Retired general: 'Why we lost' in Iraq, Afghanistan

This is nothing new if you've been reading me for the past, oh, eight years, but since often the messenger matters more than the message, here you go, from a retired Army Lt. General.

A 3-Star General Explains 'Why We Lost' In Iraq, Afghanistan

November 9, 2014 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/1yYEegl

Beinart: Russia's invasion of Ukraine ended the 'War on Terror'

Interesting thesis.

For what it's worth, I've been saying all along the GWOT was a distraction for the U.S.  For the past 12 years we've been swatting mosquitoes and calling them dragons.

And, call me racist or whatever, but Europe is different. It just is. War in Europe will always get America's attention.

Finally, I want to give belated props not to Sarah Palin, but Mitt Romney, who declared during the 2012 campaign that Russia was America's "No. 1 geopolitical foe."  FOX is having a high time resurrecting that sound bite. Keep in mind though: Obama never disagreed with Romney. There are just certain obvious things that a presidential candidate can afford to say that a sitting U.S. President cannot. 

Ukraine: Is This How the War on Terror Ends?

By Peter Beinart

March 4, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/ukraine-is-this-how-the-war-on-terror-ends/284214/

Greenwald: Elites debate, Is AUMF awesome or totally awesome?

Here's how Greenwald sums up the "Dr. Strangelove" absurdity of the AUMF hearings in Congress, and the thinktank-media-judicial-political elite that wants to keep and expand it:

Nobody really even knows with whom the US is at war, or where. Everyone just knows that it is vital that it continue in unlimited form indefinitely.

In response to that, the only real movement in Congress is to think about how to enact a new law to expand the authorization even further. But it's a worthless and illusory debate, affecting nothing other than the pretexts and symbols used to justify what will, in all cases, be a permanent and limitless war. The Washington AUMF debate is about nothing other than whether more fig leafs are needed to make it all pretty and legal.

The Obama administration already claims the power to wage endless and boundless war, in virtually total secrecy, and without a single meaningful check or constraint. No institution with any power disputes this. To the contrary, the only ones which exert real influence - Congress, the courts, the establishment media, the plutocratic class - clearly favor its continuation and only think about how further to enable it. That will continue unless and until Americans begin to realize just what a mammoth price they're paying for this ongoing splurge of war spending and endless aggression.

Like I said, Congress ought to have thought twice before it handed the Executive branch carte blanche and an undated, blank check to wage war on anybody all over the globe...including at home.  And we citizens should have been screaming at our Congress for years now.

Washington gets explicit: its 'war on terror' is permanent

By Glenn Greenwald

May 17, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3fqqb

Have historians been unfair to Dubya?

Prof. Stephen Knott argues that Dubya has been treated unfairly by historians making their Best & Worst Presidents lists.  (As if their lists matter to anybody, but let's forget that for now....)

There are two ways to evaluate the success of a U.S. president: by what the evaluator thinks a president did right or wrong; or by how effectively a president got what he wanted; furthermore, one could evaluate how enduring were the gains a president won.

By the first measure, many people, including many Republicans, think Bush was a failure. But partisanship, ideology and ego affect our judgment, so it's one of those things best left to argue over beers. By the second measure, however, I'd argue that Bush was pretty darn successful, unfortunately. And his "achievements" endure.

Why do I say "unfortunately"? We had a recent example. Last night, when noting the nation's reaction to the apprehension of the Boston bombers and their alleged Islamist beliefs, I posted: "It's still Dubya's America and we're just living in it... including President Obama."

That is, I meant that Dubya and his team (including his team at FOX News and Clear Channel) have been extremely successful in framing our view of Muslims, so successful that even President Obama seems prisoner to our prejudices.  The Left is silent while Obama is under constant pressure by the Right to link the entire religion of Islam to terrorism.

Here's the latest bulletin from the conservative GWOT Language Police: "The language of terror," by Charles Krauthammer.  You have to read through a lot of nothing to get to Krauthammer's point at the very end:

Obama has performed admirably during the Boston crisis, speaking both reassuringly and with determination. But he continues to be linguistically uneasy. His wavering over the word terrorism is telling, though in this case unimportant. The real test will come when we learn the motive for the attack.

As of this writing, we don’t know. It could be Islamist, white supremacist, anarchist, anything. What words will Obama use? It is a measure of the emptiness of Obama’s preferred description — “violent extremists” — that, even as we know nothing, it can already be applied to the Boston bomber(s). Which means, the designation is meaningless.

You see, it makes all the difference in the world that the Boston bombers' alleged motivation was Islamist beliefs, and that our President says so. Why? Well, it's obvious, isn't it? Because it's ammunition for those who want to categorize all Muslims, including legal U.S. residents and citizens, as suspected terrorists. There's no other reason for the Right to police this language issue so severely. 

And as George Orwell warned us, language controls our thoughts. Control our language, control our thoughts. That is just one "achievement" of the successful George W. Bush "imperial" presidency, but it's a mighty one.

How about some more?  Bush's Great War on Terra (GWOT) continues and even escalates: with drone attacks, G'itmo, sanctioned rendition and torture, domestic spying and Internet surveillance, prosecuting government whistle blowers, and assassinating U.S. citizens when they are overseas. Obama continues Bush's extra-constitutional practice of presidential signing statements. Bush's occupations of choice in Afghanistan and Iraq are inexorable; Obama cannot or will not get out of them. Deregulated Wall Street banks may still gamble, legally, with depositors' and taxpayers' free money and are now Too Bigger To Fail. Deregulated for-profit colleges that live on government-backed student loans still hold the majority of student debt, now at $1 trillion. The budget of Bush's Department of Homeland Security now rivals the Pentagon's. Bush's unfunded Medicare Advantage entitlement is still wildly popular even among seniors in the Tea Parties... yet to put Medicare's finances back in order requires cutting or reforming Medicare Advantage, giving Republicans the opportunity to accuse Democrats of "cutting Medicare." Clinton's federal assault-weapons ban was allowed to expire in 2004; meanwhile right-to-carry and concealed-carry laws were passed in most states with Bush's encouragement, even as mass shootings increased.  And speaking of guns, Obama ironically got blamed for Bush's "Fast and Furious" "gunwalking"/drug-interdiction program by the ATF. And finally, Bush's unaffordable tax cuts on the very wealthy are now sacrosanct even among Democrats who once fought them, even in the worst economic climate since the Great Depression, with the two aforementioned wars still on the nation's credit card, unpaid for.  

