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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (36112)	7/12/2005 11:30:03 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

When Hitler bombed London, was Churchill to blame? James Lewis, July 12th, 2005 Last Thursday's London massacre of almost three score innocent people who were simply smashed to bleeding fragments on their way to work, has thrown a harsh light on the British Left. Normal people learned something from the horror – the shocking inhumanity of the attackers, perhaps. Not so the Left. Within twenty-four hours, the Guardian of London was pumping out its daily propaganda line: Don't blame the killers. Blame Bush and Blair for knocking over Saddam Hussein. Which makes me wonder whether the editors' own parents blamed Winston Churchill for the Nazi bombings of London. The Brit Left continues to mix up "the fire and the fire brigade," in Churchill's phrase. That is not by accident. In the upside-down prism of the Left there are no criminals, only police brutality. There are no hard-working achievers, only exploiters of the poor. And there is no jihadist menace, only "Crusader-Zionist" invaders of the House of Islam, as al Qaeda likes to put it. The hard Left is a secular religion that is utterly immune to evidence or reason. No facts will change its rock-hard faith. That is why the Guardian doesn't need to think about last Thursday's horrors. It just turned the crank on its daily cliché machine. A decisive answer has now come from an authoritative source, a certain Dr. Hani Al-Siba' i, who runs an Islamic studies center right in London. This gentleman explained the bombers' religious basis in no uncertain terms: "The term 'civilians' does not exist in Islamic religious law. ... There is no such term as 'civilians' in the modern Western sense. People are either of Dar Al-Harb or not ..." [Dar Al-Harb is the House of War, where Islam is not dominant and infidels may be slaughtered - ed.]. You and I, gentle reader, are living in the House of War, in Dr. Al-Siba'.i's eyes. We are what the US military in Vietnam used to call a "free fire zone," perfectly legal victims of murder in the eyes of God, if some jihadi fanatic takes it in his head to do us in. Our only chance is to submit to Islam, and live as they do. Islamic law on the killing of civilians is utterly foreign to our tradition. Christianity, Judaism, the Roman law of war according to Cicero, and the Western judicial philosophy of "just war" all protect civilians. Islam does not. Infidels are only protected if they pay Muslims for protection and agree to live as dhimmis, second-class citizens bearing public signs of their disgrace. The London subway travelers were therefore fair game. More than that, butchering them was a great victory for God and his faithful, according to Dr. Al-Siba' i. "If Al-Qa'ida indeed carried out this act, it is a great victory for it. It rubbed the noses of the world's eight most powerful countries in the mud." Al-Siba' i is an extremist, obviously, and does not necessarily speak for millions of other Muslims. His Islamic center is presumably paid for by the Saudis, who are themselves Wahhabi radicals, barely one generation from desert blood feuds just like those carried out by Mohammed himself. Indeed, the tribe of Al-Saud made great slaughter of its Muslim tribal enemies while coming to power. Many Muslims still hate them for it. We would be fooling ourselves, however, if we ignored the fact that Al-Siba' i can quote chapter and verse from the Hadith, second in authority only to the Koran itself: "[The Mujahideen] tell (that) the Prophet drove nails into and gouged out the eyes of people from the 'Urayna Tribe. They were merely a group of thieves who stole from sheep herders, and the Prophet drove nails into them and threw them into the Al-Hrara area, and left them there to die. He blinded them and cut off their opposite legs and arms. This is what the Prophet did on a trifling matter, let alone in war." According to a recent scholarly book, the Prophet Mohammed waged an average of nine desert wars each year he was in power. His example is enshrined in the Hadith. Hitler laid out his goals in Mein Kampf. Marx and Lenin made it pretty clear what Communist regimes were going to do. Those two totalitarian ideologies accounted for some 150 million victims in the 20th century. We would be fools indeed if we did not pay attention to the words of radical Islamists. But not the Guardian, not the BBC, and not the Left, here or abroad. Oddly enough, the hard Left agrees that civilians have no special status. That is why the BBC finds it so hard to figure out the difference between "terrorists" and "freedom fighters." The Geneva Conventions have no problem with that, just as you and I don't. Terrorists target innocent civilians, that's all there's to it. Civilized combatants do everything in their power to avoid hurting civilians, often risking their own lives to spare the innocent. The civilized military of America and Britain have defended us against ruthless murderers for a century. That is why they are heroes, while terrorists are dirt. An Israeli cartoon tells the difference. On the left side of the picture is a soldier of Israel, aiming his gun while shielding a baby carriage with his body. On the right side is a soldier of Palestine, aiming his gun while his body is shielded by a baby carriage. The difference is obvious to a child of ten, but not to the sophisticated minds of the Left. Just to drive this point home, in September 2002 al-Qa'ida