From WorldNetDaily.com: If his laxity on keeping our borders secure wasn't enough, Bush should be impeached for allowing this to happen on his watch.

Controversial Muslim group
gets VIP airport security tour

Feds show CAIR latest screening steps,
sensitive counterterrorism procedures

Posted: August 18, 2006

The Department of Homeland Security took a Muslim group with known past ties to terror organizations on a VIP tour of security operations at the nation's busiest airport at the same time British authorities were working to break up a plot to blow up U.S. airlines.

On June 21, a senior DHS official from Washington personally guided Muslim officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations on a behind-the-scenes tour of Customs screening operations at O'Hare International Airport in response to CAIR complaints that Muslim travelers were being unfairly delayed as they entered the U.S. from abroad.

CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association for Palestine, identified by two former FBI counterterrorism chiefs as a "front group" for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Several CAIR leaders have been convicted on terror-related charges.

During the airport tour, CAIR was taken on a walk through the point-of-entry, Customs stations, secondary screening and interview rooms. In addition, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents were asked to describe for CAIR representatives various features of the high-risk passenger lookout system.

In a meeting, Brian Humphrey, Customs and Border Patrol's executive director of field operations, assured CAIR officials that agents do not single out Muslim passengers for special screening and that they must undergo a mandatory course in Muslim sensitivity training. The course teaches agents that Muslims believe jihad is an "internal struggle against sin" and not holy warfare.

Customs agents involved in the CAIR tour at O'Hare tell WorldNetDaily they were outraged that headquarters would reveal sensitive counterterrorism procedures to an organization that has seen several of its own officials convicted of terror-related charges since 9-11.

"Isn't that nice of CBP," one agent said, to provide a "group like CAIR with a guided, behind-the-scenes tour of our customs facilities, explaining how programs designed to catch Muslim terrorists work."

CAIR says the tour allayed its concerns about profiling and that it "looks forward to continuing the relationship with U.S. Customs and Border Protection offices in the region, and to furthering understanding between the organizations as well as facilitating future communication in order to eliminate problems for Muslim travelers before they even arise."

The Muslim-sensitivity training course at O'Hare is taught by Margaret Nydell, an Arabic professor at Georgetown University, home to a large Saudi-financed center on Islamic studies.

A Customs and Border Protection supervisor described Nydell's instruction, along with CBP's companion training manual and video, as "politically correct drivel."

"It's all about how Islam means peace and tolerance," he told WorldNetDaily. "We're told how to deal with Arabs and Muslims, that they are loving people and not terrorists. That jihad is struggle with sin and has nothing to do with violence."

The Department of Homeland Security invites CAIR itself to conduct sensitivity training for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and supervisors (CBP's counterparts) in Chicago. The course is taught by local CAIR officials Christina Abraham and Mariyam Hussain. More than 30 ICE staffers have gone through the CAIR awareness program so far.

CAIR – which is bankrolled by the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates, two countries that formally recognized the Taliban – also offers religious and cultural sensitivity training about Islam and Muslims to the military. In June, for example, CAIR trained more than 300 military personnel at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Ariz.

Also in June, CAIR was invited by the Pentagon to a ceremony dedicating the first Islamic center in Marine Corps history at Quantico headquarters outside of Washington.

Washington-based CAIR also has regular meetings with the FBI and Justice Department. In fact, FBI case agents complain the bureau rarely can make a move in the Muslim community without first consulting with CAIR, which sits on its advisory board. CAIR in the past has cried racism and bigotry when the bureau has moved unilaterally with investigations and raids in the community.

From brucespringsteen.net:
ANNOUNCING "GREETINGS FROM E STREET:
THE STORY OF BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND"

FIRST BIOGRAPHY OF THE ENTIRE BAND

Greetings from E Street, by Robert Santelli, is the first and only collective biography of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band written with participation from its members by a long-time intimate. In an illustrated interactive format, it celebrates the life and work of one of the world's best-loved bands. Over 200 photos, documents, handwritten notes, and souvenirs join tour stories, reminiscences, and little-known facts to give readers a full picture of one of the most iconic bands, and musicians, in American rock music.

Rock journalist Bob Santelli begins the tale in 1960s New Jersey with the teen bands whose members--such as Danny Federici--would go on to work with Bruce, and illuminates milestones such as the founding of the band in 1972 (bringing in members such as Clarence Clemons and Garry Tallent), their first taste of superstardom with Born to Run in 1975 (with Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan now on board), their worldwide hit Born in the USA in 1984 (and a sold-out tour featuring Nils Lofgren, and Patti Scialfa), and their marathon tour of 1999-2000 (now with Steve van Zandt and Soozie Tyrell). Packed with rare and never-before-seen mementos and new stories, Greetings from E Street is a must for fans of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

Greetings from E Street will be published in October 2006 by Chronicle Books.

About the Author

Robert Santelli, a former music critic for the Asbury Park Press, has written extensively about Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band since the early 1970s. He is currently the Artistic Director at of the Experience Music Project in Seattle, has taught about popular music at Monmouth University and Rutgers University, and has served as education director at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. He is the author of nearly a dozen books on American popular music and a frequent contributor to numerous music magazines, including Rolling Stone and Backstreets. He also worked with E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg on his book, The Big Beat, and with Bruce Springsteen on his book, Songs.

"Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal."

-George Will

Casey Melton upholds the honor of the National Pastime and does battle against the noxious ideology of Wahabbi Soccerism.

The Real Teachings of the Koran
By Cal Thomas

During the Cold War, American intelligence loved getting its hands on defectors from communism. The reasoning was that these people had the best information about the plans of the other side, information that would help America defeat them.

In the present war against what President Bush has properly labeled "Islamic fascism," defectors are just as valuable.

The Israel Project, an international nonprofit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel, recently made a former leading imam and radical Islam expert available for media interviews and I had a chance to speak with him. He goes by the name of Sam Soloman because of death threats from those not happy with the information he has about their plans to dominate the world.

Soloman was brought up in the Islamic tradition and became a "recruiter," which he says is something like an assistant teacher. One of his responsibilities was "brainwashing people in the Koran." He tells me "The suicide bombers go through stages, and the most important stage is not when they blow themselves up. The most important stage is conforming them to the (Muslim) ideology. Once they are conformed to the ideology, the rest is easy. That is the role I had."

Soloman is in double trouble. Not only did he abandon Islam and the terrorists' objectives, he has also become a Christian, which has marked him for death. Born in the Middle East, he visited Washington from his adopted country, which he declines to name to protect his family.

Soloman speaks with knowledge, credibility and conviction. He has memorized large sections of the Koran and tells me, "There's not a single verse in the Koran talking about peace with a non-Muslim, with the Jews and the Christians. Islam means submission. Islam means surrender. It means you surrender and accept Islamic hegemony over yourselves..."

I ask him about the best strategy for fighting it: "It cannot be combated simply by force. It needs to be combated ideologically, spiritually (as well as) through arms."

Soloman says the outlets for Islamic ideology are religious - seminaries, the madrassas (Koranic schools) and especially the mosques. "From the beginning, Mohammed used the mosque to propagate this ideology. It was in the mosque that jihad was declared (and) that troops were sent to conquer the rest of the world. The mosque was the seat of government and Americans are right to be concerned about (their growth)."

He asks Americans to inform themselves about the real teachings of Islam and not to fall for what various Islamic groups say it teaches. Soloman says, "The simplest Islamic book you open" teaches that all unbelievers (in Islam) are profane people. "Because of the (Koranic) text and what it says, it incites violence." He begins quoting verses from memory, too quickly to write them all down. One is, "Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush." (Surah 9:5)

"This kind of tactic of taking verses out of context can be used against any religious faith," says Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, an Islamic civil rights and advocacy group. "It can and has been used against the Bible and has been used against the Quran."

"These verses deal with the real experience of the Muslim community at the time when they were under attack. It's not a general injunction to go out and harm people. The only people who take it that way are those who want to promote hostility toward Islam and Muslims. They would object if the same thing were done to their faith."

Yes, but virtually all Christians and Jews denounce the infinitesimal few who claim to be Jewish or Christian and use their "holy books" to justify violence against others as a direct command from God.

Asked whether the Koran commands the killing of or violence against all nonbelievers, Ali Khan, national director of the Chicago-based American Muslim Council, replied: "No. (That's) far from the truth. There's nothing in the Koran, no verse that I'm aware of, that advocates the killing of nonbelievers."

The terrorists and those who preach from mosques throughout the Middle East must be reading a different version, then, because virtually all of their sermons that I've read claim their God wants them to kill all "infidels."

Soloman says Americans must demand from the leading Islamic hierarchy, such as the Muslim World League and the Union of Imams, a fatwa that makes it clear "that this is not what the text means and that these texts are no longer effective. They have passed their date. But if they remain effective and eternally valid, then in America we have a serious problem."

