‘This is a prosecutorial decision as well as a national security decision,” President Barack Obama said last week about the attorney general’s announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other al Qaeda operatives will be put on trial in New York City federal court.
No, it is not. It is a presidential decision—one about the hard, ever-present trade-off between civil liberties and national security.
Trying KSM in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda and the hostile nations that will view the U.S. intelligence methods and sources that such a trial will reveal. The proceedings will tie up judges for years on issues best left to the president and Congress.
Whether a jury ultimately convicts KSM and his fellows, or sentences them to death, is beside the point. The treatment of the 9/11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than as an act of war will cripple American efforts to fight terrorism. It is in effect a declaration that this nation is no longer at war…
Now, however, KSM and his co-defendants will enjoy the benefits and rights that the Constitution accords to citizens and resident aliens—including the right to demand that the government produce in open court all of the information that it has on them, and how it got it.
Prosecutors will be forced to reveal U.S. intelligence on KSM, the methods and sources for acquiring its information, and his relationships to fellow al Qaeda operatives. The information will enable al Qaeda to drop plans and personnel whose cover is blown. It will enable it to detect our means of intelligence-gathering, and to push forward into areas we know nothing about.
This is not hypothetical, as former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has explained. During the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman (aka the “blind Sheikh”), standard criminal trial rules required the government to turn over to the defendants a list of 200 possible co-conspirators.
In essence, this list was a sketch of American intelligence on al Qaeda. According to Mr. McCarthy, who tried the case, it was delivered to bin Laden in Sudan on a silver platter within days of its production as a court exhibit.
Bin Laden, who was on the list, could immediately see who was compromised. He also could start figuring out how American intelligence had learned its information and anticipate what our future moves were likely to be…
KSM’s lawyers will not save the government from itself. Instead they will press hard to reveal intelligence secrets in open court. Our intelligence agents and soldiers will be the ones to suffer.
Then again, that may be exactly what the President and his Attorney General wish to happen.
It’s not as if the President has been truthful or consistent during his occupancy of the White House on these serious matters. Just look at his previous comments on trying terrorists:
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid. – Dwight David Eisenhower
President Obama and his merry band of Statists idiots have failed. They have failed – again and again, and it will continue.
At some point you chowder-heads who voted for this amateur are going to see the damage he is doing to the country. He’s created more debt than EVERY PRESIDENT WHO CAME BEFORE HIM COMBINED.
I don’t expect you O-bots to understand the damage he is doing to our military, maybe because you don’t care. I don’t know.
I know the president doesn’t really care about our service men and women and their mission. He doesn’t care the same way other presidents cared about our men and women in uniform at home or abroad. He showed it before the campaign. He pretended to be something else during the campaign. He has faked and postured his way from Dover to Arlington to Fort Hood attempting to convince the nation that he has their best interests in mind and supports their mission.
And now as ‘His Ditherness’ struggles to find the lint in his bellybutton, our finest, our bravest, our most patriotic sit, wait, bleed, and die while the “smart power” you voted in as your new ‘American Idol’ makes a f’ing decision about the “necessary war”, the central front on the War on Terror, that he chided President Bush and John McCain over. You know the war that Candidate Obama thought was sooo important:
“His plan comes up short. There’s not enough troops, not enough resources and not enough urgency. What President Bush and Senator McCain don’t understand is that the central front in the War on Terror is not in Iraq and never was. The central front is in Afghanistan and Pakistan where the terrorists who hit us on 9-11 are still plotting attacks seven years later.”
I am sure the ripples of HOPE® and CHANGE® are reaching our troops here and across the ocean in the dusty military posts, forts, and bases knowing that Barack Hussein Obama – mmm, mmm, mmm – is on his way to save the day with his own plan.
Morale has fallen among soldiers in Afghanistan, where troops are seeing record violence in the 8-year-old war, while those in Iraq show much improved mental health amid much lower violence, the Army said Friday…
Though findings of two new battlefield surveys are similar in several ways to the last ones taken in 2007, they come at a time of intense scrutiny on Afghanistan as President Barack Obama struggles to craft a new war strategy and planned troop buildup.
