PipeLineNews Editorial Page
John Kerry, Sandy Berger & The Clinton Legacy
By - William A. Mayer, Editor & Publisher - PipeLineNews.org
July 22, 2004 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Now that Sandy Berger has fallen on his sword for the Kerry machine one must contemplate the rapidity of the move as being indicative of the seriousness of the affair. There is much more heat and light here.
Berger, former Assistant to the President for National Security for Bill Clinton, State Department foreign policy planner during the Jimmy Carter years and until very recently a key foreign policy advisor to John Kerry is currently under investigation by the DOJ for illegally removing classified documents from the National Archives.
The documents - which Berger removed from the by placing them in a leather portfolio, his jacket, his pants’ pockets and in his socks – should have been turned over to the 911 Commission.
Berger has admitted that the apparent theft occurred and that he “inadvertently took a few documents from the Archives" however it remains unclear how such a deliberate act of placing sensitive national security documents in one’s socks can be construed as being anything but intentional.
Additionally, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that documents were taken by Berger on five separate occasions, casting further doubt on the claim of inadvertence or “sloppiness." To further complicate matters it seems that each of the occasions of "inadvertence" involved at least fifteen pages of documents, meaning that possibly a hundred pages of highly classified information was illegally removed.
That Berger, who should at this point have been thoroughly discredited as a cheap hustler and member of Clinton’s inner circle, would rise to political prominence – this time in the Kerry camp - speaks volumes about the failed prosecution of Clinton’s fundraising scandals as well as the intellectual bankruptcy of the Kerry foreign policy team itself, which still counts serial liar, Joseph Wilson, among its brain-trust.
Bill Clinton, the man who among other things, diddled while America burned - presided over the theft of nuclear secrets and the exportation of hundreds of Class III supercomputers to China where they were most likely used in nuclear weapon’s research. He also was the man responsible for refusing on numerous to entertain offers by the Sudanese government to extradite Osama bin-Laden, reference our PLN exclusive The Clinton Administration And The Extradition Of bin-Laden - The True Story - by Janet McElligott.
At every juncture in Clinton's eight year journey of malfeasance, perjury and class warfare, Sandy Berger was right there along side him, demonstrating a total lack of concern for American national security.
At times, Berger acted more the agent of Red China than otherwise.
“…Berger failed to object to presidential waivers for Hughes Electronics Corp. and Loral Corp. - aerospace firms that illegally transferred technology related to Chinese rocket tests. The requests for waivers came as Justice Department investigators were closing in on the companies…" - Daniel J. Murphy, Investor’s Business Daily, May 21, 1999
During the period of 1994-1996 at Los Alamos and Sandia Laboratories, less than 2% of the foreign visitors from the “sensitive" countries of China, Iran and Iraq to the labs were even given cursory background investigations. – Source information - GAO Report: Department of Energy Needs to Improve Controls Over Foreign Visitors to Weapons Laboratories - GAO/RCED-97-229
Berger came to politics the same way Bill Clinton did, they both cut their teeth on the fratricide surrounding the 1972 McGovern campaign. He had no foreign policy experience and unlike most of his predecessors at the NSC he was neither an academic nor was he a military man.
Berger is a trade attorney who worked at the DC law firm of Hogan & Hartson. Berger specialized in international lobbying.
Today, Hogan’s strategic partner in China is Stonebridge International, LLC.
Stonebridge International is Sandy Berger’s company.
One of Stonebridge’s China experts is Berger’s former fellow NSC member Jeffrey Bader, who was director for Asian Affairs with responsibility for U.S. relations with China.
This is how the revolving-door world of DC works.
Berger is not a late comer to the Clinton feast of shame, he is a long time supporter, pushing his candidacy early in the process. He was in Little Rock when Clinton announced in 1992 and was chief of the transition when Clinton was elected.
Berger sat on the NSC at the same time he was also a key player in Clinton political strategy session that were mapped out by Clinton, Gore and Dick Morris – a highly unusual arrangement and one without historical precedence.
Ditto his activity in furtherance of fundraising.
Berger was the driving force that eventually allowed classified satellite technology to be transferred to China, as such he was in large part representing the Chinese government with an eye on continued flow of campaign donations and the building of future bridges, to wit his creation of Stonebridge.
Seen as a whole, Berger has been a consistent advocate for Red China, being an influential voice in fostering the maintenance of China’s “most favored nation" trade status, despite her obvious transgressions in the field of espionage, human rights and attempts to influence American elections via illegal campaign contributions.
Can you say stolen W-88 Trident warhead technology and neutron bomb secrets?
Berger's true allegiance was no secret however, as Senator Fred Thompson excoriating remarks during that period demonstrate:
“But there for a while it was really an unbelievable string of events taking place. You had an individual by the name of Wang Jun - the chairman of the Chinese International Trust and Investment Company, and the arms manufacturing company, which is run by the People's Liberation Army, connected to a plan to smuggle assault rifles into the United States - attended a coffee with the president on February 1996.
Ng Lap Seng, Mr. Woo - head of real estate development conglomerate with - from Macao, that notorious place where a lot of at least gambling racketeering is going on; a business partner of Charlie Trie; sent hundreds of thousands of dollars into here, into the states through Mr. Trie - got into the White House about 10 times.
Roger Tamraz - who we have talked to, over really the objections of the NSC - managed to get into the White House, I believe, six times, including seeing a movie with the president. Grigori Loutchansky - international businessman, linked to organized crime in Russia, the smuggling of nuclear materials, drug trafficking and money laundering - attended a dinner with the president in October, 1993. It was not at the White House, I might add, but that's another question.
And other individuals who, although these kinds of questions about them do not arise, it certainly would be people, I think, the NSC would have been interested in. The head of the CP group, single-largest foreign investor in China, attended a coffee along with other officials from the CP group. Yim Van Wong, Singapore billionaire, business partner of Mark Middleton, attended the radio address…PRC businessmen with Johnny Chung, attended a radio address of the president, and it concerned the president so much that he didn't want the photographs of that meeting to be released." Fred Thompson questioning Sandy Berger before the Senate Campaign Finance Committee Hearings – September 11, 1997
Thompson's bravado belied an eventual show of cowardice still difficult to fathom. Janet Reno was allowed to stonewall any meaningful investigation and the sight of hundreds of witnesses fleeing these shores in search of more hospitable climes is probably the most salient memory of the times aside from that stained little blue dress.
