The New York Times Prepares the Defense of Hasan

But of course you could expect nothing less from the rag that divulges our secrets for kicks.

 This smuck, Robert Wright, asks "Who created Major Hasan?"

 "IN the case of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and the Fort Hood massacre, the verdict has come in. The liberal news media have been found guilty — by the conservative news media — of coddling Major Hasan’s religion, Islam. Liberals, according to the columnist Charles Krauthammer, wanted to medicalize Major Hasan’s crime — call it an act of insanity rather than of terrorism.

They worked overtime, Mr. Krauthammer said on Fox News, to “avoid any implication that there was any connection between his Islamist beliefs ... and his actions.” The columnist Jonah Goldberg agrees. Admit it, he wrote in The Los Angeles Times, Major Hasan is “a Muslim fanatic, motivated by other Muslim fanatics.”

 The good news for Mr. Krauthammer and Mr. Goldberg is that there is truth in their indictment. The bad news is that their case against the left-wing news media is the case against right-wing foreign policy. Seeing the Fort Hood shooting as an act of Islamist terrorism is the first step toward seeing how misguided a hawkish approach to fighting terrorism has been.

 The American right and left reacted to 9/11 differently. Their respective responses were, to oversimplify a bit: “kill the terrorists” and “kill the terrorism meme.” Conservatives backed war in Iraq, and they’re now backing an escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

Liberals (at least, dovish liberals) have warned in both cases that killing terrorists is counterproductive if in the process you create even more terrorists; the object of the game isn’t to wipe out every last Islamist radical but rather to contain the virus of Islamist radicalism

 One reason killing terrorists can spread terrorism is that various technologies — notably the Internet and increasingly pervasive video — help emotionally powerful messages reach receptive audiences. When American wars kill lots of Muslims, inevitably including some civilians, incendiary images magically find their way to the people who will be most inflamed by them.

 This calls into question our nearly obsessive focus on Al Qaeda — the deployment of whole armies to uproot the organization and to finally harpoon America’s white whale, Osama bin Laden. If you’re a Muslim teetering toward radicalism and you have a modem, it doesn’t take Mr. bin Laden to push you over the edge.

All it takes is selected battlefield footage and a little ad hoc encouragement: a jihadist chat group here, a radical imam there — whether in your local mosque or on a Web site in your local computer. This, at least, is the view from the left. Exhibit A in this argument is Nidal Hasan. By all accounts he was pushed over the edge by his perception of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He also drew inspiration from a radical imam, Anwar al-Awlaki. Notably, it had been eight years since Major Hasan actually saw Mr. Awlaki, who moved from America to Yemen after 9/11.

And  for most of those years the two men don’t seem to have communicated at all. But as Major Hasan got more radicalized by two American wars and God knows what else, the Internet made it easy to reconnect via e-mail. The Fort Hood shooting, then, is an example of Islamist terrorism being spread partly by the war on terrorism — or, actually, by two wars on terrorism, in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Fort Hood is the biggest data point we have — the most lethal Islamist terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. It’s only one piece of evidence, but it’s a salient piece, and it supports the liberal, not the conservative, war-on-terrorism paradigm.

When the argument is framed like this, don’t be surprised if conservatives, having insisted that we not medicalize Major Hasan’s crime by calling him crazy, start underscoring his craziness.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they’ll note, aren’t wars against Islam or against Muslims; Major Hasan must have been deluded to think that they are! Surely we can’t give veto power over our foreign policy to a crazy ... well, not crazy, but, you know, not-entirely-sane person like Major Hasan. It’s true that Major Hasan was unbalanced and alienated — and, by my lights, crazy. But what kind of people did conservatives think were susceptible to the terrorism meme? Like all viruses, terrorism infects people with low resistance.

And surely Major Hasan isn’t the only American Muslim who, for reasons of personal history, has become unbalanced and thus vulnerable. Any religious or ethnic group includes people like that, and the post-9/11 environment hasn’t made it easier for American Muslims to keep their balance. That’s why the hawkish war-on-terrorism strategy — a global anti-jihad that creates nonstop imagery of Americans killing Muslims — is so dubious."

Much of this requires no comment. because typical of the tripe we've heard from the left over the last eight years.

By their reasoning it's not Hasan's fault you see. It's nasty American aggression and 'misunderstanding' of the terrorist and their "ways" who are at fault.

However one thing is glaring and that's the ignorance that Wright shows - or perhaps he knows full well - that the approach to terrorism up to 2008 keep this country free from attack, either from within or without.  Major Hasan's terrorist act represents the first time the US has been attacked since 9/11 and that on the watch of those with his views.

Thus we really could care less.  I'm sure the families of the victims at Fort Hood would agree.

Get ready because this is precisely how the media will cover the trial of Hasan as well as the 9/11 trials.

Guess What? New York City Cannot Afford to Try 9/11 Suspects

This is in no way reflective on the fine men and women of the New York City Police department, or local FBI, but the fact of the matter is that New York City cannot afford the cost of hosting the 9/11 terrorist trials.

 According to the NYC Budget, posted here, the budgeted amount for police - who will provide the lion-share of work - is $4,358,387, for FY 2010.

 This is down nearly $300,000 from FY 2009. Mind you that this is "bare operating" cost of simply running the police department. There is nothing budgeted for "extra security", or contingency.

 Mayor "Spend 'em and Leave 'em" Bloomberg in January this year painted a "grim economic picture" for New York City in FY 2009.