As a result of all this and more, Bush increased our national debt 91 percent ($5.9 trillion), and yet somehow escapes blame for it; meanwhile spineless Democrats are ready to apologize for Obama's deficits (totaling $4.9 trillion or a 41 percent increase over FY 2009) caused by Bush's Great Recession and two unfinished wars. For that political magic act, we are compelled to acknowledge that Dubya was a brilliant politician. Obama is a dunderhead by comparison.

I haven't read Knott's book, but based on its title, Rush to Judgment: George W. Bush, the War on Terror, and His Critics, it probably highlights Bush's achievements in fighting terrorism.  If that's so, then Knott has an excellent case to make that Bush got everything he wanted and more, i.e. he was pretty darn successful. Too bad for us. 

UPDATE (04.24.2013): Ralph Nader repeats a lot of what I've said in his op-ed: "Obama Is Comfortable With Bush's Inferno." 

UPDATE (04.26.2013):  Here's an acerbic take on Dubya's strategy of "Keep Quiet and Hope They Forget" by Alexandra Petri: "George W. Bush was the greatest president of all time, ever."  It's working.  Dumbo has outsmarted us again.  [Facepalm.]

George W. Bush is victim of a rush to judgment

By Stephen F. Knott

April 20, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/17y2whL

Thoughts on fighting terrorism

I would like President Obama and Congress to lay down a few markers for U.S. citizens and the rest of the world, because the "Great War on Terrorism" (GWOT) is hopelessly muddled and prone to overreach.

First, in operational terms, the most important marker is that any terrorist group that we take action against must present a clear and present danger to the United States, because that is the measure by which we decide whether to take military action against other sovereign states. And as a practical matter, we must look where such terrorists are based. If they are acting in a sovereign state -- as they are most likely to do -- then we must act only with the permission of that state. Failure to act militarily without that state's permission would be a violation of that state's sovereignty. There is hardly any act more serious that the United States could undertake. Violating another country's sovereignty should never be done lightly, and never without clear consultations with said state. And again, as a practical matter, we should be extremely wary of violating any country's sovereignty, since they are prone to take the most extreme actions against us in response. The United States would do no less if the shoe were on the other foot.

Second, we must always make a clear distinction between state-sponsored terrorism and non-state-sponsored terrorism.

Bitter experience has taught us that non-state terrorists flourish in failed or failing states, like maggots in a rotting corpse. Such groups present a novel and special challenge to the United States.  We know now that terrorist groups often hope that the U.S. will choose to put boots on the ground in failed states. Such groups flock to failed or failing states; in the first case for refuge and operational freedom; in the latter case often to foment total state failure to secure such operational freedom.  

Furthermore, terrorist groups know that our presence in such states will provide them with ready and abundant targets in confusing environments where our rules of engagement are muddled and lead to the killing of combatants and innocent non-combatants alike. Terrorists do not care about non-combatants. Indeed they hope that innocents will be killed by indiscriminate use of American force, since such killings tend to bolster their recruitment and win over public opinion to their side.

State-sponsored terrorism, by contrast, is war by other, indirect means by our adversaries in other sovereign states.  Where we can make a solid connection between the actions of terrorists against the U.S. and the states who sponsor them, then the U.S. should have the right to respond appropriately, up to and including military force against the sponsor state.  The U.S. has made it fairly clear that it will hold state sponsors accountable. So this is not the real problem. 

The main condition is that we must avoid conflating the two types of terrorism.  The second condition is that our government should never fail to provide evidence of a clear and present danger to the United States (or its allies) before authorizing military force against non-state or state-sponsored terrorists, or the states who sponsor terrorists.  

The U.S. Constitution makes no reference to terrorism. Terrorism did not exist in the late 18th century.  It is a modern phenomenon. Nevertheless, the principle set down in the Constitution that the President must seek permission from Congress to declare war should still apply in the case of terrorist organizations.  Our Founding Fathers' fear was not that the U.S. would make war against private individuals as opposed to other sovereign states; rather, our Founders were afraid that the Executive would deploy U.S. forces indiscriminately and non-judiciously. The same fear, the same likelihood, exists with regard to traditional warfare as it does with non-traditional counter-terrorism military operations.

Greenwald: Constitution doesn't stop at U.S. border

All you so-called constitutional conservatives and Paulites, here's what the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1957 on the question of whether the U.S. Government is obligated to follow the Constitution beyond its borders:

At the beginning, we reject the idea that, when the United States acts against citizens abroad, it can do so free of the Bill of Rights. The United States is entirely a creature of the Constitution.  Its power and authority have no other source. It can only act in accordance with all the limitations imposed by the Constitution. When the Government reaches out to punish a citizen who is abroad, the shield which the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution provide to protect his life and liberty should not be stripped away just because he happens to be in another land.

This goes for all our constitutional rights:

This Court and other federal courts have held or asserted that various constitutional limitations apply to the Government when it acts outside the continental United States. While it has been suggested that only those constitutional rights which are 'fundamental' protect Americans abroad, we can find no warrant, in logic or otherwise, for picking and choosing among the remarkable collection of 'Thou shalt nots' which were explicitly fastened on all departments and agencies of the Federal Government by the Constitution and its Amendments. Moreover, in view of our heritage and the history of the adoption of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, it seems peculiarly anomalous to say that trial before a civilian judge and by an independent jury picked from the common citizenry is not a fundamental right. . . . Trial by jury in a court of law and in accordance with traditional modes of procedure after an indictment by grand jury has served and remains one of our most vital barriers to governmental arbitrariness. These elemental procedural safeguards were embedded in our Constitution to secure their inviolateness and sanctity against the passing demands of expediency or convenience.

Glenn Greenwald makes clear the absurdity of contrary claims by neocons and Obama admin. officials:

[D]oes anyone think it would be constitutionally permissible under the First Amendment for the US government to wait until an American critic of the Pentagon travels on vacation to London and then kill him, or to bomb a bureau of the New York Times located in Paris in retaliation for a news article it disliked [Republicans would celebrate in the streets! - J] , or to indefinitely detain with no trial an American who travels to Beijing or Lima or Oslo and who is suspected of committing a crime? 