In many ways it marked the official end of the Gingrich revolution of 1994 leaving a hunger for justice hardly sated by Clinton's eventual impeachment.
So at this point the real question is not whether Berger should have resigned from the Kerry campaign in disgrace but how the shadow of Clinton still looms large in the party, poisoning all that it touches as thoroughly as when he was still happily visiting his West Wing annex sink more often than his Director of Central Intelligence.
'
©2004 PipeLineNews.org, all rights reserved.
The Catholic Theological Union And The Limits Of Understanding
By - William A. Mayer & Beila Rabinowitz - June 28, 2004
CTU is in the news again.
Since the beginning of this year, unwanted media attention been directed at the Catholic Theological Union's Bernardin Center, its Muslim Studies program and the program's embattled director, Dr. Scott Alexander
Alexander has been under fire because he is increasingly being seen as building bridges and associations - under the guise of Christian/Muslim interfaith outreach - to some truly reprehensible disciples of radical [Salafi] Islam.
A bit of history:
In February, as part of an ongoing series we have been doing about militant Islam in America, we came upon the activities of Oussama Jammal and the Bridgeview Mosque Foundation in Illinois.
Oussama Jammal is the Mosque’s president and Sheikh Jamal Said its Imam, or religious leader. It has a reputation for being a nerve center of Islamist organizing, recruitment and fundraising activity. As a result, it has been under law enforcement scrutiny for over a decade.
Bridgeview has a long history of funding groups like Hamas [In a February 8, 2004 article, the Chicago Tribune listed the following entities as having received substantial funding from Bridgeview: "Al-Aqsa Educational Fund, Benevolence International Foundation, Global Relief Foundation, Holy Land Foundation For Relief And Development, Islamic Association For Palestine, and the Quranic Literacy Institute"] - through a complex arrangement of financial ties provided by organizations like the Holy Land Foundation For Relief and Development [formerly the largest Muslim "charitable" foundation in the United States].
The Holy Land Foundation was shut down and had its assets frozen by the Federal government on December 4, 2001, a few months after the 911 attack.
"...the administrative record contains ample evidence that 1. HLF [Holy Land Foundation] has had financial connections to Hamas since its inception in 1989; 2. HLF leaders have been actively involved in various meetings with Hamas leaders; 3. HLF funds Hamas-controlled charitable organizations; 4. HLF provides financial support to the orphans and families of Hamas martyrs and prisoners; 5. Hamas' Jerusalem office acted on behalf of Hamas; and 6. FBI informants reliably reported that HLF funds Hamas..." - from the Dept. of Justice filing in the case of Holy Land Foundation v. Ashcroft.
On the day the doors of HLF were closed, President Bush presented the people's case straightforwardly, detailing where funds raised inside of Bridgeview ended up:
"Money raised by the Holy Land Foundation is used by Hamas to support schools and indoctrinate children to grow up into suicide bombers...Money raised by the Holy Land Foundation is also used by Hamas to recruit suicide bombers and to support their families."
It is interesting to note that not only is Jammal's Mosque located only a few feet from the now closed HLF office, but - according to the Chicago Tribune - it immediately hired the man who ran the office, Kifah Mustapha, in an apparently defiant show of continued support for the organization.
Bridgeview's Saudi trained Imam, Sheikh Jamal Said and at least one his Board members have direct ties to the terror network themselves:
“One of Sheik Jamal's fellow mosque leaders, Muhammad Salah, drew scrutiny for his Palestinian fundraising activities. In 1993, while part of the mosque's eight-member executive committee, Salah was arrested at a Gaza Strip checkpoint and accused of financing Hamas military operations. He was sent to an Israeli prison for five years. In a statement to Israeli authorities that he later retracted, Salah said a religious leader in America recruited him into the Muslim Brotherhood, which led to his involvement in Hamas...The man he named: Sheik Jamal…" – “Islamic Hardliners in the Heartland"- Chicago Tribune - February 16, 2004
Yet, despite the full knowledge of the controversial nature of Oussama Jammal and his Mosque [we discussed this in detail with Scott, before publishing the first in our series] Alexander invited Jammal to participate in CTU sponsored events.
The Catholic Theological Union, located in Chicago, is America's largest Roman Catholic school of theology and ministry. It produces more Catholic scholars than any other institution in the United States.
Given its high profile one would think that it might be more circumspect in its vetting process before bestowing its official imprimatur.
Dr. Alexander, as part of his Conversations in Faith series brought Jammal into the bosom of CTU. That occurrence, in February caused the American Jewish Committee representative to withdraw, rather than appear on the same platform as Jammal.
As we wrote previously and have since updated:
Alexander has proposed to expand the Catholic-Muslim studies program to include cooperation with the Center for Islamic Research at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem - funded by a $2 million dollar grant from the Lilly foundation. Al-Quds University is an institution known for its Hamas sympathies. Two Muslim scholars, Mustafa Abu Sway and Dr. Azzam Tamimi have been involved in the program coordination and have made presentations at program conferences.
Professor Mustafa Abu Sway is a documented Hamas activist . He came to America as a visiting Fulbright Scholar at Florida Atlantic University and was under investigation by the State Department for his association with Hamas. In May 2004 he left the US to return to his position as head of the Islamic Studies Department at Al Quds University.
Dr. Tamimi is the head of the UK based Institute for Islamic Political Thought.(IIPT) Tamimi is associated with Hamas and the militant Hizb Ut Tahrir group, which calls for the destruction of Western society and the implementation of a world wide Islamic government based on Sharia law."
Sari Nusseibeh is the president of Al-Quds, he is also the senior representative in Jerusalem of the Palestinian Authority, meaning he works for Yasser Arafat.
Nusseibeh has characterized what he euphemistically calls "martyrdom operations" as a legitimate form of resistance by Palestinians against Israel.
Witness Muhammad Farhat Nidal, an Hamas terrorist, who carried out a suicide attack on March 3, 2002 which resulted in the killing of 5 Israeli boys and the maiming of 23 others. Farhat’s mother [Umm Nidal] was widely quoted in the Western press as having strongly encouraged her son to become a suicide bomber and murder Israeli’s.
Nusseibeh went so far as to appear on Al-Jazeera television with Khaled Mash'al, a Hamas leader and Farhat’s mother, Umm Nidal. Nusseibeh, observing - in Arabic:
"All respect is due to this mother. It is due to every Palestinian mother and every female Palestinian who is a jihad fighter on this land."
This is the face of Al-Quds University, this is the institution to which Alexander wishes to build a relationship...in the name of peace and religious toleration.