"Mayor Bloomberg's bad-news budget tries to plug a $4 billion hole with less than $2 billion worth of spending cuts and new sales taxes - and counts on unions, Albany and the federal govermment to come up with the rest. He proposed a $43.4 billion budget Friday for the fiscal year starting July 1, up $123 million from the year before - one that slices deep into the pockets of city residents and the ranks of city workers. "Are we going to go through some difficult times? I don't think there's any question about that. But we have a plan to balance our budget," Bloomberg said. "It is serious, but I think it is manageable." The new cuts and taxes come on top of $1 billion in cuts and $1.5 billion in tax hikes he already pushed through, as administration economists predict the national economy and Wall Street will continue to pummel the city's revenues."

Being that the FY 2010 budget is $300,000 less for police, there is no doubt that NYC simply doesn't have what it takes fiscally to host the trial.

Just Words - Obama Was For Tribunals for 9/11 Terrorists Before He was Against it

Damaging.

 

The Truth about 9/11? Clinton's Dismantling of the Defense Apparatus was to Blame

Not what you would pick up from the Ny Slimes telling of the story.

 There Jacob Heibrunn (sounds german?), attempt to prove that the book, "The Ground Truth - The Untold Story of America under Attack on 9/11" by John Farmer is proof solid that 9/11 was an "inside job".

First, Farmer was a council on the 9/11 Omission Commission, and obviously has a bone to pick with Bush and the War on Terror. Nothing he says in the book sheds any light and is much based on heresay than fact.  But notice something here.

"For all the trillions of dollars lavished on it, for all the talk about confronting new security threats, for all the exhortations to reinvent government, America’s defense establishment, as John Farmer reminds us in “The Ground Truth,” continued to fight the cold war more than a decade after it had ended. Preoccupied with building a costly missile defense system to counter a spurious menace from Russia and with maintaining “full spectrum dominance” over the rest of the globe, most Bush administration officials blithely ignored the danger emanating from the caves of Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden and his acolytes plotted against America. Confronted by a small group of mostly Saudi nationals armed with box cutters, the central nervous system of the country’s defense agencies went into a state of cataleptic shock.

The only decisive action taken on 9/11 came not from the military, but from the courageous passengers who stormed the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93, leading the hijackers to crash the plane over Pennsylvania farmland before it could reach its intended target in Washington. As senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, Farmer, who was the attorney general of New Jersey and is the dean of the Rutgers School of Law, investigated the derelict conduct of the national security apparatus. He was well prepared to do so.

In their valuable account of the commission’s activities, “Without Precedent,” the commission chairman, Thomas Kean, and the vice chairman, Lee Hamilton, noted that shortly after the attacks, Farmer — “one of our most important hires” — established a victims’ assistance center in New Jersey and helped the F.B.I. uncover important evidence in garbage at Newark International Airport.

But the commission’s efforts to reconstruct the tragedy itself were, at best, resented and, at worst, impeded by the sprawling defense bureaucracy and the Bush administration, both of which had much to hide. Even two reports by the inspectors general of the Defense and Transportation Departments, released in 2006, whitewashed government failures. Now that numerous transcripts and tapes have been declassified, however, Farmer draws on them to assail the government’s official depiction of 9/11 as so much public relations flimflam."

Right. Of course missing from the book is the thousands of hours of testimony - never challenged - that most of what occurred that morning was correct and indeed there was no government "coverup" or story concocted.

However the greater point was that because of the Clinton's administrations dismantling of the military apparatus during the 90s, and especially his approach to terrorism - treating it as a criminal act, the US was not prepared for such an attack.

"He shows that, perversely enough, the one defense agency that had suffered draconian budget cuts was Norad, which had seen its alert sites reduced from about two dozen to a pitiful seven and, in any case, was unable to view large areas of the continental United States owing to its antiquated radar system."

Note that the downsizing of NORAD was a "pet project" of the Clinton Administration.  So perhaps the release of this book, obviously done to embarrass or to blame the Bush administration instead does the opposite.  

Yet I find this so appropriate considering Eric Holder's decision to try the 9/11 conspirators in NYC, a return of the practices which made the Clinton years infamous.

9/11 Terrorist to Be Tried in NYC - A Major Screw Up from a Major Screw Up

Let's dispense with the formalities. Barack Obama is an ass-clown, and Eric Holder his bitch an even worse, so this shouldn't surprise anyone.

"Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday. The official said Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning. The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity. Bringing such notorious suspects to U.S. soil to face trial is a key step in President Barack Obama’s plan to close the terror suspect detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Obama initially planned to close the detention center by Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline. It is also a major legal and political test of Obama’s overall approach to terrorism. If the case suffers legal setbacks, the administration will face second-guessing from those who never wanted it in a civilian courtroom.

And if lawmakers get upset about notorious terrorists being brought to their home regions, they may fight back against other parts of Obama’s agenda."

Oh, that's not the half of it.

 If this blows up and the 9/11 terrorist get off, we'll hound Obama and Holder to the gates of Hell.

 It's time for the American people to say "enough" and rise up. Via Sgt. Tim Sumner, brother-in-law of FDNY Joseph G. Leavey, 45, Ladder 15, WTC:

"We have an announcement as well: we will fight with every remaining breath in our bodies both their bringing KSM and the rest of the 9/11 conspirators to federal courtrooms within walking distance of where they slaughtered our loved ones. And whomever finds Manhattan’s federal courthouse near Ground Zero a “sentimental favorite” for the 9/11 trials is a damn fool and they ALL ought to be fired. Pass that message on, far, wide, and up and down the chain-of-command."

Michelle Malkin has more, and there will be lots more.

 Since President Chicken-shit threw this out on Friday and then flew off to Asian to do more apologizing for America, he'll find the backlash to be intensive when he returns.

We'll be waiting.