Charles Krauthammer's false statement about the US Constitution

By Glenn Greenwald

March 15, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3ef4e

Israeli security chiefs may surprise you

"After retiring from this job, you become a bit of a leftist."  Hmm....

In "The Gatekeepers," Israeli Security Chiefs Say What US Leaders Can't

By Asawin Suebsaeng

February 22, 2013 | Mother Jones

"What's unnatural is the power you have to take three people, terrorists, and take their lives in an instant," says Yuval Diskin, the 12th director of the Shin Bet, Israel's internal security service, during the opening sequence of The Gatekeepers. His blunt testimony sets the grave and mournful tone that defines the rest of this illuminating and devastating film.

The Oscar-nominated documentary, directed by Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh, uses interviews with all six living ex-directors of the Shin Bet to paint a stark portrait of the agency and how it figures into the Jewish state's past, present, and future. For those who haven't heard of this security service, here are a couple lines from my crib sheet: Imagine the FBI, only tremendously more efficient, brutal, and terrifying. Now, imagine if the war on terror were half a century old, and if we had drone strikes and black sites in Florida and Montana.

That's what the Shin Bet is like for Israelis.

It's a juggernaut of counterterrorism and intel gathering. Shin Bet directors answer directly to the prime minister. The agency's greatest blunder was their failure to protect Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli leader who came closest to making peace with the Palestinians, from being murdered by a right-wing Israeli terrorist.

"I didn't want any more live terrorists in court," explains Avraham Shalom, who led the organization from 1980 to 1986. "In the war against terror, forget about morality." He's talking about the agency doctrine of targeted assassination against Islamic militants. (For what it's worth, Shalom now looks like your average adorable grandpa in dark-red suspenders, and yes, he has blown up his fair share of people.)

It goes without saying that these men have street cred. None of them has anything to prove when it comes to battling Muslim extremism or waging war on violent anti-Semitism. Avraham Shalom was even part of the team that captured Adolf Eichmann and flew his Nazi ass back to Israel to stand trial in 1960. These are guys who know perhaps better than anybody else what it means to orchestrate the ruthless killing of jihadists and Hamas terrorists.

And yet not one of them could make it through a Senate confirmation hearing. In fact, the most fascinating thing about The Gatekeepers is that so much of what these hardened agency dons say about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is completely interchangeable with what many American pundits and politicians might assail as anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Here are six examples of things said in the film that could get you pilloried in American politics:

1. "Talk to everyone, even if they answer rudely. So that includes even Ahmadinejad, [Islamic Jihad, Hamas], whoever. I'm always for it. In the State of Israel, it's too great a luxury not to speak with our enemies…Even if [the] response is insolent, I'm in favor of continuing. There is no alternative. It's in the nature of the professional intelligence man to talk to everyone. That's how you get to the bottom of things. I find out that he doesn't eat glass and he sees that I don't drink oil."—Avraham Shalom (1980-86), on negotiating with the enemy.

2. "We are making the lives of millions [of Palestinians] unbearable, into prolonged human suffering, [and] it kills me."—Carmi Gillon (1994-96).

3. "We've become cruel. To ourselves as well, but mainly to the occupied population." Our army has become "a brutal occupation force, similar to the Germans in World War II. Similar, not identical."—Shalom, who clarifies that he is referring to the Nazis' persecution of non-Jewish minorities.

4. "We don't realize that we face a frustrating situation in which we win every battle, but we lose the war."—Ami Ayalon (1996–2000), regarding the wisdom of Israel's counterterrorism measures.

5. "To them, I was the terrorist.… One man's terrorist is another man freedom fighter."—Yuval Diskin (2005-11), candidly discussing the very first time he considered his profession from a Palestinian perspective.

6. "We are taking very sure and measured steps to a point where the State of Israel will not be a democracy or a home for the Jewish people."—Ayalon

But the film's contribution to any political discussion on the topic goes way beyond its quotable shock value. It's the culmination of a personal saga for these six warriors, packaged in one raw, brilliantly paced film with stunning visuals. "After retiring from this job, you become a bit of a leftist," Yaakov Peri, who ran the Shin Bet during the First Intifada, says with a sad smirk. The narrative unfolds as a modern tragedy where the characters' career highs are forever marred by a sense that they've retired only to become Cassandras. And for all their tactical successes on the battlefield, they see an Israel poised to lose the war if it continues to give up on peace.

Check out the trailer below:

Vet/Republican/NSA whistleblower speaks out

This is the kind of stuff that should be driving conservatives and militia types nuts, not Obama's non-existent restrictions on gun owners.

But so far, according to the mainstream, anything done in the name of fighting Islamic terrorism is permissible.  

[The NSA's 'Stellar Wind' program, based in Utah] is being designed to store huge amounts of accessible web information – such as social media updates – but also information in the "deep web" behind passwords and other firewalls that keep it away from the public.

As an example of Stellar Wind's power, Binney believes it is hoovering up virtually every email sent by every American and perhaps a good deal of the people of the rest of the world, too.

US data whistleblower: 'It's a violation of everybody's constitutional rights'

Former National Security Agency official Bill Binney says US is illegally collecting huge amounts of data on his fellow citizens

By Paul Harris

September 15, 2012 | Guardian

URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/sep/15/data-whistleblower-constitutional-rights?commentpage=last#end-of-comments

DOS 'whistleblower': Nation-building FAIL

More than a few State Dept. officers disagree with Van Buren, and personally distrust his motivations (write a provocative book at/near retirement and get rich and famous) instead of blowing the whistle internally and trying to change the system from within.

Myself, I have a problem with his "greedy contractors"/"corrupt bureaucrats" line.  First, contractors don't write the contracts, the government does.  They just bid on the work and then implement it.  Secondly, Van Buren presents no evidence of U.S. government corruption.  

If Van Buren meant corruption within the Iraqi and Afghan governments, then, well, duh.  We never should have expected to funnel $ billions through these nascent institutions and trust all the money to be well-spent or even accounted for.  But in fact, trying to spend a lot of money fast -- and this was a hell of a lot to spend on development, more than any nation had ever tried to spend before in such a short time -- no matter who was managing it, was bound to lead to waste, poor accounting, missed and moving targets, sloppy work, etc.  