Fast forward - June, 2004.
We find Scott Alexander once again attempting to grant legitimacy to a militant Islamist, in this case Fawaz Damra, the Imam of the largest Mosque in Ohio, located in Cleveland.
Damra was convicted on June 16, 2004 in Federal Court on charges of unlawfully gaining U.S. citizenship in 1994 by lying about past associations with terrorist organizations and faces possible deportation and a prison sentence of 5 years.
An important facet of the prosecution case against Damra was a series of wiretapped conversations that Damra had with Sami Amin Al-Arian, formerly a professor at the University of Southern Florida. Arian organized two front groups, the Islamic Committee for Palestine [ICP} and the World and Islam Studies Enterprise [WISE] the purpose of which was - according to INS affidavits - funding the entry of terrorists into the United States.
Arian [aka - "Amin", "The Secretary" and "Abu Abdullah"] is currently under [a 123 page] indictment for conspiracy to commit racketeering in furtherance of the group Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ].
The type of activity Al-Arian is being charged with includes, but is not limited to - conducting and attending terror fundraising seminars, inviting known terrorist into the United States to speak at these seminars, using the Internet to further organize terror networks and post their deeds and advocacy [orally and in writing] of "death to Israel and her supporters," i.e. the United States.
Another piece of the evidence against Damra was a video clip of a fundraising speech that he made to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a major terrorist group that contained the following pitch.
"...[Muslims should be] directing all rifles at the first and last enemy of the Islamic nation, and that is the sons of monkeys and pigs, the Jews..." Fawaz Damra, 1991
Maybe you can just consider that statement to be clarifying language for this 1989 snippet also by Damra:
"...terrorism and terrorism alone is the path to liberation..."
Unbelievably, Dr. Alexander submitted in writing, the following exculpatory “expert" testimony on behalf of Damra’s motives with the court.
"The rhetoric is principally used by political and religious leaders to galvanize resistance to what Palestinian Arabs consider to be the patent persecution of their people by Jewish immigrants to the Middle East…As unquestionably hate-filled and thus morally reprehensible as such language is, when Palestinians refer to Jews as 'descended from apes and swine' or encourage support for those who 'kill Jews,' they do so with the reasonably justifiable self-image of victim and persecuted, not of victimizer and persecutor."
Looking at Damra’s words carefully, it’s clearly more than the case of a bigot using hate speech. He is fomenting a campaign of murder based upon ethnicity, in a statement that would have done the Third Reich proud.
At the last minute Alexander, mindful of his having made a serious political miscalculation in fending for Damra, pulled the apologia he had filed, under withering fire from Chicago’s Jewish community - a large financial and intellectual supporter of the interfaith programs.
The fact remains that before the firestorm erupted, Alexander excused some of the vilest anti-Semitic speech imaginable under a disingenuous theory of moral equivalence, which argues that such statements can at times be justified if only they are viewed in “proper" [we must assume, terrorist] cultural context.
To bring this full circle let us excerpt from our previous series, the following refers to a telephone conversation we had with Dr. Alexander in the days immediately preceding the appearance of Oussama Jammal at one of CTU’s programs.
“We inquired whether or not he [Alexander] knew much about Oussama Jammal. He responded that he had known Jammal for approximately 3 years and that he had never heard him say anything vaguely troubling, nothing anti-Semitic or pro-terror.
I asked Dr. Alexander if he was familiar with the fact the Jammal's Mosque had been under Federal scrutiny for a decade and that at one time the vestibule of the Mosque was filled with Hamas recruiting posters?
Dr. Alexander's response was alarming, he claimed that Hamas and their terrorist activity was really no different than what the "Christian evangelical right" - people like Jerry Falwell - have brought forth.
Unbelievable as it might seem, Alexander feels that conservative, evangelical Christianity is responsible for the bombing of abortion clinics - and is not morally different from groups who conduct suicide bombings against Israeli women and children.
These are outrageous, indefensible positions for a scholar to take, let alone a Catholic scholar entrusted with cultivating discourse, reason and understanding. “
A look at Alexander's track record on this matter is damning.
He has not only personally associated with individuals and groups who represent the worst elements of Islam, he has appeared at their conferences and been lionized as an academic visionary by them - small wonder when the following quote is his stock in trade - it could easily be interpreted [especially given Alexander’s penchant for contextual manipulation] a thinly disguised defense of jihad.
“When nationalism is used to raise a fraction of the universal family in terms of economy, social service and military sphere then this is the nationalism that contradicts the fitra and the natural law." - Statement by Dr. Scott Alexander - MAS-ICNA Convention Dec. 25 - 28, 2003
Far worse; Dr. Alexander has actively recruited these people into CTU/Bernardin and structured the Muslim Studies' interfaith outreach programs around their militant sophistry instead of seeking to bring true moderation to the discussion of superheated matters of faith.
By his actions, Dr. Alexander has given official recognition to the enemies of Judaism, Christianity and in a larger sense the national security interests of the United States.
His actions have granted them a respectability that they could not otherwise achieve. Alexander is guilty not only of multiple instances of exceedingly poor judgment, but has shown himself to be a strident apologist for odious individuals and philosophies.
He displays a moral blindness - unless continued funding gets in the way - that is shocking and has disqualified himself from any claim of academic objectivity, having long ago crossed the line into advocacy.
So far Dr. Alexander's superior, Fr. Daniel Senior C.P., has been negligent in taking any meaningful administrative action in this matter, while Alexander attempts to remain aloof, refusing to comment, apparently hoping that this will somehow blow over.
Alexander is on trial, here, as is CTU. CTU's behavior, in allowing this matter to fester is inexcusable. No apology or retraction can or will change Alexander's egregious show of bad faith. We demand his immediate dismissal.
©2004, William A. Mayer & Beila Rabinowitz, all rights reserved. May not be reproduced without written permission of the authors.
Tenuous Links – The Media, The 911 Commission And The Truth
By William A. Mayer - June 21, 2004
In 2002 a highly placed network news executive scoffed at the hullabaloo surrounding the cable industry’s supposed audience gains with the observation that on average, the unique evening audience for the big three – ABC, NBC, & CBS – stood at approximately 36 million.
At the time, that figure was roughly ten times greater than that of the combined total of all the cable news providers.
Two years later, the best estimates on these figures places the network audience at maybe a little over 30 million, less than the somewhat more rosy exec’s semi-spin, but still nearly 10 times the size of cable’s audience, whose growth has flatlined [with only a 6 week spike during the onset of the Iraq conflict] since 2002.
