L!ve From > DC

UN Bans WMD Sales To Terrorists

Well, it was bound to happen, sooner or later.

The neocons have officially hijacked the UN.

Still, I guess it is better than this headline in 2020:

UN Passes UNSCR 1423243: New Resolution Orders Iraq To Disarm

Jordan Foils Zarqawi-masterminded Chemical Attack That Could Have Killed 80,000

Full story here

State television aired the confession of a suspect who said he was acting on the orders of a man believed to be Al-Qaida's chief of operations in Iraq to plan chemical and poison gas attacks against the U.S. Embassy and other targets in Jordan.

Azmi al-Jayousi, identified as the head of the Jordanian cell, appeared Monday in a 20-minute taped program and described meeting Jordanian militant Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq to plan the foiled plot. U.S. officials have offered a $10 million reward for al-Zarqawi's capture, saying he is a close associate of Al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and is trying to build a network of foreign militants in neighboring Iraq to work on Al-Qaida's behalf.

* Terrorists had hoped to kill 80,000 and injure 160,000
* Confession cites meeting between terrorists and Abu-Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq BEFORE the US invasion of Afghanistan

A couple of points:

One, this proves Bush right--these guys are indeed nuts; they will not only target Jews and Christians, but also fellow Arabs and Muslims, women and children. And they will use a WMD if they can get their hands on one.

The kind of attack that was planned requires not only technical knowledge and terror training, but deep financial support.

It all says that we had better start tracking down Saddam's missing billions and his WMD raw materials.

Two, according to the televised confession, planning for this attack took place in Iraq and before the invasion of Afghanistan--let's hope this puts to rest any assertions by the Left that invading Afghanistan or Iraq prompted this sort of bad behavior.

Three, the mainstream media has missed the significance of this story. They are treating this--when giving it any coverage--as just another attempted terror attack foiled.

Given that we have over a hundred thousand American lives in Iraq fighting to prevent this kind of horror from reaching American shores, the media's silence on this story is unpardonable but not uncharacteristic.

But we are to blame, too.

Since 9/11, the world has seen dozens of deadly Islamist terror attacks, none, mercifully, in the United States.

Ironically, because the US has been spared, and because 9/11 cost 3000 rather than 300,000 lives, we have started to pretend as if it is Bush who is giving the terrorists an unfair rap.

The Left today will tell you in all seriousness that we are less secure now because Bush is in one big perpetual over-reaction mode that is inconveniencing Americans, alienating our European and Arab friends, and ticking off Islamists.

It is because we are prone to believing in fairy tales about good-natured terrorists that a guy like John Kerry could challenge Bush.

Kerry Now A Big Liability for the Left

In January I predicted a defeat for Howard Dean in the Primaries and an eventual one for John Kerry.

Now I sense the media tide turning against Kerry. I can feel the Lefties in the media starting to distance themselves from the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee because they have started to use the term "presumptive".

Is this a subliminal signal to voters that they should consider dumping him...while they can?

No, that would be a conspiracy theory and we detest those on this forum.

But there is a growing realization on the Left that supporting Kerry is an exercise in frustration and self-humiliation far exceeding the pain Howard Dean ever caused.

Every day brings to light a new incriminating detail of his past; another flip-flop.

With the result that to make their guy look halfway decent, the Left must resort to extreme tactics—casting Bush as Hitler, a baby killer, an ape, a liar, a thief--you've probably seen them all.

It doesn't stop there--MoveOn, now Kerry's propaganda organ, sponsored ads that proclaim "Bush Knew".

They still insist that this is an "Oil War".

But folks, when they whip out the Hitler meme, they have pretty much lost the debate. They know that and it makes them mad and causes them to do irrational things such as create even more Hitler=Bush memes.

Significantly, it indicates that they have run out of ammunition. They hoped someone would expose an "Oil War"--yet neither Richard Clarke nor Paul O'Neil or Bob Woodward, the nation's foremost investigative reporter, mention an oil conspiracy in their tell-all books.

