Image made from television on Nov. 13, 2005, Iraqi Sajida al-Rishawi opens her jacket and shows an explosive belt as she confesses on Jordanian state-run television to her failed bid to set off an explosives belt inside one of the three Amman hotels targeted by al-Qaida. Women Muslim have posted Internet messages in recent weeks expressing frustration with the al-Qaida No. 2 leader’s refusal to give them a larger role in terror attacks

CAIRO, Egypt—Muslim extremist women are challenging al-Qaida’s refusal to include—or at least acknowledge—women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam.

In response to a female questioner, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman Al-Zawahri said in April that the terrorist group does not have women. A woman’s role, he said on the Internet audio recording, is limited to caring for the homes and children of al-Qaida fighters.

His remarks have since prompted an outcry from fundamentalist women, who are fighting or pleading for the right to be terrorists. The statements have also created some confusion, because in fact suicide bombings by women seem to be on the rise, at least within the Iraq branch of al-Qaida.

A’eeda Dahsheh is a Palestinian mother of four in Lebanon who said she supports al-Zawahri and has chosen to raise children at home as her form of jihad. However, she said, she also supports any woman who chooses instead to take part in terror attacks.

Another woman signed a more than 2,000-word essay of protest online as Rabeebat al-Silah, Arabic for "Companion of Weapons."

"How many times have I wished I were a man … When Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahri said there are no women in al-Qaida, he saddened and hurt me," wrote "Companion of Weapons," who said she listened to the speech 10 times. "I felt that my heart was about to explode in my chest…I am powerless."

Such postings have appeared anonymously on discussion forums of Web sites that host videos from top al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. While the most popular site requires names and passwords, many people use only nicknames, making their identities and locations impossible to verify.

However, groups that monitor such sites say the postings appear credible because of the knowledge and passion they betray. Many appear to represent computer-literate women arguing in the most modern of venues—the Internet—for rights within a feudal version of Islam.

"Women were very disappointed because what al-Zawahri said is not what’s happening today in the Middle East, especially in Iraq or in Palestinian groups," said Rita Katz, director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an organization that monitors militant Web sites. "Suicide operations are being carried out by women, who play an important role in jihad."

It’s not clear how far women play a role in al-Qaida because of the group’s amorphous nature.

Terrorism experts believe there are no women in the core leadership ranks around bin Laden and al-Zawahri. But beyond that core, al-Qaida is really a movement with loosely linked offshoots in various countries and sympathizers who may not play a direct role. Women are clearly among these sympathizers, and some are part of the offshoot groups.

In the Iraq branch, for example, women have carried out or attempted at least 20 suicide bombings since 2003. Al-Qaida members suspected of training women to use suicide belts were captured in Iraq at least three times last year, the U.S. military has said.

Hamas, another militant group, is open about using women fighters and disagrees with al-Qaida’s stated stance. At least 11 Palestinian women have launched suicide attacks in recent years.

"A lot of the girls I speak to … want to carry weapons. They live with this great frustration and oppression," said Huda Naim, a prominent women’s leader, Hamas member and Palestinian lawmaker in Gaza. "We don’t have a special militant wing for women … but that doesn’t mean that we strip women of the right to go to jihad."

Al-Zawahri’s remarks show the fine line al-Qaida walks in terms of public relations. In a modern Arab world where women work even in some conservative countries, al-Qaida’s attitude could hurt its efforts to win over the public at large. On the other hand, noted SITE director Katz, al-Zawahri has to consider that many al-Qaida supporters, such as the Taliban, do not believe women should play a military role in jihad.

Al-Zawahri’s comments came in a two-hour audio recording posted on an Islamic militant Web site, where he answered hundreds of questions sent in by al-Qaida sympathizers. He praised the wives of mujahedeen, or holy warriors. He also said a Muslim woman should "be ready for any service the mujahedeen need from her," but advised against traveling to a war front like Afghanistan without a male guardian.

Al-Zawahri’s stance might stem from personal history, as well as religious beliefs. His first wife and at least two of their six children were killed in a U.S. airstrike in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2001. He later accused the U.S. of intentionally targeting women and children in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I say to you … (I have) tasted the bitterness of American brutality: my favorite wife’s chest was crushed by a concrete ceiling," he wrote in a 2005 letter.

Al-Zawahri’s question-and-answer campaign is one sign of al-Qaida’s sophistication in using the Web to keep in touch with its popular base, even while its leaders remain in hiding. However, the Internet has also given those disenfranchised by al-Qaida—in this case, women—a voice they never had before.

