Note: This is NOT the viral email attributed on various blogs, Media (doesn't) Matters or Snopes. I spent some time looking into this. I await comments
Forwarded FYI. This sounds like the real story as it fits with other accounts but makes more sense.
Your "Real" story is not exactly the way I heard it, and probably has a few political twists thrown in to stir the pot. Rather than me trying to correct it, I'll just tell you what I found out from my contacts at NSWC Norfolk and at SOCOM Tampa.
Continued on Page 49
I found it on Atlas Shrugs, linked to FR. This account (story?) has mostly been overlooked due to Gertz picking up the mostly debunked viral email that preceded it. I believe the author refers to that viral email in the opening statements referring to it as "...'real' story is not exactly the way I heard it...".
Galrahn at Information Dissemination has analysis and information on the e-mail about Obama's decision-making in the pirate shoot that circulated a few days earlier.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/24/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
That isn't to say that military folks don't have a political opinion, only that you never see it influence their work.
That may be true at some levels but not within the beltway or Combatant Command levels.
One angry Canadian...
Janet Napolitano has some strange ideas about the Canadian border. She describes herself as a myth buster, which is really unfortunate, because Janet Napolitano constructs a new myth about the Canadian border every time she opens her uninformed Homeland Security mouth. When it comes to mythologies, Janet Napolitano is a
One-woman Greek play a myth a minute.
It's nearly 8 years since the crash of the twin towers, and she still doesn't know - still - that all of the hijackers that brought tragedy that day - came into the USA - through their own customs and immigration ---- not one came down through the great forests of Toronto or over the tundra of Montreal, not one of them got access to the US via what Ms Napolitano thinks of as "borderless" Canada.
Must it be said to Ms Napolitano yet again? The September 11 hijackers did not enter via Canada. Sauda Arabia is not the 11th province. Mohammed Atta did not fly into New York that terrible day from Prince Edward Island. The 9-11 hijackers did not go to flight school in Buttonville. Canada was not, in whole or in part, the holding room of the 9-11 terrorists.
What is Barack Obama doing appointing someone to head Homeland Security, who, eight years after the attacks, does not even now know where the hijackers came from and how they got into their country? Here, its not her ignorance about Canada which should be troubling. Its her ignorance of the most publicized event in modern American history. How can anyone be head of Homeland Security and not know the history of the 19 men who killed nearly 3,000 Americans?
Ms Napolitano acknowledges there are some slight differences between the U.S.-Canada border, and the U.S.-Mexico border. To wit: "Yes, Canada is not Mexico, it doesn't have a drug war going on, it didn't have 6,000 homicides that were drug-related last year." To which she might have added, neither have 11 million or so undocumented immigrants flowed from Canada to the U.S..
Nonetheless, with this trivial differences in mind, she argues, if they're going to tighten the Mexican border, they must "fix" the Canadian one, too. Ah yes, if the bulb goes out in the kitchen, change the one in the garage. And Pearl Harbour was executed by the Romanian navy.
Ive sometimes felt we Canadians are too hard on the Americans. We make fun of them for knowing so little of us. That were all igloos and Nelson Eddy yodeling-Mounties. Then along comes someone like Janet Napolitano, a former governor, now a major player at the highest levels of the most powerful government in the world, a one-woman storehouse of misconceptions, pseudo-facts, stale rumours and flat-out ignorance.
She says now shes been misunderstood. She knows the hijackers didnt come over the border. I take very little comfort from that. Theres probably more anger in Janet Napolitano now about being corrected than grief about being so wrong. That does not spell a happy time for traffic and business over the Canada - U.S. border.
If the man who promised Hope and Change, wants to give Canadians some Hope, hell Change the head of Homeland Security.
#3
It depends on the PTA, Parabellum. The one I used to belong to, the VP one year had managed a major hospital chain in Los Angeles, and the next was a former district prosecutor, and the one after that a retired director of human resources. The science lab was run by several engineers, the computer upgrade committee by a regional manager for 3Com, and the nature trail by a city planner. I was decidedly underqualified compared to the rest -- much like here, in fact. :-)
Ruben Navarrette via CNN:
For what it's worth, on the issue of torture, I've changed my own view since September 11, 2001. For several years after the terrorist attacks, I bought the argument that the United States couldn't afford to torture terror suspects.
