John O. Brennan, Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President
Michael A. Walsh, in the New York Post, spills the beans on the damaging leak which has seriously compromised relations between British and American intelligence services.
So that “CIA coup” in Yemen against another al Qaeda underwear bomber turns out to actually have been a joint Saudi-British intelligence operation — which apparently was prematurely terminated thanks to flapping lips on this side of the Atlantic.
So the leak didn’t just blow our chances to nail the notorious bomb designer behind the plot, Ibrahim al-Asiri, and put the life of the double agent in mortal danger for no reason.
It also seriously damaged Langley’s relationship with its foreign counterparts, who now understand that operational security and the lives of their operatives mean nothing to us (not in an election year, anyway).
Which makes it even more important to find out: Who leaked?
The betting starts with former CIA official John Brennan, the White House’s deputy nationalsecurity adviser for counterterrorism. Shortly after details about the operation leaked to the Associated Press via unnamed “officials,” Brennan took to the airwaves to crow publicly about how the wedgie bomber was “no longer a threat to the American people.”
And the AP admitted it cleared its story with the feds in advance.
The uncharitable immediately saw this naked self-aggrandizement as a blatant attempt by the Obama administration to take political credit for something it had almost nothing to do with.
Obama’s EPA riding over the bodies of energy producing companies
Why is the US economy a wreck? Why are we paying sky-high prices at the gasoline pump? We have an administration in Washington that is philosophically bent on treating the productive free market economy the same way a conquering Roman general or invading barbarian horde would treat a foreign territory. The democrat party left views the private sector economy as a victim it is entitled to conquer, rule over, and loot at will.
You couldn’t have a clearer demonstration of the total incomprehension on the part of the left of the role of freedom and the rule of law in making possible economic growth, innovation, and prosperity. When this country elected Barack Obama, it really in essence turned over control of the government to someone with the same economic perspective as Attila the Hun.
The Washington Post recently reported that the federal government in the Age of Obama is planning to extend into the realm of Nature the same kind of policies it pursues in the American economy.
If an avian species succeeds; if it extends its range; if it successfully competes, outbreeds, and even manages to hybridize itself with a rival species, the federal government will intervene on behalf of the loser.
To save the imperiled spotted owl, the Obama administration is moving forward with a controversial plan to shoot barred owls, a rival bird that has shoved its smaller cousin aside.
The plan is the latest federal attempt to protect the northern spotted owl, the passive, one-pound bird that sparked an epic battle over logging in the Pacific Northwest two decades ago.
The government set aside millions of acres of forest to protect the owl, but the bird’s population continues to decline — a 40 percent slide in 25 years.
A plan announced Tuesday would designate habitat considered critical for the bird’s survival, while allowing logging to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and to create jobs. Habitat loss and competition from barred owls are the biggest threats to the spotted owl.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the draft plan “a science-based approach to forestry that restores the health of our lands and wildlife and supports jobs and revenue for local communities.
Barred owls are a well-known and generally admired species of owl, renowned for their distinctive “Who Cooks For You? Who Cooks For You All?” call.
The Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) is clearly a typical pampered and decadent left coast inhabitant, too stoned on pot to prosper and too sexually ambiguous to reproduce effectively. The mystery is how they managed to become major democrat party donors.
Americans For Limited Government has launched a Save the Barred Owl! petition site in response to the proposed federal strigicide.
From the Hill: “President Obama and Democrats on Capitol Hill are increasingly referring to the Congress as Republican even though their party controls one-half of the unpopular institution.”
[Emphasis added] Wait till next year when they start calling it a Republican White House.
Occupy Wall Street food servers get sick of the “professional homeless people.”
“They know what they’re doing.”
For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.
They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.
[Emphasis added] What if everyone suddenly got sick of freeloaders?
The Washington Times’ editorial titled: Obama plays hide the Somali, which argues that the Obama administration hid captured Somali Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame on a US warship for two months before presenting him for indictment in Federal Court in New York in an end run around a Congressional ban on the transfer of terrorist detainees to US soil.
Sure didn’t take long for Obama to squander the goodwill from killing bin Laden. I mean, you got the most wanted man in the world, so how do you take that and start to make yourself look like an idiot? Well, let’s have Obama show us how.