Those disagreements aside, Van Buren's central points are true and bear repeating: 1) using development aid as a counter-insurgency tactic almost never works; and 2) in our arrogance and cultural blindness we have failed to understand that they don't want to be like us, they don't even want most of our stuff.  This is especially true in Afghanistan.

How not to reconstruct Iraq, Afghanistan - or the US

Why has the US spent so much money and time "so disastrously trying to rebuild occupied nations abroad"?

By Peter Van Buren

August 28, 2012 | Al Jazeera

URL:  http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282312156520461.html

Obama fights injunction against NDAA to keep unlimited detention

I admit I haven't been following this case or the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).  It looks sinister.  The plaintiff said she voted for Obama.  

Certainly I don't demand this much security from my government, if this is how they choose to "defend" us from terrorists.

For his part Mitt Romney said during a GOP primary debate on FOX that he would also sign NDAA.  (Ron Paul, not surprisingly, is against NDAA.)  So on yet another issue, voters this November are presented with no real alternative.

What makes our NDAA lawsuit a struggle to save the US constitution

By Tangerine Bolen

August 10, 2012 | Guardian

URL:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/10/ndaa-lawsuit-struggle-us-constitution

Military-corporate welfare grants NH town a tank

Where are the Tea Parties when we really need them? (Chasing after welfare moms, voters without photo IDs, and Mexican fruit pickers, as usual.....)

Police 'Tank' Purchase Riles New Hampshire Town

By Radley Balko

February 16, 2012 | Huffington Post

"We're going to have our own tank."

That's what Keene, N.H., Mayor Kendall Lane whispered to Councilman Mitch Greenwood during a December city council meeting.

It's not quite a tank. But the quaint town of 23,000 -- scene of just two murders since 1999 -- had just accepted a $285,933 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to purchase a Bearcat, an eight-ton armored personnel vehicle made by Lenco Industries Inc.

[...]

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the war on terror has accelerated the trend toward militarization. Homeland Security hands out anti-terrorism grants to cities and towns, many specifically to buy military-grade equipment from companies like Lenco. In December, the Center for Investigative Reporting reported that Homeland Security grants totalled $34 billion, and went to such unlikely terrorism targets as Fargo, N.D.; Fon du Lac, Wisc.; and Canyon County, Idaho. The report noted that because of the grants, defense contractors that long served the Pentagon exclusively have increasingly turned looked to police departments, hoping to tap a "homeland security market" expected to reach $19 billion by 2014.

Time to end the War on Terra

Is it time to end this costly, pointless, bloody war? Um, yeah. Duh.

You can catch the full Intelligence Squared debate here.

P.S. - I found it funny the guys arguing "No" to the motion in this debate had a large, direct financial interest in continuing the war on terror. No conflict of interest there, no sir!

Is It Time To End The War On Terror?

September 13, 2011 | NPR

URL: http://n.pr/qPze4c

FBI interrogator: Less Kiefer Sutherland, more Julia Roberts

The book The Black Banners looks like the opposite of "24." The author's anecdote about interrogating bin Laden's personal secretary Ali al-Bahlul is particularly enlightening. From what we're told by hot-headed pundits and two-fisted politicians, the only way to get information out of hardened terrorists is to waterboard, torture, starve and humiliate them. Not so. It's more like: eat, pray, drink. Practically a Julia Roberts movie!

Behind The War On Terror's Dark Curtain

September 12, 2011 | Morning Edition on NPR

On Sept. 12, 2001, Ali H. Soufan, a special agent with the FBI, was handed a secret file. Soufan had spent nearly a decade investigating terrorism cases, like the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. He says that this file was one he had requested before the attacks, and that had it been given to him earlier it may have helped to prevent them.

Following 9/11, Soufan interrogated suspects as one of the few FBI agents at the time who spoke Arabic. In a new book, The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda, out today, he reveals many long-held secrets about both the operations of terrorists as well as the American efforts to find and bring them to justice, including how he was able to elicit confessions from members of al-Qaeda.

According to his book, and as he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep, Soufan's interrogations did not involve the physical technique known as waterboarding, but rather involved conversations that hinged on what each man knew.

"You interview a lot of people and the most important thing during interviews is to have the person talk," Soufan says. "And then you can figure out: he's lying here, he's not lying there, maybe he's trying to hide something here."

One of the men he interrogated was Abu Zubaydah, who had been captured in Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks, and whom the Bush administration thought was a high-ranking al-Qaeda official. Soufan says though assessment was incorrect, Abu Zubaydah did give up valuable information.

"From the very beginning, Abu Zubaydah was very cooperative, and he provided the information that led us to identify the mastermind of 9/11, which is Khalid Sheikh Muhammed," Soufan says. "He also provided significant details about the plot and how the plot came to be."

Why would a terrorist volunteer such information?

"We were nice to him," Soufan says. "I mean, we had a lot of things going on, you know? He knew that we knew everything about him. We knew even what his mother used to call him as a child. He was not providing information just because he wanted to provide information. He was providing information because he's trying to convey to us that, 'Look, I am cooperating with you.' But at the same time, he didn't know what we knew. And we started playing this mental poker game with him, if you want to call it, and [got] more and more information from him."

Soufan says that the information stopped flowing after the arrival of a man he calls Boris.

"At the time, we were really surprised, because we had a good team on the ground and then we found that someone had hired this psychologist who supposedly was an expert. And when I spoke with him about his level of expertise, we were dumbfounded," Soufan says. Boris had not ever conducted an interrogation and lacked the team's depth of knowledge about al-Qaeda. He told Soufan, "I do know human nature."

"Unfortunately, he knew neither," Soufan says.

Boris employed what was referred to by former CIA director George Tenet as "standard interrogation techniques."

"And the standard interrogation techniques at the time was believed to be nudity, was believed to be sleep deprivation, loud noise," Soufan says. "And we had many problems with this technique. First of all, if it's working, why break it? if someone is talking, the best thing you can do is keep him talking. The number two issue is al-Qaeda and their associates, and Islamic extremists in general, they are anticipating to be tortured when they get caught."