So while we on the right, were busy feverishly arguing over the imponderable - how many Brit Humes, or Wolf Blitzers or Neil Cavutos could dance on the head of the cable pin - the network boys and girls continued to clean our clocks.
The networks do face serious difficulties, their evening news audience is already old - 60 years on average. On the other hand the average cable viewer is a relatively young 35. It is primarily because of this demographic reason that cable is viewed as a long term major threat to the networks, as is the democratization of the media in general. Those who now control the game don’t share well and don’t like to give up the home field advantage.
However until those charged with providing us with communication technology more fully implement the necessary infrastructure, relatively few will have access to the semi-alternative media.
The majority - and with it public opinion - will continue to be left to the tender mercies of the monopolists.
While future trends may be interest to some, this presidential campaign is run in the here and now and the above reality is not lost on those who run political operations and certainly not on the bright, seasoned professionals who run the Kerry campaign.
Item - from Kerry headquarters, a press release:
WASHINGTON, June 16 /U.S. Newswire/ -- John Kerry for President today released the following highlights from tonight's network news coverage on the validity of the Administration's claims of ties between Hussein and al-Qaida:
CBS:
"It is one of President Bush's last surviving justifications for war in Iraq and today took a devastating hit when the 9/11 Commission declared there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
'I think it's the clearest case of the administration misleading the American public to rally support for war and that misleading worked...'
...Those repeated associations left the majority of Americans believing Saddam was involved in 9/11. But the Commission today put the nail in that connection, or for that matter, any other al-Qaida acts of terror against America, declaring: there is no credible evidence that Iraq and al-Qaida cooperated on attacks against the United States. The report is yet another blow to the President's credibility as he struggles to find the exit door in Iraq, and opens him up to new criticism on the wisdom to taking on Saddam with Iraq's leadership still at large."
NBC:
"But the 9/11 commission contradicts the White House today, particularly on claims that
Iraq and al-Qaida were linked before the war... The report said that the meeting and other contacts between Iraq and bin Laden do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship.
...Critics say the president has gone out of his way to blur the lines between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks... It's clear this report is a blow to the president's rationale for war."
ABC:
"One of the Bush Administration's most controversial assertions that Bin Laden was linked to al-Qaida. Today the 911 commission said unequivocally, not so...
...The 9/11 commission staff report was categorical... But the Bush Administration continues to link the two... The commission found, however, that the only relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida was an apparent agreement not to attack each other."
Paid for by John Kerry for President, Inc.
How ironic that tag line.
Can you imagine how this must look from the perspective, lets say, of Karl Rove?
Imagine having the media compose your campaign hit pieces for you, offer millions of dollars of prime broadcast time and then run them.
For free.
Yet, that is precisely what happened on the evening of June 16.
Even for those of us who have soberly observed, throughout this administration, the relative hostility and personal animosity with which the Fourth Estate has for Mr. Bush, the sheer maliciousness that the media brings to bear on this issue is breathtaking.
CBS was of course most vituperative - but not only did all three of the networks totally misrepresent what the Commission said, they went several steps further; prejudging the effect [“devastating...another blow" in CBS’ parlance] of the media created controversy, alleging that that the justifications for invading Iraq were nearly all shot through, stating in no uncertain terms that Bush had misled the country and that as NBC stated the “report is a blow to the president's rationale for war."
The next morning, the print media ran with it also - lies spread across the front pages of nearly every major paper across the United States.
Whole cloth creations, without basis in fact.
For the record, this is what the Commission said, it is rather innocuous, and is exactly what the administration has been saying itself, all along.
“We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the US."
It does not say that there was no link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, just that the commission has no, what it terms “credible" evidence of a direct link between the September 11 attack and Saddam, no smoking gun.
Devoid of mention in the withering media anti-Bush onslaught are these gems from the very same Commission:
"There were contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda, a number of them, some of them a little shadowy. They were definitely there." – Commission Chairman, Thomas Kean
"A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting bin Laden in 1994." At that meeting, Bin-Laden and agents of Saddam "explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan."
Funny thing is that the media, under the previous administration’s watch was spinning a very different tale than what passes for gospel today:
“Intelligence sources say bin Laden's long relationship with the Iraqis began as he helped Sudan's fundamentalist government in their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. . . . ABC News has learned that in December, an Iraqi intelligence chief named Faruq Hijazi, now Iraq's ambassador to Turkey, made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden. Three intelligence agencies tell ABC News they cannot be certain what was discussed, but almost certainly, they say, bin Laden has been told he would be welcome in Baghdad." - January 15, 1999, ABC News
And the Old Gray Lady herself had a similar perspective:
“That indictment was returned before the embassy bombings and resulted from a two-year grand jury investigation of his [bin-Laden’s] activities in Somalia and Saudi Arabia, as well as reports that he had connections to a circle of Islamic militants in Brooklyn. The new indictment, which supersedes the June action, accuses Mr. bin Laden of leading a vast terrorist conspiracy from 1989 to the present, in which he is said to have been working in concert with governments, including those of Sudan,
Iraq and Iran, and terrorist groups to build weapons and attack American military installations" - Benjamin Weiser – New York Times November 5, 1998
Perhaps it’s just a case of short term memory loss, keeping track of constantly changing politically motivated opinions must be difficult even for those whose occupation is making slanted personal opinion appear to be reportage.
Let us also keep in mind that the 911 Commission is by no means the end-all-and-be-all resource for information relevant to this controversy.
In many ways because of its structure and composition, it is fatally flawed.
It does not have unlimited subpoena power, it does not have access to what may be significant intelligence on the subject for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is that among its staff and members are untrustworthy partisans - such as minority party panel memberJamie Gorelick - who would not give a second thought to disclosing information regardless of its potentially catastrophic effect on the intelligence gathering process, just as long as it provided short-term political benefit.
Similar leaks by people such as Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy have in the past, according to press reports, resulted in field operatives being killed after being "outed."
For those interested in the, by now, voluminous evidence of linkage between al-Qaeda/bin-Laden and Iraq, the most exhaustive assembly of which was outlined by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith in an October 27, 2003 memorandum to the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
That memo, which was leaked, has been referred to and characterized by Vice President Cheney as the most comprehensive accounting publicly available regarding the relationship between the ex Saudi terrorist’s organization and the government of Saddam Hussein.
The memo lists 50 possible contacts between them.