The Internet is the only "breathing space" for women who are often shrouded in black veils and confined to their homes, "Ossama2001" wrote. She said al-Zawahri’s words "opened old wounds" and pleaded with God to liberate women so they can participate in holy war.

Another woman, Umm Farouq, or mother of Farouq, wrote: "I use my pen and words, my honest emotions … Jihad is not exclusive to men."

Such women are al-Qaida sympathizers who would not feel comfortable expressing themselves with men or others outside their circles, said Dia’a Rashwan, an expert on terrorism and Islamic movements at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.

"The Internet gives them the ideal place to write their ideas, while they’re hidden far from the world," he said.

Men have also responded to al-Zawahri’s remarks. One male Internet poster named Hassan al-Saif asked: "Does our sheik mean that there is no need to use women in our current jihad? Why can we not use them?"

He was in the minority. Dozens of postings were signed by men who agreed with al-Zawahri that women should stick to supporting men and raising children according to militant Islam.

Women bent on becoming militants have at least one place to turn to. A niche magazine called "al-Khansaa"—named for a female poet in pre-Islamic Arabia who wrote lamentations for two brothers killed in battle—has popped up online. The magazine is published by a group that calls itself the "women’s information office in the Arab peninsula," and its contents include articles on women’s terrorist training camps, according to SITE.

Its first issue, with a hot pink cover and gold embossed lettering, appeared in August 2004 with the lead article "Biography of the Female Mujahedeen."

The article read:

"We will stand, covered by our veils and wrapped in our robes, weapons in hand, our children in our laps, with the Quran and the Sunna (sayings) of the Prophet of Allah directing and guiding us."

Source

Eduardo Raul Morales-Soriano

A Howard County Circuit Court judge this week sentenced a 27-year-old illegal immigrant to 10 years in prison for his role in an auto collision that killed an Iraq war veteran and his date on Thanksgiving in 2006.

On May 28, Eduardo Raul Morales-Soriano, 27, formerly of Laurel, pleaded guilty to two counts of negligent manslaughter by automobile.

Judge Louis Becker found Morales-Soriano guilty of the two counts and sentenced him to 10 years on each, suspending the term on one of the counts.

Morales-Soriano agreed to plead guilty to two counts of negligent manslaughter by automobile last September in return for Howard prosecutors asking for a sentence of no more than eight years in prison. Circuit Court Judge Lenore Gelfman, however, ruled the deal inadequate at Morales-Soriano’s sentencing hearing in January and ordered him to stand trial.

The May 28 sentencing, which also came out of a plea bargain, was the result of that order.

Thanksgiving crash

The collision occurred at about 10:20 p.m. on Nov. 23, 2006 — Thanksgiving night — when Morales-Soriano crashed his Nissan Sentra into a Toyota Corolla that was stopped at a red light at the intersection of Route 175 and Route 108, in east Columbia, Howard County police said.

The occupants of the Corolla, Marine Cpl. Brian Mathews, 21, of Columbia, and Jennifer Bower, 24, of Montgomery County, later died as a result of the collision.

Mathews was home on leave at the time. He had served in Iraq from September 2004 to April 2005.

Morales-Soriano registered a blood alcohol level four times greater than the legal limit of .08, according to police. The native of Mexico was in the country illegally at the time, said Wayne Kirwan, a spokesman for Howard County State’s Attorney Dario Broccolino.

On May 14, Howard prosecutor Danielle Duclaux and Bradley Goldbloom, Morales-Soriano’s attorney, agreed to a plea deal that would allow Becker more latitude in sentencing Morales-Soriano than did the September 2007 deal, Duclaux said.

At Morales-Soriano’s sentencing May 28, Duclaux asked Becker to sentence Morales-Soriano to 20 years in prison, noting the defendant’s high blood-alcohol level at the time of the collision.

Goldbloom asked Becker to consider a sentence of no more than eight years, stating that his client had a high tolerance for alcohol and that the case had been unfairly characterized in media reports as "the illegal immigrant vs. the American hero."

In handing down his sentence, Becker said that Morales-Soriano’s high blood-alcohol content and the fact that he was in the country illegally were relevant.

"This court cannot ignore that the defendant has violated the law by his unauthorized presence," Becker said.

Following the sentencing, William Mathews, Brian Mathews’ father, called Becker’s suspension of the second 10 year-sentence "farcical," adding that he did not feel the verdict represented justice for his son.

"There is no winning here," he said.

Morales-Soriano’s family declined comment.

Goldbloom said he was disappointed in the sentence but that he expected it, adding that his client continued to feel remorse for the collision.