Many of these extremists have been through jails in the Middle East, Soufan says, and "expect to be beaten, they expect to be burned, their nails to be pulled out, they expect to be sodomized. I mean, there is a lot of sick things that happens over there. And now we are saying that we're going to take your clothes off, we're going to put some loud music on, and you're going to cooperate. He's not going to cooperate because he's gonna see how long can he endure the treatment that you're giving him. And you know with 'enhanced' interrogation techniques, you hit the last one we have, which is waterboarding. So when you get [to] waterboarding, what do you do? You keep doing it again and again, in the case of Abu Zubaydah 83 times. In the case of KSM, 183 times. You know when do you realize that it's not working? 102nd time? 101st time? When?"

After his retirement from the FBI, Soufan testified before a Senate Administrative Oversight and the Courts subcommittee on the Bush administration's interrogation and detention program. He spoke to the subcommittee from behind a black screen to protect his identity.

"As I mentioned in my Senate statement, Abu Zubaydah stopped talking. So for a few days we didn't get one single piece of information. Just a day before that started, we get that KSM is the mastermind of 9/11," he says.

In The Black Banners, Soufan repeatedly uses a word not usually associated with interrogation to refer to another suspect, a man by the name of Ali al-Bahlul. Soufan visited Bahlul in Guantanamo, where the military explained that the prisoner was cooperative, and that there was no reason to believe that he was dangerous. His story: that he went to Afghanistan to teach the Quran to poor Afghanis.

"So when we had him brought to the interrogation room, I just felt that there is something wrong with this guy," Soufan says. I mean, he is saying all the rhetoric. He is repeating all the counter-narrative of al-Qaeda. He is very knowledgeable about it. But that means he is also very knowledgeable about al-Qaeda's rhetoric. So I was the devil's advocate here."

Soufan says that he began arguing on behalf of al-Qaeda, "from political perspective and from ideological perspective," and that during the debate, he stopped taking notes, which upset Bahlul.

"He asked me, 'So why are you not taking notes?' And I said, you know, 'I respected you this whole time. I never lied to you. I'm telling you who I am and why I'm here, but I don't see the same from you.' And this is the last thing somebody like him, who claims that he is pious, want to hear from someone," Soufan says. "So I explain to him that I know a lot about him, I know who he really is, and then I ask him to go and pray. So he went, he prayed, he came back. I gave him a cookie, if you want to eat a cookie. So he was chewing on the cookie and he was looking down on the floor and then he looked at me and he said, 'I am Anas al Makki. That's my Qaeda name.'"

The man they had known as Bahlul explained that he was actually a leader of al-Qaeda, and a personal secretary of Osama bin Laden. "What do you want to know?" he asked.

"I said, 'Do you want some tea?' He almost spit the cookies from his mouth," Soufan says. "He said, 'I just told you who I am, and you're just asking me if I want tea?' I said, 'Well, I knew that, but now I know you're respecting me, so I'm offering you some tea.' I had no clue who the guy was."

Al Makki eventually revealed that while the Sept. 11 attacks were being carried out, bin Laden was attempting to use a satellite to watch the destruction on television.

"He said that he was not able to get a signal because they were running away and they were hiding in the mountains somewhere," Soufan says. "So they ended up listening to it on the radio. He talked about different individuals in the group. He talked about the structure. And he is now going to be serving his life in jail."

Stiglitz: The real cost of 9/11

To put the amount in perspective, $2 trillion in direct spending so far in Iraq and Afghanistan is almost 5 times more than the stimulus (ARRA) spending to date.

Yet no Tea Parties have rallied on Washington or stormed town halls to end the wars and cut the deficit. Why not?

The True Cost of 9/11

Trillions and trillions wasted on wars, a fiscal catastrophe, a weaker America.

By Joseph E. Stiglitz

September 1, 2011 | Slate

The Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks by al-Qaida were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama Bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush's response to the attacks compromised America's basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to al-Qaida—as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive—orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning—as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation.

Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I calculated America's war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3 trillion to $5 trillion. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50 percent of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans' medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health care costs will total $600 billion to $900 billion. The social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable.

Even if Bush could be forgiven for taking America, and much of the rest of the world, to war on false pretenses, and for misrepresenting the cost of the venture, there is no excuse for how he chose to finance it. His was the first war in history paid for entirely on credit. As America went into battle, with deficits already soaring from his 2001 tax cut, Bush decided to plunge ahead with yet another round of tax "relief" for the wealthy.

Today, America is focused on unemployment and the deficit. Both threats to America's future can, in no small measure, be traced to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Increased defense spending, together with the Bush tax cuts, is a key reason why America went from a fiscal surplus of 2 percent of GDP when Bush was elected to its parlous deficit and debt position today. Direct government spending on those wars so far amounts to roughly $2 trillion—$17,000 for every U.S. household—with bills yet to be received increasing this amount by more than 50 percent.

Moreover, as Bilmes and I argued in our book The Three Trillion Dollar War, the wars contributed to America's macroeconomic weaknesses, which exacerbated its deficits and debt burden. Then, as now, disruption in the Middle East led to higher oil prices, forcing Americans to spend money on oil imports that they otherwise could have spent buying goods produced in the U.S. The Federal Reserve hid these weaknesses by engineering a housing bubble that led to a consumption boom. It will take years to overcome the excessive indebtedness and real-estate overhang that resulted.

Ironically, the wars have undermined America's (and the world's) security, again in ways that Osama Bin Laden could not have imagined. An unpopular war would have made military recruitment difficult in any circumstances. But, as Bush tried to deceive America about the wars' costs, he underfunded the troops, refusing even basic expenditures—say, for armored and mine-resistant vehicles needed to protect American lives or for adequate health care for returning veterans.

Military overreach has predictably led to nervousness about using military power, and others' knowledge of this threatens to weaken America's security as well. But America's real strength, more than its military and economic power, is its "soft power," its moral authority. And this, too, was weakened: As the U.S. violated basic human rights like habeas corpus and the right not to be tortured, its longstanding commitment to international law was called into question.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. and its allies knew that long-term victory required winning hearts and minds. But mistakes in the early years of those wars complicated that already-difficult battle. The wars' collateral damage has been massive: By some accounts, more than 1 million Iraqis have died, directly or indirectly, because of the war. According to some studies, at least 137,000 civilians have died violently in Afghanistan and Iraq in the last 10 years. Among Iraqis alone, there are 1.8 million refugees and 1.7 million internally displaced people.