It has been written about extensively, by the Weekly Standard’s investigative reporter, Stephen Hayes, is available to any interested unbiased party and is partially excerpted below:
“5. A CIA report from a contact with good access, some of whose reporting has been corroborated, said that certain elements in the "Islamic Army" of bin Laden were against the secular regime of Saddam. Overriding the internal factional strife that was developing, bin Laden came to an "understanding" with Saddam that the Islamic Army would no longer support anti-Saddam activities. According to sensitive reporting released in U.S. court documents during the African Embassy trial, in 1993 bin Laden reached an "understanding" with Saddam under which he (bin Laden) forbade al Qaeda operations to be mounted against the Iraqi leader."
“8. Reporting from a well placed source disclosed that bin Laden was receiving training on bomb making from the IIS's [Iraqi Intelligence Service] principal technical expert on making sophisticated explosives, Brigadier Salim al-Ahmed. Brigadier Salim was observed at bin Laden's farm in Khartoum in Sept.-Oct. 1995 and again in July 1996, in the company of the Director of Iraqi Intelligence, Mani abd-al-Rashid al-Tikriti."
Two rather intriguing links.
Two of fifty.
Yet certain segments of the press, always predictably the same segments, ignore any information that clashes with their agenda, despite the fact that the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence directly contradicts their screaming headlines.
It may be news to some, but it is nonetheless important to remember that the Clinton administration - six years ago - in the spring of 1998 brought a sealed indictment against bin-Laden which also contains language suggestive of al-Qaeda – Iraq links.
The same year produced a stunningly revelatory Clinton White House official White Paper on Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
Perish the thought that these two documents would have any resonance today amongst the dominant media.
If this is degree to which the media will bend the truth and do so boldly in what passes for broad daylight, confident that none of their brethren will call attention to their Swiss cheese-like pronouncements, one can only imagine what donkey and pony show they have lined up for us upon the release of the 911 Commissions final report.
© 2004, William A. Mayer, all rights reserved
Creeps And Dead Presidents
By William A. Mayer - June 16, 2004
The week long period of national mourning over our fallen leader has now lifted and with it comes that nasty thump of reality.
That this time of blessed quiescence was accompanied by a period [however brief] of enforced sobriety on the part of the press was a significant, if fleeting bon-mot to an almost bygone day.
Imagine the necessity of having to be almost physically constrained from attacking the memory of the architect of a reborn America, and at precisely the time when he was most defenseless.
One might picture the righteous anger, welling up – mercurial – swelling and distending the veins of the hard core left, like petroleum supposedly infuses the souls of the evil Halliburton rich.
But we didn’t really have to wait very long for the first cannonade across the bow of USN Reagan, we didn’t even have to wait for those fey acid words spit out by Ron Reagan Jr. at the funeral…no, that act might very well be laid at the door of one Joe Strupp, Associate Editor of the New York Magazine, Editor & Publisher.
Editor & Publisher is the official mouthpiece of the publishing industry; as such it covers the often arcane details that only someone within the field would find even mildly of interest.
We count ourselves among that number; we like to think of it as a minor failing however…three Hail Mary’s, an Act of Contrition and go your way.
To be charitable, let’s say that Strupp brings a liberal perspective to his work.
Since we ain’t in a charitable mood, let’s call him what he is - a geeky looking, pasty faced lefty prick who cut his teeth at the People’s Republic of Berkeley’s Maoist flavored KPFA [July, 1994 Through May, 1997] as duly noted on his cyber-shrine to himself – JoeStrupp.com.
What may be most annoying regarding Mr. Stupp’s June 7, poison pen assault on Ronald Reagan, was its timing, the fact that he didn’t even have the decency to wait much more than 48 hrs before feasting on the still warm entrails of the President
It’s disgusting, but de rigueur among the left – fish swim after all and vultures…
“So the overwhelming praise for a president who plunged the nation into its worst deficit ever, ignored and cut public money for the poor, while also ignoring the AIDS crisis, is a bit tough to take. During my years at Brooklyn College, between 1984 and 1988, countless classmates had to drop out or find other ways to pay for school because of
Reagan's policies, which included slashing federal grants for poor students and cutting survivor benefits for families of the disabled." – Joe Strupp - June 7, 2004
Accuracy and taste aside, this one article reveals so much about what is wrong with the press that it is a veritable Rosetta Stone.
Strupp’s prose is written with all of the insight of a self-absorbed eighth grader, who castigates his father about slights real or imagined all the while whining about not getting a larger allowance.
It’s really victimhood raised to sacramental proportions and set within a dopey cartoon history presented Ex-Cathedra - leavened with Trotsky era class warfare rhetoric.
Actually, Strupp’s voluminous excerpting from what he apparently considers the responsible press [NYT, Washington Post, LA Times, Philly Enquirer & the Boston Globe] reveals him to be less the sage expositor than clueless scrivener, his inconsiderable efforts merely rendering a laundry list of intellectual clichés of little use in this ebb period in national political debate.
Fathom, if you will…“butchered facts, invented anecdotes, indulged White House chaos, and seemed dreamily unaware of the illegal deeds done during Iran-contra. He was guilty of all that, as well as union-busting, callousness to the poor, a failure to grasp America's multicultural destiny." – Philly Enquirer
Strupp revels in the temerity - a quality he seems to possess in spades - to equate Ronald Reagan with Bill Clinton - “let's not forget, however, that the often-mocked Bill Clinton accomplished much the same for his party, and despite the Lewinsky disgrace, left office with approval ratings that beat Reagan's." - not to mention [one might add parenthetically] having been impeached, in no small part for creating the most corrupt, vindictive and criminally incompetent administration in the history of the United States.
As water carrier for the indefensible, namely partisan press, Strupp does yeoman’s work.
However, in the ill-fitting role of fair minded observer , one near the helm of what should be a dispassionate trade journal devoted to the craft of the First Amendment, he fails so abysmally that a less optimistic chap than myself might nigh well conclude that there is no hope whatsoever of resuscitating a media which has been so long on an ego driven, leftward spiraling bender that only a cataclysmic re-taking of the barricades and parapets so long ago abandoned by the right, might prove a suitable counter.
© 2004 William A. Mayer, all rights reserved.
Tragic French Offensive Stalled On Beaches
By William A. Mayer, Editor & Publisher - PipeLineNews.org
Normandy, France - June 6, 1944
Pandemonium, shock and sheer terror predominate today’s events in Europe.
