to your stomach.