Not all of the consequences were disastrous. The deficits to which America's debt-funded wars contributed so mightily are now forcing the U.S. to face the reality of budget constraints. America's military spending still nearly equals that of the rest of the world combined, two decades after the end of the Cold War. Some of the increased expenditures went to the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader "global war on terrorism," but much of it was wasted on weapons that don't work against enemies that don't exist. Now, at last, those resources are likely to be redeployed, and the U.S. will likely get more security by paying less.

Al-Qaida, while not conquered, no longer appears to be the threat that loomed so large in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. But the price paid in getting to this point, in the U.S. and elsewhere, has been enormous—and mostly avoidable. The legacy will be with us for a long time. It pays to think before acting.

This article comes from Project Syndicate.

U.S. torture: Past, present & future

Aint much difference.

It looks like the more they deny it, the more likely they're doing it. Kind of like Anthony Weiner.

Seriously though, Bush & Cheney were bad but Obama seems just as determined to continue torturing, despite his lofty oratory to the contrary.

We Americans cannot rely on politicians, the military, or the CIA to do the right thing; we need a national conversation about our values and the law, then we must demand the truth about what evil, sadistic acts they are performing in our name, supposedly for our safety.

Like it or not, we are all accessories to illegal imprisonment and torture, including torture resulting in homicide. Are we OK with that?

Happy Independence Day... for some.

Is Torture In America's Future As Well As In Our Country's Past?

By Dan Froomkin

July 4, 2011 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/04/is-torture-in-americas-future_n_889359.html

In U.S., peace just isn't taken seriously

Yeah, it's just a damn shame that talking about peace these days -- at least in Washington and the major media -- is regarded as pitiful naivete.

And not just peace, but our ignoring all the weapons that we sell to war-torn countries -- America is the world's largest arms exporter by a wide margin.

Real conservatives ought to be appalled, as Ron Paul is appalled, at America's empire of hundreds of military bases around the globe. As Engelhardt points out (again):

"This wasn't always the case. The early Republic that the most hawkish conservatives love to cite was a land whose leaders looked with suspicion on the very idea of a standing army. They would have viewed our hundreds of global garrisons, our vast network of spies, agents, Special Forces teams, surveillance operatives, interrogators, rent-a-guns, and mercenary corporations -- as well as our staggering Pentagon budget and the constant future-war gaming and planning that accompanies it -- with genuine horror."

America's Tragic Descent into Empire

July 7, 2010 | AlterNet

The following is an excerpt from The American Way of War: How Bush's Wars Became Obama's by Tom Engelhardt (Haymarket, 2010).

URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/147428/america's_tragic_descent_into_empire/?page=entire

Obama defeating terrorists by ignoring them?

Hey, I predicted this:

"Conservatives keep saying that Obama doesn't really believe we're at war; that he sees terrorists as mere criminals, not the epic evil-doers that they really are. But here's the irony: It's precisely because he doesn't see the terrorist threat as quite so epic that al Qaeda is falling apart.

And I've been saying al Qaeda is no real threat to America for a long time:

"To understand why, it helps to understand that al Qaeda is one of the weakest enemies America has ever faced. In their day, the Nazis and communists each ran a great power. (In the case of the communists, two). What's more, during the Depression, vast numbers of people across the globe—including some of the most famous intellectuals in the United States and Europe—believed the fascists and communists could build societies that were more prosperous and dynamic than their democratic competitors. Barely anyone has ever believed that about al Qaeda. Not only have the jihadists never controlled a powerful country, but no one really believes that if they did it would be anything other than a basket case. To millions of people, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia once offered compelling visions of modernity; Taliban Afghanistan never did.

"At the end of the day, all jihadist terrorists can really do is kill. [And even then, they can't kill very many people, and certainly not many U.S. troops in combat - J]. But the more they kill, the more they alienate their fellow Muslims."

And here's some evidence that a U.S. policy of CTFD (Calm The F*** Down) is working:

"Now Obama, by pledging to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and close Gitmo, and by eschewing torture—in other words, by not overreacting to the terrorist threat—is cutting al Qaeda's throat. Although the U.S. government is still not exactly loved in Muslim nations, it is hated less. Between 2008 and 2009, according to Gallup, approval of U.S. policies rose 23 points in Tunisia, 22 points in Algeria, 19 points in Egypt, 17 points in Saudi Arabia and 13 points in Kuwait. In Indonesia, according to the Pew Research Center, approval of the U.S. rose 26 points. And not coincidentally, al Qaeda's slide seems to be accelerating. Between 2003 and 2009, according to Pew, support for Osama bin Laden has dropped 34 points in Indonesia, 28 points in Pakistan, 28 points in Jordan, 20 points in the Palestinian territories, 16 points in Lebanon and 13 points in Turkey. In Indonesia and Pakistan, much of the decline has occurred in the last year alone. Bin Laden is having so much trouble demonizing the United States that his last audio tape focused on climate change."

Here's the upshot:

"The dirty little secret of the 'war on terror' is that America is winning. We began winning during George W. Bush's second term, when al Qaeda's violence began corroding its support among Muslims, and we're doing even better under Barack Obama, because the U.S. now presents a less menacing face. The best chance al Qaeda has is another American overreaction of the kind the GOP demands: reckless military attacks by the United States or Israel, mass profiling of Muslims, a return to torture. Perhaps Obama's Republican critics do take the terrorist threat more seriously than he does. I'd rather take it less seriously, and win."

I would only add that the Muslim world never has to love us. Lots of eurofags don't love us, but they don't put bombs in their pants trying to kill us either; they sit in cafes and complain about us. No, all we need is to tone down the hysteria a few notches, to reduce the flow of terrorist recruits and donations. That's good enough. That's victory.


Obama Outsmarts the Terrorists
By Peter Beinart
February 5, 2010 The Daily Beast

URL: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-05/the-dirty-secret-of-the-terror-war/

Obama more fascist than Reagan?

It's pretty amazing to read these quotes from Reagan and his counter-terrorism chief Paul Bremer (yeah, that Paul Bremer), and realize that Reagan's policy of treating terrorists like criminals is considered limp-wristed, far-left, and dangerous today. It's shocking and depressing to think that Obama is more of a fascist than Reagan was. (And I don't mean that in the oxymoronical, Jonah Goldberg "liberal fascist" sense, I mean it in the real sense of the term.)

