#2
Nobody in the current administration will read this and if one does they will dismiss it a part of the great right wing conspiracy and an anomoly.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
12/05/2011 12:08 Comments ||
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#3
Actually I don't think this opinion piece is particularly good. It is overly long and filled with redundancies.
There are many articulate, knowledgeable (even scholar) apostates from Islam who deserve to get space in one of the major dailies some day - at least for one op ed. I used to write to the WaPo frequently to advocate for this. Maybe. Maybe. Some day.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
12/05/2011 13:46 Comments ||
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#4
Lord Garth, I imagine the Washington Times would be more open to the idea...or the third one -- I think it's called the Examiner. The Post isn't quite as hopeless as the New York Times only because Washington isn't as hospitable to the Theatre, and all the creative dears who inhabit it.
#5
..yes, New York is more amenable to good posers actors who want to play politicians than Washington with posers politicians who play badly as actors.
The Bonn conference on Afghanistan aimed to paint an optimistic future for the war-torn country. But the country's inhabitants have no illusions: They know that their military cannot protect them, and that the warlords are jockeying for position. Meanwhile, the Taliban are just waiting for the Americans to leave.
Meanwhile, in Howz-e-Madad, Kandahar Province, Maj. Brian Ducote of the First Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, has not given up on delivering a sustainable peace to this patch of southern Afghanistanone that won't wind up harboring terrorists bent on attacking innocent Westerners. Until very recently the area was a hotbed of insurgent activity and attacks against NATO troops and locals alike. But last week, 15 months after the major arrived as part of the U.S. surge, the battalion had a breakthrough: a letter, signed by several local Taliban leaders and mid-level operators.
"We are ready to give up our weapons if you are ready to respond to our requests," reads the letter, stamped with the Taliban movement's official letterhead, which was seen by the Journal.
Last week's letter suggests it's starting to pay off. The Taliban's core have "black hearts," says the major. But many of its foot-soldiers and mid-level operatives joined out of expedience rather than ideology, and they are now "feeling disenfranchised, as they see the [Afghan] government strengthen. They see that there are local solutions to governance. They don't want to be left behind."
And if they want in, they need to act quickly, before we're gone.
I refer to the apparent violation of at least one (probably two) major U.S. laws by the Holder Justice Department. A few years ago, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701, the follow-on to the Trading with the Enemy Act) was expanded in order to criminalize any transactions between U.S. entities to include departments and agencies of the U.S. government and all foreign drug cartels.
I am familiar with these prohibitive statues because several years ago, while serving as the senior drug analyst for the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was tasked to initiate and became the principal drafter of legislation which became known as the Kingpin Act (21 U.S.C. §§ 1901-08). The Kingpin Act is an extension of the highly successful IEEPA sanctioning program specifically targeting Colombian drug cartels. It expands sanctions authority against various drug cartel operations worldwide including Mexico which have been determined by the president to be threats to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States.
A violation of any of the IEEPA sanctioning programs or the Kingpin Act carries stiff penalties, both criminal and civil, and potentially totaling decades in prison and tens of millions of dollars in fines. It is not necessary that an individual or governmental entity be shown to have knowingly violated any of these programs: it is illegal for any U.S. entity or individual to aid, abet, or materially assist or in the case of Operation Fast and Furious, to facilitate others to aid, abet, or materially assist designated drug traffickers. There are no exceptions within IEEPA programs for unlicensed U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agency operations.
Based on the July 5, 2010, memo to Eric Holder, it would appear that Fast and Furious facilitated the delivery of weapons to at a minimum the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico. The U.S. Department of the Treasury, which administers both the IEEPA and Kingpin Act programs, has designated numerous members of the Sinaloa cartel under both programs. IEEPA prohibitions apply to the U.S. government as well as to individuals, and as stated there are no exceptions within IEEPA programs for unlicensed U.S. law enforcement or intelligence agency operations.
#1
Hugo Chávez says his Bolivarian Revolution needs more time to produce its utopian fruits. "We barely have 10 years here," he told a crowd of supporters in Caracas last week. "We will take it to 10 more and 10 more and 10 more to construct the new social virtues."
Good luck dead man.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
12/05/2011 11:49 Comments ||
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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.
By Nouri al-Maliki
