#2
oooh, ouch. Great piece that taps into what 99.9% of Americans feel.
And as for the answer to this question, What would he (George Washginton) have made of transparently politicized free-speech zealots who inform for the enemy and have the nerve to call it patriotism. My guess is he would have hung them.
#4
I think it is time for a massive demonstration to shut down the Times operations in New York. The targets being their offices in Times Square and their printing plant in Queens. See what 24 hours of blackout do to them. It would be hard for the media to ignore a day without the times.
Posted by: DanNY ||
06/27/2006 6:44 Comments ||
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#5
If they are not silenced, there will be more of it.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
06/27/2006 7:14 Comments ||
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#7
I'm not familiar with Federal law, but isn't there some law/ordinance/statute/whatever that could compel the Times to reveal their source(s)?
I'm certain they promised their sources protection, swearing they would never give them up no matter what. I really doubt that Mr Keller and the rest would be willing to spend time in Rikers, or some other garden spots, to protect the source(s), no matter what he pledged. Turn their promises into the equivalent of "Yeah, baby, it was great. Mmm hmm, you're the best. I'll call you."
Finding the leaker(s) and nailing them to the wall would probably be easier (and more effective) than turning Keller & Co. into martyrs for jihad journalism.
Yes, they'll pitch a bitch about it, and so will some other media sources. But I think more of the media would just love to circle 'round like sharks attacking bloody meat if they would go after the Times in this way. (Never, ever count out the backstabbing bitch mentality of all those journos who think they are good enough to work at the Ol' Gray Lady....hell, they're better writers, natch, and would love to take those bastards down a peg or two for stealing "their" Pulitzers....)
#8
"...isn't there some law/ordinance/statute/whatever that could compel the Times to reveal their source(s)?"
Of course there is; but I don't think the Bush administration has the balls to enforce the laws of the United States, if it means facing down his domestic political enemies.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
06/27/2006 9:43 Comments ||
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#9
It would take a federal DA with a subpoena for an investigation; there are several laws that cover unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
It's a political decision; lotp a couple days back noted the shitstorm that would ensue if the gummint actually went after Keller and Risen.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/27/2006 10:05 Comments ||
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#10
It certainly would. But I'm not so sure I buy that piece as a whole. It is not in anyones interest for the government to just sit back because they are afraid that if they do something it willonly make it worse. It needs to be made clear that people who endanger our national security will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Just waiting for the NYT/LAT and the rest of the MSM to die on the vine is not enough.
#12
SO I guess we hafta have a grand jury to summon the author of the piece to testify, and when they refuse, throw 'em in the slammer, ala Judith Miller (?) until they do reveal their source.
Then evicerate the source.
Publically.
Posted by: Bobby ||
06/27/2006 16:29 Comments ||
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This story broke on Friday, but it received comparatively little attention except in the blogosphere, and in Bill Gertz's story in the Washington Times. A former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, Ronald Montaperto, has pleaded guilty to the illegal retention of classified documents, and admitted (in a plea agreement) to passing "top secret" information to Chinese intelligence officials.
There a number of things that bother me about this case. First, Montaperto was more than just a "line" analyst at DIA. Over a 20-plus-year-career in government, he advanced through the ranks, enventually becoming Dean of a U.S. Pacific Command think tank in Hawaii. In that position, Montaperto was at least a GG-15 (civilian equivalent of a full Colonel), or more likely, a member of the Senior Executive Service, equivalent to a military flag officer. In other words, a man with extensive, high-level contacts within the military and intelligence communities, a man that, potentially, could have passed large amounts of sensitive information to his Chinese contacts.
Continued on Page 49
#2
A final thought: one reason for the plea deal (and potentially light sentence) may be the "contact" program that Montaperto participated in. At one point, DIA appparently encouraged some sort of contacts between selected employees and Chinese embassy officials. There may have been concern about potential disclosures within that program, if the Montaperto case was tried in an open court. A lot of information made its way to the PRC in the 1980s and 1990s, and there are probably a lot of government officials--current and former--who may be nervous or embarassed about what we gave the Chinese, under the aegis of an "official" program.
If your jaw hit the keyboard and your blood pressure just spiked report to RB Sick Bay, Doc Steve is on duty just get in line and wait.
#3
The U.S. intelligence apparatus is full of turncoats. I wouldn't be surprised one bit if foreign agents were those blowing all the operations to the newspapers.
#7
The sooner DIA is closed down the better. Absolutely NO degradation on collection or analysis would result I assure you. It is a quagmire of high-grade bureaucratic civilians, political correctness, petty politics, affirmative action, and inefficiency beyond measure. We have been ill-served by DIA for many years. It is nothing more than a government jobs portal.