But now, acknowledging that the Bush administration did something right in preventing more attacks, I've come around to the view that we can't afford to take any option away from interrogators as they try to prevent an attack that could cost thousands of lives.
Too many Americans keep forgetting that the threat we face is real, and unrelenting. In fact, the Bush administration claimed that just a few months after 9/11, it thwarted a planned attack on Los Angeles where al Qaeda intended to use shoe bombers to hijack an airplane and fly it into the U.S. Bank Tower, the tallest building in the city. If enhanced interrogation played a role in foiling that plot, wouldn't it have been worth the cost?
After all the bobbing and weaving this week, I'm not really sure what President Obama believes about torture or what to do with those who authorize it. And, at this point, I don't care.
All I care about is that Obama choose a position and sticks to it, and that, as commander-in-chief, he fully grasps the enormous responsibilities that came with the office.
#1
careful there with the "MSM gets it". Ruben's a tool in most all aspects, even if he occasionally hits it right (stopped clock and all that). He came to the SD Union Tribune from the Dallas MN after James O. Goldsborough (an even more rad lefty) got axed, posed as a "more moderate columnist". He usually decries border patrol and ICE raids, justifies MALDEF, Aztlan, et al, and generally is a pain in the ass, and generally wrong
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/24/2009 18:13 Comments ||
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#2
Ok, this won't be popular, but the problem with torturing people is that it says that they are important enough to keep alive. But they aren't. They should be dead. And their evil friends and colleagues should know that.
As for any information they may have, after Flight 94, may the passengers rest in peace, anyone trying to capture Americans is a fool (c.f. three Somali pirates). It is unlikely that any planning information, exposed by people we had captured and kept alive, would really prevent an attack, because in the event the attack would have been foiled by the common man or woman anyway.
It seems to me better that our enemies get no quarter even if they have or pretend to have some important information. Better that we kill all we can catch and fight the rest. The Predator strikes make that point every week.
Capturing them and putting them on ice for a while was ok. But it would be better to release them and let them die another day rather than keep them confined. Any information they may have is less important than the certainty of their demise.
For once, a prominent Democrat may not get to "have it both ways." Or will she?
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi apparently thought she could. With the recent release of Bush Administration memos on the "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects, Ms. Pelosi sought to stake out a position consistent with her party and its leader, Barack Obama. Practiced at judging the political winds, Speaker Pelosi wasn't about to contradict Mr. Obama's ban on the enhanced techniques, which he has classified as torture.
Unfortunately for Ms. Pelosi, she had once done just that, and--ironically enough--a mainstream media outlet had the proof. In December 2007, the Washington Post detailed briefings provided by the CIA for senior members of Congress; the sessions detailed interrogation techniques approved for use on suspected Al Qaida members. Among the attendees was the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, Nancy Pelosi.
Continued on Page 49
WASHINGTON: The Obama administration called it the Af-Pak policy. Its emphasis on Pakistan over Afghanistan led some regional experts to rename it the Pak-Af strategy. Now, with Pakistan seemingly hurtling towards anarchy, and discordant voices emerging from Washington on how to handle the situation, critics are dubbing it a potential Fak-Ap, an infelicitous terminological invention to describe a mess in the making.
Washington is in ferment over the turmoil in Pakistan. Administration officials, lawmakers, and regional experts are in a tizzy over the prospective -- and some say imminent -- collapse of Pakistan. The fall of Buner, a district 100 kms from the capital Islamabad, made page one in many newspapers and headlines on television in a country facing myriad other crises. Not even the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 1996 agitated Washington pundits as much.
The reason for anxiety is not far (from Islamabad) to see. Pakistan's main nuclear and military complexes are within miles of the capital, which is only 60 miles (and that's only "as the crow flies" assured Pakistan's envoy to US Hussain Haqqani) from Buner. If the extremists who are promising to be hospitable to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida take control of Islamabad and get their radical hands on the nukes.