How serious? He says "They are infiltrating and undermining every part of this society. We are promoting Islamic mortgages, Islamic insurance companies. There are 29 banks in the United States promoting Islamic banking. Since 1999, Dow Jones has launched Dow Jones Islamic Index and has subjected itself to be governed by an international Sharia board." (Sharia is the religious law of Islam outlined in the Koran.)

Soloman adds, "The Islamic organizations have their missionaries and there are active or sleeping cells in this country." He mentions one, Tablighi Jamaat, "a Pakistani organization that is hand-in-glove with the Wahaabis, strong Muslim sects known for their strict observance of the Koran, and a strong facilitator of al-Qaida and other factions of terrorism. They alone have 1,000 missionaries in New York, 50,000 across the United States. This is only one organization. In 1994, I took a map and started putting pins in it. I found there is not a single state without a mosque. Since then (the number) has increased."

Americans must see past their natural reluctance to paint all members of a group with a broad brush and realize our failure to act now against this clear and present danger in the ways Sam Soloman recommends will lead to a disaster for us that is far worse than our Cold War enemies had envisaged.

Cal@CalThomas.com

©2006 Tribune Media Services

From The Guardian:

We must stand up to Islamo-fascism
By Harold Evans

August 15, 2006 11:25 AM

History tells us it takes a long time to rouse the British, though once roused they see things through. Maybe the latest terrorist outrage will give second thoughts to all those well-meaning battalions of left and right and leaders of the Muslim community who have yet to see an anti-terrorism measure they approve. No to 90 days to question suspects; no to identity cards; no to selective telephone monitoring; and yes, in the name of free speech, to the radical mullahs brainwashing deluded youth.

A whole culture of complaint has grown up among the media and among leaders of the Muslim community. The protest letter signed by 38 Islamic organizations, with three MPs and three Lords, is typical of the buck-passing. They blame British foreign policy, which is unhistorical. The Islamic radicals were using Afghanistan as a base to plot mass murder, climaxing in 9/11, long before the ill-judged invasion of Iraq. They were planning murder, too, when Tony Blair was active in trying to establish a Palestinian state and negotiations with Israel were at an apex of hope. By attacking Blair instead of Osama, the protesters give the radicals a free pass and feed a sense of alienation among perennially disgruntled youth.

It is understandable that the leaders of the Muslim community are sensitive to a stereotype of Muslims as terrorists. Everyone knows the vast majority are decent, law-abiding citizens who deserve our sympathy and respect. But everyone knows, too, that the crimes are committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, and not by Christians, Jews, Buddhists. The anti-terror laws that draw protest do not discriminate, so why protest them?

As for too much of the media, the attitude is that typified in a 52-page document from the International Federation of Journalists - 52 alarm bells - where FIEJ describes the response of government to terrorism as "a devastating challenge to the global culture of human rights established almost 60 years ago ... we are sleepwalking into a surveillance society."

A devastating challenge to the global culture of human rights?

Speaking personally of challenges to human rights, I'd rather be photographed by a hidden surveillance camera than travel on a train or bus with killers carrying bombs in their backpacks.

Speaking personally, I'd regard being blowing to bits on the street as more of an intrusion on my privacy than having an identity card. I have only one identity; the terrorists hide behind multiple identities that require time to unravel.

Speaking personally, I'd rather have my phone subject to monitoring than know that terror plotting is going undetected.

There can be no security without freedom - but no freedom without security.

Of course, it is true that as well as the accident of the De Menezes tragedy, anti-terrorism measures have resulted in a number of notorious affronts to human rights. There is absolutely no justification for Abu Ghraib, nor for long-term detention without due process; but these shocking events, all properly exposed by a vigilant press, have led to prosecutions of the perpetrators. That is the way a free society works.

An editor at an international conference I attended recently said blame for the murders of journalists in Iraq - most of them Iraqi - is all because President Bush won't accept the Geneva conventions. I am not going to defend Bush's stubborn and stupid unilateralism on a whole range of issues, but it totally misunderstands the nature of terrorism today to think the Geneva convention, courts of law, or the "foreign policy" the Islamic organisations dislike, even remotely enter the thinking of Osama and his motley bombers.

The civil rights lobbies are working from a passé play book. They are blind to the lethal nature of the new Salafist totalitarianism. They won't recognize that we are facing an irrationalist movement immune to compromise and dedicated to achieve its ends of controlling every aspect of daily life, every process of the mind, through indiscriminate mass slaughter. It is a culture obsessed with death, a culture that despises women, a culture devoted to mad hatreds not just of Americans and Jews everywhere, but of Muslims anywhere who embrace a less totalitarian, less radical, more humane view of Islam. These Muslims are to be murdered, and have been in their thousands, along with "the pigs of Jews, the monkeys of Christians" and all the "dirty infidels".

Nor is the repellent language of hate limited to recognized terrorist groups like al-Qaida, Hizbullah and Hamas. It is in the school textbooks in Palestine and in the schools of our "ally", Saudi Arabia. They promised to clean them up but a recent Washington Post investigation showed the books still tell the young they have a religious obligation to wage jihad against not only Christians and Jews but also Muslims who do not follow the xenophobic Wahabi doctrine.

The Salafist movement was under-rated and misunderstood and the reaction to it has been confused. As always, the right is triggerhappy and hostile to free expression; as always, the left never wants to do anything that would hazard its self-righteous sense of moral purity.

These are historic fault lines. The right tolerated fascism in the thirties, the left Soviet Communism in the fifties. Of course these two earlier totalitarian movements were different in nature and our response when it came was not always well judged - the tendency is to think first of the excesses of the right typified by the witch hunts of the odious McCarthy, but we should remember, too, that the Democratic party in the immediate postwar years of Henry Wallace would have abandoned Europe just as the left in the eighties would have left Europe at the mercy of the new Soviet missiles.

The apologists for the Islamo-fascists - an accurate term - leave millions around the world exposed to a less obvious but more insidious barbarism.

From therockradio.com:

Flashback: The Beatles rock Shea Stadium

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

It was 41 years ago, on August 15th, 1965, that the Beatles played their legendary concert at Shea Stadium in New York City. The show was the first on their 1965 US summer tour, and it was also the first-ever stadium rock concert. The group flew into New York on August 13th and a day later taped a five-song performance for The Ed Sullivan Show to be broadcast the following month. Sullivan returned the favor by introducing the group the next night at Shea, in front of a sell-out crowd of 55,600 fans.

The Fab Four, who performed on a makeshift stage near where second base would be, earned a whopping $160,000 for their 30-minute set -- which was a record payout at that time.

The New York Police Department was worried that fans attending the shows would jam the tunnels in and out of Manhattan, so the Beatles were escorted from the Warwick Hotel to the Manhattan East River Heliport and flown by helicopter to the roof of the World's Fair building in Flushing Meadows Park, not far from Shea Stadium. Next, the group jumped in a Wells Fargo armored van and were driven to the stadium. The van driver gave each of the Beatles a Wells Fargo "agent badge," which they all wore at the evening's concert.

Unlike today's stadium events, no seats were set up on the field for safety reasons. Throughout the concert -- which also featured legendary New York DJ Murray The K and opening acts the King Curtis Band, Cannibal & the Headhunters, Brenda Holloway, and Sounds Incorporated -- fans were constantly stopped from making mad dashes towards the stage. Ringo Starr recalled the concert in The Beatles Anthology, saying, "What I remember most about the concert was that we were so far away from the audience... And screaming had become the thing to do... Everybody screamed. If you look at the footage, you can see how we reacted to the place. It was very big and very strange." As John Lennon recalled in 1970: "At Shea Stadium, I saw the top of the mountain."

Singer Bobby Vinton and the Rolling Stones briefly visited with the Beatles before they hit the stage. Vinton recalled to us hanging out with the Stones as they made their way to the concert: "Well, I remember I went to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium when they were here. I still saw the poster, I think it was like five dollars to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium. I went with Mick Jagger and the Stones, and they didn't quite... they weren't there yet, you know? They were just comin', and I remember walkin' in New York to Shea Stadium and a couple of guys noticed Mick Jagger and they start punchin' him. And, I mean, these guys in New York are kinda rough, and I said, 'Oh yeah, those bad guys from England.' (laughs)."

Eric Carmen told us that although primitive by today's big budget concert productions, the Beatles' performances during their touring years were defined by the quality of the material they performed: "Y'know, pacing was probably never a problem for the Beatles. Because first of all, all those songs were just terrific. They were playing for a half an hour. So, I mean if you listen to an old Beatle tape of a concert, it's 30 minutes of 'Twist And Shout' and 'I Saw Her Standing There,' and 'Ticket To Ride." And how bad can it be?"

The Beatles' setlist for their Shea Stadium concert was: "Twist And Shout," "She's A Woman," "I Feel Fine," "Dizzy Miss Lizzy," their most recent Number One hit "Ticket To Ride," "Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby," "Can't Buy Me Love," "Baby's In Black," "Act Naturally," "A Hard Day's Night," "Help!" and "I'm Down."