spokesman Suleiman Abu Gheith said: "We have the right to kill four million Americans - two million of them children - and to exile twice as many and wound and cripple hundreds of thousands. It is our right to fight them with chemical and biological weapons." There is, in fact, an astonishing similarity between jihadis and the Left. Both peddle tales of endless victimhood. Both excuse the deliberate slaughter of civilians. Both blame civilized nations for defending themselves against primitive savagery from the tribal badlands of the 7th century. And both follow totalitarian creeds. Which raises the question of who is more to blame for the London massacre: the fanatics who did the deed, or those who have spent decades justifying terrorism, peddling their perversity through the BBC and the Guardian of London? James Lewis is a frequent contributor. James Lewis

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (36112)	7/12/2005 1:12:48 PM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

CBC mocks Tony Blair's reaction to terrorist attacks and minimizes casualties by Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor, Canada Free Press Tuesday, July 12, 2005 In a CBC Radio commentary that aired the day after the horrific terrorist attacks in London, journalist Gwynne Dyer described British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s reaction by saying: "…the sounds that came out of his mouth were unmistakably British. Yet the words were not. They were George Bush-style rhetoric about how British values and the British way of life are under attack by these terrorists. Only they’re not, really, and most people in London know it." Dyer, like the network that he provided the commentary for, likes to blame George Bush for any and all acts of Muslim extremism. Dyer mentions that London was attacked because that country has troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. In his effort to minimize and excuse the actions of Islamic terrorists, the commentator completely ignores the fact that acts of Islamic terror; the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the bombings of two American Embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and 9/11 all preceded the presence of coalition forces in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Then again, facts are not important when it comes to attacking George Bush and Tony Blair for standing up to terrorism. Dyer goes on to make ridiculous comparisons between the IRA and the Islamic terrorists. He says that the IRA never wanted to end the British way of life; they only wanted British troops out of Northern Ireland, as if this fact was somehow proof positive that Muslim extremists are not attempting to destroy the Western way of life. And what does Gwynne Dyer have to say about those who were killed or maimed in the bombings? He seems to view the deaths in much of the way Joseph Stalin, undoubtedly one of his idols, would. Stalin once said, "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic". On speaking of those who lost their lives in London’s transportation system on July 7, Dyer said, "Greater London has around eleven million people, and every day about 400 of them die of natural causes. Yesterday closer to 450 died, and almost 10 per cent of the day’s deaths were due to terrorism. Today another 400 Londoners will die, none of them from terrorism." The fact that a commentary would air on the CBC the day after 7/7, blaming George Bush and the West for the attacks is hardly surprising. But even those Canadians who think that Bush and U.S. foreign policy are to blame for the acts of Islamic extremists should be outraged at the rendering of the innocents who died on July 7 to a mere statistic; nothing more than a slight blip in the ordinary cycle of birth and death. Canadian taxpayers shell out approximately $1 billion a year to fund the CBC. We could find a better use for that money than to have it fund nonsense like this. One billion could sure feed a lot of starving Africans. Arthur Weinreb is an author, columnist and Associate Editor of Canada Free Press. His work as appeared on Newsmax.com, Men's News Daily, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com and The Rant. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (36112)	7/12/2005 3:40:54 PM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93284

A lefty sicko posts: _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ To: paret who wrote (36186) 7/12/2005 2:10:40 PM From: yields Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36196 Telling the TRUTH is not mocking... __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ To: Peter Dierks who wrote (36112) 7/12/2005 1:12:48 PM From: paret Read Replies (1) of 36196 CBC mocks Tony Blair's reaction to terrorist attacks and minimizes casualties by Arthur Weinreb, Associate Editor, Canada Free Press Tuesday, July 12, 2005 In a CBC Radio commentary that aired the day after the horrific terrorist attacks in London, journalist Gwynne Dyer described British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s reaction by saying: "…the sounds that came out of his mouth were unmistakably British. Yet the words were not. They were George Bush-style rhetoric about how British values and the British way of life are under attack by these terrorists. Only they’re not, really, and most people in London know it." Dyer, like the network that he provided the commentary for, likes to blame George Bush for any and all acts of Muslim extremism. Dyer mentions that London was attacked because