Obama “struggles” because he has no f’ing backbone and no clue about fighting for anything more than a community center or the Olympic Games.
He struggles because he doesn’t trust his military leaders. The people in our country who have led lives of substance, sacrifice, and purpose for decades already.
Obama’s never done anything of substance beyond be a lawyer and politician – two of the lowest professions possible falling in right next to prostitutes and thieves, but wait, I repeat myself.
It takes more to be a member of today’s military and face the uncertainties of war than it does to demagogue to the likes of SEIU, ACORN, Organizing for America, Egyptians, Germans, and guilty white Americans, when you yourself have stated you have not done anything of measure.
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So, it comes as no surprise our Commander-in-Chief is already looking to run away instead of fighting against evil ruthless radical religious zealots who torture and terrorize innocents in the name of Allah:
President Barack Obama’s strategy for Afghanistan will include a plan for “how we’re going to get folks out” after a secure environment can be passed to the Afghan government, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday.
“We have been there for eight years. And we’re not going to be there forever,” Gibbs said. “It’s important to fully examine not just how we’re going to get folks in but how we’re going to get folks out.”
Gibbs spoke en route to Alaska, where the president stopped at an Air Force base in Anchorage before traveling on to Tokyo for his maiden trip to Asia, which will take him to Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea.
The president “has asked for, and will want, benchmarks to evaluate our progress,” Gibbs said. “That’s part of his desire to get a sense of where we are rather than committing to an open-ended conflict.”
But whatever the reason, this man is making a mockery of our country and our military. He is destroying our economy. He is destroying our way of life. He is rewarding failure and taking away our liberty. He is destroying 230+ years of real human progress. And he intended to do it ever since he fell in with the pathetic refuse that surrounds him.
Osama bin Laden was right when he called the America a “Paper Tiger” in his declaration of war against our nation, he knew more about the majority of us than we would like to believe.
The impressionable useful idiots in our nation who believe HOPE® and CHANGE® are actually something more than novelty.
As long as the Democrats, Statists, Liberals, Progressives, and sheep of this nation lead us, a paper tiger is all we will be and we will continue our decline because of them.
There’s been plenty of debate about President Barack Obama’s omission of the word “terrorism” when he spoke Tuesday at Fort Hood to honor the 13 Americans shot to death and dozens wounded last week by a Muslim army psychiatrist, Nidal Hasan. More broadly troubling to my mind is a word that Obama did use: “incomprehensible.”
[...]
“These Americans did not die on a foreign field of battle. They were killed here, on American soil, in the heart of this great state and the heart of this great American community. This is the fact that makes the tragedy even more painful, even more incomprehensible.”
That might be language appropriate for a private conversation with the bereaved, whose interests may well center on the unfathomable ways of death and loss. But Obama was not holding a private conversation. Onstage at Fort Hood, he was speaking not only to the immediate survivors, but to the nation.
In that context, the death dealt out on a routine day, in deepest America, by the hand of someone yelling “Allahu Akbar,” is not only comprehensible, but a predictable feature of this war against the United States. [emphasis added - jcrue] We may not know exactly where or on which day the next attack will occur, or with what weapons. But this is a war of many dimensions, in which ideas preached in one part of the globe can translate swiftly into murder–more aptly known as terrorism–in another…
If that truth seems too obvious to bear repeating, then why, at a freighted emotional moment, in a speech watched by the world, does it elude the president of the United States? [I have an opinion on that but if you have ever been here before, I don't need to explain it - jcrue]
[...]
President Bush understood this, and during his first term pushed the frontlines of this war back from New York, Washington and skies over Pennsylvania to the home turf of America’s enemies. He toppled two of America’s most aggressive and brutal foes–Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the al-Qaida-hosting Taliban in Afghanistan. He cowed and harassed their despotic brethren with his push to promote their worst nightmare: freedom for their own people.
Political correctness is a disease and one of the most debilitating agendas in our military.
It can be argued that fear of the backlash allowed the terrorist traitor Major Hasan to be able to murder his fellow soldiers. It can also be argued that it impedes our military leaders in their decision-making and their grasp of reality. It adversely affects those in charge of troops for fear of being investigated for discrimination when a promotion is denied or punitive actions are taking against others of a different race, religion, or background.