The show was filmed and eventually aired on U.S. TV in December 1966 as The Beatles At Shea Stadium. Although most of the footage from the show is featured in the group's Anthology series, nearly all of the behind-the-scenes footage from that day remains unreleased. The Beatles returned to Shea the next year, on August 23rd, 1966, to a less-than-capacity crowd, with as many as 15,000 unsold seats.

Both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr's future wives were present at the concert -- the late Linda McCartney, and Barbara Bach. McCartney said during The Beatles' Anthology that, "Linda was also there -- but as she was a real music fan she was quite (annoyed) with everyone screaming. I think she enjoyed the experience, but she genuinely wanted to hear the show. That wasn't the deal though. Not then."

In addition to the Fab Four, other artists who have performed at Shea Stadium include the Rolling Stones, the Who, Eric Clapton, Elton John, the Police, Simon & Garfunkel, Grand Funk Railroad, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Living Colour.

Judgment Day Coming -- For the Neocons
By Patrick Buchanan

The Democrats are determined to make the election of 2006 a referendum on Bush and the war in Iraq. And, as of now, that is how history will likely record it.

But beneath the surface of the national election, a different plebiscite is being held, within the conservative movement, on the ideology George Bush imposed on Ronald Reagan's party.

What are the elements of Bushite neoconservatism?

First, an interventionist foreign policy, using U.S. power to impose democracy and "end tyranny on this earth." Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon are the laboratories and proving ground.

Second, "Big Government Conservatism," as seen in the deficits, the dearth of vetoes, soaring social spending in wartime, the bulking up of the Department of Education and "faith-based initiatives" -- LBJ-style cash grants to pastors and parsons for Social Gospel work, to reap a harvest of gratitude from the pulpits in elections to come.

Third, a La Raza immigration policy, featuring amnesty and a "path to citizenship" for 12 million illegal aliens, pardons for all businesses that hired illegals, and outsourcing of immigration policy to Corporate America to go abroad and hire workers for jobs here Americans cannot take at the wages offered.

Fourth, a trade policy rooted in the belief that it does not matter where goods are produced or whether Americans produce them. What matters is unimpeded global commerce, where the consumer is king and gets all the goods he wants at the cheapest possible price.

On these four mega-questions, Republicans are as divided as they were in the days of Rockefeller and Goldwater. Where the Right unites -- on tax cuts, John Roberts and Sam Alito -- the president has the nation behind him.

Wherever "conservatives" stand -- whether Old Right or neocon, supply-sider or deficit hawk, America First or global democrat, Big Government or small government -- the returns of Bush's policies are largely in and the outcome unlikely to change. And this is why Bush and the GOP are in trouble, and neoconservatism is in the dock.

The altarpiece of the Bush foreign policy is Iraq. American dead are at 2,600, the wounded at 18,000. Three hundred billion dollars has been plunged into the war. Yet, Iraq is a bloodier, more dangerous place than it has been since the fall of Baghdad. One hundred are being killed every day, half of them in the capital. IED attacks on U.S. troops are at record levels -- three-and-a-half years after Baghdad fell.

The Bush democracy campaign brought stunning electoral gains for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Moqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. Our ally Hamid Kharzai is today little more than mayor of Kabul, as the Taliban roam the southeast and coalition casualties reach the highest levels since liberation, five years ago.

North Korea and Iran remain defiant on their nuclear programs. Vladimir Putin is befriending every regime at odds with Bush, from Tehran to Damascus to Caracas. Neocon meddling in The Bear's backyard has gotten us bit.

Unless we grade foreign policy on the nobility of the intent, which is how the liberals used to defend disasters like Yalta, it is not credible to call Bush's foreign policy a success. The Lebanon debacle, once U.S. complicity is exposed, is unlikely to win anyone a Nobel.

Bush's trade policy has left us with annual deficits of $800 billion with the world and $200 billion with Beijing. Once the greatest creditor nation in history, we are now the greatest debtor. U.S. manufacturing has been hollowed out with thousands of plants closed and 3 million industrial jobs vanishing since Bush took office.

As for Bush immigration policy, the nation is in virtual rebellion. Six million aliens have been caught at the Mexican border since he took office. One in 12 had a criminal record. In April-May, millions of Hispanics marched through U.S. cities demanding amnesty and all rights of citizenship for aliens who are breaking the law by even being here. Bush and the Senate are in paralysis, appeasing the lawbreakers by offering amnesties and by opposing House demands that the president seal the border before the invasion brings an end to the America we once knew.

While the economy has been running well since 2003, creating jobs, and the markets are performing well, the real wages of working Americans have not kept pace with the portfolios of the clients of Lawrence Kudlow. Industrial states, like Ohio, could be killing fields of the GOP in November.

To the neocon guru Irving Kristol, "The historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be ... to convert the Republican Party and American conservatism in general, against their respective wills, into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy."

With some of us, the tutoring never took, but the neocons surely did convert George W. How's your boy doing, Irving?

Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate

From The Wall Street Journal:

Behind the 9/11 Report
Was the commission's work as effective as its publicity?

BY EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN
Friday, August 18, 2006 12:01 a.m.

In July 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, popularly known as the 9/11 Commission, published its final report. Coming in the midst of the presidential campaign, it won the quick endorsement of both candidates and wide acceptance in the media. In "Without Precedent," the commission's co-chairmen, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, offer an inside account of their investigation of the 9/11 tragedy.

The book's title is somewhat of a misnomer. There were of course dozens of precedents for high-level bipartisan inquiries, such as the Warren Commission's investigation of the JFK assassination. More to the point, there was a precedent for the investigation of the 9/11 attack: the Joint Inquiry by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Indeed, the 9/11 Commission was required to use the Joint Inquiry's report as its starting point and to limit itself to fill in what that report had not already covered.

The most notable difference between these two investigations was their public relations--or, in Messrs. Kean and Hamilton's apt phrase, their "public face." The co-chairmen assumed that it was vital to be perceived "as having full access to the most secretive material in the government."

To build this impression, they recount in the book how they prevailed in their battle for information with a secretive Bush administration, an evasive military bureaucracy and recalcitrant New York City officials. They also had to cultivate the media. So both chairmen appeared on the TV talk shows, gave joint press interviews and did everything possible to build an aura of openness around the investigation--hoping to avoid, as they explained, "the kinds of conspiracy theorizing that have followed in the wake of other inquiries."

For the commission to succeed, Messrs. Kean and Hamilton had to nurture the impression that the commissioners had seen all the evidence regarding 9/11 and had independently assessed it. In reality, however, the 9/11 Commission was neither exhaustive nor independent. If the investigation had truly been as exhaustive as advertised, it would have made a genuine effort to weigh evidence that ran counter to its thesis. But it did not. Consider how the 9/11 Commission dealt with Capt. Scott Phillpott, a high-ranking naval intelligence officer who asserted that through data mining his military intelligence unit, code-named Able Danger, had identified Mohamed Atta as a potential terrorist in 2000 and even had his photograph on a chart.

Since the staff could not find any such chart in the documents that it had obtained from the Pentagon, and because Capt. Phillpott's account "failed to match up" with the staff's conclusion that Atta was unknown to U.S. intelligence prior to 9/11, this putative identification of Atta was omitted from the commission's report (and a number of commissioners were not informed about it).

Later, the Pentagon said that at least four other intelligence officers in the unit had confirmed that they had seen the photograph of Atta or recalled hearing Atta's name prior to 9/11. The Pentagon also explained one possible reason the chart with Atta's photo was missing: The military had destroyed many Able Danger records in 2001. To be sure, there were reasons to be skeptical about eye-witness accounts, but an exhaustive investigation would have at least heard them.

Nor was the 9/11 Commission able to independently evaluate or verify crucial information it received from intelligence agencies. Although the CIA had imprisoned seven al Qaeda conspirators who had planned, directed and coordinated the 9/11 attack, the agency refused to give the commission access to the prisoners. In the case of the Warren Commission, Chief Justice Earl Warren went to Jack Ruby's prison cell to personally question Oswald's killer. In the case of the 9/11 Commission, the commissioners were not allowed to speak to, see or know the whereabouts of conspirators. The commission could not even question the prisoners' CIA interrogators about the way information had been obtained from them.

The co-chairmen admit in "Without Precedent" that they "had no way of evaluating the credibility of detainee information." But apparently that did not discourage them from accepting, essentially at face value, information from the prisoners, delivered via a CIA "project manager," if it would fill in gaps in the commission's investigation.