So there’s debate about releasing the photos of Osama. I don’t even really care about it. Obama administration could have just said, “We’re not going to release the photos because we don’t feel like it.” and I would have been fine with that. Instead it’s the usual, “If we release the photos, it will make Muslims in the Middle East mad.” Really? There are Muslims in the Middle East who just give us hugs all the time, but if they see a photo of dead Osama they’re suddenly going to become murderous? But they were okay with us killing him — just don’t want to see the photo? I’m sorry, but anyone who would be stirred up to commit murder by an Osama photo are people we should be already hunting down and trying to kill — so stirring them up will just make them easier to find. But it’s hard to believe it will stir them up since so many in the Middle East are just constantly angry all the time at the most moronic things imaginable. When do we just say, “These guys are angry idiots constantly getting enraged by everything, so let’s stop worrying about what will make them angrier lest we catch some of their psychosis trying to think like them.”? If we want to end anger in the Middle East, let’s just send the message that being stupid angry is how you get dead. So everyone who is like, “Me see photo! Me want to murder now!” why don’t you learn to count to ten before you end up like Osama. And the Obama administration: Stop trying to coddle the feelings of people who celebrate a mass murder and instead concentrate on the feeling of your own people.
And then there is the changing story of how the assault went down. Now I, like pretty much every American, don’t really care how it went down as long as we got the end result of taking out Osama. The official report could have been, “Osama begged for mercy while we ripped off his leg and beat him to death with it,” and everyone would be like, “Great job, Obama!” But instead we keep getting this changing story about whether Osama was armed or not and whether he used a human shield — things we don’t even really care about — and now they’re like, “We’re done talking about this.” Hey, Obama, no one cares what the details of what happened in the raid, so just stop looking weasely about it.
So just, a couple days later, we go from Obama’s one flash of competency to looking like this probably all happened in spite of him, because, really, what an idiot.
—————————————————— Jim Treacher says that President Obama is taking his victory lap in a clown car.
It’s been less than 72 hours since President Barack Obama announced that U.S. Special Forces had killed Osama Bin Laden. Since then, his administration has been hard at work screwing the whole thing up.
Let’s start with that speech Sunday night. It was originally announced for 10:30 but didn’t happen until 11:30. By that time, the news Obama was supposed to be breaking had broken already. Not the best start. Presumably he was delayed arguing with his speechwriters about keeping in all the “I,” “Me,” and “Mine.” Everything having to do with this raid was “I”; anything that could be attributed to the Bush administration was “We.” “I gave the order, I did this, I did that.” The hallmark of any great leader is a willingness to bravely take credit for the hard work and sacrifice of others.
Then there’s the official narrative of the raid, which has already gone through more versions than the Star Wars movies. First Bin Laden had a gun; then he didn’t. He hid behind one of his wives, who was killed; wait, no, scratch that, she’s alive and wasn’t his wife. Maybe? Now Leon Panetta says he and President Obama didn’t actually see the whole thing go down, after the White House made a point of releasing that instantly iconic picture of the whole gang watching it go down.
Isn’t it kind of important to get all that stuff right the first time? Personally, I don’t care if Bin Laden was holding a tray of freshly baked cookies and asking our boys if they wanted any tea when they shot him. You’ve heard of suicide by cop? As far as I’m concerned, Osama Bin Laden committed suicide by 9/11. But now the White House just looks like a bunch of bumblers. If you’re not exactly sure what happened, why give details you might have to retract? How in the world do you screw up a win this big? (Amanda Carey has a wrap-up of the inconsistencies in the official story.)
And now the Obama administration is showing decisive leadership on the issue of dithering. “Gee, should we show the pictures of Bin Laden with his Navy SEAL makeover? Won’t that make people mad?” The Abu Ghraib pics were in the public interest; visual evidence of the death of the mastermind of 9/11 isn’t. Keeping us from seeing flag-draped coffins was bad; keeping us from seeing a blood-drenched mass-murderer is good. Now they’ve finally decided not to release the pictures, after Panetta already said they would. I’m sure that’s Obama’s final decision unless he changes his mind. Stay tuned for the latest round of polls.
Usually when governments use misinformation, they use it to make themselves look good. The Obama Administration gets points for originality, insofar as it’s been using disinformation and misinformation to make itself look arbitrary, unlawful, helpless and stupid.
Bookworm Room lists the contradictions in the narrative as it exists.
Stephen Green (better known as Vodkapundit) describes the current administration as “The Gang That Could Shoot Straight — But Not Much Else.”
The plan for killing Osama Bin Laden was perfectly conceived and as perfectly executed as any special forces operation since Israel’s raid on Entebbe. But the follow-through has been strange at best, sometimes bordering on incompetence.
First, there was that weird burial at sea “in accordance with Islamic tradition.” There, the White House managed to annoy most everyone. There are those like me, who thought Bin Laden’s corpse was treated with too much respect, to those in the Islamic world now inflamed because it wasn’t really done properly after all.
Then there was the president’s oddly bloodless speech Sunday night. For almost ten years we’d been trying to get the guy who murdered 3,000 Americans, attacked our military HQ, and ripped the heart out of the New York City skyline. The effort spanned two continents, four or five countries, a Caribbean Navy base, and the persistent efforts of two presidents, the American intelligence community, and the best of the best of our special forces. And yet President Obama sounded as if he were announcing a “worthwhile Canadian initiative.”