In an as yet unfolding apparent fiasco, Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight David Eisenhower’s troops got a rude awakening this morning at Omaha Beach here in Normandy.
Due to insufficient planning and lack of a workable entrance strategy, soldiers of the 1st and 29th Infantry as well as Army Rangers are now bogged down and sustaining heavy casualties inflicted on them by dug-in insurgent positions located 170 feet above on cliffs overlooking the beaches; beaches which resemble blood soaked killing fields at the time of this mid-morning filing.
Bodies, parts of bodies and blood are the order of the day here, the screams of the dying and the stillness of the dead mingle in testament to this terrible event.
Morale can only be described as extremely poor - in some companies all the officers have been either killed or incapacitated, leaving only poorly trained privates to fend for themselves.
Things appear to be going so poorly that Lt. General Omar Bradley has been rumored to be considering breaking off the attack entirely. As we go to press embattled U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s spokesman has not made himself available for comment at all, fueling fires that something has gone disastrously awry.
The government at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is in a distinct lock-down mode and the Vice President’s location is presently and officially undisclosed.
Whether the second in command should have gone into hiding during such a crisis will have to be answered at some future time, but many agree it does not send a good signal.
Miles behind the beaches and adding to the chaos, U.S. Naval gunships have inflicted many friendly fire casualties, as huge high explosive projectiles rain death and destruction on unsuspecting Allied positions. The lack of training of Naval gunners has been called into question numerous times before and today’s demonstration seems to underlie those concerns.
At Utah Beach the situation is also grim, elements of the 82nd and 101st Airborne seemed to be in disarray as they missed their primary drop zones behind the area believed to comprise the militant’s front lines. Errant paratroopers have been hung up in trees, breaking arms and legs, rendering themselves easy targets for those defending this territory.
On the beach front itself the landing area was missed, catapulting US forces nearly 2,000 yards South of the intended coordinates, thus placing them that much farther away from the German insurgents and unable to direct covering fire or materially add to the operation.
Casualties at day’s end are nothing short of horrific; at least 8,000 and possibly as many as 9,000 were wounded in the haphazardly coordinated attack, which seems to have no unifying purpose or intent. Of this number at least 3,000 have been estimated as having been killed, making June 6th by far, the worst single day of the war which has dragged on now - with no exit strategy in sight - as the American economy still struggles to recover from Herbert Hoover’s depression and its 25% unemployment.
Military spending has skyrocketed the national debt into uncharted regions, lending another cause for concern. When and if the current hostilities finally end it may take generations for the huge debt to be repaid.
On the planning end of things, experts wonder privately if enough troops were committed to the initial offensive and whether at least another 100,000 troops should have been added to the force structure before such an audacious undertaking. Communication problems also have made their presence felt making that an area for further investigation by the appropriate governmental committees.
On the home front, questions and concern have been voiced. A telephone poll has shown dwindling support for the wheel-chair bound Commander In Chief, which might indicate a further erosion of support for his now three year-old global war.
Of course the President’s precarious health has always been a question. He has just recently recovered from pneumonia and speculation persists whether or not he has sufficient stamina to properly sustain the war effort. This remains a topic of furious discussion among those questioning his competency.
Today’s costly and chaotic landing compounds the President’s already large credibility problem.
More darkly, this phase of the war, commencing less than six months before the next general election, gives some the impression that Roosevelt may be using this offensive simply as a means to secure re-election in the fall.
Underlining the less than effective Ally attack, German casualties - most of them innocent and hapless conscripts - seem not to be as severe as would be imagined. A German minister who requested anonymity stated categorically that “the aggressors were being driven back into the sea amidst heavy casualties, the German people seek no wider war."
"The news couldn't be better," Adolph Hitler said when he was first informed of the D-Day assault earlier this afternoon. "As long as they were in Britain we couldn't get at them. Now we have them where we can destroy them."
German minister Goebbels had been told of the Allied airborne landings at 0400 hours.
"Thank God, at last," he said. "This is the final round."
© 2004 William A. Mayer, all rights reserved.
Another Day, Another Muslim Atrocity, Part II – Lessons Unlearned
By William A. Mayer - May 13, 2004
Over the weekend I had the occasion to stumble across an article entitled “If General Patton Were President".
Until the murder of Nick Berg I had no framework within which to place the piece, but that is no longer the case.
Let’s play.
The article in question was offered, I am sure, in a good natured way to illuminate just how easy it would be to run US foreign policy if only a regular, meat and potatoes, no-nonsense warrior type guy were calling the shots.
Of course it should go without saying that General Patton’s boss, General Dwight David Eisenhower actually was president - for two terms [1952-1960] mind you - and did none of the things suggested in the essay, but that is probably an unfair use of the truth, so let’s put it in abeyance, at least for right now.
So let’s see what the populist type attitude represented by this essay would have had General Patton doing.
Well for starters the General would turn tail and run, not walk from Iraq, claiming that America’s feelings had been hurt by the non-support of the effort by most of the world’s governments.
“This morning I gave the order for a complete removal of all American forces from Iraq. This action will be complete within 30 days."
Given Patton’s dogged determination displayed throughout World War II and especially during the Battle of the Bulge it’s hard to fathom him authorizing this, but I guess anything is possible these days.
Next our make believe Patton character calls for an end to foreign aid, both to punish those who did not stand with us in Iraq [a conflict we just abandoned and lost, thus proving those who refused to stand with us, correct in the first place] and to pay for our effort there during that, now aborted, war.
“Let me start by saying that effective immediately, foreign aid to those nations on List #2 ceases immediately and indefinitely. The money saved during the first year alone will pretty much pay for the costs of the Iraqi war."
Best estimates are that total authorized US foreign aid for 2004 is $28 billion [which includes aid to the UN]. So far $87 billion has been appropriated for the Iraq effort and another $25 billion will be needed shortly. This gives us a total of $112 billion, subtracting “Patton’s" evil foreign aid leaves us with a shortfall of merely $84 billion.
That is billion with a “B", folks.
Now it is true that Patton was a military leader, and as such not a bean counter by trade; but a commander so obtuse as to think the above equation is in balance might just not be the kind of guy to be making such decisions in the first place.
You think?
Ok, after dispatching those two thorny problems our beloved General becomes bellicose again, this time threatening the terrorists who have just defeated us in Iraq.
“On that note, a word to terrorist organizations. Screw with us and we will hunt you down and eliminate you and all your friends from the face of the earth."