For example, the CIA reported that one key prisoner, Ramzi Binalshibh, had said co-conspirator Atta "did not meet with anyone" when he went to Prague in June 2000--even though Binalshibh himself was not in Prague and had no first-hand knowledge. He further alleged that on another two journeys, Atta went to Spain solely to talk with him and met no other conspirator--but Binalshibh was not in Spain during all of Atta's visits. And, again through the medium of the CIA project manager, Binalshibh informed commissioners that Osama bin Laden would not have allowed Atta to meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer because the al Qaeda leader was upset with Saddam Hussein's treatment of Muslims.

Even though such contributions were indeed unverifiable--particularly the one that required Binalshibh to read bin Laden's mind--the 9/11 Commission came to rely on this information, giving it the benefit of the doubt when conflicting information surfaced. For instance, the commission uncovered CIA documents that threatened to complicate matters by dragging Iran into the 9/11 conspiracy: The documents revealed that Iran had "apparently facilitated" the travel of most of the 9/11 "muscle hijackers" in flights from Afghanistan by not stamping their passports, and that Imad Mugniyar, the Hezbollah terrorist group's infamous chief of terrorist operations, had flown with the hijackers. But the commissioners merely referred the "troubling" matter to the CIA project manager.

At that point, the report was only one week away from publication. The project manager quickly ran the information past the agency's prisoners and sent a reply back "just in time for inclusion in the Report," Messrs. Kean and Hamilton write. Result: "We found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack." Such CIA feeds permitted the commission to hew to its theory that al Qaeda carried out 9/11 with no help from any outside party or government.

With this book, Messrs. Kean and Hamilton have shown how a government-appointed commission managed to create the appearance, if not the reality, of an exhaustive independent investigation and artfully transformed itself into a lobby for the reorganization of the intelligence establishment. Now that is without precedent.

Mr. Epstein is the author of "Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth," and he is currently writing a book about the 9/11 Commission.

Article from The New York Sun: I don't agree with Giuliani on a number of social issues, most notably abortion. Unless we get a leader in this country that can effectively marshal an effort against Islamism, though, all social questions will be moot. McCain may be too chummy with Dems from his time in the Senate, so Giuliani may be the best hope.

Giuliani Sprints in Carolina As Band Plays ‘New York ...'

BY RYAN SAGER - Special to the Sun

August 17, 2006

GREENVILLE, S.C. — If Rudy Giuliani does run for president in 2008, the Palmetto State is everything that's supposedly going to trip him up in the primaries: It's Southern (Mr. Giuliani's a Yankee), it's religious (61% evangelical, the sixth highest concentration in the nation), and it's predisposed to go with the guy whose "turn" it is (think Bob Dole in 1996).

But none of those hurdles seemed terribly high as Mr. Giuliani sprinted from event to event yesterday, starting with a fund-raiser for a local GOP congressional candidate in Greenville, moving on to a motivational speech around the corner, and finishing up with another fundraiser at night for the state GOP, on the other side of the state in Charleston.

Addressing roughly 75 supporters of Republican congressional candidate Ralph Norman — a business-oriented, conservative state representative running to unseat a Democratic incumbent — Mr. Giuliani gave an instructive preview of how he might try to sell himself to skeptical Southern primary voters.

The 2000 election, Mr. Giuliani said, had taught him just how important politics really is. While the election had seemed a relatively frivolous one at the time, suddenly — on September 11, 2001 — it mattered a great deal who was in the White House. "Sometimes, elections are more important than we realize when we're in them," he said.

While he tied that argument to the 2006 midterm elections, the real message was clear: The coming presidential election isn't about the Confederate flag, it's not about Roe v. Wade, it's not about whether New York's former mayor has had some marital troubles — it's about who will lead America in the War on Terror. Some conservatives might not see eye-to-eye with this Blue-stater on social issues, but this is a new world we live in.

"I think it's going to happen … we can't keep this country 100% safe," Mr. Giuliani said about the prospect of another terrorist attack on American soil, adding that he's "surprised" we haven't been hit again thus far. What's more, he said, Republicans shouldn't shy away from "politicizing" the War on Terror in fighting the Democrats. "You don't have to politicize a war," he said. "Wars are political … It's our right as Republicans to argue our case … There's a big difference between our party and theirs."

The crowd responded warmly. As Mr. Giuliani finished taking questions from the audience, Fred Butler, 87 years old, of Greenville, piped up and said he hoped greatly that the former mayor would get into the 2008 GOP contest. "How much do I owe you?" Mr. Giuliani cracked as he wrapped things up.

Mr. Butler, speaking to me after the fundraiser, said that Mr. Giuliani is currently his top choice for the 2008 primary. "I know he did a good job in New York City, and I think he's just a good man," Mr. Butler said. He added, "I think he would garner a lot more votes than anyone I could think of right now."

A retired plant manager, Mr. Butler told me he was prepared to support Senator McCain after his win in New Hampshire in 2000, "but after he made his pitch down here, I voted for Bush." As for Mr. McCain's chances this time around, Mr. Butler doesn't seem particularly ready to give the senator another chance: "He's not as popular as a lot of people think, not as popular now as he was then … I don't think he'll get the nomination."

Mr. Butler was hardly alone in his sentiments.

In the afternoon, Mr. Giuliani took his show to the "Get Motivated" business seminar at a nearby convention center. The Get Motivated seminars, which Mr. Giuliani has been doing every few weeks for the last few years, are a bit cheesy — "Is anyone here proud to be an American?" the perky announcer asked the crowd before launching into patriotic song and then introducing the star of the show — but they showcase an engaging side of the former mayor.

Mr. Giuliani came on stage to the strains of "New York, NewYork," as a rain of red-white-and-blue streamers and confetti dropped from the ceiling. As he moved through a series of humorous and inspirational anecdotes, the crowd laughed at his quips and roared with applause and laughter when he closed with a story he likes to tell about a New York City construction worker bear-hugging President Bush at Ground Zero — much to the dismay of the Secret Service.

As Mr. Giuliani left the stage, I asked the woman sitting next to me — Camilia Huntley, a North Carolina Republican born and raised in South Carolina — what she thought. "He's the one," was her to-the-point reply. Pressed, she said that Mr. Giuliani's abortion position did trouble her, but it wouldn't sway her vote. "He has shown such great leadership in New York," she said. And, Ms. Huntley added, she just doesn't trust Senator McCain as a leader in a crisis — for reasons, she said, she couldn't quite articulate.

The crowds yesterday were certainly self-selected. Everyone present had come out more-or-less specifically to see America's Mayor on the stump. And neither venue was quite overflowing. The upper rows at the "Get Motivated" speech, in particular, had thinned out as the seminar was coming to a close.

A primary campaign will be grueling. A lot of Mr. Giuliani's support here could be worn down as the details of his personal life and his positions on social issues are swirled around by his opponents. If he's not careful, his rhetoric about the War on Terror could start to sound more than a bit like fear mongering.

But the argument that Mr. Giuliani simply can't win over conservatives in South Carolina, and the South more generally, gets more tenuous by the day.

Mr. Sager is author of "The Elephant in the Room: Evangelicals, Libertarians, and the Battle to Control the Republican Party," due out September 12 from Wiley Publishing. You can email Mr. Sager at editor@rhsager.com

From The London Times:

It sounded so good to start with. But where did it all go wrong, George?
By Gerard Baker

“HOW’M I DOIN’?” was the question the quixotic Ed Koch used to ask New York’s voters during Hizzoner’s eleven turbulent years as the city’s mayor. For a man who governed the globe’s most neurotic metropolis in the style of a rolling public psychiatric consultation, it was a fitting question.

But as the world contemplates the nervous breakdown of American policy in the Middle East, it is something President George Bush should surely be asking himself, or at least his fellow Americans. How’m I doin’?

Let’s see. You invaded Iraq because you argued you would be able to bring about a peaceful, democratic society in the heart of the Arab world, a step vital to the eradication of modern terrorism. Many of us supported the project because we believed the stakes were so high that you would not stint in committing the resources necessary to achieve it.

But you tried to do it on the cheap. If many of us miscalculated the scale of the threat Iraq posed, there was no excuse for the woeful lack of preparation by your Administration for the task of pacifying the country.

The outcome? A broken nation on the verge of civil war, prey to the avarice of tyrannical regional neighbours, violently immolating itself and nurturing new generations of terrorists.

How’m I doin’?

Well, you supported and perhaps even encouraged Israel to invade Lebanon last month, after repeated provocations by terrorists. The aim — a good one in principle — was to crush Hezbollah, weaken its Syrian and Iranian sponsors and put Lebanon on a path to long-term, terror-free stability. But when the largely aerial campaign predictably failed and equally predictably led to the world’s media reaching their one-sided conclusion about Israel’s “aggression” , you quickly backtracked. You encouraged Israel to accept a ceasefire that amounts to the country’s most serious defeat in its 57-year history.

The result? A strengthened Hezbollah and a new Arab hero, Sheikh Hassan Nasrullah; a reprieve for the beleaguered Assad regime in Damascus and a further fillip to Iranian ambitions; a strategic setback for Israel and the condemnation of Lebanon tragically to replay the turmoil of the 1980s.