Now the Administration can’t even decide whether or not to release a photo of the body.
Tom Brown demonstrates the correct approach to the problem of bullying.
The Daily Caller reports on the Obama Administration’s latest initiative to apply federal oversight to children’s speech and social interaction.
Roughly 150 various advocates — lobbyists for gays and lesbians, legislators, White House officials, at least one cabinet secretary and the first lady — gathered around President’s Obama’s bully pulpit in the White House Thursday to cheer for increased government monitoring and intervention in Facebook conversations, in playgrounds and in schoolrooms around the country.
No officials at the televised East Room roll-out of the White House’s anti-bullying initiative suggested any limits to government intervention against juvenile physical violence, social exclusion or unwanted speech. None mentioned the usefulness to children of unsupervised play. None suggested there were any risks created by a government program to enforce children’s approval of other children who are unpopular, overweight, or who declare themselves to be gay, lesbians or transgender.
“It breaks our hearts to think that any child feels afraid every day in the classroom, on the playground, or even online,” first lady Michelle Obama said.
“We’re going to prevent bullying and create an environment where every single one of our children can thrive,” the president said, as he announced a series of government actions intended to fund, guide and pressure state and local officials to adopt regulations and programs that would shield children from insults or social-exclusion as well as from physical harm.
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Ken Sweeney responds at Ricochet, quoting Jim Geraghty in NRO’s email newsletter Morning Jolt.
I thought [Jim Geraghty’s observation, “Liberals want to eradicate bullying. Conservatives want to raise kids strong enough to handle it.”] encapsulates the entire left versus right debate perfectly. (Reminds me of the old adage: Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach the man HOW to fish, you feed him for a lifetime). President Obama’s show and tell at the White House on bullying was sad and pathetic. But this mindset goes beyond the specific topic of bullying. It is the mindset that you can perfect mankind and create a utopia through government action, not 300 million individuals taking responsibility for their lives.
[B]ullies stop being a problem when their victims have enough inner strength to refuse to accept it, and to stand up for themselves. Teachers, principles, authority figures—it’s great when they are there and witness bullying and are there to mete out justice. But anybody who’s been bullied knows that the eyes and ears of authority are not all-seeing and all-hearing. At that point, it’s up to you. But instead, there seems to be a belief in the White House that with enough conferences, enough best-practices discussions, enough Department of Education pamphlets and pilot programs, that somehow the federal government can end a social phenomenon that has existed as long as there have been children and teenagers.
The answer is: not well. The Embassy Bomber who killed 224 people in the simultaneous truck bomb attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 was acquitted in a Manhattan Federal District Court of all but one count of a 285 count indictment.
The acquittal of Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani yesterday on all but one of 285 counts in connection with the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania has once again demonstrated that the leftist lawyers’ experiment in applying civilian trial rules to terrorists is gravely misguided and downright dangerous. The soon-to-be House chairman on homeland security, Peter King, issued a statement blasting the trial outcome and the nonchalant response from the Justice Department:
“I am disgusted at the total miscarriage of justice today in Manhattan’s federal civilian court. In a case where Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was facing 285 criminal counts, including hundreds of murder charges, and where Attorney General Eric Holder assured us that ‘failure is not an option,’ the jury found him guilty on only one count and acquitted him of all other counts including every murder charge. This tragic verdict demonstrates the absolute insanity of the Obama Administration’s decision to try al-Qaeda terrorists in civilian courts”
Congress can start by ending federal-court jurisdiction over detainees. Then they should demand Eric Holder’s resignation — preferably before his serially wrong advice causes any more damage to our national security.
[P]rosecutors built a circumstantial case to try to establish that Mr. Ghailani had played a key logistical role in the preparations for the Tanzania attack.
They said the evidence showed that he helped to buy the Nissan Atlas truck that was used to carry the bomb, and gas tanks that were placed inside the truck to intensify the blast. He also stored an explosive detonator in an armoire he used, and his cellphone became the “operational phone” for the plotters in the weeks leading up to the attacks, prosecutors contended.
The attacks, orchestrated by Al Qaeda, killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands of others.
But the case was ill-suited to civilian courts, and a key witness was excluded from testifying:
But because of the unusual circumstances of Mr. Ghailani’s case — after he was captured in Pakistan in 2004, he was held for nearly five years in a so-called black site run by the Central Intelligence Agency and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the prosecution faced significant legal hurdles getting his case to trial. And last month, the government lost a key ruling on the eve of trial that may have seriously damaged their chances of winning convictions.