It's a nightmare scenario that haunts Washington. "The United States has an enormous stake in the stability and security of Pakistan. We can't...permit the Pakistani state and its nuclear arsenal to be taken over by the Taliban or any other radical groups or otherwise be destabilized in a matter that could lead to renewed conflict with India," California lawmaker Howard Berman said at a Congressional hearing on Wednesday.
Others have expressed similar sentiments, but there is no sign the Obama administration, like its predecessor Bush dispensation, has any contingency plans to disarm a Pakistan with radicals in control of its nukes. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton skirted the Pakistan loose nuclear question in her testimony, but blasted the Pakistani government, its army, its civil society, and even its diaspora for not standing up to the Talibanist extremists, for abdicating their responsibility.
Meanwhile, the disharmony in Washington over how to tackle Pakistan spilled out in the open on Wednesday after former Presidential candidate Senator John Kerry obliquely criticized the Obama administration over its Af-Pak policy, saying it "is not a real strategy." In fact, Kerry even advised the administration to stop using the term "Af-Pak," because "I think it does a disservice to both countries and to the policy," and the two governments are "very sensitive to it" and "don't see the linkage."
"Pakistan is in a moment of peril," Kerry told reporters and editors of USA Today in an internal meeting reported by the paper. "And I believe there is not in place yet an adequate policy or plan to deal with it." The paper said Kerry later called to clarify that he did not mean to criticize Obama. "What I'm saying is that the details have not been fleshed out. We're working hand in hand on it," he explained.
Both Kerry and Berman have returned recently from the region in preparation to move separate legislation in the Senate and House respectively to facilitate massive US assistance to Pakistan.
Kerry's own proposals are seen as appeasement of Pakistan by some analysts. A bill he is expected to move in the Senate has been criticized for lavishing billions to Pakistan without any certifiable benchmarks that House members are demanding. In his USA Today meeting, Kerry said he opposes language in a companion bill in the House requiring the president to certify that Pakistan does not support terrorists. Pakistanis consider that "insulting," he said.
But in her replies that followed her testimony on Wednesday, Secretary of State Clinton appeared to tread a middle path, saying, "we do think that there need to be the right kind of conditions," so the administration was "trying to figure out sort of what is the area that will influence behaviour and produce results."
"You know, it's a little bit like the Goldilocks story. I mean, if they're too weak, we don't get changes. If they're too strong, we get a backlash," Clinton explained, telling lawmakers that the administration will work with them to figure out the "sweet spot" that would get results.
"We're not interested in putting money into doing what hasn't worked. And we've seen the situation deteriorate over the last eight years in Pakistan and even before. It's been a very difficult country for us to get our arms around and figure out what our ongoing relationship would be like," she added.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/24/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Any person in US administration and foreign policy with an ounce of brain must have recognized that Pakistan will be under the influence of China and not long before now will be acting like the enemies of US like Iran and N. Korea for a very simple reason. Pakistan wants to rule India and Afghanistan at any cost and now Pakistan is seeing the reality that US will not help that failed state of Pakistan to severely harm India or Afghanistan. On the other hand, China has been more than happy to help Pakistan in order to control India and to throw the US dominance not only in far east and south Asia but every where in the world. See, China protects Iran, N. Korea and other African nations that are anti-American. I can only imagine what the US state department people have been smoking for many years because American tax payers have been paying a whole lot of money for Pakistan to buy arms from China to fight India.
#4
Bman (#2). First, Pakistan does not want to fight Taliban, Pakistan is the Taliban now. Second, why will China help destroy Taliban? For the Chinese objectives on the world stage, Taliban are the best terrorists China will keep because these terrorists are doing exactly what China wants, driving USA away from that region and destroying the emerging power of India
WASHINGTON -- A leading ally of President Barack Obama and critic of the Israel lobby in the United States has outlined a proposed U.S. campaign to pressure Israel that would suspend the intelligence dialogue between the two countries.
Because even though Hamas wants all the Juice dead, and Fatah wants them dead, and Islamic Jihad wants them dead, the Israelis have to endorse a two-state solution and bend on the right of return.
Israel's "special relationship" with the United States has been low-hanging fruit for the unrelenting and politically victorious critics of the Bush administration's War on Terror which targeted militants in Iraq, Iran and Syria in coordination with Israel's security agencies.