How’m I doin’? You rightly identified Iran as the gravest threat to the West’s long-term security and you pledged to bend US policy to ensure that it did not gain the regional hegemony that would allow it to blackmail the world into acquiescence of its hateful ideology. Above all, Iran would be stopped from getting the bomb.

The result? The despised regime in Tehran has emerged as the true hegemonic power in the region, leeching on the battered bodies politic of Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, elevating its brand of Shia fundamentalism into position as the dominant force in the Islamic world and continuing on its path towards nuclear status.

If I were a conspiracy theorist I would be starting to conclude that you were some sort of Iranian Candidate, an agent of Tehran, brilliantly executing a covert strategy to enhance the prestige and power of the ayatollahs.

How’m I doin’? It took John Prescott, apparently, to come up with the grammatically flawed but analytically accurate answer this week. But I concur with the Deputy Prime Minister in monosyllabic conclusion only, not in thesis.

The common critique of US foreign policy these past few years has been that it was insufficiently multilateral. That if only the US would work a bit more with the French and the Russians, be a little bit warmer to the Palestinians, sign up to international treaties, say nice things about the United Nations, the world would be a much safer and calmer place.

I always found that a slightly old-fashioned critique. The events of September 11, taken together with the other, steadily escalating acts of terrorism committed against the West in the past 30 years, required a radical new departure for the international system. Preventing the lunatics from blowing us all to the hereafter was going to require that the US, the only country with the power to stop it, break a bit of crockery.

But the US could take the risk of alienating the world and discarding international law only if its leadership was going to be effective. Instead its leadership has been desultory and uncertain and tragically ineffective.

It tried unilateral pre-emption in Iraq, but never really had the will to see it through. So with Iran, it went all mushy and multilateralist. In Lebanon, it thought it would cover all the bases — start by aggressively supporting Israel, then go all peacenik, holding hands with the UN in a touching chorus of Kumbaya.

Now we have the worst of all worlds. Not only is the US despised around the globe, it can’t even make its supposed hegemony work.

It’s one thing to be seen as the bully in the schoolyard; it’s quite another when people realise the bully is actually incapable of getting anybody else to do what he wants. It’s unpleasant when people stop respecting you, but it’s positively terrifying when they stop fearing you.

What we have now is a situation in which the world’s only superpower, with the largest economic and military advantage any country has ever enjoyed on Earth, is pinned down like Gulliver, tormented by an army of fundamentalist Lilliputians.

Some will say that the US’s ineffectiveness is a direct result of the loss of its “soft” power. Alienating the rest of the world has weakened its ability to achieve its objectives. Idiocies such as Abu Ghraib and the brief flirtation with torture as a legitimate instrument undoubtedly hurt America’s image. But I don’t truly see how the failings in the Middle East could have been avoided by Washington’s being nicer to foreigners. What’s been missing is resolute leadership.

It is hard for me to recall a time when the world was such a scary place. No one should rejoice at America’s weakness. The world is scarier still because of it.

Why We MUST Profile
By Robert Spencer

FrontPageMagazine.com | August 17, 2006

To profile or not to profile? Some recent suspicious incidents involving mass purchase of cell phones by Middle Eastern men have given this debate a new urgency.

On Tuesday, terrorism charges were dropped against two Muslims from Dearborn, Michigan, who had been arrested in Ohio. Ali Houssaiky and Osama Sabhi Abulhassan had been stopped for a traffic violation a week before; in their car, sheriff’s deputies found $11,000 in cash, airline passenger lists, material about airport security procedures, and twelve cell phones. It turned out that they had bought 600 cell phones recently.

Cell phones can be used as detonators. They’re also a ready means of non-traceable communication, as well as an easy source of ready cash, as they can be resold to people who don’t want their calls traceable. There have been several other strange incidents involving mass purchase of such phones recently: three Palestinians were recently arrested in Texas with 1,000 cell phones in their van, and there was another incident involving “Middle Eastern men” buying cell phones in large quantities in Tucson, Arizona.

These incidents, especially all coming around the same time, are extremely suspicious, but even before prosecutors dropped the terror charges against Houssaiky and Abulhassan, charges of racial profiling began surfacing in the mainstream media. A public defender handling Abulhassan’s case, Ray Smith, said of his client at a hearing: “If his name was Joe Smith, we wouldn’t be here. His origin and appearance and name condition us to (think), ‘Oh my gosh, he’s a terrorist.’” The dropping of the charges will only reinforce this impression, despite the fact that many questions remain about the case and Washington County, Ohio Prosecutor James Schneider said that he still might press terrorism-related charges against the pair. According to AP, “Relatives of the men said they were just trying to make money by reselling the phones and were targeted because of their Arab backgrounds.”

It is unclear, however, what those who are charging that racial profiling was a factor in the arrest of Houssaiky and Abulhassan would have preferred to have happened. The facts of the case remain that they had lists of airline passengers, information on airport security, a large amount of cash, and instruments capable of being used as detonators. I hope that in such circumstances – given the fact that jihad terrorists have abundantly established their taste for targeting airplanes -- investigators would have looked into the possibility of terrorism even if Houssaiky and Abulhassan had been two Norwegian grandmothers.

But the fact that they are two young Muslim men makes this not an option, but a necessity. For however unpleasant or politically inconvenient a fact it may be, young Muslim males are responsible for the overwhelming majority of terrorist violence around the world today. Since 9/11 Islamic jihadists have perpetrated well over five thousand terror attacks; no other group even comes close. Sane and courageous law enforcement officials will therefore subject young Muslim males to greater scrutiny, within the bounds of the law – and political correctness can take the hindmost.

Profiling, of course, is an imperfect tool, however useful it may be. Islam is not a race, and neither is the jihad. Adherents of the jihad ideology can be found among all races: as John Walker Lindh, Jose Padilla, Richard Reid, Ismail Royer, and Hasan Akbar can attest. All those men have in common is that they are converts to Islam – a phenomenon that doesn’t necessarily have any outward signs. In fact, a recently discovered Al-Qaeda manual directs jihadists to adopt a Western secular appearance, and to eschew any outward manifestation of Islamic faith, precisely in order to divert suspicion: “Have a general appearance that does not indicate Islamic orientation (beard, toothpick, book, [long] shirt, small Koran)....Be careful not to mention the brothers’ common expressions or show their behaviors (special praying appearance, ‘may Allah reward you’, ‘peace be on you’ while arriving and departing, etc.)...Avoid visiting famous Islamic places (mosques, libraries, Islamic fairs, etc.).” Likewise, the recent terror arrests in Britain, which included a pregnant woman, demonstrate that not all jihad terrorists are men, either.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that young Middle Eastern males have committed a disproportionate amount of violent terror attacks in recent years. Although Islamic jihad supremacism is an ideology, not a race, more Middle Eastern males hold to it than do members of other groups. Accordingly, it is simply a waste of resources to subject all airline passengers, from grandmothers to toddlers, to equal scrutiny, while refusing to spend more time investigating passengers who come from the group from which most terrorists spring nowadays.

This is not a question of civil liberties. No one is arguing for the rounding-up of people who are just going about their business. If, however, the police see anything suspicious, as they did in the car of Houssaiky and Abulhassan, they have a right and a duty to check it out, and should be able to do so freely, without worrying about hurting feelings or incurring internal affairs investigations for politically incorrect practices. And it is still true that in a free society, people who are not breaking the law will have nothing to worry about.

After the uncovering of the recent jihadist airplane plot in Britain, British officials have begun moving toward this. However, politically this is an explosive issue: a British source said that the British Department for Transport “is ultra-sensitive about this and won’t say anything publicly because of political concerns about being accused of racial stereotyping.” And predictably, once a report was printed about this in the Times of London, Metropolitan Police Chief Superintendent Ali Desai declared: “What you are suggesting is that we should have a new offence in this country called ‘traveling whilst Asian.’ What we don’t want to do is actually alienate the very communities who are going to help us catch terrorists.” And of course, we don’t want to do that. But those communities themselves have to take responsibility for the fact that jihadists have lived and recruited and plotted in their midst, generally with no fear that their coreligionists would turn them in. While Muslim tipsters helped expose the latest airplane hijacking plot, and that is highly commendable, all too often the wrath of the Muslim communities in America and Britain has been focused on anti-terror efforts and the foreign policy of their governments – when what is needed instead is an understanding of and tolerance for the need for profiling. But Muhammad Abdul Bari of the Muslim Council of Britain doesn’t think profiling is worth doing anyway: “If the profiling is done on the basis of race and religion, it will be wrong, it is not going to work.”