Worst it prevents our Commander-in-Chief and other politicians like him from being honest with the American people about the threats we face both foreign and domestic. It allows them to hide behind vague statements and cowardly rhetoric in their speeches – where no mention of terrorism, terrorists, terrorist acts, Muslims, or Islam are included for fear of what backlash these accurate, but touchy, subjects may cause.
We are cowards in our own country.
Here are a few examples of the political correction BS in our nation that is going on starting with the little know and moving to the big topic at hand:
An insufficiently colorful color guard? (via Powerline)
How deep does the culture of political correctness run in the military and the service academies? We’re getting some idea in the case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The Hasan story has rightly overwhelmed the news. Evidence of the red flags preceding his murder spree continues to accumulate and enrage. One inevitably sees in the disregarded red flags a case of political correctness run amok.
The story of the Naval Academy’s insufficiently colorful color guard has not quite broken out yet, and perhaps it won’t, but it provides additional context to the case of Nidal Hasan. It appears that Naval Academy senior commanders decided during the World Series to remove two Midshipmen from the color guard that appeared. What was their offense? The color guard was deemed too white and too male. There was accordingly a push to make the color guard more “diverse.” (more…)
On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting, “Allahu akbar!” (“God is great!”) committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.
What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Fort Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of nondenominational shoplifting.
Hours after the Fort Hood massacre, a grieving nation looked to the president for consolation and leadership. Instead, it got light banter and a “shout-out” before President Obama read a perfunctory statement. The president has always had a reputation for coolness, but in this case, he was utterly detached. He can’t blame the scriptwriter for his astonishing lack of empathy.
Mr. Obama was scheduled to speak at the Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs. Rather than canceling the photo op or addressing the tragedy from another venue, the president chose to open with the kind of obligatory thanks and recognitions that would be appropriate in any other circumstance but not this one. The emotional shift was jarring and confusing. It was as though he were an actor switching scripts heedless of the emotional content of the event he was addressing.
Mr. Obama recently came under criticism, chiefly from liberals, for visiting New Orleans but declining to view the damage from Hurricane Katrina. One local blogger dubbed it the “tinkle-stop tour.” “Not even a flyover,” one resident complained, referring to President George W. Bush’s aerial tour of the ravaged city, which many mark as the beginning of his decline in popularity.
Mr. Bush also suffered his critics’ ire for reading “The Pet Goat” to a group of schoolchildren at Emma E. Booker Elementary School after he was informed of the aircraft hitting the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He was charged with being out of touch, indecisive, tuned out. He was said to be unable to grasp the significance of the events unfolding around him.
The new president’s performance on Thursday afternoon was similar. As an anxious nation looked for reassurance, it saw a president conducting business as usual, seemingly unaware of the magnitude of the tragedy. By the time he got to his statement, the damage was done. It was Mr. Obama’s “Pet Goat” moment.
The man accused of killing 13 people and wounding 29 at Fort Hood is able to talk, a hospital spokesman said Monday, but it’s unknown when investigators might take advantage of his improving health to press forward with their probe into the shooting spree….
Sixteen victims remained hospitalized with gunshot wounds, and seven were in intensive care.
Democrats have never been good at going after the important threat:
November 7, 2009
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DROP THE BALL: “While DHS was busy putting tea parties and anyone who dares fly the official military Gadsen flag on the domestic terrorist watch list, a real terrorist was spouting off online, glorifying suicide bombings and our mission in Iraq. I mean, I’m sure if I drink enough I might be able to understand the perception that a bunch of middle-class people peacefully dissenting with certain Washington policies are way more dangerous than a dude who talked about terrorist stuff on social sites and had gotten authorities’ attention six months ago.”
UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “Ah, but those middle class protesters are a threat to politicians’ power. Terrorists are just a threat to their constituents’ lives. See the difference?” Such a cynic.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Washington Post: Officials may not have heeded warning signs. “Law enforcement officials also faced questions about whether they had missed possible warning signs. Six months ago, investigators came across Internet postings, allegedly by Hasan, that indicated sympathy for suicide bombers and empathized with the plight of Muslim civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a federal official briefed on the situation. The official, and another source, said investigators never confirmed whether Hasan was the author of the postings and did not pursue the matter.” Too busy worrying about Glenn Beck viewers, military veterans, and Tea Party organizers, I guess.
The plan would fall well short of the 80,000 troops that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, suggested as a “low-risk option” that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.
It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a “high-risk” one that called for 20,000 additional troops and a “medium-risk” one that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.
Duane : I’m not going to condemn him for what he did. I don’t know why he did it. I will not, absolutely not, condemn him for what he had done though. If he had done it for selfish reasons I still will not condemn him. He’s my brother in the end. I will never condemn him.Gavin Lee : There might be a lot of people shocked to hear you say that.
Duane: Well, that’s the way it is. I don’t speak for the community here but me personally I will not condemn him.
Gavin Lee : What are your thoughts towards those that were victims in this?
Duane : They were, in the end, they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them. It’s just like the majority of the people that will hear this, after five or six minutes they’ll be shocked, after that they’ll forget about them and go on their day.
Over at Biased BBC they wonder whether this is the same Duane Reasoner quoted today by the New York Times:
Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood, said Major Hassan was told he would be sent to Afghanistan on Nov. 28, and he did not like it.“He said he should quit the Army,” Mr. Reasoner said. “In the Koran, you’re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.”
Just last week, Hasan expressed views that Muslims shouldn’t serve in the military and fight other Muslims, according to Duane Reasoner Jr., a recent Muslim convert who had been having dinner regularly with Hasan.Hasan had taken 18-year-old Reasoner under his wing, mentoring him in his new faith. After evening prayers he would often buy a fish dinner for Reasoner and sometimes the iman at the Golden Corral, a chain buffet restaurant. Besides mentioning that he prayed for a wife, the conversation almost never strayed from religion, Reasoner said, describing Hasan as warm and caring.
Looks like Hasan has left some disciples to continue his work at Ft Hood.
Hey Duane, I suggest you stay indoors for a while, kiddo.
Hate for you to run into someone who disagrees with your anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish views there in Texas.
We offer our condolences and prayers to the families that have a person who died,” said Imam Mohammed Abdullahi over loud-speakers that carried the weekly Muslim prayer to several hundred worshippers gathered at the mosque.
“Islam is not responsible,” he stressed.
Maybe not, but I believe it played a HUGE, HUGE part.
Were the Major yelling, “Praise Jesus,” or, “Hallelujah Xenu,” I might take the imam seriously.
The best thing about all these stories about the Democrat Party and their idiocy is that it gives the chance for me to post a new bumper sticker idea I have. It’s after the jump below.
Let’s get started with the vapid chowder-heads from California:
‘We don’t look at either of these gubernatorial races . . . as something that portends a lot for our legislative efforts,” insisted White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on Tuesday, as New Jersey and Virginia voters gave Democrats a thumping. Unfortunately for the White House, its opinion no longer counts.
First thought on Tuesday’s elections: There’s a lot of firing going on in America, and now that includes politicians. Seems only fair and will likely continue. I don’t think voters in New Jersey and Virginia were saying, “Oh the Democrats are awful, and we hate them,” nor were they saying, “Republicans are wonderful, and we love them.” The voters were being practical, and thinking policy: “Will he raise my taxes?” In Jersey, they fired the incumbent governor because they couldn’t imagine the state getting off its current trajectory (high unemployment, high taxes, high spending) with him there. And they’re certain they have to get off their current trajectory or they’re sunk.
Both states hired new governors. The good news for the GOP is that they hired Republicans. The bad news is that if the Republicans don’t make progress, they’ll fire them too.
Second, it’s too simple to say this was a vote against Obama. Yes, he went to Jersey three times and draped himself like a shawl around the Democratic incumbent. But the crowds showed and nobody booed and everyone had a good time. What happened actually is more interesting. They just didn’t listen to him. Mr. Obama told Jersey to vote for Jon Corzine, and they didn’t. They don’t hate him, they’re just not hearing him. That’s new. They’re warning him: Hey you with the health-care obsession, shape up or you’ll get shipped out!