that country has troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. In his effort to minimize and excuse the actions of Islamic terrorists, the commentator completely ignores the fact that acts of Islamic terror; the World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the bombings of two American Embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 and 9/11 all preceded the presence of coalition forces in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Then again, facts are not important when it comes to attacking George Bush and Tony Blair for standing up to terrorism. Dyer goes on to make ridiculous comparisons between the IRA and the Islamic terrorists. He says that the IRA never wanted to end the British way of life; they only wanted British troops out of Northern Ireland, as if this fact was somehow proof positive that Muslim extremists are not attempting to destroy the Western way of life. And what does Gwynne Dyer have to say about those who were killed or maimed in the bombings? He seems to view the deaths in much of the way Joseph Stalin, undoubtedly one of his idols, would. Stalin once said, "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic". On speaking of those who lost their lives in London’s transportation system on July 7, Dyer said, "Greater London has around eleven million people, and every day about 400 of them die of natural causes. Yesterday closer to 450 died, and almost 10 per cent of the day’s deaths were due to terrorism. Today another 400 Londoners will die, none of them from terrorism." The fact that a commentary would air on the CBC the day after 7/7, blaming George Bush and the West for the attacks is hardly surprising. But even those Canadians who think that Bush and U.S. foreign policy are to blame for the acts of Islamic extremists should be outraged at the rendering of the innocents who died on July 7 to a mere statistic; nothing more than a slight blip in the ordinary cycle of birth and death. Canadian taxpayers shell out approximately $1 billion a year to fund the CBC. We could find a better use for that money than to have it fund nonsense like this. One billion could sure feed a lot of starving Africans. Arthur Weinreb is an author, columnist and Associate Editor of Canada Free Press. His work as appeared on Newsmax.com, Men's News Daily, the Drudge Report, Foxnews.com and The Rant. He can be reached at letters@canadafreepress.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (36112)	7/13/2005 12:33:56 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 93284

Here's a list of Clinton's scandals courtesy of emporium.turnpike.net ADMINISTRATION RECORDS SET - The only president ever impeached on grounds of personal malfeasance - Most number of convictions and guilty pleas by friends and associates - Most number of cabinet officials to come under criminal investigation - Most number of witnesses to flee country or refuse to testify - Most number of witnesses to die suddenly - First president sued for sexual harassment. - First president accused of rape. - First first lady to come under criminal investigation - Largest criminal plea agreement in an illegal campaign contribution case - First president to establish a legal defense fund. - Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions - Greatest amount of illegal campaign contributions from abroad HISTORICAL CONTEXT - Number of independent counsel inquiries since the 1978 law was passed: 19 - Number that have produced indictments: 7 - Number that produced more convictions than the Starr investigation: 1 - Median length of investigations that have led to convictions: 44 months - Length of Starr-Ray investigation (7/00): 67 months. - Number of Starr-Ray investigation convictions to date (including one governor, one associate attorney general and two Clinton business partners): 15 - Median cost per Starr investigation conviction: $3.5 million as of 3/00 - Total cost of the Starr investigation (3/00) $52 million - Total cost of the Iran-Contra investigation: $48.5 million - Total cost to taxpayers of the Madison Guarantee failure: $73 million - Number of Clinton cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 5 - Number of Reagan cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 4 - Number of top officials jailed in the Teapot Dome Scandal: 3 CRIME STATS - Number of individuals and businesses associated with the Clinton machine who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to crimes: 47 - Number of these convictions during Clinton's presidency: 33 - Number of indictments/misdemeanor charges: 61 - Number of imprisonments: 14 - Number of congressional witnesses who have pled the 5th Amendment, fled the country to avoid testifying, or (in the case of foreign witnesses) refused to be interviewed: 124 CAMPAIGN FINANCE INVESTIGATION - As of June 2000, the Justice Department listed 25 people indicted and 19 convicted because of the 1996 Clinton-Gore fundraising scandals. - According to the House Committee on Government Reform in September 2000, 79 House and Senate witnesses asserted the Fifth Amendment in the course of investigations into Gore's last fundraising campaign. [These figures are included in the larger figures elsewhere]. -James Riady entered a plea agreement to pay an $8.5 million fine for campaign finance crimes. This was a record under campaign finance laws. STARR INVESTIGATION - Number of Starr-Ray investigation convictions or guilty pleas to date (including one governor, one associate attorney general and two Clinton business partners): 15 - Number of Clinton Cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 5 - Number of Reagan cabinet members who came under criminal investigation: 4 - Number of top officials jailed in the Teapot Dome Scandal: 3 SMALTZ INVESTIGATION - Guilty pleas and convictions obtained by Donald Smaltz in cases involving charges of bribery and fraud against former Agriculture Secretary Espy and associated individuals and businesses: 15 - Acquitted or overturned cases (including Espy): 6 - Fines and penalties assessed: $11.5 million - Cost of investigation: $22.2 million through 9/99 - Amount Tyson Food paid in fines and court costs: $6 million - Amount Tyson Food still has in annual government contracts: $200 million - Reasons individuals other than Espy were convicted or pled guilty: Concealing knowledge of gifts to Espy and his girlfriend (1), providing illegal gratuities to Espy(4), illegally supplementing the salary of a government official (2), concealing receipt of illegal funds on behalf of Espy (1) (Espy's chief of staff sentenced to prison in this case) CRIMES FOR WHICH CONVICTIONS HAVE BEEN OBTAINED Drug trafficking (3), racketeering, extortion, bribery(4), tax evasion, kickbacks, embezzlement (2), fraud (12), conspiracy (5), fraudulent loans, illegal gifts(1), illegal campaign contributions(5), money laundering (6) POSSIBLE CRIMES AND SUSPICIOUS MATTERS INVESTIGATED BY SPECIAL PROSECUTORS, CONGRESS, AND/OR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS Bank and mail fraud, violations of campaign finance laws, illegal foreign campaign funding, improper exports of sensitive technology, physical violence and threats of violence, solicitation of perjury, intimidation of witnesses, bribery of witnesses, attempted intimidation of prosecutors, perjury before congressional committees, lying in statements to federal investigators and regulatory officials, flight of witnesses, obstruction of justice, bribery of cabinet members, real estate fraud, tax fraud, drug trafficking, failure to investigate drug trafficking, bribery of state officials, use of state police for personal purposes, exchange of promotions or benefits for sexual favors, using state police to provide false court testimony, laundering of drug money through a state agency, false reports by medical examiners and others investigating suspicious deaths, the firing of the RTC and FBI director when these agencies were investigating Clinton and his associates, failure to conduct autopsies in suspicious deaths, providing jobs in return for silence by witnesses, drug abuse, illegal acquisition and use of 900 FBI files, illegal futures trading, murder, sexual abuse of employees, false testimony before a federal judge, shredding of documents, withholding and concealment of subpoenaed documents, fabricated charges against (and improper firing of) White House employees, as well as providing access to the White House to drug traffickers, foreign agents and participants in organized crime. UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA - FBI files misappropriated by the White House: c. 900 - Estimated number of witnesses quoted in FBI files misappropriated by the White House: 18,000 - Number of witnesses who developed medical problems at critical points in Clinton scandals investigation (Tucker, Hale, both McDougals, Lindsey): 5 - Problem areas listed in a memo by Clinton's own lawyer in preparation for the president's defense: 40 - Number of witnesses and critics of Clinton subjected to IRS audit: 45 - Number of names placed in a White House secret database without the knowledge of those named: c. 200,000 - Number of persons involved with Clinton who have been beaten up: 2 - Number of women involved with Clinton who claim to have been physically threatened (Sally Perdue, Gennifer Flowers, Kathleen Willey, Linda Tripp, Elizabeth Ward Gracen): 5 - Number of men involved in the Clinton scandals who have been beaten up or claimed to have been intimidated: 10 ARKANSAS SUDDEN DEATH SYNDROME - Number of persons in the Clinton machine orbit who are alleged to have committed suicide: 9 - Number known to have been murdered: 12 - Number who died in plane crashes: 6 - Number who died in single car automobile accidents: 3 - Number killed during Waco massacre: 4 - Number of one-person sking fatalities: 1 - Number of key witnesses who have died of heart attacks while in federal custody under questionable circumstances: 1 - Number of medications being taken by Jim McDougal at the time he was placed in solitary confinement shortly before his death: 12 - Number of unexplained deaths: 4 - Total suspicious deaths: 46 - Number of northern Mafia killings during peak years of 1968-78: 30 - Number of Dixie Mafia killings during same period: 156 ARKANSAS ALZHEIMER'S - Number of times Hillary Clinton said "I don't recall" or its equivalent in a statement to a House investigating committee: 50 - Number of paragraphs in this statement: 42 - Number of times Bill Clinton said "I don't recall" or its equivalent in the released portions of the his testimony on Paula Jones: 271 - Total number of facts or events not recalled before official bodies by Bill Kennedy, Harold Ickes, Ricki Seidman, Bruce Lindsey, Bill Burton, Mark Gearan, Mack McLarty, Neil Eggleston, John Podesta, Jennifer O'Connor, Dwight Holton, Patsy Thomasson, Jeff Eller, Beth Nolan, Cliff Sloan, Bernard Nussbaum, George Stephanopoulous, Roy Neel, Rahm Emanuel, Maggie Williams, David Tarbell, Susan Thomases, Webster Hubbell, Roger Altman, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton: 6,125 - Average occurrence of memory lapse by top administration figures while before official bodies: 235 ARKANSAS MONEY MANAGEMENT - Amount of an alleged electronic transfer from the Arkansas Development Financial Authority to a bank in the Cayman Islands during 1980s: $50 million - Grand Cayman's population: 18,000 - Number of commercial banks: 570 - Number of bank regulators: 1 - Amount Arkansas state pension fund invested in high-risk repos in the mid-80s in one purchase in April 1985: $52 million through the Worthen Bank. - Number of days thereafter that the state's brokerage firm went belly up: 3 - Amount Arkansas pension fund dropped overnight as a result: 15% - Percent of Worthen bank that Mochtar Riady bought over the next four months to bail out the bank and the then governor, Bill Clinton: 40%. - Percent of purchasers from the Clintons and McDougals of resort lots who lost the land because of the sleazy financing provisions: over 50% THE MEDIA - Number of journalists covering Whitewater who have been fired, transferred off the beat, resigned or otherwise gotten into trouble because of their work on the scandals (Doug Frantz, Jim Wooten, Richard Behar, Christopher Ruddy, Michael Isikoff, David Eisenstadt, Yinh Chan, Jonathan Broder, James R. Norman, Zoh Hieronimus): 10 FRIENDS OF BILL - Number of times John Huang took the 5th Amendment in answer to questions during a Judicial Watch deposition: 1,000 - Visits made to the White House by investigation subjects Johnny Chung, James Riady, John Huang, and Charlie Trie. 160 - Number of campaign contributors who got overnights at the White House in the two years before the 1996 election: 577 - Number of members of Thomas Boggs's law firm who have held top positions in the Clinton administration. 18 - Number of times John Huang was briefed by CIA: 37 - Number of calls Huang made from Commerce Department to Lippo banks: 261 - Number of intelligence reports Huang read while at Commerce: 500

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (36112)	7/13/2005 12:39:01 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

Karl Rove, Whistleblower He told the truth about Joe Wilson. Wall Street Journal Wednesday, July 13, 2005 Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud. For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove. Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he'd obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists. On the "no underlying crime" point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller out of jail. "While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place," the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either. The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first "outed" himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous "16 words" on the subject in that year's State of the Union address. Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair. But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission. "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip," said the report. The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger. About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded." In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know. If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not to mention inspire a "special counsel" probe. The Bush Administration is also guilty on this count, since it went along with the appointment of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt the issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an unguided missile, holding reporters in contempt for not disclosing their sources even as it becomes clearer all the time that no underlying crime was at issue. As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (36112)	7/13/2005 1:08:10 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 93284

California Guard criticized over poster AP ^ \| Jul 12,, 2005 \| ap Islamic leaders and peace groups are criticizing the California National Guard for a flier posted in its headquarters suggesting the United States execute Islamic terrorists with bullets dipped in pig's blood to deny them entry to heaven. The flier attributed the practice to World War I General John J. Pershing. "Maybe it is time for this segment of history to repeat itself, maybe in Iraq?" the flier stated. It was posted outside a cubicle in the Guard's Civil Support Division. A second flier showed the wings and tail of a bomber forming a peace sign with the slogan, "Peace the old fashioned way." Also posted was a cartoon from a Web site showing a Red Crescent ambulance stuffed with weapons and a caricature that looks like the late-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat unloading the weapons. Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Doug Hart at first defended the postings to the San Jose Mercury News, which reported them Tuesday, but Hart later said they had been removed. Peace activists spotted the fliers during a tour last week. The tour came after peace groups and a state senator questioned whether a new Guard unit had been formed to spy on U.S. citizens and had monitored a Mother's Day anti-war rally. A federal investigation of the allegations is underway. "It's troubling to see a governmental organization dedicated to the security of our country promoting culturally and religiously insensitive ideas," said William Youmans, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Santa Clara. "It's very possible to combat terrorism without offending the cultural values of a major world religion."

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (36112)	7/13/2005 1:40:21 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 93284

Curse of the language corrupters Michelle Malkin July 13, 2005 Across the pond, the British Broadcasting Corporation is taking well-deserved lumps for whitewashing the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London. Editors have reportedly expunged the word "terrorist" from the BBC website and substituted the sanitized "bomber" to describe the killers. Next: "Burglars" will be "takers." "Child molesters" will be "ticklers." "Rapists" will be "unplanned lovers." High-minded BBC guidelines admonish employees against using words like "terrorist" that "carry emotional or value judgments." Yet, employing a reporter, Barbara Plett, who told viewers she bawled her eyes out when an ailing Yasser Arafat was whisked off to France in November 2004, is model objectivity. But bashing the terror-coddling BBC is too easy. Let us turn to our own language corrupters. $27,776 12:59AM Wednesday Nearly four years after the 9/11 attacks, the White House and the press still use the empty phrase "War on Terror" to describe the global battle against radical Islamist throat-slitters, suicide bombers and hijackers who incinerate children on their way to Disneyland. And in the wake of the London terrorist attacks, we Americans continue to bow to an unwritten editorial policy of invoking sanitized phrases and bloodless bluster as a substitute for concrete action. How many times have you heard some cable TV talking head or political hack urging us to be on "heightened alert" -- without having the courage to spell out exactly what that means? How many times has this been followed by a furrowed-brow precaution from some civil rights lawyer or human rights activist urging us to avoid an "anti-Muslim backlash"? I'd have an easier time cheering the "We will not yield" and "We are not afraid" sloganeering if just one of our tough talkers in Washington would get brutally specific about how they will show vigilance, courage, alertness and refusal to yield to radical Islamic terror. Allow me: -- A true state of "heightened alert" would mean barring any new religious visas for Muslim clerics and ending all visa-free travel, which means scrapping the anachronistic and insecure Transit Without a Visa program and the dangerously lax Visa Waiver Program. -- A true state of "heightened alert" would mean a targeted visa moratorium for terror-sponsoring and terror-friendly nations. The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 placed such a ban on temporary visitor visas for individuals from the seven official state sponsors of terrorism. The list should be expanded and revisited if and when intelligence points to new al Qaeda breeding grounds. And yes, that means tourists from Egypt, Yemen, Syria and the Philippines might be denied a Grand Canyon vacation the next five years. Tough noogies. At this point, despite all the grand rhetoric from both political parties about increased information-sharing and cooperation, I have limited confidence that our consular offices abroad are capable of stopping the next Mohammed Atta or Hani Hanjour from getting a temporary visa. The fewer applications from danger spots they have to deal with, the better. -- A true state of "heightened alert" would mean killing off the idiotic Diversity Visa Lottery Program once and for all and scouring the H1-B visa program for Islamist exploitation. -- A true state of "heightened alert" would mean unapologetic government monitoring of Arab and Muslim foreign students on temporary visas, Muslim chaplains and soldiers serving in the military and in prisons, and Arab and Muslim pilots and flight students. -- A true state of "heightened alert" would mean immediate deportation of illegal aliens from terror-sponsoring and terror-supporting nations, increased National Guard dispatches on both the northern and southern borders, aggressive police-federal cooperation to catch illegal border crossers and overstayers on the interior, and vigorous encouragement of volunteer border security efforts like the Minuteman Project. It's precisely these kinds of national security profiling and targeted immigration enforcement measures that obstructionists characterize as an "anti-Muslim backlash," which is why no one will talk about them despite all the "heightened alert" posturing. In London, "terrorists" are "bombers." In the U.S., citizen watchdogs are "vigilantes." The Ministry of Truth would be pleased.