But, but, but…we just ran away from Iraq Mr. Patton, do you think our white flagged threats and brown stained underwear will scare them? Especially since we also just abandoned the only democracy in the Mid East also – Israel - to Hamas, Al-Qaeda and the terrorist states?
“To Israel and the Palestinian Authority. You, boys. Work out a peace deal now. Just note that Camp David is closed. Maybe all of you can go to Russia for negotiations"
Bottom line?
After this simple, edifying and wildly popular five minute speech we have lost all credibility with every nation in the world, given radical Islam its biggest victory in 1,300 years, given up whatever leverage we ever had with foreign governments and thrown our friends the Israelis back to the Nazis, this time in Kaffiyehs.
We have also most likely sealed our own fate proving once and for all throughout the land where radical Islam holds sway, that the West is weak, decadent and without moral fiber.
Scenario:
Saudi Arabia falls within a year to a Wahabi revolution.
Israel is defeated by a Palestinian led Arab military coalition in 6 months, failing to use its few nuclear weapons because France and Germany having promised nuclear retaliation due to the fear of being taken over by their own indigenous Islamic populations. President Arafat dissolves the State of Israel - an action which is sanctioned by the United Nations - whose diplomat’s cars had just been impounded on orders by Patton.
“I have instructed the Mayor of New York City to begin towing the many UN diplomatic vehicles located in Manhattan with more than two unpaid tickets to sites where those vehicles will be stripped, shredded and crushed."
Arafat orders the execution of all Israeli men over the age of 18.
Oil hits $150 a barrel, the US economy crashes, causing a global depression.
A clique of Soviet generals sell 25 suitcase nuclear devices to Chechen Islamic terrorists to raise much needed cash and to buy time for the Moscow government.
Within 90 days 15 major US cities [we intercepted 10 of the suitcase nukes] are destroyed by low yield nuclear weapons, courtesy of Al-Qaeda.
US civil disorder causes martial law to be invoked with shoot to kill the order of the day.
The international situation spins further out of control and downward from there.
Conclusion: Get real citizens, quit your bitching, get with the program and read the goddamn writing on the wall before it’s too late.
2004© William A. Mayer/PipeLineNews/PipeLineMedia, Inc., all rights reserved.
Another Day, Another Muslim Atrocity
By William A. Mayer - May 12, 2004
These are troubling times, but they are assuredly the most comfortable troubling times in history.
The television commentators look like movie stars, the talking heads look like movie stars. Little girls on the street, revealing far too much flesh, look like mini-movie stars as do their older brothers, revealing far too much in the baggy shorts chumpy attitude department.
Mom wears Dior, dad…Armani.
It’s so easy, far too easy.
Even the journalists, who toil in relative obscurity, look more like movie stars than many movie stars of yesteryear, sitting behind multi-thousand dollar banks of computers and video monitors. We have access to the Internet at T-3 speeds. We are wired in like never before.
We watch a battle half a world away in real time and mistakenly allow ourselves to think that we are actually there, choking on the dust and acrid smoke, ears ringing long after the action ends.
We delude ourselves constantly, offering simplistic battlefield advice wholly inappropriate to the situation.
Yet because we are exempt from the actual consequences of these malformed suggestions, we continue to gladly trod the road of undeserved certitude.
Kill them all…pull them out…do this…do that…
At times it seems pointless to carry on in the face of such confusion.
But carry on we must, there is really no alternative.
And that is where President Bush finds himself.
Not necessarily beleaguered, but certainly under attack from all sides. The left pushing for his ouster, driven by the same mindset that brought about the Soviet Union. Some on the right, operating on the assumption that actions do not have consequences, auguring for the tactical nuclear option in Iraq.
Two sides, both mistaken, both increasingly driven by rage.
While we understand the animus of the left, that of the right is less easily explained.
We have noted from the very inception of the Bush administration that many on the right have been expecting to “get sold down the river" in one form or another. These people interpret the world through the peculiar lens of that expectation and of course it taints everything that falls upon their gaze.
Their glass is smudged with greasy fingerprints and always half empty.
The president’s actions in Iraq being only the most recent reason for their imagined abandonment and consequent knee-jerk fatalism.
Today, and nearly every day that we battle the philosophy that lead to 911, we are presented with examples of terrorists doing what terrorists do, brutally conducting themselves in such a manner as to intimidate those of a less warlike countenance.
It seems that for some, the previous night’s sleep has miraculously removed the assorted bogeymen and bad characters from the world, a world only to be shattered again by the next opportunistic attack.
Such is the unfortunate case of Nick Berg, Westchester, PA.
Nick was in the wrong place at the wrong time and for his efforts to help the Iraqi people, had his head hacked off by Islamic sub-humans.
That this happened was no revelation to me, it should have been no revelation to you, gentle readers, either.
In this war you must, WE must, keep a bit of that outrage - of 911, of reporter Danny Pearl, of the 700 plus servicemen who have so far died in this war, and now of just plain folks Nick Berg - always resident in our hearts.
We must never forget what the enemy is like, how little they differ from Mohammed’s hordes as they swept across Europe in the last part of the first millennium AD. We must constantly remember that what was done to Nick is the fate that the enemy wants to visit upon your wife, your husband and your children, preferably in front of you.
These people deserve no mercy; they do not deserve a dignified soldier’s death.
What they deserve is too horrific to even speculate upon in this space.
But we must not let this rage contaminate our thinking; we must not turn inwards on ourselves, picking at each other like animals pick at their wounded.
We must keep our criticism in check and realize that all of us are operating on imperfect knowledge that we do not and never will - until this is over once and for all - have the depth of information necessary to make a reasonable judgment regarding what policy is best followed as the war is being prosecuted.
We have a further impediment.
Americans - European Americans primarily - are a direct lot. It’s probably still a remnant of the scientific revolution that percolates throughout our genes. This leads us to analyze, quantify and take prescriptive action.
“Bad guys over there, apply force X in sufficient amount. Repeat as necessary, screw the collateral damage."
Easy in the laboratory, not so easy in real life where the United States is already feared and envied, perceived, pejoratively, as the new Rome.
You may say, beget the world, we can make them soil themselves and tremble under their beds in ways they can’t even imagine, we can turn their world into fiery hell at the press of a button and not even break a sweat.
That is true, but then that is what Rome would have done, and Rome is but a memory…as well as a warning.
We Americans are supremely competitive and confident. If it’s important to us, we will win.
Period.
And win this war we must, just not in the manner in which World War II was won.
That was a different time, never to return.