Stephen Walt, a U.S. professor of international affairs at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, who co-authored with John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago a controversial study on the Israeli lobby in the United States, has drafted recommendations for the Obama administration to pressure the new Israeli government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Any guarantees of Israeli security? **crickets**
Walt, regarded as influential in the U.S. diplomatic community, said the campaign should begin by administration criticism of Israel and support for United Nations resolutions that condemn the Jewish state.
"U.S. officials could even describe Israel's occupation [of the West Bank] as 'contrary to democracy,' 'unwise,' 'cruel,' or 'unjust,'" Walt wrote in the U.S. magazine Foreign Policy. "Altering the rhetoric would send a clear signal to the Israeli government and its citizens that their government's opposition to a two-state solution was jeopardizing the special relationship."
What about Hamas and their opposition to a two-state solution?
Netanyahu was scheduled to fly to Washington to meet Obama in May 2009. But on April 16, the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot reported that Netanyahu was expected to cancel his visit amid an assessment that Obama would refuse to meet the Israeli prime minister.
"Within four years there will be a permanent settlement between Israel and Palestinians," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was quoted by Yediot as saying. "We don't care who the prime minister is." A bit arrogant, doncha think?
Walt's report, titled "Can the United States Put Pressure on Israel: A User's Guide." marked the latest recommendations to the Obama administration to revise U.S. policy toward Israel.
In March 2009, a report by a bipartisan panel of foreign policy analysts called on the White House to pressure Israel as part of an effort to resolve the U.S. conflict with the Arab world.
The book by Walt and Mearshimer, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, generated controversy but also served to validate a growing alternative foreign policy consensus for a new administration elected in large part on the basis of the repudiation of the 43rd U.S. president.
But the book was also repudiated by such ideologically opposed former foreign policy officials as former Secretary of State (1982-89) George Shultz and former N.Y. Times correspondent and former President of the Council on Foreign Relations Leslie Gelb.
"Anyone who thinks that Jewish groups constitute a homogeneous 'lobby' ought to spend some time dealing with them," Shultz wrote in the U.S. News and World Report. "For example, my decision to open a dialogue with Yasser Arafat after he met certain conditions evoked a wide spectrum of responses from the government of Israel, its political parties, and American Jewish groups who weighed in on one side or the other. ... The United States supports Israel not because of favoritism based on political pressure or influence but because the American people, and their leaders, say that supporting Israel is politically sound and morally just. ... So, on every level, those who blame Israel and its Jewish supporters for U.S. policies they do not support are wrong. They are wrong because, to begin with, support for Israel is in our best interests. They are also wrong because Israel and its supporters have the right to try to influence U.S. policy. And they are wrong because the U.S. government is responsible for the policies it adopts, not any other state or any of the myriad lobbies and groups that battle daily--sometimes with lies -- to win America's support."
Leslie Gelb wrote in the New York Times Book Review that the scholarship was shoddy and that the authors were biased. "More troublingly, [Walt and Mearsheimer] dont seriously review the facts of the two most critical issues to Israel and the lobby -- arms sales to Arab states and the question of a Palestinian state -- matters on which the American position has consistently run counter to the so-called all-powerful Jewish lobby. For several decades, administration after administration has sold Saudi Arabia and other Arab states first-rate modern weapons, against the all-out opposition of Israel and the lobby. And make no mistake, these arms have represented genuine security risks to Israel. . . And on the policy issue that has counted most to Israel and the lobby -- preventing the United States from accepting a Palestinian state prior to a negotiated deal between Israel and the Palestinians -- its fair to say Washington has quietly sided with the Palestinians for a long time."
Walt warned against any immediate attempt by Obama to reduce the $3 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel. He said this would result in a battle with the Democratic-controlled Congress. "There's a lot of potential leverage here, but it's probably not the best stick to use, at least not at first," Walt said.
"Trying to trim or cut the aid package will trigger an open and undoubtedly ugly confrontation in Congress -- where the influence of AIPAC and other hard-line groups in the Israel lobby is greatest. So that's not where I'd start."