#8
...has pleaded guilty to the illegal retention of classified documents, and admitted (in a plea agreement) to passing "top secret" information to Chinese intelligence officials.
So what's the real problem? Like it wasn't the NYT, LAT, or WaPo. He gets stiffed because of who he gives them to and not just the act? It's not like the CIA doesn't have a current telephone directory with the address for the others.
#9
The real problem is that the past tense of plead is pled, not pleaded. You don't say someone bleeded to death. Sorry, that one is nails on the chalkboard for me.
#10
Unless they ship him off to the Florence, Colorado Supermax, there is a strong possibility that while he was pipelining, what he was pipelining may not have been all that reliable.
#1
God-based Communism-Socialism-Totalitarianism-Absolutism. Substitute Politburo for Mullahs, Moud for Stalin, Kruschev, Brezhnev,Gorby, etal. The final or ultimate form for mankind cannot be subordinate, inferior, or defective to any each and all other lower forms. thus the successful inferior must surrender to the failed and failing superior.
#2
The one thing Islam does provide to those born into it and to those who convert to Islam is certitude. And with certitude comes the human affliction of an arrogant belief that no other religion or form of government other than that imposed by Islamic law has any right to exist. The punishment for leaving Islam is death. The enemies of Islam are to be beheaded.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you al Qaeda, Wahhabism, and the Islamic revolution that is your obligation to resist for the sake of all mankind.
The only certitude is that an Islam which cannot renounce violent jihad will perish from the face of this earth ... forever.
From Jewish World Review on line
By Caroline B. Glick
The current situation parallels October 2000, when Barak issued Arafat an ultimatum to stop the violence and then did nothing
It is painful to watch Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni try to contend with the terrible outcome of the Palestinian terror strike against the IDF on Sunday morning.
They use so many fancy and angry words. They sound so resolute. And yet, they have nothing useful to say. Two soldiers are dead, a third is now the prisoner of jihadist killers, seven are wounded, an IDF border post has been overrun, and a world view and a security doctrine have been blown to smithereens.
Olmert and his associates have four general messages. First, they tell us that Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas is responsible for bringing about Cpl. Gilad Shalit's release. Second, they say Hamas better watch out because they're gonna get it. Third, they say that Hamas won't get it until later. Finally, while stipulating that they will not negotiate with Hamas, Olmert and his associates are negotiating with Hamas.
None of these messages and none of the actions that attend to them have any chance of making Israel safer. They also hold little promise of bringing Cpl. Shalit home. Yet there is next to no possibility that Olmert or his associates will widen their options to include any relevant responses to Sunday's terror offensive. Doing so would involve an admission that what the Kadima and Labor parties have presented to the public as their world view is wrong.
That world view involves a denial of a basic, fundamental truth: When you empower terrorists, terrorists are empowered.
WE HAVE been in this situation before. Six years ago, in October 2000, on the eve of Yom Kippur then prime minister Ehud Barak gave Yasser Arafat an ultimatum. He was ordered to end all the violence he had fomented within 48 hours or face the consequences. When as the deadline passed Arafat continued the violence, Barak did nothing. He did nothing because he could do nothing. His entire government was based on the idea of making peace with Arafat by empowering him. When Arafat chose war, Barak had nothing to say.
Kadima and Labor insist that by empowering terrorists they are somehow weakening them. This is the notion that stands at the base of the government's insistence on reenacting the empowerment of Hamas and Fatah caused by last summer's retreat from Gaza by repeating it twenty-fold in Judea and Samaria.
Somehow, destroying Israeli communities, ordering the retreat of IDF forces and so enabling the terrorist takeover of those lands is according to Olmert and his associates supposed to bring about the enhancement of Israel's security through the weakening of terrorists that Israel is empowering.
Ahead of Sunday night's security cabinet meeting, Olmert reportedly told IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz not to present any wide-scale military options to the cabinet. This makes sense. Any major operation, just like any real discussion of Israel's security situation or its options for contending with it would show the failure of the government's retreat policy. And so the government entertains only fictions.
The first fiction the government entertains is that of PA Chairman and Fatah Chief Mahmoud Abbas as anti-terrorist peace partner who must be empowered. Abbas is viewed as an irreplaceable resource and ally of Israel. If he goes, Israel will face nothing but Hamas. And since Hamas is bad, Abbas must be good. Unfortunately, Abbas is a terrorist too.
Abbas has pocketed the money, arms and legitimacy that Olmert, the Bush administration and the EU have given him and proceeded to buck up his terrorist credentials. He appointed Mahmoud Damra, a top Fatah terrorist as the commander of his personal army Force 17. Damra is wanted by Israel for his direct involvement in the murders of scores of Israelis since 2001.