In the ruling, the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan of Federal District Court, barred them from using an important witness against Mr. Ghailani because the government had learned about the man through Mr. Ghailani’s interrogation while he was in C.I.A. custody, where his lawyers say he was tortured.
The witness, Hussein Abebe, would have testified that he had sold Mr. Ghailani the large quantities of TNT used to blow up the embassy in Dar es Salaam, prosecutors told the judge, calling him “a giant witness for the government.”
The judge called it correctly, and explicitly warned the government of “the potential damage of excluding the witness when he said in his ruling that Mr. Ghailani’s status of ‘enemy combatant’ probably would permit his detention as something akin ‘to a prisoner of war until hostilities between the United States and Al Qaeda and the Taliban end, even if he were found not guilty.’”
In other words, what in the world was the bomber doing in an Article III courtroom? He was, quite bluntly, part of a stunt by the Obama administration, which had vilified Bush administration lawyers for failing to accord terrorists the full panoply of constitutional rights available to American citizens who are arrested by police officers and held pursuant to constitutional requirements.
Once again, the Obama team has revealed itself to be entirely incompetent and has proved, maybe even to themselves, the obvious: the Bush administration had it right.
James Capretta, at National Review Online, takes a look at the first six months of “reform.”
He finds the foundations well underway for massive bureaucracy resulting in the politicization of patient care decisions, with the Obama Administration engaging in disinformation campaigns and power plays, and making threats against the livelihoods of businesses affected which protest.
During the long national debate over the future of American health care, President Obama frequently chastised his opponents for launching exaggerated attacks on his plan for “reform.” He took particular exception to the criticism that the changes he was pushing amounted to a government takeover of the whole health sector. He knew full well that this kind of criticism might derail the entire effort in Congress, because most Americans recoil at the thought of a distant and bureaucratic federal government running the health-care system for everyone. So Obama vigorously denied that his program would lead to any such thing. In his Aug. 8, 2009, radio address, he described the “takeover” accusation as “outlandish” and characterized his approach as a mainstream and moderate attempt simply to reform the nation’s private health-insurance system.
It’s now been six months since Congress passed Obamacare — not a long time given the sweeping nature of the legislation and the long phase-in schedule for its most significant provisions. Even so, it is already abundantly clear that Obamacare’s critics were dead right: The new health law has set in motion a government takeover of American health care, and a very hostile one at that. The Obama administration’s clumsy and overbearing behavior since its passage proves the point.
Gene Taylor (4-MS) this week became the first House democrat to sign the Repeal Obamacare petition.
Democrats in larger numbers are deserting Obama and calling for tax cuts for all Americans.
A.B. Stoddart, at the Hill, observes that you don’t have to wait for November to tell that the tide has turned, the Tea Party has already stopped Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid’s leftist offensive. The war will continue, but the initiative has changed sides.
Even before Christine O’Donnell handily defeated Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) in an epic upset Tuesday night, the Tea Parties, all of them, had already won. No matter what happens in the midterm elections on Nov. 2, the Tea Party has moved the Democrats to the right and the Republicans even more so, and President Obama’s agenda is dead. ...
As of last week, before the House and Senate even reconvened, it was clear there were enough Senate Democrats joining Republicans seeking an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest earners that the Democrats don’t have the votes to pass President Obama’s permanent extension of the middle-class tax cuts without passing cuts for the top two tax brackets as well.
When Obama introduced his latest economic proposals earlier this month, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), an ally of the Obama White House, immediately put out a statement not only criticizing Obama’s newest infrastructure plan but knocking the original stimulus as well. “I will not support additional spending in a second stimulus package. Any new transportation initiatives can be funded through the Recovery Act, which still contains unused funds,” Bennet said.
Obama won’t get his infrastructure plan through the Congress, and he knows it. Next year, when he is running for reelection, tax and budget reform will be the only issues he could realistically work on with a GOP majority or a razor-thin Democratic majority. In other words, the Tea Party agenda.
The Tea Party candidates themselves — like O’Donnell, whom Karl Rove called “nutty,” — matter little. Only a few will actually get elected this fall. Yet the Tea Party has won without them. There are no tea leaves left to read. Democrats have been spooked and Republicans threatened, cajoled or cleansed. The results are already in.
“Obama has underestimated the frustration in the country and the power of the Tea Party movement, which gives the prevailing disillusionment a platform and a voice. It is by far the most vibrant political force in America. Obama’s left-of-center coalition, which got young people and intellectuals involved and which appealed to a majority of women, blacks and Latinos, has evaporated into nothing. ...
The new right, though, is on the rise. It sets the agenda. America is facing a shift to the right. The Republicans have already marched in this direction of their own accord, regardless how many Tea Party reactionaries get a seat and a voice in Congress in November. The Democrats and the president have been put totally on the defensive. From now on they will only be able to react, rather than act.