Broccolino said he was not pleased with the verdict, but that no verdict would represent justice in the case.

"You can’t resurrect somebody," Broccolino said. "That would be justice,"

Source

"Goldbloom asked Becker to consider a sentence of no more than eight years, stating that his client had a high tolerance for alcohol and that the case had been unfairly characterized in media reports as "the illegal immigrant vs. the American hero."

What in the fuck is it going to take before we U.S. Nationalists say Enough!

Skip Rollins

CORNISH, N.H. — The father of a soldier killed in Iraq said a group in Cornish disrespected his son’s memory when it used his son’s name in a public display.

The group Cornish Women for Peace labeled about two dozen pairs of boots with the names of soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan and displayed them in town. One of the boots bore the name of Justin Rollins, 22, who died in Iraq last year. "These boots are a disgrace to the uniform that he wore while he served his country," said his father, Skip Rollins. The boots were initially set up in town offices. Group members said they didn’t mean any disrespect. "There’s no intent at all of making it anything political," said Ginny Wood of Cornish Women for Peace. "It was all to honor those who died." Some town selectmen said they also felt that it shouldnot be political. "People should be cognizant of families’ losses and of the nation’s loss," Selectwoman Merilynn Bourne said. When Skip Rollins learned that boots with his son’s name would be placed at the town’s Memorial Day ceremony on Friday, he spoke up. "I should not have to ask these antiwar people to have my son’s name removed from the boots each and every time they have a display going out there," he said. The board of selectmen on Friday decided not to bring the boots to the ceremony. "If the boots were going to become a political tool for one side or the other, we decided it was in the best interest of the town, our children and the people we’re memorializing to leave the boots out of it," Bourne said. Skip Rollins said he removed the label that bore his son’s name and six other labels other New Hampshire families he said felt the same way.

One of the women in the group said she realizes the memorial might make some people upset, but she said the group is thinking about family members and the soldiers.

Source

 By John J. Kruzel
American Forces Press Service

BAGHDAD — Last week, Iraq experienced the lowest level of “security incidents” since March 2004, a reduction that military officials attribute in part to improvements in Iraqi security forces.

“The collective efforts … to increase the capacity of the Iraqi security forces is a key part of the reason why we saw last week the lowest level of security incidents in Iraq the past four years,” Army Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a Multinational Force Iraq spokesman, said May 28 during a news conference in Baghdad.

“It is also why we are seeing Iraqi citizens increasingly supporting their security forces by calling in tips on criminal activity and illegal weapons,” Bergner continued. “And it is why we are seeing the Iraqi security forces conducting effective operations in Basra, Mosul and Baghdad to enforce the rule of law.”

Army Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, commander of Multinational Security Transition Command Iraq, said he and other officials tasked with building and training the national security forces in Iraq are seeing continued progress.

“The last 12 months have witnessed a marked decrease in violence, along with a corresponding increase in the capability, professionalism and effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces,” he told reporters during the news conference.

The media have devoted much attention to the temporary 33,000-troop surge announced last year, which military officials have praised for helping tamp down violence in Iraq, Dubik said. But equally important, he added, is the complementary surge in the numbers and overall quality of the Iraqi forces.

Since June 2007, the Iraqi army has added 52,000 soldiers, the air force has expanded by 21 aircraft, and Iraq’s special operations forces have increased by 1,400 personnel. At the same time, the nation’s armed forces have dramatically increased their ability to sustain and replenish themselves, Dubik said.

“Last year at this time, the Iraqi army had only about 2,500 up-armored Humvees; right now it’s almost 3,200, and by the end of this year, there will be over 6,200 up-armored Humvees in the army alone,” he said, adding that the Iraqi air force increased its number of sorties over the same time from 30 weekly missions to 225.

Since this time last year, Iraqi security forces have grown by about 46,000 Iraqi police members and 15,000 Iraqi national police, Dubik said. As the forces swell, the Interior Ministry has made a “concerted effort” to ensure the members are trained to comport themselves professionally at the national and provincial levels.

“This has contributed greatly to an increase in confidence in the people that the police are to serve and protect,” he added. “I’m very proud to be a partner in this endeavor.”

Baitullah Mehsud from a recent Taliban video

By Bill Roggio

Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban and the commander in South Waziristan, spends more money on yearly operations than al Qaeda spent year prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to the governor of the Northwest Frontier Province.

"He is spending between Rs 2.5 - 3 billion [about $45 million] yearly on procuring weapons, equipment, vehicles, treating wounded militants and keeping families of killed militants fed," Governor Owais Ahmed Ghan told Daily Times. Ghan said the money could not have come from donations alone; the opium trade in Afghanistan is filling Baitullah’s coffers.