But Walt urged Obama to reduce U.S. strategic cooperation with Israel. He said the administration could suspend the dialogue between the Israeli and U.S. intelligence communities as well as that of the Israeli military and the Defense Department. "Today, such a step would surely get the attention of Israel's security establishment," Walt said. And would get the attention of Iran and its proxies.
And deprive us of needed intel. Nice thinking, Walt ...
Walt also recommended that the United States reduce its procurement of Israeli defense equipment, another step that would not require congressional approval. Israel has sold a range of armor, munitions and platforms deployed by the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now we are talking about jeopardizing the lives of our troops. Our military picks equipment for its forces from Israel based upon performance.
"Obama could instruct Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to slow or decrease these purchases, which would send an unmistakable signal that it was no longer business-as-usual," Walt said. "Given the battering Israel's economy has taken in the current global recession, this step would get noticed too. And most of these measures could be implemented by the Executive Branch alone, thereby outflanking die-hard defenders of the special relationship in Congress." That also means lessening the links of cooperation between the US Military and the IDF. We do share information and tactics for mutual survival against a common enemy. The ramifications of Obama's policies are far ranging and serious, if not deadly.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/24/2009 15:10 ||
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#1
I suspect that Israel provides its fair share of intelligance information. Emasculating the CIA and turning off Israel at the same time is stupid.
#6
Frank, as you know, both the U.S. and Israel are loaded with post-modernist, post-Zionist lefties who still believe in peace with the Arabs but even they are not prepared to risk another Jewish Holocaust.
Regardless, when the Jews say never again, they mean it. Israel will act based on her own intelligence data long before Obama realizes that his kinder, gentler approach to tyrants is a loser.
#8
Zorba - I hope so, and as a Catholic, I stand by them in their self-defense
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/24/2009 18:04 Comments ||
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If the Big O administration is stupid enough to implement this leftist agenda, there will be serious repercussions to this country. Israel will do what it needs to do to ensure its security, with or without the US. If aid, military and intel contacts are cut off with the US, the Israelis will develop further trade and military relationships with India, Russia, and China that will work to their benefit, both economically and securitywise. This will include sales of military equipment, systems hardware and software that the Chicoms and Russia would love to have, and that the Israelis got from the US, but are presently constrained by their relationship with the US from sharing. Talk about shooting your foot off to pay dues to your leftist handlers.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
04/24/2009 18:48 Comments ||
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What a hell of a week for Obama and his liberal base:
- Anyone who pays taxes, voices opposition to more taxes is a teabagger.
- Labels veterans right wing extemists.
- Says he is going to prosecute Bush officials.
- Releases information that damages the CIA.
- Plans to release pictures "showing troops pointing guns at terrorists", etc., etc..
#11
This arrogant SOB's gonna get us all killed. He'll be smirking when his co-religionists nuke Tel Aviv, but guess what Barack-0? DC is next on their list.
#13
*crickets*, Frank? You say that, knowing who posts here? You are capable of considerably better analysis than that, my dear. I've watched you over the years, and I know.
Now the first question we must address before discussing the presence or absence of crickets is, who is aware of Professor Walt's recommendations. I am accustomed to reading the news here at Rantburg before seeing it in the popular press, like the rest of the Rantburgers and quite unlike the rest of the country. I plan on forwarding this article to a few friends and my Congresscritters, as no doubt will some here. We'll see what happens -- President Obama tends to respond to the loudest of his customer base at any given moment, and he does things differently when he knows those whose votes he want are watching.
#14
TW - you are an exception, and one that I doubt voted for our Teleprompter Jesus. I know there are a few more like you. My question is for the overall American Juice population, who vote Democrat. I know that if the O'dministration proposed rules leading to the death and destruction of Vatican City, I might have something to say (and do) about it
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/24/2009 22:18 Comments ||
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All of us here are exceptions, Frank. As I said, I'm going to start this trickling into the Jewish community, as will no doubt others here. My Congressional Representative is John Boehner, who may still lead the House branch of the Republican party. If someone could forward this to Rush Limbaugh or someone appropriate at Fox News, life could get very interesting, indeed.
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.