For desperately promoting conspiracies about the Iraq war while American troops remain engaged there, Kerry, MoveOn, the DNC, the Lefty media elements are all running a big risk. The payoff could be a monumental defeat for their side in November.

You can bet that Democratic Party supporters and anti-Bush lobbies are hoping someone sorts this out very quickly before Kerry burns through the coffers--before he makes them look quite foolish for standing by him.

The American people don't trust Kerry, they are more shocked by his post-Vietnam conduct than they are in awe of his service, and they don't trust the media and political personalities that fight for him either, especially when they resort to Hitler memes and conspiracy theories

Kerry's supporters must now decide if they want to end up in a situation where they have no credibility left because of their support for him.

The DNC may be regretful for jumping the gun and destroying Dean, for not taking the chance with Clarke and Edwards. They also know that if a few more of Kerry's flip-flops surface, they can kiss their more significant supporters in the media goodbye.

Without the media support, barring the quagmire the DNC is hoping for in Iraq, Kerry will not win the election. If they lose this one, it is pretty much over for the Donkeys and their stalwart supporters like MoveOn.

The stakes for Kerry backers are higher than most realize.

The Democrats can still save face, however.

MoveOn tries, but Kerry Still Looks Bad

This is priceless--Kerry uses MoveOn to launch a vicious attack on the President's "record of service" only to find that his own Vietnam duty commanding officer is gravely dubious about that first Purple Heart.

Kerry's commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Grant Hibbard, reached at his retirement home in Florida, said he can still recall Kerry's wound, and that it resembled a scrape from a fingernail. "I've had thorns from a rose that were worse," said Hibbard.

Stop laughing. Rose thorns and fingernail scrapes can hurt and even kill.

But it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Kerry rewarded himself with that Purple Heart-winning shrapnel.

Note the irony in the boast: The latest Kerry ad concludes: "This election is about character. It's between John Kerry, who left no man behind… and George W. Bush, who simply left."

John Kerry, it is clear, waited with bated breath to collect three Purple Hearts--the magic number to get out of Vietnam free--he simply left--he ran away--turned his back on hundreds of thousands, then turned a knife in their back--and now it is revealed that he may have lied, while others died to get out of Vietnam.

No wonder Vietnam War veterans are p****d.

Contrast Bush who has pledged--remains resolved--to not leave Iraq until the job is done with Kerry's never-ending lies and flip-flops.

The guy is a WRECK!

***

Why am I getting MoveOn bulletins?

This goes back to the days when I subscribed to their newsletters out of curiousity--before I discovered they were just a bunch of anti-American, intellectual midgets with Communist and Socialist sympathies, dedicating every waking hour trying to prove every anti-American, anti-Bush conspiracy theory that came their way.

For triggering Godwin's Law with their infamous Bush=Hitler commercial, MoveOn has long lost the debate.

Kerry's Latest Whopper: I Threw Away My Medals; Except I Didn't Really

The more I see and hear about this guy, the more sorry I feel for the Democrats.

What a piece of work, eh?

Kerry was asked if he gave back the Bronze Star, Silver Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for combat duty as a Navy lieutenant in Vietnam. "Well, and above that, [I] gave back the others," he said.

The statement directly contradicts Kerry's most recent claims on the disputed subject to the Los Angeles Times last Friday. "I never ever implied that I did it, " Kerry told the newspaper, responding to the question of whether he threw away his medals in protest.

"I'm proud of my medals. I always was proud of them," he told Jennings in December, adding that he had only thrown away his "ribbons" and the medals of two other veterans who could not attend the protest.

The Real Oil War: Arabs Commit Genocide In Sudan

Armed Arab militias, armed and backed by the Arab-dominated government embarked on a scorched-earth policy in the oil-rich Darfur region, killing up to 10,000 people.

"HRW says last month, men from the Fur ethnic group were rounded up with the help of government forces, and delivered to their place of execution in army lorries."