Nostalgia for Bush/Cheney radicalism

By Glenn Greenwald

January 31, 2009 | Salon.com

(updated below)

As has been voluminously documented here, one of the most notable aspects of the first year of the Obama presidency has been how many previously controversial Bush/Cheney policies in the terrorism and civil liberties realms have been embraced. Even Obama's most loyal defenders often acknowledge that, as Michael Tomasky recently put it, "the civil liberties area has been [Obama's] worst. This is the one area in which the president's actions don't remotely match the candidate's promises." From indefinite detention and renditions to denial of habeas rights, from military commissions and secrecy obsessions to state secrets abuses, many of the defining Bush/Cheney policies continue unabated under its successor administration.

Despite all that, there is substantial political pressure from all directions for Obama to reverse the very few decisions where he actually deviated from Bush/Cheney radicalism in these areas. In the wake of extreme political pressure, mostly from Democrats, the White House just forced Eric Holder to retreat on his decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City, and numerous Democrats now appear prepared to join with the GOP to cut-off funding for civilian trials altogether, forcing the administration to try all Terrorists in military commissions or just hold them indefinitely. The administration has created a warped multi-tiered justice system where only a select few even get civilian trials -- those whom they know in advance they can convict -- yet there are growing signs that the President will abandon even that symbolic, piecemeal nod to due process.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post is publishing demands from former Bush CIA and NSA Chief Michael Hayden -- who presided over the blatantly criminal warrantless eavesdropping program -- that Obama must even more closely model his Terrorism policies on Bush's, as though the architects of Bush's illegal policies are our Guiding Lights when deciding what to do now. Even Obama's own top intelligence official criticized the Justice Department's decision to treat Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as what he is -- a criminal -- and accord him normal due process. And an internal Justice Department investigation which -- under Bush -- had concluded that John Yoo and Jay Bybee committed ethical violations in their authoring of the "torture memos" and should be investigated by their state bars has now, under Obama, reportedly been changed -- whitewashed -- to conclude that they acted appropriately (even if their written opinions exhibited "poor judgment").

In sum, there is clearly a bipartisan and institutional craving for a revival (more accurately: ongoing preservation) of the core premise of Bush/Cheney radicalism: that because we're "at war" with Terrorists, our standard precepts of justice and due process do not apply and, indeed, must be violated. To relieve ourselves of guilt and of the bad lingering taste left from having such discredited and unpopular leadership for eight years, we collectively pretended for a little while to regret the excesses of the Bush/Cheney approach to such matters. But it's now crystal clear that the country, especially its ruling elite, is either too petrified of Terrorism and/or too enamored of the powers which that fear enables to accept any real changes from the policies that were supposedly such a profound violation "of our values." One can only marvel at the consensus outrage generated by the mere notion that we charge people with crimes and give them trials if we want to lock them in a cage for life. Indeed, what was once the most basic and defining American principle -- the State must charge someone with a crime and give them a fair trial in order to imprison them -- has been magically transformed into Leftist extremism.

To see how radical our establishment consensus in this area has become, just consider two facts. First, look at the Terrorism policies of what had previously been the most right-wing administration in America's history: the Reagan administration. In this post yesterday, Larry Johnson does quite a good job of documenting how Terrorism by Islamic radicals had been a greater problem in the 1980s than it is now. There was the 1983 bombing of our Marine barracks in Lebanon, a 1982 and 1984 bombing of Jewish sites in Argentina, numerous plane hijackings, the blowing up of a Pan Am jet, the Achille Lauro seizure, and what the State Department called "a host of spectacular, publicity-grabbing events that ultimately ended in coldblooded murder" (many masterminded by Abu Nidal).

Despite that, read the official policy of the Reagan Administration when it came to treating Terrorists, as articulated by the top Reagan State Department official in charge of Terrorism policies, L. Paul Bremer, in a speech he entitled "Counter-Terrorism: Strategies and Tactics:"

Another important measure we have developed in our overall strategy is applying the rule of law to terrorists. Terrorists are criminals. They commit criminal actions like murder, kidnapping, and arson, and countries have laws to punish criminals. So a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are -- criminals -- and to use democracy's most potent tool, the rule of law against them.

It was also Ronald Reagan who signed the Convention Against Torture in 1988 -- after many years of countless, horrific Terrorist attacks -- which not only declared that there are "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever" justifying torture, but also required all signatory countries to "ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law" and -- and Reagan put it -- "either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution." And, of course, even George W. Bush -- at the height of 9/11-induced Terrorism hysteria -- charged attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid with actual crimes and processed him through our civilian courts.

How much clearer evidence can there be of how warped and extremist we've become on these matters? The express policies of the right-wing Ronald Reagan -- "applying the rule of law to terrorists"; delegitimizing Terrorists by treating them as "criminals"; and compelling the criminal prosecution of those who authorize torture -- are now considered on the Leftist fringe. Merely advocating what Reagan explicitly adopted as his policy -- "to use democracy's most potent tool, the rule of law against" Terrorists -- is now the exclusive province of civil liberties extremists. In those rare cases when Obama does what Reagan's policy demanded in all instances and what even Bush did at times -- namely, trials and due process for accused Terrorists -- he is attacked as being "Soft on Terror" by Democrats and Republicans alike. And the mere notion that we should prosecute torturers (as Reagan bound the U.S. to do) -- or even hold them accountable in ways short of criminal proceedings -- is now the hallmark of a Far Leftist Purist. That's how far we've fallen, how extremist our political consensus has become.

Second, consider the company we keep, specifically where our mentality falls on the spectrum that defines the rest of the world. Countries which have been victimized by horrific terrorist attacks over the last several years -- Britain, Spain, India, Indonesia -- have tried and convicted the perpetrators as criminals in their civilian court system, right in their normal courthouses, in the heart of the cities that were the target of the attacks. These countries -- which aren't protected by oceans and (in the case of India and Indonesia) aren't bordered by friendly countries -- didn't invent special military commissions to abridge due process or simply imprison the accused without a trial. They didn't pour water down their throats, freeze them, disorient them with sleep deprivation, or hang them naked from the ceiling. Instead, they followed the Reagan administration's policy for dealing with Terrorists -- "use democracy's most potent tool, the rule of law against them" -- despite the fact that they had suffered deadly attacks.