President Obama came into office insisting that his administration would press hard and fast to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But after nine months, analysts and diplomats say, the administration’s efforts have faltered in part because of its own missteps.
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And finally we have this comment from the president regarding the crazed man who killed and injured dozens while yelling ‘ALLAHU AKBAR’ at Fort Hood yesterday:
“We don’t know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts,” Obama said in a Rose Garden statement otherwise devoted to the economy.
I feel so much better with this guy leading our nation.
So, in closing, remember when voting in the next few years, we can begin to fix all our nation’s problems by remembering to do the following… (more…)
The White House says that Republican wins in two governors’ races were not referendums on the president.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Wednesday that voters went to the polls in Virginia and New Jersey to work through “very local issues that didn’t involve the president.” The presidential spokesman said voters were concerned about the economy.
“I don’t think the president needed an election or an exit poll to come to that conclusion,” Gibbs said.
Hundreds of tons of weaponry, ten times the size of the Karine A shipment of 2002, were seized in an overnight raid Tuesday by the Israeli navy, some 100 nautical miles west of Israel, officials said. The ship seized was sailing under an Antiguan flag.
The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama’s administration refused to disclose due to “national security” concerns, has leaked. It’s bad. It says…
Big Hollywood has already posted a couple disturbing videos of young school children singing/speaking praises to President Obama, but when eleven more dropped in our email box it came as quite a shock. What seemed like an aberration now appears to be a troubling pattern.
British soldiers at war are an incredible group. Courageous, competent, and committed in very difficult conditions. An email came today from London, from a BBC correspondent who has been to Afghanistan saying that Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid had been killed.
Staff Sgt Schmid, born in Cornwall, lived in Winchester with his five-year-old stepson and wife.
Christina Schmid said: “Oz was a phenomenal husband and loving father who was cruelly murdered on his last day of a relentless five-month tour.
“The pain of losing him is overwhelming. I take comfort knowing he saved countless lives with his hard work.”
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thomson, commanding officer of 2 Rifles Battle Group, said: “Staff Sgt Oz Schmid was simply the bravest and most courageous man I have ever met.
“No matter how difficult or lethal the task which lay in front of us, he was the man who only saw solutions.
“He saved lives in 2 Rifles time after time and for that he will retain a very special place in every heart of every rifleman in our extraordinary battle group.”
Lt Col Gareth Bex, commanding officer of the counter IED (improvised explosive devices) task force, said Staff Sgt Schmid had been a “legend”.
He added: “Staff Sgt Oz Schmid was a brilliant operator and a superb soldier. We loved him like a brother. He was a much adored member of our close knit family.
“With his tousled hair and boyish grin his effervescent presence was always good for morale and he had an infectious enthusiasm.
“His courage was not displayed in a fleeting moment of time – he stared death in the face on a daily basis.
“Many soldiers and ordinary Afghans owe their lives to Staff Sgt Schmid’s gallant actions and his sacrifice will never be forgotten.”
Since late this summer General Stanley McChrystal has been asking for more troops for Afghanistan lest we lose the war. Early last month those sentiments were expressed in a formal request for 40,000 additional troops. General Patraeus and Secretary of Defense Gates have publicly endorsed Gen. McChrystal’s request.
Since that time you have been considering whether or not to provide those troops and whether or not the use of those troops in a counter-insurgency strategy — similar to that employed in Iraq — is wise or not. If press reports are to be believed, then top members of your administration have serious doubts as to whether or not the strategy as outlined by Gen. McChrystal and endorsed by Gen. Patraeus and Sec. Gates will work.
Your inaction on this request speaks volumes and one can only draw one logical inference from it: you do not trust the judgment of Gen. Patraeus, Sec. Gates, or Gen. McChrystal.
If you trusted their expertise, then you would have immediately begun to implement their strategy.
Since it is glaringly obvious that you do not trust the judgment of your top commanders in the field or of your own Sec. of Defense, then why don’t you fire them?
If they are so wrong, then they should be fired.