No, this war calls for a different mindset, one that I have no doubt will finally become operative.
We must be brutal, when brutality is indicated, but not brutal just to satiate the blood lust which now boils in most of us just below the surface.
We must be duplicitous, when duplicity suits our endgame, not just for the sake of confounding our enemies.
We must be magnanimous in victory, though our adversaries do not deserve it, because maybe their children or their children’s children just might.
Above all we must be patient, we must be deliberate and we must rely upon the wisdom provided by faith in God that our cause is just and we will pursue it justly.
For justice, true justice is our goal.
This is both an historic challenge and an historic opportunity.
There is so much to gain and there is a world to lose.
I trust that we will have the wisdom to see that for what it is.
2004© William A. Mayer/PipeLineNews/PipeLineMedia, Inc., all rights reserved.
Hazing At Baghdad U
By William A. Mayer - May 10, 2004
At the center of the Iraqi prisoner controversy, stand six individuals accused of abusing approximately 20 detainees at Saddam’s infamous Abu Ghraib jail in Baghdad.
These six have already been reprimanded by the US military, another six are currently under investigation for having possibly participated in the incidents, all of which seem to have occurred in November and December of 2003.
Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, was the head of the 800th Military Police Brigade and in charge of the entire Iraqi prison system which includes the Abu Ghraib jail. She was also in command of the 3,400 National Guard troops assigned to the city of Mosul.
Karpinski [whose husband continues to serve in Oman] denies any knowledge of the events, claiming to have been “shocked" when the information became public.
Regardless, she has been reprimanded and relieved of command, a career destroyed.
So what exactly is the grave activity that those involved in this behavior are accused of?
Humiliation basically, that and placing subjects in circumstances where they believed that peril could ensue.
No actual physical torture is being alleged.
No skin broken, no bones shattered, no cattle prods, no meat hooks.
What we find of particular interest is the contrast between the worst that has occurred in Abu Ghraib under the coalition and the worst that occurred under Saddam and to a lesser extent which continues to occur in nearly every Muslim penal institution in the Middle East - every day of the week.
Under Saddam, such horrific acts of cruelty were inflicted upon hundreds of thousands - as official state policy - that it’s really beyond comprehension.
It is also without modern historical precedent.
Whereas the Nazis murdered millions, they refrained from the pure demonic brutality that Saddam bathed in for all of his adult life. The Third Reich was an ice-cold killing machine, designed to systematically eliminate certain ethnic and religious minorities in the most efficient manner. It was simply beyond the scope of Hitler's vision or desire to see his victims piteously reduced to quivering dead meat.
Saddam reveled in it.
So again we must ask ourselves, what exactly is the coalition guilty of, if the worst comes to pass?
If you strip the charges of their political radioactivity, you could jocularly characterize the incidents as a rough form of hazing - call it Sigma Abu Ghraib.
Every year probably fifty-thousand American kids must run a similar gauntlet, mostly in activities set in and around institutions of advanced learning – frat houses and intramural sports teams primarily. There is no reason here to go into to oft-times perverted and sadistic sexual nature of the most extreme of these college rituals, ample evidence exists and has been extensively catalogued.
Are there differences between what we may disapprove of in theory but tolerate in practice on American campuses and what apparently has taken place in Iraq?
Absolutely.
Students are not captives of an almost omnipotent foreign power, they are not in confinement and dependent upon their keepers for the necessities of life and only the most severe of cases seem to rival what we have seen in the media’s feeding frenzy so far, but the fact remains that the parallels are there.
But that is not really the entire point.
What has been lost here is perspective, there is precious little in evidence.
First let us remember that in his salt-the-earth depravity, Saddam opened the prisons in anticipation of the coalition attack. Those released were mostly common criminals – rapists, murderers and thieves. It is from this socially deviant demographic that a substantial number of Abu Ghraib’s past and current prison population were drawn. Along with them are a significant contingent of dead-enders, unreconstructed Baathists, assorted crazies and those newly conscripted into the hate America club.
These are the people who inhabit the Iraqi prison system, most minor offenders are released in short order, there simply isn’t room to hold everyone who commits a lesser offense.
And it is among these specimens of social pathology that our troops live and work. In a very real sense the jailers in this type of arrangement become the jailed themselves.
This is neither being offered as an excuse, nor even as an extenuating circumstance. It's merely explanatory, as is the fact that the safety of the coalition forces demands that a high priority be placed upon information gleaned from interrogations and one of the duties of those in charge of the incarceration mechanism is to set the tone to make those interrogations effective.
ASSESSMENT OF DoD COUNTER-TERRORISM INTERROGATION AND DETENTION OPERATIONS IN IRAQ (MG MILLER’S ASSESSMENT)
"1. (S/NF) ...The Executive Summary also stated that detention operations must act as an enabler for interrogation. (ANNEX 20)
2. (S/NF) With respect to interrogation, MG Miller’s Team recommended that CJTF-7 dedicate and train a detention guard force subordinate to the Joint Interrogation Debriefing Center (JIDC) Commander that “sets the conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees." Regarding Detention Operations, MG Miller’s team stated that the function of Detention Operations is to provide a safe, secure, and humane environment that supports the expeditious collection of intelligence. However, it also stated “it is essential that the guard force be actively engaged in setting the conditions for successful exploitation of the internees." (ANNEX 20)" - Executive summary [empahsis added] of Article 15-6 investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba
Please keep in mind also, something that though repeated often, needs to be hammered home relentlessly.
We are engaged in a war for survival, whose outcome is still unclear. We have reluctantly taken up arms against a philosophy as dangerous as any that we as a people have faced in our near 400-plus years of common shared experience.
Watch the evening news, observe extremist elements reveling in successful sapping operations in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or India or the former peaceful land of the House of Saud.
Look at the hate on the faces of indoctrinated monster-children created in fundamentalist Islamic Madrassas and Mosques, as they hoist their AKs high while dragging their burning victims through the streets.
Now picture that coming to your neighborhood…because if intent alone were driving the train, they would be outside your door as you read this, some of the forward-placed expeditionary troops reside among us already.
It is this clarity of vision which has been absent from the so far, one sided, prisoner debate.
It has been removed from this controversy, like color is drained from the sky as night approaches.
If we allow such diversions to fixate us, all will eventually unravel and it will be an exceedingly hard night that is upon us indeed.
D-Day Editorial
Editorial Archives
2004© William A. Mayer/PipeLineNews/PipeLineMedia, Inc., all rights reserved.