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/81530/1/.html http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/07/bush.un.sudan/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3652521.stm

And:

Darfur is home to racially and ethnically distinct tribal groups. Although virtually all are Muslim, generalizations are hard to make. But the Fur, Zaghawa, Masseleit, and other peoples are accurately described as "African," both in a racial sense and in terms of agricultural practice and use of non-Arabic languages. Darfur also has a large population of nomadic Arab tribal groups, and from these Khartoum has drawn its savage "warriors on horseback" -- the Janjaweed -- who are most responsible for attacks on villages and civilians.

The racial animus is clear from scores of chillingly similar interviews with refugees reaching Chad. A young African man who had lost many family members in an attack heard the gunmen say, "You blacks, we're going to exterminate you." Speaking of these relentless attacks, an African tribal leader told the U.N. news service, "I believe this is an elimination of the black race." A refugee reported these words as coming from his attackers: "You are opponents to the regime, we must crush you. As you are black, you are like slaves. Then the entire Darfur region will be in the hands of the Arabs." An African tribal chief declared that, "The Arabs and the government forces . . . said they wanted to conquer the whole territory and that the blacks did not have a right to remain in the region."

Over 2 million people have died over two decades.

Not a peep about the "oil war" from the Left in the Media.

Meanwhile, the UN remains, as was its position during the Rwandan genocide, idle and utterly impotent.

On a related note: Remember the chemical plants Clinton bombed in Sudan in 1996 in retaliation of the embassy bombings? Clinton claimed the plant was owned by Bin Laden.

Now read this little-publicized aspect of Richard Clarke's theory (from his recent book): Sudan, Bin Laden, Iraq and WMD:

Riyadh, Basra Attacks Prove 9/11 Was Unavoidable

Since the launch of the War on Terror, Saudi Arabia's vast Secret Police apparatus--which employs thousands of native Arabic speakers and some of the most intrusive law enforcement practices found anywhere in the world--has been cracking down on Islamists--many attacks were successfully foiled. Some were not--and caused hundreds of deaths.

Today's suicide attack on Riyadh proves that the most intensive measures are no match for the will of dedicated Islamists.

If the Saudis themselves cannot stop all the Islamists all the time, is it any surprise that the United States, with its politically correct management of issues such as racial profiling and severe intelligence gathering limitations could not prevent 9/11?

In Saudi Arabia, Islamists have dedicated themselves to the toppling of the House of Saud--they wish to control the world's largest oil reserves and channel that wealth to the spread of Wahabbi Islam.

In Iraq, foreign Islamists have joined forces with local extremists in attempt to takeover that country's oil wealth as well.

Sunnis are targeting Shias and vice versa--just as they have been for centuries.

All this underscoring the critical need for the people of Islam to finish the debate among themselves.

Which is why it is so important for the US to stay the course in Iraq. A democratic Iraq underpinned by united Shia, Sunni and Kurdish Iraqis is the best antidote to the extremist ideology--both Sunni and Shia.

Related Post: 9/11 could have been postponed, but not avoided

Al Qaeda, not the US, distracted/"stretched thin" by Iraq

Disproving a myth is always easier.

Let's quickly disprove the myth (promoted extensively by Howard Dean and now by John Kerry and Ted Kennedy) that the US is distracted by the War in Iraq—that we are "WORSE OFF", the claim, because we did not apply the same military and monetary resources to the pursuit of Al Qaeda that we did to removing Saddam. (I first challenged this here and here).

First, Al Qaeda and its assorted mutants could be found in more than 60 countries. Do Bush critics expect the US to invade or bomb every nation that has "Al Qaeda"? ("Why not?", will argue the same folks who also complain about the forces being stretched thin.)

Of course not. You partner with these nations, deploy special ops, and help fund and train their security and intelligence folks to weed out terrorists.

(Partnering, obviously, was not an option with hostile, terror-sponsoring regimes in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Syria).

Critics love to portray the President as an isolationist but they likely have no clue how many nations the U.S. has partnered with in its pursuit of Islamists.
Here's a brief list of those that have committed both men and billions of their own dollars to the fight (this is not a listing of countries that have joined the Iraq coalition)--: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Turkey, Japan, Greece, Canada, Belgium, India, Pakistan, Kazhakstan, New Zealand, Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Australia, UK, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, UAE, Romania, Poland, Georgia, Uzbekistan,

(Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Pakistan are now partners in the War on Terror, and perhaps
Libya soon.