Personally, I don’t think Obama has the stones in his shorts to fire anyone (his wife on the other hand…).
Obama has never had to do anything truly important that included personal responsibility and risk, that is why he is unable to make decisions.
It’s ‘Petraeus’ just in case your internal spellcheck rang.
On Friday, the Justice Department released reams of newly declassified documents on the CIA interrogation program. Among the documents is a revised, October 2009 version of the Justice Department Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s involvement in detainee interrogations.
This report proves, once and for all, that FBI interrogator Ali Soufan lied about his role in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah.
Soufan has become the hero of the left for his public assault on the CIA interrogation program. Critics cite him as proof that we could have gotten the same information from al-Qaeda terrorists without resorting to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.
The leader of a local mosque who authorities also are calling the head of an Islamic fundamentalist group was killed in a shootout with federal agents this afternoon during a series of raids that resulted in charges against a dozen men.
Luqman Ameen Abdullah, 53, leader of the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit, is accused in a federal complaint of heading a Sunni Muslim group with a mission of establishing a separate Islamic nation within the United States.
Abdullah, also known as Christopher Thomas, was gunned down after firing on officers as the FBI raided a Dearborn warehouse, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. An FBI canine also was fatally shot. Raids also were conducted in Detroit.
“The eleven defendants are members of a group that is alleged to have engaged in violent activity over a period of many years and known to be armed,” a joint statement from the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
A 12th man was arrested late Wednesday in connection with the investigation. Three of the men charged were at large Wednesday night.
Abdullah and the others were charged with conspiracy to commit several federal felony crimes, including illegal possession and sale of firearms and theft from interstate shipments.
As a military brat, a Marine, and a civilian I have always distrusted the Democrat Party and their values.
Once again, they prove just how f’d up their priorities are:
Twice as many Democrats say health care reform should be President Obama’s top priority as say the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should be his top concern, according to a new Gallup poll.
Gallup asked people this question: “Which of the following should be Barack Obama’s top priority as president — the economy, health care, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy, the federal budget deficit, or something else…?”
The numbers help explain Obama’s slowness in reaching a decision on what to do in Afghanistan. There simply aren’t very many people in the president’s party who believe the war should be his top priority — just half as many as those who say health care should be his top concern. When it comes to pressure for a decision coming from his own party, there just isn’t much.
When I see numbers like that I don’t see an explanation of Obama’s slowness. I see their attitude towards our military, their sacrifices and the what they really believe when it comes to helping others.
While our Narcissus-in-Chief is frozen gazing at his perfect image in his private pool, choices have to be made in Afghanistan. Consider the following…
“What’s going to happen if al-Qaeda gets their hands on WMD?” the pilot asked.
“They already have,” the defense contractor said. Then he told the story of how, just last January, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) had bungled a WMD experiment using bubonic plague.
“None of you press wrote about that,” the man said, eyeballing me.
I had to correct him because I did write about that story — for Pajamas Media [1]. My article cited two papers, the Sun and the Washington Times; I couldn’t locate any firsthand sources with access to the information. “How do you know that the information was correct?” I asked my fellow banquet guest.
“I was at the military briefing,” he said. Then he added that the briefing was not classified and included several members of the press.
“Why do you think that story wasn’t more widely reported?” I asked.
He said something to the effect of: there are some things the public finds easier to ignore.
I had the same reaction when I returned home from my trip on Friday night to read a single-line item on the Counterterrorism Blog [2]: “Switzerland: Terror cops arrest Collider scientist linked with al-Qaeda,” it said. The Collider is the largest nuclear research facility in the world. For at least the next forty-eight hours the story did not appear anywhere in the U.S. press, despite the fact that the arrested nuclear scientist, a 32-year-old Algerian-born French man named Dr. Adlene Hicheur, was being described by France’s Central Directorate of Interior Intelligence as a “very high-level” operative with AQIM. That’s the same group who’d been experimenting with bubonic plague earlier in the year. Adlene Hicheur had attended Stanford University [3], in California, in 1999 and 2002.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." - The 10th Amendment of the United States Constitution
Next, let’s admire our Community-Organizer-in-Chief’s and Team Obama’s stellar work:
