Happy New Year!

I'm off to the family to the beach to welcome in 2006. May everyone have a safe and happy New Year! I'll leave you all with this article written by writer, actor, economist, and lawyer, Ben Stein printed in today's American Spectator

"It's almost 2006, a date that seems like something from a science fiction movie in which men are traveling around on teleporters and making weekend trips to Jupiter. But, no, it's 2006, and most of the day I am still stuck in traffic, especially the traffic in my head. That traffic is thoughts of old times and of how much less time I have left than I did even a few years ago.

I've started asking friends what their favorite memories are, what their happiest days were. I get stories of love, of parents' expressing love to children, of romantic love, of a man fly fishing with his sons in a river in Montana. I get stories of peace and stories of revenge. And this thought keeps coming to my mind, which I'll share with you now.

Probably the happiest moment of my whole life was when I had just quit being a trial lawyer for the FTC, the world's worst job, had moved out to UC Santa Cruz to teach, dragged my colitis-racked body into my tiny prefector's dorm room, unpacked, and then gone to look around. It was a surprisingly warm August night in Santa Cruz in 1972. I found a picnic table, a sturdy table indeed, and lay down on it on my back just for a lark. I looked up at the stars. I had never seen so many and they danced all around in the California sky.

I was at peace, free from cares and worries, about to plunge into a new life of love and redwood trees. And I know I've told you about this before and will again if I live.

For the next several weeks, I had a riot of romance with various women around Santa Cruz, got my first Weimaraner, learned to say good-bye to the day by staring at the sunset, and became generally a new man.

The old, frightened Benjy was gone at least for a few weeks or months.

I was a hero of the revolution, James Bond raking in the girl chips.

I was happy.


BUT WHAT JUST OCCURRED to me today, December 29, 2005, is that none of this, absolutely none, not one bit of it, would have been possible without the men and women of the Armed Forces. While I was busy being born (and not dying), men and women were getting blown to pieces by German 88's and Japanese mortars to win the big one. While I was growing up, our freedom was saved by the Strategic Air Command ("Peace is our Profession") and by men and women patrolling in the Arctic Circle. While I was in elementary school, my cousin Joe and my uncle Bob were fighting and fine men and women were dying at Cho-Sin Reservoir.

And at the moment I was looking at the stars in perfect peace, far better men than I were getting killed in ambushes in Vietnam.

So, yes, I had a moment of peace and weeks or months of romantic glory, but all behind the shield of the men and women who wear the uniform.

Other happy moments flood back to me: lying in my parents' living room not long before they died, with my mother offering me grapes and my father reading the American Economic Review, and all of us at peace. And this was a rare moment indeed. All inside the glittering dome made for us by the men aboard nuclear submarines and the women caring for the sick, and the policemen of the District of Columbia and the firemen and EMT's, too.

And my favorite moments now, lying in bed in front of the fire, wind blowing through the palm fronds outside, with the dogs and my wife, napping while the dogs snore and my wife reads her mysteries: and all while far better men and women than we are fight and die in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families live in terror back home.

A glorious moment: speaking as valedictorian of my class at Yale Law, '70, talking airily about peace and love and gardens of Eden, and all the while, as I chattered in my bubble, high on something, I am sure, with my coterie of girls watching and oooh-and-ahhing, far better humans than I, with far better claims to human decency than I, with far closer relations to the Almighty, were being held in prison camps and torture chambers in Vietnam.

Now that I think of it, every moment that's great in my life shares the same foundation: we live large thanks to those who serve in difficult, life-threatening places and ways.

So, as the science fiction year of 2006 dawns, my main resolution is to keep in mind the guys in whose shadows we all walk, behind whose shields we all live, the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces, and God bless them and their families in 2006 and forever."

Amen!

Happy 2006!




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What the NSA - and the Nation Really Needs..

What can I say about the Washington Post - Chutzpah - yeah that's the word.

So soon after the announcement that they are the target of an investigation into the leaking of classified material, they continue with "dissecting" the inner operations of the NSA and again alerting the enemy to it's "shortcomings". Although I cannot disagree with their specifics they report - i.e.; yeah, the agency could use a lot of updating, yet on the other hand, technology is rapidly changing and yes we are fighting a NEW kind of enemy. The fact is that what they do they do well and so far it has worked greatly - EXCEPT when when our IC efforts have been thwarted by the MSM.

Let me be clear, as an American and lover of our freedoms I really do applaud freedom of the press and an open Government,. But damn it folks this is a war and letting the enemy in on our plans and where were are weak, can't do anything but embolden those we seek to distroy. It just serves no functional purpose whatsoever, and it needs to stop. Hopefully it will after a few "big mouth journalists" are sent up the river it will.

"As the controversy over the legality and propriety of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency rages on, one question has not been adequately addressed: Is the NSA's approach really the best way of tracking terrorists? While there's no question that the NSA's covert move into domestic surveillance raises serious legal and ethical issues, the equally important and less examined question is whether -- more than four years after 9/11 -- the agency's methods are suited to tracking the jihadists.

The difference between Bletchley Park and Crypto City has as much to do with the very different nature of their tasks as with the way they are viewed. By today's standards, the mission at Bletchley Park was well-defined. The targets of the surveillance were clear: the German high command and intelligence service. The signals collectors had a good fix on what communications to monitor. The greatest challenge lay in breaking the extremely complex Enigma code.

By contrast, the NSA conducts broad-based surveillance indiscriminately over communications lines that few bad guys even use any longer. "Big Noddy," as those in the know call the NSA's vast "Ear in the Sky," has capabilities that dwarf the Bletchley Park World War II enterprise, but it isn't picking up much because the smartest terrorist groups have long since stopped talking about their plans over cell phones or land lines -- or to the extent they do, it's probably to plant disinformation. Today the challenge isn't decoding an intercepted message from a known enemy; instead it's figuring out what is and isn't a message and who the enemy is."

Actually, there is a question. If the NSA is so busted why is what they do apparently working so well? Not to be crude, but seen any burning buildings lately? You reporters and your "Chicken Little Journalism" are getting lame and annoying - I mean really annoying.

"Moreover, communications between terrorist groups today, says one intelligence official, is either "air-gapped" -- in which a document or computer disk is hand-delivered by messenger (as was seen in the letters allegedly exchanged between al Qaeda chieftain Ayman Zawahiri and Iraqi insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi) -- or it occurs through Web sites. Some intelligence experts who are critical of NSA's efforts, like John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., a sometime Pentagon consultant, say the real problem is that the agency is still pursuing a Cold War-era strategy.

What the NSA really needs to do, say Arquilla and others, is to build a new Bletchley Park. Just as Bletchley attracted Alan Turing, inventor of the modern computer, the NSA needs to summon the Turings of our day -- mainly computer hackers -- to snare al Qaeda and other terrorists at the only place they still communicate electronically, on Web sites. An added benefit, Arquilla adds, is that "if we went the route of a much greater emphasis of intelligence collection on the Web and Net, we would learn a lot more and intrude less on civil liberties."

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corp., notes that most of the major breakthroughs against al Qaeda-linked plots in recent years have shown that the terrorists, wary of phone monitoring, are communicating through couriers on the ground and coordinating plots on the Web. When Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a protege of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was arrested in July 2004, his laptop contained plans for simultaneous attacks on London and New York that were to have been transmitted electronically. Today, adds Hoffman, the most sophisticated terrorists have learned to evade the NSA altogether. "They keep their messages in a draft file on a Web site, then give someone the password and user name to get in. The NSA can't track that, because it's stationary."

It's interesting that they would mention Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan as it was the NY Times that outed him, "The undercover operative's value as a critical intelligence asset went up in smoke on Monday when the New York Times named the previously unidentified Khan, calling him "a kind of clearinghouse of Qaida communications" and "a vital source of information" on terrorist operations."

Khan was helping us to locate and track other terrorists, but of course the NY Times is the "Paper of Record", so they print the story, we lose our asset, which caused world wide havoc on IC operations.

Thanks!

Perhaps the biggest problem the NSA has isn't it's legal techniques but blabber mouth leakers leaking to bigger blabber mouth reporters. Perhaps now that the investigation into the leaking is moving forward, we can begin to put these critical and damaging leaks to an end, along with the leakers themselves.

Yeah, perhaps that's just what we need.

UPDATE: Along with the WAPO, Michelle Malkin notes that NY Times "spy expert" and author James Risen has moved the release of his book "State of War" to January 3rd. Great! Just in time for a hot subpoena for Mr. Risen.

Quite frankly, it appears that Mr. Risen is basically saying, "Catch me if you can", while sticking his finger in the eye of the DOJ. Not smart at this point.

Sir, you're planning a battle, you're going to lose. Word is that the President of the United States wants "heads" on this matter, and and not the ones on the side of a coin. I would suggest Mr. Risen you not be so bold.




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The Classic Media Moments of 2005

I was compiling stories for the end of the year but Media Research Center has a run down of Notable Quotables. Michelle Malkin with "The MSM war on Blogs".

My MSM "egg on the face" moment of the year?

See here!.

Destined to be a classic!

From the mouth of Babes - so long as they aren't Republicans

The left decrys "Why" in Iraq....

Per Michelle Malkin, a teen responds.

It will be interesting to see if the MSM treats this teen as shabbly as they are treating 16-year-old Farris Hassan of Fort Lauderdale (local boy), the high school student who snuck off to Iraq to practice "immersion journalism":

"He said he wrote half the essay while in the United States, half in Kuwait, and e-mailed it to his teachers Dec. 15 while in the Kuwait City airport.

“There is a struggle in Iraq between good and evil, between those striving for freedom and liberty and those striving for death and destruction,” he wrote.

“Those terrorists are not human but pure evil. For their goals to be thwarted, decent individuals must answer justice’s call for help. Unfortunately, altruism is always in short supply. Not enough are willing to set aside the material ambitions of this transient world, put morality first, and risk their lives for the cause of humanity. So I will.”

“I want to experience during my Christmas the same hardships ordinary Iraqis experience everyday, so that I may better empathize with their distress,” he wrote."

This of course was yesterday. Today news accounts tell us that:

"He is a member of a Republican Party club at school."

Useless information as far as the story goes and no doubt included to 'explain' his pro-war/Iraqi freedom views.

Views incidently which are fowned upon for a kid going to a private school in heavily democratic Broward County Florida to have:

Thus:

"When school officials learned of Hassan’s’ trip, they threatened to expel him, but Atiya and Hassan’s father, Redha Hassan, a physician, persuaded officials to allow him to remain, Atiya said. It was not immediately clear why they wanted to expel him."

This additional information from the AP:

"Minutes after Medhi Hassan was interviewed by Diane Sawyer, he watched a CNN report in which two of the journalists his brother met in Baghdad described the teen as "blissfully ignorant."

Yeah....

One would have to wonder if he went with a Cindy Sheehan type of attitude?

UPDATE: Just in case you've missed it, courtesy of MSNBC has a blog called, "Blogging Bagdad: The untold story. Better DNC talking points on the war you won't find. Not suprising they too think Hassan is just a 'misinformed' and 'misguided' little boy. Read the postings and have a chuckle on me.

For me once was enough. Fact is, the story HAS BEEN told from a slew of bloggers that have been in Iraq since the beginning. So no thanks MSNBC. Personally, if I want to know what is really going on on the ground (and the Satellite phone is on the fritz), I frequent Michael Yon. Best damn Iraq war reporting - period!




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NSA - The Leak Investigation Begins

As the wheels really begin to spin (as they have over the last few weeks behind the scenes) into the probe of the NSA leak as well as the CIA Prison leak, and from my source even a few more leaks from 2004-05 are being looked at - a few points to ponder:

(Of course it's interesting to note that this morning, suspect number two - the Washinton Post is more interested in the manufactured story of Tom Delay and Abramoff (again ignoring Abramhoff's extensive ties to Democrats like Senator ($67,000) Harry Reid, than of giving this story the front page treatment that they gave to the Plame Game).

Oh well, ignorance is bliss for the MSM.

But back on the points.

First, if the left was looking for "Watergate-2006", they're not going to get it from this story - there is no crime. Nice try though, and as we will see much of what I and AJ Strata, Michelle Malkin and the folks at American Thinkerhave been eluding to over the summer is the story of was has been (and continues to be) an orchestrated attempt at "Gettng Bush".

Not since "Get Nixon" has the iron triangle of DNC/MSM/CIA been in such full gear to bring down a President. Had it been 1972 they might have pulled it off - but thankfully it's not and more thankfully a more corrupt standard of President lifted the bar so to speak. When it comes to absolute corruption, it's hard to hold a candle to Clinton's Records. Moreover to his legendary and far reaching use of warrantless searches.

But I digress.

Whether it was the half a hundred anti-Bush books published and promoted through the MSM during 2004 (published more or less in succession to help defeat Bush); through the manufactured stories such as (RaThErGaTe) which severely backfired on C-BS, all the way to the no-leak story of DNC Operative, and CIA Administrative Assistant Valerie Plame and her DNC orchestrated, MSM enabled attempt to discredit the Bush Adminitration and help Kerry win the election. When it didn't work they got the unholy alliance of Kristof/Pincus and Corn to help them manufacture the story of the no-leak and get Joe a book deal!

They ought to have hired a different script writer, the plot of this movie was evident from beginning to end and very badly acted as the main characters such as Dishonest Joe who kept forgetting his lines.

We now come to what should be the Waterloo of the MSM - as in the end they are going to be nailed for publishing classified material. Through the Plame Game the door was opened to jailing journalists who obstruct and hide behind their sources. I do hope Andrea Michelle's memory improves - I'm really worried about her! It's actually going to be a lot of fun to see "who turns on who", as with Judith Miller we learned that the Media loves to consume their own.

Just as an observation, besides my dream of seeingCNN’s Jack Cafferty so dressed, I think The Nation's David Corn looks good in Orange as well.

Anyway... and are expectedly crying the blues that the Bush Administration would be so mean. "How could they?" They can, they are, and it's about time.




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I'm Staying out of Fremont!

Cross Fremont California off my list of places to visit.

Rabid Chihuahuas? Porn-planting burglars?

I though Berkeley California was weird.

Clinton's Use of Warrantless Searches - a Fact - Except for the Reality Challenged Left

Perhaps there can be a debate on warrantless searches if the left wasn't so absent minded to forget that President Bush didn't invent them, but so partisen to say he should be nailed for them.

I've often quoted from this Cato Institute paper which covered what they felt were mutiple constitutional abuses of President Clinton during his two term presidency.

This paper was published in 1997, long before the current debate. Reading it one could imagine if it had been written and released during this year - imagine the outcry!

Clinton's use of warrantless search method is legendary among law enforcement persons. Little wonder that as the paper cites, this led ACLU officials to describe the Clinton White House as "the most wiretap-friendly administration in history."

In fact during the 90's in my capacity in law enforcement I participated on many such "warrantless seraches" which were upheld and cited under guidelines created by the Justice Department under Clinton.

For example in the much publicized Chicago Public Housing Authorty case, the paper says:

"In the spring of 1994 the Chicago Public Housing Authority responded to gang violence by conducting warrantless "sweeps" of entire apartment buildings. Closets, desks, dressers, kitchen cabinets, and personal effects were examined regardless of whether the police had probable cause to suspect particular residents of any wrongdoing. Some apartments were searched when the residents were not home. Although such searches were supported by the Clinton administration, Federal District Judge Wayne Anderson declared the Chicago sweeps unconstitutional. Judge Anderson found the government's claim of "exigent circumstances" to be exaggerated since all of the sweeps occurred days after the gang-related shootings. He also noted that even in emergency situations, housing officials needed probable cause in order to search specific apartments. Unlike many governmental officials who fear demagogic criticism for being "soft on crime," Judge Anderson stood up for the Fourth Amendment rights of the tenants, noting that he had "sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution" and that he would not "use the power of [his] office to override it, amend it or subvert it."

The White House response was swift. President Clinton publicly ordered Attorney General Reno and HUD secretary Henry Cisneros to find a way to circumvent Judge Anderson's ruling. One month later the president announced a "constitutionally effective way" of searching public housing units. The Clinton administration would now ask tenants to sign lease provisions that would give government agents the power to search their homes without warrants.

The Clinton plan was roundly criticized by lawyers and columnists for giving short shrift to the constitutional rights of the tenants. A New York Times editorial observed that the president had "missed the point" of Judge Anderson's ruling. Harvard law professors Charles Ogletree and Abbe Smith rightly condemned the Clinton proposal as an open invitation to the police to "tear up" the homes of poor people."

Of couse the most publicized occurrences of a warrantless search was on traitor Aldrich Ames. Squirm as some of the pundits on the left are doing, this particular case is a fact, and nothing the current Administration has done comes close. Not that I don't agree with the method as Ames was/is a traitor.

But let's not be so intellectually dishonest to pretend that somehow this one case "doesn't count", or that "it''s different". Again, one could imagined if this would have happened during President Bush's tenure. Fact of the matter is that Bush didn't invent the practice of warrantless searches, nor for that matter did Clinton, and there may be room for a valid debate about the practice and the issues surrounding it, if the left would get off it's "Bush stole the 2000 Election" five-year hangover, and talk about the issue halfway intelligently.

But then, I just bought a lotto ticket.

UPDATE: Here'sa story reporting that that the Rendition Program actually began under Clinton. Now why would we expect the the NY Times or Washington Post to have included this in their original reporting?





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Calling Mr. Fitzgerald?

**UPDATED AND BUMPED****

As I told you about in this post yesterday as a source confirmed to me that the Justice Department has launched a probe into the NSA leak. Mr. Risen, you are in trouble - prepare your defense. I told you so.

The White House will be announcing the probe at about 12:30pm. My source tells me that this probe will most likely result in another prosecutor being assigned as of course Fitzgerald is still busy/dizzy on the Plame/Game No-Leak. Additionally, other probes into other recent leaks such as the CIA 'prisons'leak is in the works as well. As I said, this is the NEW Bush - on the attack - it's no more Mr. Nice Guy!

About time! Also covering Michelle Malkin

*****End Update*********

UPDATE II: Looks like I owe my source big time as yet another tip comes true as the Washington Post is on the target list as well for the CIA Prison leak.

****End Update II*************************************

Update III: Via Fox: "The government has no legal right to pursue the whistleblower [or] whistleblowers who disclosed what's been publicly aired to date," Tom Devine, the legal director for the Government Accountability Project and a lawyer who represents whistleblowers, told FOXNews.com.

Devine said at least two laws protect a potential leak source. One is a so-called anti-gag statute that prevents the government from spending money on a leak investigation unless it specifically warned the employee that its gag rules cannot trump good-government laws.

The leak also could be legal if the Whistleblower Protection Act covers it, Devine said, as long as the leaker was not in the FBI, CIA or NSA, which aren't covered by the act. For instance, a civilian Pentagon employee who wanted to expose government wrongdoing would have free speech protections to expose abuses of power or illegal actions."

Mr. Devine needs to stop the bloviating and read up on TITLE 18: PART I: CHAPTER 37 : § 798 Disclosure of classified information, to wit:

(a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information—

(1) concerning the nature, preparation, or use of any code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the United States or any foreign government; or
(2) concerning the design, construction, use, maintenance, or repair of any device, apparatus, or appliance used or prepared or planned for use by the United States or any foreign government for cryptographic or communication intelligence purposes; or
(3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government; or
(4) obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any foreign government, knowing the same to have been obtained by such processes—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

In short, NO Whistleblower is protected from disclosing classifed information.

*****************end update III*************************************

UPDATE IV: Alas the news that leakers are to be sought out and prosecuted brings a meltdown on the left as evidenced here. So that it's not the leakers that matter to the left, but who the leaking is on - who it harms. If a leak exposes a political operative fraud and their shuckster-opportunistic husband, then it's worthy of seventy-million bucks a two-year trip to no where. Yet when the leaks are to an arrogant press and bring untold damage to our national security and place our agents (who are enemies in the eyes of the left) in harms way, and in turn endanger our lives, then it's "acceptable" and "right".

Relax "Armando", this isn't like the Constitutional Abusive Clinton Years.

We have met the real enemy, Armando and his kind are the reason we fight, and in the end we will win.

****************end update IV***************************************

UPDATE V: Just one more left "reaction" here. Again, the Plame "No leak" and the current leak of known classified information draw no parallel. For the umpteenth time Plame was not uncover/covert as Fitzgerald found (and most of us knew) and thus couldn't charge for outing an "office worker". Therefore, there is no "hypocrisy" of the right (and 29 percent of the left) that now think this current leaks are REAL leaks which REALLY damaged National Security and which REALLY ought to be looked into.

You can see though that this is where the left is going. "Bush didn't care about leaks when super-secret/undercover-covert Valerie DNC operative cover got blown, now he's mad about leaks to the Paper of Record!".

These people are derangedand unhinged, which is bad for them and their families, but great for the Right.

So I say, have at it! The more you side with the terrorist the better it is for us in 2006 and beyond. Keep it going PLEASE!

*************end update V******************************************

UPDATE: VI Per a commenter, "CNN beginning the 4 pm "Day Room" is reporting "whistleblowers"!

Got it? They are not "leakers".". As of 5pm, only "premium content" has a link to story. No "front page here!". Snow blowing over Europe leads on MSNBC (I wonder if Hardball will cover the "flakes" as usual?).

On another thought, I wonder if Senator Chuck Schumer will ask Risen and Priest to sign confidentiality waivers for their sources to testify if needed?

hmmmm

***********end update VI********************************************

UPDATE VII: I've been getting a lot of emails reference The Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 - which in this case does not apply as the leak was evidently to the Media - NOT the Inspector General's office as the law intends. Again, see Title 18, as well as the intent of the Classified and Related Information Disclosure Act, to wit:

"This legislation directs the President to inform employees of the intelligence community that they may disclose information, including classified information, to an appropriate oversight committee of Congress when that information is evidence of misconduct, fraud, or gross mismanagement.

The committee is hopeful that this legislation will also encourage employees within the intelligence community to bring such information to an appropriate committee of Congress rather than unlawfully disclosing such information to the media, as happens from time to time."

The "right" of intelligence employees of the Government to report TO PROPER AUTHORITY evidence of fraud, misconduct, etc.

As in anything, there is a "chain of command" in all of Government, and the last time I looked, the NY Times (James Risen) or Washington Post (Dana Priest) did not appear in any of the IC charts.

Sorry folks, whoever leaked this information is in a major hurt along with those who received it.

*****************end update VII*************************************

UPDATE VIII: Townhall's Linda Chavez in her column yesterday noted the difference in the democrats "outrage" between the Plame Game no leak, and the very serious NSA/CIA prisons leaks, especially with her "ditto" on Chuck Schumer.

As I noted here, the media set themselves up for this "trouble", by their 'froggy' behavior surrounding the Plame Game. Now with the Libby defense team gearing up to no doubt call up journalists as witnesses (better get your story together Andrea), as well as this investigation firing up - 2006 just may just be The Year of the Dog - for the MSM.

*************end update VIII****************************************

When the President of the United States presumes something is taking place, that's "Washington Speak" for it had better be damn well underway.

According to a source of mine- it is.

Since we already have a "eternal investigation" via Patrick Fitzgerald, it would seem as this new and from what I understand very "broad" investigation into recent classified leaks to the media, he may be quite busy into the New Year and beyond.





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Of course, we could just kill him now

How's this for losing your mind in the wind of passing gas?

"AMMAN (Reuters) - The United States should free Saddam Hussein if it wants to end its problems in Iraq and earn the friendship of Arabs, the former Iraqi president's lawyer wrote in a letter to U.S. President George W. Bush.

The chief lawyer for Saddam at his trial for crimes against humanity in Baghdad told Bush that Iraqis who supported their former leader were waiting for a bold decision from the world's most powerful statesman to free him.

"I call on you (President Bush) to release Mr. President (Saddam) immediately to allow the Iraqis to decide his fate. Only then will you get out of your predicament in Iraq and truly become an advocate of justice," Khalil Dulaimi wrote in a letter obtained by Reuters.

Such a decision would prove to be the panacea that would end Washington's woes over Iraq, Dulaimi asserted.

"Your relations with Iraq will then be historic and you will win the favor of the Arabs and Muslims and the entire world," Dulaimi said, adding that it was the only way to spare Iraq from undergoing a bloody civil war.

"Iraq is heading now toward a destructive civil war... release him so that wounds can heal and his people unite."

Dulaimi also said it will become clear to Bush that Saddam's two-month-old trial is a farce of false witnesses and lies that should be ended. "

Speechless that's what I am!

Hugh Hewitt:

"While I was Googling for this story, by the way, I came across a "Free Saddam" online petition with 177 signatures on it. Nice. I wonder when they'll start printing T-shirts. And if they do, how long it would take for Howard Dean to have his picture taken in one.

I thought I was joking about that last part, but thinking on it, Dean really is the Great Gaffe-Master and I reckon he could master that one."

Yeah!




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Cookie This!

While the MSM goes bonkers over the fact that the NSA website installed internet "cookies" on people's computers as they visited the site, the fact is that the NSA site can't hold a candle to the KING of cookies MSNBC. In fact just loading the page in internet explorer loaded over 25 cookies. This doesn't count all the scripts it runs on your system through Active X (kind of an intrustion because it actually installs things on your computer without you being aware of it).



Note that in this screen capture window are "tribal fusion" and "double click" cookies, and other "spyware". Bad MSNBC - very bad.

Now...

"Cookies are widely used at commercial Web sites and can make Internet browsing more convenient by letting sites remember user preferences. For instance, visitors would not have to repeatedly enter passwords at sites that require them.

But privacy advocates complain that cookies can also track Web surfing, even if no personal information is actually collected.

In a 2003 memo, the White House's Office of Management and Budget prohibits federal agencies from using persistent cookies — those that aren't automatically deleted right away — unless there is a "compelling need."

A senior official must sign off on any such use, and an agency that uses them must disclose and detail their use in its privacy policy.

Peter Swire, a Clinton administration official who had drafted an earlier version of the cookie guidelines, said clear notice is a must, and "vague assertions of national security, such as exist in the NSA policy, are not sufficient."

Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered the NSA cookies, said mistakes happen, "but in any case, it's illegal. The (guideline) doesn't say anything about doing it accidentally."

In a word - Mr. Swire is full of crap. I also worked on Government websites, as well as developing other commercial websites. Fact is that cookies don't automatically "track web habits", they have to be written to do so and most do not (unlike the aforementioned MSNBC spyware). Fact is that none of the cookies found on the NSA website were found to have trafficked 'web surfing habits'. The only 'gig" is that that their programmed expiration date was 2035, which by the way is about the same time most of the some of the MSNBC cookies are set to expire, and again, most of those DO track your web surfing habits.

More at Wizbang.




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Media in Glass House Shouldn't Throw......

Call it the year of Lame Reporting.

This post is a take off on this article blaming the Bush adminstration for everything except teenage acne.

Fact is that for ANYONE in the MSM to even try to write an article like this is lame enough, as if it was the banner year for the MSM....NOT, but to miss their multiple screwups in the process is well, so, MSM!

Since most of the article's venom is pointed at the Federal Response of Katrina - although I'm still waiting on some really tough reporting on idiot Nagin and Kathleen (got my water bottle where's yours?) Blanco to appear - Let's review how THEY did during the disaster!

Fact is that the MSM blew Kartina story big time. I mean as covering stories go, you couldn't have covered it worse or more incompetantly than media.

Although, we're still waiting for all the corrections to come in, much less the apologies to both the President and the Nation, nonetheless, most of what we still see is compete denial for the most part and outright arrogance overall.

Yet some of the media has been less than flattering...

For instance:

"The New York Times at the time Katrina was front page news hailed CNN's Anderson Cooper as "an anchor who reports disaster news with a heart on his sleeve". Strange praise for a reporter pledged to provide facts.

Last week, though, the Times busted many of the Cooper fables, from the chain of botched aid it was far more complicated than "Bush did it" because of America's three-government federal system to the allegedly "violence-ridden" Superdome.

And Maj Ed Bush of the Louisiana National Guard, who was there, told the Los Angeles Times in retrospect: "What I saw in the Superdome was just tremendous amounts of people helping people." In other words, no violence at all, in what was certainly a hellhole.

Remember the stacks of corpses at the Superdome, where failed officials didn't take food? There were six deaths, of natural causes, none the result of violence."

And who could forget Aaron Broussard's tearful outburst, shown September 4th on Meet the Press? Which was also later discovered to be an act.

Then there were the false stories which caused people - American's - to die. Such as the Newsweek fake Koran story. We've yet to see Newsweek fire anyone (hint: Isokoff) for this disaster. Instead we were treated to Rathergate excuses.

Ask me, it's been a pretty damn lame year for the MSM, they should talk. By the way, I'm still asking for nominations for the Top Ten Media Lies for 2005!



iraq Politics News murtha Able Danger Curt Weldon bush war on terror spying patriot act nsa CIA jonathan alter alitokrugman

Real Journalism - Fair and balanced for a change

What!

Who are these guys and what did they do with the Chicago Tribune staff?

Seriously though, I slam the MSM as a whole whenever I can because of their most times blantant misrepresentation of the facts, if not compete fabrication of news stories based on their liberal agenda.

But it's also fair to point out when they actually print a story based on real journalism - fair and balanced. Such is the case with the story outlined below. Here the times staff does a very good job spearating the hype from the facts as we know them today.

Judging the case for war

"Did President Bush intentionally mislead this nation and its allies into war? Or is it his critics who have misled Americans, recasting history to discredit him and his policies? If your responses are reflexive and self-assured, read on.

On Nov. 20, the Tribune began an inquest: We set out to assess the Bush administration's arguments for war in Iraq. We have weighed each of those nine arguments against the findings of subsequent official investigations by the 9/11 Commission, the Senate Intelligence Committee and others. We predicted that this exercise would distress the smug and self-assured--those who have unquestioningly supported, or opposed, this war."

The Chicago Tribune in this article actually does a very good job on separating the facts surrounding the lead up to the war in Iraq vs. the lies of the left - the "Bush lied" mantra. Read it for yourself, but here are a few of the points:

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

The Bush administration said Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction. Officials trumpeted reports from U.S. and foreign spy agencies, including an October 2002 CIA assessment: "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions."

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Many, although not all, of the Bush administration's assertions about weapons of mass destruction have proven flat-out wrong. What illicit weaponry searchers uncovered didn't begin to square with the magnitude of the toxic armory U.S. officials had described before the war.

THE VERDICT

There was no need for the administration to rely on risky intelligence to chronicle many of Iraq's other sins. In putting so much emphasis on illicit weaponry, the White House advanced its most provocative, least verifiable case for war when others would have sufficed.

Iraq rebuffs the world

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

In a speech that left many diplomats visibly squirming in their chairs, President Bush detailed tandem patterns of failure: Saddam Hussein had refused to obey UN Security Council orders that he disclose his weapons programs--and the UN had refused to enforce its demands of Hussein.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Reasonable minds disagree on whether Iraq's flouting of UN resolutions justified the war. But there can be no credible assertion that either Iraq or the UN met its responsibility to the world. If anything, the administration gravely understated the chicanery, both in Baghdad and at the UN.

THE VERDICT

Hussein had shunted enough lucre to enough profiteers to keep the UN from challenging him. In a dozen years the organization mass-produced 17 resolutions on Iraq, all of them toothless. That in turn enabled Hussein to continue his brutal reign and cost untold thousands of Iraqis their lives.

The quest for nukes

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

Intelligence agencies warned the Clinton and Bush administrations that Hussein was reconstituting his once-impressive program to create nuclear weapons. In part that intel reflected embarrassment over U.S. failure before the Persian Gulf war to grasp how close Iraq was to building nukes.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Four intel studies from 1997-2000 concurred that "If Iraq acquired a significant quantity of fissile material through foreign assistance, it could have a crude nuclear weapon within a year." Claims that Iraq sought uranium and special tubes for processing nuclear material appear discredited.

THE VERDICT

If the White House manipulated or exaggerated the nuclear intelligence before the war in order to paint a more menacing portrait of Hussein, it's difficult to imagine why. For five years, the official and oft-delivered alarms from the U.S. intelligence community had been menacing enough.

Hussein's rope-a-dope

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE SAID

The longer Hussein refuses to obey UN directives to disclose his weapons programs, the greater the risk that he will acquire, or share with terrorists, the weaponry he has used in the past or the even deadlier capabilities his scientists have tried to develop. Thus we need to wage a pre-emptive war.

WHAT WE KNOW TODAY

Hussein didn't have illicit weapons stockpiles to wield or hand to terrorists. Subsequent investigations have concluded he had the means and intent to rekindle those programs as soon as he escaped UN sanctions.

THE VERDICT

Had Hussein not been deposed, would he have reconstituted deadly weaponry or shared it with terror groups? Of the White House's nine arguments for war, the implications of this warning about Iraq's intentions are treacherous to imagine--yet also the least possible to declare true or false."

Well, what we know is that dispite "what we know", there are facts of Saddams intentions and what he did with his WMD's before the invasion which have been all but completely ignored by the MSM. Be that as it may, it's refreshing to see at least the attempt at objective journalism, although don't expect the Nighly News with Brian Williams to lead tonight's broadcast with it.




iraq Politics News murtha Able Danger Curt Weldon bush war on terror spying patriot act nsa CIA jonathan alter alitokrugman