Abbas took the thousands of rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition the US gave him last month and had his security chief Muhammad Dahlan issue a joint call with Hamas for the murder of all Palestinians suspected of assisting Israel in its counter-terror operations.
He has been negotiating a blueprint for war authored by jailed Fatah mass murderer Marwan Barghouti with Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and has been touting the document as a peace plan.
And, his Fatah organization is as responsible for Sunday's strike against Israel as Hamas. The Popular Resistance Committees, a Fatah front group that also includes Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists claims to be holding Cpl. Shalit. Fatah has threatened to attack Israel with chemical and biological weapons and to renew shooting attacks on neighborhoods in southern Jerusalem if the IDF launches a major operation in Gaza.
But none of this can be acknowledged because acknowledging that Abbas is a terrorist would mean acknowledging that empowering him means empowering terrorists.
THEN THERE is the doctrine of the security fence. Olmert and his colleagues are big proponents of replacing defensive strategies with slogans and one of their favorite ones is "We'll be here and they will be there." Israel will build a fence and we'll never have to deal with the Palestinians again. But then those mean old Palestinians showed us on Sunday that they can dig beneath our fence. They show us daily that they can launch missiles and rockets and mortars above the fence. They can build ladders to climb over the fence. And of course, they can simply subcontract their killing to their collaborators on our side of the fence.
But this cannot be acknowledged because doing so would be tantamount to an admission that Olmert and his associates have been passing off cliches as security plans for the past four years.
The bombardment of the Western Negev that holds the population and the economy of southern Israel hostage to the whims of jihadist cells with rocket launchers has shown up another major myth that forms the basis of Olmert's world view. Olmert and his associates claim that the IDF deployment in Gaza was wasteful because all those forces were being used just to defend those annoying, fanatical settlers in Gush Katif and northern Gaza. But as the bombardment and the IDF's inability to stop the bombardment from outside Gaza shows, the IDF was not in Gaza to protect the Israelis who lived there. The IDF was in Gaza to protect Israel.
Any major IDF offensive in Gaza would constitute an admission of this truth. Yet since the government's only policy is to reenact last summer's retreat in Judea and Samaria, it cannot acknowledge this truth. It needs the public to believe that the safety of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem can be guaranteed by having IDF forces sitting in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It needs the public to believe that settlers are the cause of their misfortunes and not the jihadists who are waging war against our country.
That is, they need the public to believe that empowering terrorists doesn't empower terrorists.
FINALLY, OLMERT cannot allow a counter-terror offensive in Gaza because doing so will lead to international condemnation of Israel. It isn't the impact of the condemnation Israel's international standing that concerns him. Olmert cannot be condemned internationally because he promised that after Israel retreated from Gaza, the international community would accept any Israeli counter-terror offensives in Gaza.
Sunday's attack and Cpl. Shalit's kidnapping are watershed events. In the coming days and weeks, it will become self-evident to the Israeli public as a whole just how indefensible Olmert's plan to empower terrorists actually is. Yet public recognition of his plan's failure is not enough.
In 2000, the public realized that Barak's terrorist empowering peace plan had brought us war. Yet rather than discard the policy of empowering terrorists, our political leaders simply repackaged it. What had formerly been called "peace" was called "separation" and "disengagement" and now is called "convergence" or "realignment." These euphemisms are sold to the public in turn as new quick-fixes that spare us the need to recognize the reality of war.
So to our fervent prayers for Cpt. Shalit's rescue, we should add another prayer. We should pray that whereas the demise of the so-called peace process did not cause the demise of its core policy of empowering terrorists, the demise of Olmert's retreat policy will also cause the burial of the notion that empowering terrorists can do anything other than make terrorists more powerful.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
06/27/2006 13:06 ||
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#1
I've always admired Caroline Glick's no-nonsense approach. She doesn't mince words or try to rationalize ugly realities. Would that we had more like her in Israel and here...
#1
It's funny how these things go. Things have changed in just the last week. It's not like they change at once. In fact it takes years. But suddenly, the dialog changes and people are willing to say things that they weren't previously thinking but weren't willing to say out loud. We've turned a corner on the world on terror. We're winning in Iraq but the bad guys have infiltrated world-wide. The blinders are finally falling from the eyes of those who have long been deluded... it's going to get worse before it gets better ... and their lives or the lives of their loved ones may be at stake. Which is it? Your beloved multicult PC or the life of your child? Take your pick. They are finally willing to shut up and get a clue.
#3
Which is it? Your beloved multicult PC or the life of your child? Take your pick.
You're sure that they wouldn't take the opportunity to sacrifice their own child? This would instantly make them into a victim, and they'd be able to milk it for the rest of their lives.
#4
Likewise, a political culture that is in denial about a serious social problem will condemn those who seek to discuss it, and try its best to silence them.
......That would be both our political parties here in the US.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