Why not? All the September 11 hijackers were Muslims. So were the July 7 London bombers. And the Madrid train bombers of March 2004. And on and on. All the plotters in the recent international airplane hijacking attempt are Muslims. All were working on the basis of Islamic theology. Why must officials continue not to notice this? To ignore this is to give up voluntarily the one thing that may make it possible to spot the perpetrators of a terror attack before it happens, and head it off. In other words, it is suicidal.

From The New York Times:

Muslim Myopia
By IRSHAD MANJI

August 16, 2006

New Haven

LAST week, the luminaries of the British Muslim mainstream — lobbyists, lords and members of Parliament — published an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair, telling him that the “debacle” of both Iraq and Lebanon provides “ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.” In increasingly antiwar America, a similar argument is gaining traction: The United States brutalizes Muslims, which in turn foments Islamist terror.

But violent jihadists have rarely needed foreign policy grievances to justify their hot heads. There was no equivalent to the Iraq debacle in 1993, when Islamists first tried to blow up the World Trade Center, or in 2000, when they attacked the American destroyer Cole. Indeed, that assault took place after United States-led military intervention saved thousands of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.

If Islamists cared about changing Iraq policy, they would not have bothered to abduct two journalists from France — probably the most antiwar, anti-Bush nation in the West. Even overt solidarity with Iraqi suffering did not prevent Margaret Hassan, who ran a world-renowned relief agency in Baghdad, from being executed by insurgents.

Meanwhile, at least as many Muslims are dying at the hands of other Muslims as under the boots of any foreign imperial power. In Sudan, black Muslims are starved, raped, enslaved and slaughtered by Arab militias, with the consent of an Islamic government. Where is the “official” Muslim fury against that genocide? Do Muslim lives count only when snuffed out by non-Muslims? If not, then here is an idea for Muslim representatives in the West: Go ahead and lecture the politicians that their foreign policies give succor to radicals. At the same time, however, challenge the educated and angry young Muslims to hold their own accountable, too.

This means reminding them that in Pakistan, Sunnis hunt down Shiites every day; that in northern Israel, Katuysha rockets launched by Hezbollah have ripped through the homes of Arab Muslims as well as Jews; that in Egypt, the riot police of President Hosni Mubarak routinely club, rape, torture and murder Muslim activists promoting democracy; and, above all, that civil wars have become hallmarks of the Islamic world.

Muslim figureheads will not dare be so honest. They would sooner replicate the very sins for which they castigate the Bush and Blair governments — namely, switching rationales and pretending integrity.

In the wake of the London bombings on July 7, 2005, Iqbal Sacranie, then the head of the influential Muslim Council of Britain, insisted that economic discrimination lay at the root of Islamist radicalism in his country. When it came to light that some of the suspects enjoyed middle-class upbringings, university educations, jobs and cars, Mr. Sacranie found a new culprit: foreign policy. In so doing, he boarded the groupthink express steered by Muslim elites.

The good news is that ordinary people of faith are capable of self-criticism. Two months ago, 65 percent of British Muslims polled believed that their communities should increase efforts to integrate. The same poll also produced troubling results: 13 percent lionized the July 7 terrorists, and 16 percent sympathized. Still, these figures total 29 percent — less than half the number who sought to belong more fully to British society.

Whether in Britain or America, those who claim to speak for Muslims have a responsibility to the majority, which wants to reconcile Islam with pluralism. Whatever their imperial urges, it is not for Tony Blair or George W. Bush to restore Islam’s better angels. That duty — and glory — goes to Muslims.

Irshad Manji, a fellow at Yale University, is the author of “The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.”

Too bad it's so difficult to figure out what kind of terrorists to look for.

Reconsidering Our Opposition to Profiling
By Kathleen Parker

In the wake of last week's foiled terrorist plot to blow up 10 U.S. jetliners flying between Britain and the United States, sensible people are reconsidering our government's stubborn opposition to profiling.

Among the sensible elsewhere are officials of the British Department for Transport, who are proposing ethnic profiling as a means of more effectively identifying potential terrorists. The predictable chorus of opposition has chimed in on cue.

The Muslim Council of Britain has warned the government to think "very carefully,'' saying that including "behavioral pattern recognition'' in passenger profiling would lead to discrimination. A spokesman for the council said, "Before some kind of religious profiling is introduced, a case has to be made.'' Challenge accepted.

Most terrorist acts of the past several decades have been perpetrated by Muslim men between the ages of 17 and 40. A complete list would fill this space, but following is a partial Islamic terrorist resume:

Eleven Israeli athletes murdered at the Munich Olympics (1972); U.S. Marine barracks blown up in Beirut (1983), Achille Lauro cruise ship hijacked and elderly, disabled American passenger killed (1985); TWA Flight 847 hijacked (1985); Pan Am Flight 103 bombed (1988); World Trade Center bombed (1993); U.S. embassies bombed in Kenya and Tanzania (1998); USS Cole bombed (2000); Sept. 11, 2001; Madrid and London train bombings (2004 and 2005).

Yet we are torn. Profiling seems both un-American and dangerous in an era of slippery slopes. The paranoid leap is that detention camps are just around the bend. Thus, instead of deciding to closely scrutinize airline passengers who fit the description of a likely perpetrator -- based not on bigotry, but on evidence, history and common sense -- we frisk the elderly and confiscate toddlers' sippy cups.

Critics of profiling insist that focusing on one group will distract us from other possible terrorists -- presumably all those Baptist grandmothers recently converted to Islam. They also invariably point to Timothy McVeigh, our own homegrown terrorist who blew up a federal office building in Oklahoma City. As if one white-bred misfit -- or the occasional Caucasian Muslim -- cancels out 35 years of Middle Eastern terrorists invoking Muhammad.

For a nation that laments its lapse in dot-connecting before 9/11, we are curiously blind when it comes to dealing honestly with certain people of a certain sort. Profiling isn't aimed at demonizing Muslims; it's aimed at saving lives, including Muslims.

We learned from investigators of the foiled London-based plot that Muslims played a key role in busting the conspirators, for which the world is grateful. But the idea that profiling young males of Asian or Middle Eastern descent now would alienate those who heretofore had been helpful, as some have argued, presumes that Muslims have no interest in self-preservation.

Or that they're all so belligerently ethnocentric that they'll cease cooperating if airport security officials suddenly start behaving competently.

Identifying potential terrorists is complicated by their sheer numbers in places like Britain, where between 16,000 and 18,000 Muslims are suspected to be Islamic extremists, according to Britain's MI5 counterterrorism unit. How do you track 15,000 people? You don't.

But we can focus energies and resources where plausible, including at airports where profilers are invited to be polite and discreet. And we can listen to sensible Muslims like Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, general manager of the al-Arabiya news channel, who wrote in the Arab News two years ago what our own officials struggle to say:

"It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims. ... We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.''

And the West cannot survive if we continue to avert our eyes from the obvious. On the legal questions, profiling has at least one notable defender -- John Banzhaf, the George Washington University public interest law professor best known for taking on tobacco and fast food.

Banzhaf argues that racial profiling is constitutional if done in accordance with U.S. Supreme Court guidelines that ethnicity not be the sole criteria. Other considerations for potential hijackers might be age, gender, behavior or clothing. He also notes that courts have upheld using race/ethnicity to further "compelling state interest," as in considering race for college admissions.

"Obviously, the government's interest in protecting the lives of thousands of citizens from a major terrorist attack is at least as 'compelling' as a better college education," he says.

For the past several years, Banzhaf has been a pain in the neck to the tobacco and fast food industries. Let's hope he proves equally troublesome to the terrorists among us.

Pat Buchanan's 'State of Emergency'
By Tony Blankley

On page 240 of Pat Buchanan's stunningly logical new book, "State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America" (St. Martin's Press, New York, 2006) appear the following words:

"One of the truly major issues with which America must deal [is] the vast tidal wave of human beings coming from the Third World. There is a fragmentation going on in this country. At what point does cultural, racial diversity become a kind of social anarchy? How do you get national cohesion this way?"

But those are not the words of my friend and political sparring partner Pat Buchanan. They are words he quoted from a 1987 interview in The Christian Science Monitor with Eric Sevareid, the CBS correspondent and close associate of Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.

Only 19 years ago, one of the nation's most respected public liberals could unself-consciously utter words that today could be a scandalous career ender for a public figure.

And it is around that issue -- race, ethnicity, language, culture and immigration -- and the problem of talking honestly about it, that Buchanan has constructed his most important book to date.

Most people will be familiar with Buchanan's view on immigration. But even those who have read his earlier books and read his columns, as I have, will not be prepared for the remorseless presentation of unimpeachable facts with which he makes his convincing case for the reality of his book's subtitle: "The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America."

Here he deepens his case against illegal immigration (and his case for a moratorium on even legal immigration) with statistic after statistic concerning, among many topics, the shockingly disproportionate degree of disease and crime that illegal Mexican and other immigrants are transmitting into the country.

For example, in Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide, which total 1,200-1,500, are for illegal aliens. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, California now has almost 40,000 cases of tuberculosis (a disease only recently thought to be virtually extinct in America).