These countries understand the danger Islamists pose and are thus actively weeding them out using their own resources.

Once Bush stigmatized all manners of terrorism and said "with us or against us" terrorist-belt countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Pakistan began the adoption of unprecedented social, political and economic reforms--from elections to rolling up madrassas.

Yet, folks like Kennedy and Kerry continue to depict the President as a
Divider. But it is they who trickily attempt to separate Iraq from the War on Terror. Iraq is front and central to the War on Terror, which cannot be won without eliminating state sponsors of terror.

Look at Israel—Iran and Syria breed more terrorists than Israel could ever eliminate.

Saddam “secular” Hussein was sponsoring Islamist terrorists against Israel—he gave them a cool $25 million between 2001 and 2003--money that could have--and probably already has--trickled to Al Qaeda or other Islamists.

Saddam's unaccounted for billions could be funding terrorism in Iraq and elsewhere even as we speak.

The brilliance of the Iraq strategy: by opening up a new front in Iraq, the
US is drawing Al Qaeda and Islamist militants from all over to confront highly trained US forces inside Iraq. These are terrorists that are fleeing their former host nations both because of the crackdown against them and because they relish the opportunity to jihad against Americans in Iraq.

This is GOOD--we want them to go to Iraq and fight soldiers instead of coming here and terrorizing civilians. If Qaeda had enough recruits, it would have done both, but the fact that we haven't had a terrorist attack since 9/11 proves that it is the enemy that is stretched thin.

Having said this, I fully support more troops for Iraq; we need to send as many as needed to combat all the terrorist bees that are flocking to the American honey.

So in summary--we have a relentless global war against Al Qaeda and affiliates; bin Laden who once had an entire country to manufacture terrorists and who aspired to procure WMD now stretched thin and reduced to hiding in a hole somewhere--doesn't even have a video camera, apparently; Iraq and Afghanistan liberated and marching towards democracy and setting an example for the rest of the Middle East; Libya renouncing terror and WMD; Muslim nations cracking down on Islamists--what more can Bush critics whine about?

American military casualties?

9/11/01 claimed more victims than US military losses worldwide since
1980. How's that for perspective?

Spain: Leave if you must, but do it quietly?

Clearly, March's terror attack in Madrid has decimated Spanish resolve to stay in Iraq.

But did they have to make such a fuss about it? Why couldn't they have just left quietly, without making it appear as if they were caving in to terrorism?

Snatching back his troops will only give "false comfort to terrorists," as Bush noted today.

Zapatero may not like Bush or the democracy project too much, but he should have whispered his intentions in Bush's ear; instead he delivered juicy soundbites to Islamists.

Even better, if all he was trying to do was save Spanish lives in Iraq, he could have announced a withdrawal, pulled out a few, and kept most of the troops behind.

Of course, democracies being transparent beasts, this would have been exposed by the liberal media the second they got a whiff of it.

Still, Zapatero appears to be doing the next best thing--he announced the Spanish were leaving, instantly buying protection for his people in Iraq--the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr has asked his followers to stop attacking Spanish troops--but says it could take less than six weeks. That puts the completion of Spanish withdrawal closer to the June 30th deadline for handover of sovereignty.

Unfortunately, despite announcing a deadline for the transfer of power several months ago--and showing that it intends to stick with it, the US has not managed to invoke such generosity from extremists in Iraq.

Al Qaeda, not the US, "distracted"/stretched thin by the Iraq War

Several months ago, I challenged Howard Dean's suggestion that the US was distracted by the Iraq war. Since then Richard Clarke has leveled the same charge, undoubtedly warming the cockles of Bin Laden and Islamists around the world.

I had also predicted (correctly, as it turned out) that since Bin Laden was diverting fighters from Afghanistan to Iraq, we should be prepared for an escalation in violence in Iraq.

Today, the Pentagon again warned Syria to prevent terrorists from winding their way into Iraq.

Yet, the antiwar lobby remains determined to spin terrorist attacks by foreign fighters as a local, popular uprising.