By contrast, look at what Libya is doing. The U.S. has, for decades, harshly criticized Libya as one of the most tyrannical and uncivilized regimes on the planet. In 2008, the State Department not only amazingly condemned that country for "torture" (which included such U.S.-embraced methods as "depriving detainees of sleep, food, and water; hanging by the wrists; suspending from a pole inserted between the knees and elbows . . . . threatening with dog attacks"), but also for indefinitely detaining people without trials ("The law stipulates that detainees can be held for investigation after being arrested up to eight days. In practice security services can hold detainees indefinitely. Although the law requires that detainees be informed of the charges against them, it was not enforced in practice. The law states that in order to renew a detention order detainees must be brought before a judicial authority at regular intervals of 30 days, but in practice security services detained persons for indefinite periods without a court order").

Consistent with those abuses, Libya just announced its new policy for how it will treat accused Al Qaeda Terrorists -- a policy that should sound quite familiar to all Americans:

Libya will hold up to 300 al Qaeda members in jail indefinitely after they have completed their prison terms to stop them staging fresh attacks, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said on Thursday.

"These people are heretics. They are followers of (Osama) Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri. They killed a number of civilians and police," Gaddafi told a gathering of his top legislative body, referring to al Qaeda's two global commanders.

"It is a necessity to keep them in prison. They are very dangerous as they are ready to resume killing people in our streets here or travel to Algeria or Egypt or elsewhere to stage attacks," he said in remarks broadcast on state television and monitored in Rabat.

At least Libya seems to be indefinitely imprisoning those who were at one time convicted; the U.S., by contrast, is doing so with regard to detainees who have never been charged, let alone convicted, of anything. Saudi Arabia has a similar policy of simply imprisoning people in the name of Terrorism without trials or due process.

So that's where the American consensus now lies. The practices used by Britain, Spain, India and Indonesia (and the Reagan administration) of treating Terrorists as criminals and convicting them in normal courts -- with due process -- is too fringe Leftist for the United States, which has spent decades sermonizing to the rest of the world about the need for due process and the evils of arbitrary detention. Instead, our political and media establishment demands that we replicate the policies of Libya and Saudi Arabia: simply hold accused Terrorists without trials or, at most, invent special due-process-abridging military tribunals to ensure they are convicted.

George Bush and Dick Cheney ended up as two of the most despised American political leaders of the last 100 years, so our establishment had to pretend that they, too, found their policies to be distasteful and extreme. But that was clearly a pretense. In those very rare instances where Obama and his Attorney General try to deviate, they're accused (including by leading members of their own party) of accommodating "the Far Left" and being "Soft on Terror." The undeniable truth is that our establishment craves Bush/Cheney policies because it is as radical as they are. That one is automatically accused of being too Leftist merely by literally reciting Reagan administration policy on Terrorists (in words if not deeds) -- and that one can be "centrist" only by standing with the due-process-denying practices of Libya and Saudi Arabia -- reflects just how far the American spectrum has regressed.

UPDATE: According to Mitch McConnell, it's not only Ronald Reagan, but also George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, who were too far to the Left when it came to the treatment of accused Terrorists. McConnell said today on CNN that Bush's mistakes were giving civilian trials to some accused Terrorists and releasing too many people from Guantanamo. McConnell likely speaks for the bi-partisan establishment, as he confidently predicts that there are more than enough votes -- from both parties -- for cutting off funds for trying accused Terrorists in civilian courts.

Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush: Far Leftist Civil Libertarian Extremists.

'Jesus rifles' aid Our Troops in GWOT

Gee, I guess the War on Terra is a crusade against Islam after all:

"It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they're being shot by Jesus rifles."

(Not that I actually believe that; but certainly these 'Jesus rifles' will be used as PR weapons against us by jihadists, who seem to be much more image-savvy than we are).

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret 'Jesus' Bible Codes

Pentagon Supplier for Rifle Sights Says It Has 'Always' Added New Testament References

By Joseph Rhee, Tahman Bradley and Brian Ross

January 18, 2010 | ABC News

URL: http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=9575794

Curious historical footnote: 'The war on terror'

Reading Victor Davis Hanson, the metaphor comes to mind of a lion in captivity proudly prowling some rich guy's fenced-in game preserve.

The women ooh and ahh, the kids point and snap photos, and the men say, "Yep, that's what a real lion looks like." Then they all drive back home, leaving that pathetic lion to rule his open-air zoo.

Hanson is a guy who takes himself way too seriouly because he doesn't realize he's just a zoo animal, a curious bare-toothed display of a bygone decade, a guy whom nobody in the real world takes seriously anymore, if they ever did at all.

Does anybody seriously believe in a "war on terror" anymore? The editors of NRO do, sure, and everybody at FOX and Clear Channel... but in the real world?

Does anybody seriously still think that we are up against a mortal enemy, our near-equal in strength, and that we may have met our match if we don't muster all our resolve and gather all our allies to defeat him?

Does anybody seriously still go for these hyperbolic WWII/Chamberlain/Churchill/Hitler analogies when discussing the dire threat from bearded loonies who hide in desert caves and communicate through messengers on donkeys about their diabolical plans for the destruction of the West?

Does anybody have a few spare acres with a nice high fence where we can let the Victor David Hansons of America roam "wild and free," under the illusion that they are proud, strong American warriors?

To be fair, Davis is right though: Obama is due all kinds of criticism for his utter hypocrisy on Iraq, G'itmo, illegal wiretapping, and renditions. But let's remember, unlike Clinton, who sought out the center because Dick Morris told him to, Obama is a guy who instinctively seeks out the middle of the road on every issue because he believes it's the right thing to do. Hence we have a senseless foreign policy that's somewhere on the left-right spectrum between Dubya and his favorite straw man, "some."

Our Sorta, Kinda War on Terror

President Obama has not signed up for a serious effort against radical Islam.

By Victor Davis Hanson
January 15, 2010 | National Review

URL: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjNkYWM2OWU3MzFlZTJhZWZiY2I3NTllMGQ2YmY2ODk=