He presents compelling evidence that the "Reconquista" of southwestern United States is not merely the silly conceit of a few extremists but is widely desired by Mexicans (he cites a 2002 Zogby poll showing that by 58 percent to 28 percent of Mexicans believe the American Southwest belongs to Mexico).

New to me was his citation to the fact that all 47 Mexican consulates in the United States are mandated to provide textbooks to U.S. schools with significant Hispanic populations, which textbooks teach history from the point of view of General Santa Ana -- in which America stole the Southwest. The Los Angeles consulate, alone, has distributed 100,000 such textbooks just this year to the L.A. Unified School District.

Buchanan recounts the observation that "every great truth begins in blasphemy." In that sense this book is one extended blasphemy against not only liberal proprieties, but even against received wisdom about the nature of America believed by many conservatives.

I have particularly in mind his chapter 9: "What Is a Nation," in which he rejects the argument that America is fundamentally defined as a "creedal nation" of democracy, equality and the institutions formed by our constitution.

Rather, Buchanan argues, "The Constitution did not create the nation; the nation adopted the Constitution." While the Founding Fathers did believe in universal principles and rights, "they were loyal to a particular nation and to kinfolk with whom they shared ties of blood, soil, and memory."

In this elegantly crafted chapter, he weaves into a thought-provoking tapestry on the nature of nationhood and patriotism the writings of George Washington, Arthur Schlessinger Jr., Alexander Hamilton, Psalms and Genesis, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Joseph De Maistre, Abraham Lincoln, Charles DeGaulle and Israel Zangwill (Jewish author of the 1908 play "The Melting Pot") among others.

Of course, there is nothing more dangerously controversial than trying to define the ethnic, language and cultural nature and desirability of America. But until we as a country come to terms publicly with what kind of a country we think America is and should be, we can never have a rational and full debate about what kind of immigration policy we should try to enforce.

Buchanan quotes the French poet Charles Peguy: "It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of looking insufficiently progressive."

By that standard, Buchanan, in this book, is positively fearless. He is also right. Americans, from whatever nation or ethnicity we originated, have formed a common culture worth preserving and a common history worth continuing.

I am convinced a large majority of Americans agree. This book, "State of Emergency," will give its readers both the facts and the backbone to powerfully make that case.

IMUS NEWS QUOTE OF THE DAY

Radio Talk Show Host Jay Severin discusses with Imus his views on the presence of the U.S military in Iraq and President Bush's 'confident' predictions regarding the war:

Imus: "I think I heard Chris Matthews or somebody say, that we are going to send seven thousand troops back into Baghdad, U.S. troops back into Baghdad. Did you hear that?"

Jay Severin: "That is an utter total disaster. The President's remarks yesterday are also included that we all knew we could have total confidence in the outcome of that war and I'm afraid that the President is half right. We all seem to have total confidence in the outcome of that war, only it does not happen to be the one that the President suggests. A couple of people that I talk to on the air yesterday who were very angry and I would like to repeat something they said. They said if the President is so totally confident as to the successful outcome of this war in Iraq as he stated yesterday, and in so doing he is taking their only children and sending them to Iraq, perhaps Jenna and Barbara, the Bush twins, who are of military age, could by way of a gesture of national confidence and cohesion enlist themselves. I think it's a damn fine point."

Imus: "That is a good point. Maybe they are doing something else though, one of those deferments like the Vice President got like a dozen of those."

Jay Severin: "As far as I can tell one of them is dancing a lot at discos in New York as a deferment."

Imus: "Well these seven thousand troops though are going to wind up just being target practice for these insurgents."

Jay Severin: "Oh absolutely. We are not fighting a war. It's not an offensive war. It's a shooting gallery. Also this notion on which the President bases confident prediction, he keeps saying we know that these are people who thirst for democracy."

Imus: "I guess they're insurgents, by the way. I don't know who they are."

Jay Severin: "Well, did you know, the scintilla of evidence that there are groups or conditions in Iraq that are yearning to be free? And George Bush apparently looks at four different tribes, three, or four different tribes in Baghdad, and Iraq, who have been murdering each other, neighborhood to neighborhood for seven-thousand years over who loves God the right way? I mean they go in, they have road blocks--they kill the people from the next neighborhood, women and children over who loves God the right way, and George Bush looks at this, and he sees guys in the tri-cornered hat of the American Colonials fighting against England, there's not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that these people understand, or would use--I mean right now, Iraqi's can use democracy like a catfish can use a bicycle. And now, what are we doing--you know the old expression of 'throwing good money after bad', here we are now throwing life and limb after those who have already sacrificed and for what? I'm totally confident of the outcome. The outcome is going to be seven-thousand more limbs and lives lost."

Imus: "What should we do there? How do we get out of this? How do we resolve it right?"

Jay Severin: "Well it's--it's pretty clearly reached critical mass with the Lieberman situation, and really more importantly the Hillary Clinton situation. It is now impossible to win the Democrat nomination probably, if you are not seen as being against the war. And, also even among registered Republicans doubt about the war, or opposition to it is just skyrocketing. And this is--we've seen this before, in other wars, Vietnam especially. It starts, and it grows, and it metastasizes, and right now what George Bush has on his hands is--a dead shark. And he doesn't know what to do with it, he's got an election...."

Imus: "...Yeah, but my question for you is what would you do? What do you--what's the appropriate way in your view to end this?"

Jay Severin: "The moral and practical justification that we had for going into another country was a clear and present danger to ours. Therefore, the moment we stopped looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), we should have gotten the hell out. We have no business trying to colonize or democratize anybody else. That's not an excuse to be there. If that's the criteria, there are about ninety-eight other countries we can get prepared to invade tomorrow."

Imus: "So we should just leave?"

(Severin interrupting)

Jay Severin: "We should have left yesterday."

West Side is the 4th (and most recent) book in John Mackie's excellent series of police procedurals featuring Detective Thorn Savage. Mackie, a veteran of the NYPD, knows his stuff thoroughly and it shows. I can think of no other police series that goes into such depth and detail regarding homicide investigations. Mackie's series is a literary parallel to NYPD Blue, and regular viewers of that series will find much that is familiar and entertaining in Mackie's books.

West Side is the story of a psychotic doctor deep in debt and involved in the gay underground scene of New York. He and a couple of associates conspire in an insurance fraud scheme necessitating multiple murders that unravels throughout the course of the book. It's well written, the characters are three dimensional, and the pace is unflagging with events taking place in New York, Key West, and Europe. West Side may be the best yet of this consistently fine series.

From The Washington Post:

We Need Our Own MI5
By Richard A. Posner

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

What lessons can we draw from the recent foiled plot to bring down U.S.-bound airliners with liquid bombs?

The first concerns the shrewdness of al-Qaeda and its affiliates in continuing to focus their destructive efforts on civil aviation. Death in a plane crash is one of the "dreaded" forms of death that psychologists remind us arouse far more fear than others that are much more probable. The concern with air safety, coupled with the fact that protection against terrorist attacks on aviation can be strengthened only at great cost in convenience to travelers, makes the recently foiled plot merely a partial failure for the terrorists. The episode is going to make air travel significantly more costly. The additional costs are no less real for being largely nonpecuniary (fear, and loss of time -- which, ironically, will result in some substitution of less safe forms of travel, namely automobile travel).

The plot has also revealed the indispensability of good counterterrorism intelligence. A defense against terrorists, as against other enemies of the nation, must be multilayered to have a reasonable chance of being effective. One of the outer defenses is intelligence, designed to detect plots in advance so that they can be thwarted. One of the inner defenses is preventing an attack at the last minute, as by airport screening for weapons.

The inner defense would have failed in the recent episode because the equipment for scanning hand luggage does not detect liquid explosives. (The liquid-bomb threat had been known since a similar al-Qaeda plot was foiled in 1995, but virtually nothing had been done to counter it.) Fortunately, the outer defense succeeded.

Intelligence succeeded in part because of the work of MI5, England's domestic intelligence agency. We do not have a counterpart to MI5. This is a serious gap in our defenses. Primary responsibility for national security intelligence has been given to the FBI. The bureau is a criminal investigation agency. Its orientation is toward arrest and prosecution rather than toward the patient gathering of intelligence with a view to understanding and penetrating a terrorist network.

The bureau's tendency, consistent with its culture of arrest and prosecution, is to continue an investigation into a terrorist plot just long enough to obtain enough evidence to arrest and prosecute a respectable number of plotters. The British tend to wait and watch longer so that they can learn more before moving against plotters.

The FBI's approach means that small fry are easily caught but that any big shots who might have been associated with them quickly scatter. The arrests and prosecutions warn terrorists concerning the methods and information of the FBI. Bureaucratic risk aversion also plays a part; prompt arrests ensure that members of the group won't escape the FBI's grasp and commit terrorist attacks. But without some risk-taking, the prospect of defeating terrorism is slight.

MI5, in contrast to the FBI (and to Scotland Yard's Special Branch, with which MI5 works), has no arrest powers and no responsibilities for criminal investigation, and it has none of the institutional hang-ups that go with such responsibilities. Had the British authorities proceeded in the FBI way -- rather than continuing the investigation until virtually the last minute, which enabled them to roll up (with Pakistan's help) more than 40 plotters -- most of the conspirators might still be at large, and the exact nature and danger of the plot might not have been discovered. We need our own MI5, not to supplant but to supplement the FBI.

A New York Times article Sunday on British methods says the British could wait until the last minute because they can detain suspects for up to 28 days without giving them a judicial hearing, while we in the United States can do so for only 48 hours. That is not correct. Normally, it is true, an arrested person in this country is entitled to a probable-cause hearing within 48 hours. But the rule is waived in extraordinary circumstances. The government may have a compelling justification for holding a suspected terrorist incommunicado for more than 48 hours, namely, to avoid tipping off his accomplices that the government has seized him and may be getting information from him that can be used to make further arrests.

But to the extent that our laws do handicap us in fighting terrorism, it is one more sign that we do not take the threat of terrorism seriously enough to be willing to reexamine a commitment to a rather extravagant conception of civil liberties that was formed in a different and safer era.

There is a silver lining in all this: not that the Heathrow plot was foiled, because, as I said, it was only a partial failure. The silver lining is that our close call may shake us out of our complacency. Because we have not been attacked since 2001, we are (or were until last week) beginning to feel safe. We were ostriches. An article in the current Atlantic Monthly proclaims victory over al-Qaeda, arguing that by depriving Osama bin Laden of his sanctuary in Afghanistan we defeated al-Qaeda, and the only danger now is that we will overreact to a diminished terrorist threat. Bin Laden was indeed deprived of his Afghanistan sanctuary, but he promptly found another one, in northwestern Pakistan. Though the plotters of the liquid-bomb attack are British citizens, the plot, in its scope and objective, has al-Qaeda written all over it.

The ostriches may retreat to the claim that "our" Muslims, unlike those in Britain and Canada, are fully integrated into American society and so pose no threat. And the percentage of American Muslims who are potential terrorists is indeed smaller than the corresponding percentages in either Britain or Canada. But there are many more American Muslims than there are British or Canadian ones, and we now know that British (and presumably Canadian) Muslim extremists are bent on attacking the United States, not just their own societies. We cannot afford to assume that we are safe. Perhaps we will now abandon that comfortable assumption.

The writer is a U.S. appeals court judge and author most recently of "Uncertain Shield: The U.S. Intelligence System in the Throes of Reform."

The Triumph of Unrealism
By George Will

WASHINGTON -- Five weeks have passed since the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers provoked Israel to launch its most unsatisfactory military operation in 58 years. What problem has been solved, or even ameliorated?

Hezbollah, often using World War II-vintage rockets, has demonstrated the inadequacy of Israel's policy of unilateral disengagement -- from Lebanon, Gaza, much of the West Bank -- behind a fence. Hezbollah has willingly suffered (temporary) military diminution in exchange for enormous political enlargement. Hitherto, Hezbollah in Lebanon was a "state within a state.'' Henceforth, the Lebanese state may be an appendage of Hezbollah, as the collapsing Palestinian Authority is an appendage of the terrorist organization Hamas. Hezbollah is an army that, having frustrated the regional superpower, suddenly embodies, as no Arab state ever has, Arab valor vindicated in combat with Israel.

Only twice in the U.N.'s six decades has it authorized the use of substantial force -- in 1950 regarding Korea and 1990 regarding Kuwait. It still has not authorized force in Lebanon. What is being called a "cease-fire'' resolution calls for Israel to stop all "offensive'' operations. Israel, however, reasonably says that its entire effort is defensive. The resolution calls for Hezbollah to stop "all attacks.'' The U.N., however, has twice resolved that Hezbollah should be disarmed, yet has not willed the means to that end. Regarding force now, the U.N. merely "expresses its intention to consider in a later resolution further enhancements'' of the U.N. force that for 28 years has been loitering without serious intent in south Lebanon.

The "new Middle East,'' the "birth pangs'' of which we supposedly are witnessing, reflects the region's oldest tradition, the tribalism that preceded nations. The faux and disintegrating nation of Iraq, from which the middle class, the hope of stability, is fleeing, has experienced in these five weeks many more violent deaths than have occurred in Lebanon and Israel. U.S. Gen. George Casey says 60 percent of Iraqis recently killed are victims of Shiite death squads. Some are associated with the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry, which resembles a terrorist organization.

The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.'' The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented 9/11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by The New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror.'' In a candidates debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military,'' it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world.''

Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a "senior administration official,'' insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:

"The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, loveable, God-fearing people if it weren't for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. (Democrats) do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It's like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn't work.''

This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike "the law enforcement approach,'' does "work.''

The official is correct that it is wrong "to think that somehow we are responsible -- that the actions of the jihadists are justified by U.S. policies.'' But few outside the fog of paranoia that is the blogosphere think like that. It is more dismaying that someone at the center of government considers it clever to talk like that. It is the language of foreign policy -- and domestic politics -- unrealism.

Foreign policy "realists'' considered Middle East stability the goal. The realists' critics, who regard realism as reprehensibly unambitious, considered stability the problem. That problem has been solved.

Bush’s Vietnam?
Not yet -- but does Bush realize how close it is?

By Rich Lowry

For the past 30 years, left-right debate over America’s wars has traveled a well-worn rut. The Left says whatever war is in question is “another Vietnam,” while the Right denies it. After three decades of being serially wrong, in the Iraq war liberals might be making their first-ever correct diagnosis.

In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we face a vicious insurgency that has worn down the will of the American public. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we have failed to cut off the enemy from re-supply. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we have had ever-shifting military strategies. In Iraq, as in Vietnam, we have had trouble building effective, clean governmental institutions in the soil of an alien culture. Most importantly, in Iraq, as in Vietnam, we face the prospect of defeat.

The consequences of that defeat would be remarkably similar to those in the wake of Vietnam. The prestige of the U.S. government would sink around the world, emboldening our enemies and creating a period of American doubt and retreat. A humanitarian catastrophe would likely befall Iraq, just as it did Vietnam. The only significant difference is that in Iraq, radical Islamists harbor ambitions to come to our shores and kill Americans, whereas the Viet Cong never wanted to follow us home.

The American domestic political scene already has the hallmarks of Vietnam redux. The Democrats are waging an intraparty civil war to marginalize supporters of the war, and they revile President Bush as much as they did President Nixon. Republicans, on the other hand, are hoping that the Democrats lurch too far in their dovishness and will, once again, discredit themselves on national security for a generation.

The paradox is that Republicans are seeking to win the midterm elections on national security at the same time they are losing, or at least not obviously winning, a major war. This can’t help but hurt the GOP, no matter how much weakness and incoherence there is among the Ned Lamont Democrats.

The two parties have clashing imperatives in the Iraq debate. The Democrats want to wage a fight over the war in retrospect, emphasizing Bush administration missteps that have become a matter of conventional wisdom, while declining to make any positive prescriptions that might divide their party or expose unpopular positions (e.g., an immediate pullout). The Republicans have to fight in prospect, avoiding the losing debate over the past while convincing people they have a plausible strategy for success and the Democrats have none.

But what is that strategy? President Bush sometimes seems not to realize that having a fierce determination to see things through is only the precondition for a winning strategy. For too long, his administration has seemed content to do the bare minimum in Iraq, hoping to hold things together just enough to allow troop drawdowns that justify the administration’s assurances of progress. This hasn’t worked, since the violence in Iraq has belied the rhetoric of progress and prevented any reduction in troops. Bush would be much better served by forthrightly acknowledging Iraq’s distressing circumstances and backing an all-out push to secure Baghdad even if it takes thousands more American troops in the country.

For there is one other similarity with Vietnam that should be avoided — the aching sense that not everything was done to win the war. By the end of Vietnam, we had essentially beaten the insurgency and could have helped the South Vietnamese hold off the conventional invasion of the North, if we hadn’t given up. In Iraq, too, we have scored some successes against the Sunni insurgency, but the insurgents have managed to create a new and different threat by stoking a budding civil war.

It is not too late to tamp down that militia-directed violence, which hasn’t yet taken on an uncontrollable life of its own. But the clock is ticking, toward the hour when we will indeed suffer another Vietnam.

— Rich Lowry is author of Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years.

WORLD TRADE CENTER



The advance praise for Oliver Stone's film by Cal Thomas and other conservative writers was well justified. World Trade Center tells a story whose power is amplified by virtue of the attack having happened so recently. It needs to be seen by every American as a fresh reminder of what Islamists want to do to Western Civilization.