Most of the money is spent on "the means of communication — vehicles, fuel and equipment — and then on treatment of wounded fighters, and lastly on keeping the killed comrades’ families fed," Zulfiqar Mehsud, an aide to Baitullah, told Daily Times last March. "We have to change vehicles after we use them for a year. Every vehicle at our disposal must be in top condition because we have very rough and tough roads and hilly areas and cannot afford to keep vehicles that are not as fit as our job requires."

Baitullah is thought to operate a force of more than 20,000 fighters, some of whom are professionally trained. His forces beat back Pakistani Army assaults in 2007 and 2008, and overran two military outposts in South Waziristan. His fighters also captured an entire Pakistani Army company without firing a shot.

The operating costs for Baitullah’s forces in South Waziristan exceed that of al Qaeda, according to numbers compiled by the 9-11 Commission and terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna. The 9-11 Commission report says al Qaeda central spent an estimated $30 million for yearly operations, which included salaries for members, the operation of training camps, weapons, vehicles, and the development of training manuals.

Al Qaeda also spent an estimated $10 million–$20 million per year to receive a safe haven from the Taliban in Afghanistan. "Bin Laden also may have used money to create alliances with other terrorist organizations, although it is unlikely that al Qaeda was funding an overall jihad program," the 9-11 Commission Report states. "Rather, Bin Laden selectively provided startup funds to new groups or money for specific terrorist operations."

Gunaratna’s numbers are similar. He estimates al Qaeda spent $36 million a year on operations in Afghanistan, and another $14 million for global operations, putting the yearly budget at about $50 million. Gunaratna’s estimate of al Qaeda’s funding of the Taliban and allied terrorist movements is much higher than the 9-11 Commission Report’s estimate.

"To buy loyalty, Al Qaeda also funded individuals in various Islamist groups, including the Taliban, to the tune of $100 million," Gunaratna said, citing US intelligence sources.

Baitullah is but one Taliban commander

While Baitullah is arguably the most important and capable Taliban leader in Pakistan’s tribal areas and in the Northwest Frontier Province, he is not the only one. The $45 million cited does not extend to leaders such as Faqir Mohammed in Bajaur, Mullah Fazlullah in Swat, the Haqqanis in North Waziristan, Mangal Bagh Afridi in Khyber, Omar Khalid in Mohmand, and others in the region.

And Baitullah may not be receiving the largest funding in Pakistan, a senior US military intelligence source familiar with the Taliban in Pakistan told The Long War Journal. Bajaur’s Faqir Mohammed may be receiving more money than Baitullah, the source said.

Faqir has close links to al Qaeda (he is believed to have sheltered Ayman al Zawahiri several times) and Bajaur serves as an al Qaeda command and control center for operations into eastern Afghanistan. His safe houses and training camps have been the target of several US airstrikes since 2006.

By Cliff Kincaid

Publisher Peter Osnos, who admits to personally working with former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan on his new book, What Happened, began his career as an assistant to I.F. Stone, the pro-communist "journalist" named as a Soviet agent of influence who was the uncle of Weather Underground communist terrorist Kathy Boudin.

But the connections don’t end there. Boudin’s son Chesa was raised by Barack Obama associates Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were Boudin’s comrades in the communist terrorist group, after Kathy Boudin went to prison for her involvement in an armed robbery and assault that took the lives of two policemen and a security guard. Dohrn later served jail time for refusing to cooperate in an official investigation of the crime.

Obama stands to benefit from the McClellan book because it was obviously crafted, under the guidance of Osnos, to inflict maximum damage on President Bush and, by extension, fellow Republican and Iraq War supporter Senator John McCain. None of this can be called an accident.

One question that has been raised by critics is whether McClellan is in it for the money. But that’s less important than the fact that the network that has made this book into a reality incorporates many elements of the far left. Some of these links have been commented on already. For example, the Osnos firm, PublicAffairs Books, has also published books by George Soros, John Kerry, and Vladimir Putin. But Osnos’s ties to I.F. Stone and the media constitute the story behind the story.

The network that included Stone, who died in 1989, was the subject of Susan Braudy’s 2003 book, Family Circle, about the Boudin family’s communist and socialist ties. Page 185 shows Kathy Boudin and Bernardine Dohrn together, "after Bernardine’s return from Cuba," where she had "a warm meeting with members of the Viet Cong." That was before she and Ayers finished their bombing campaign, which included a blast that killed a San Francisco policeman, and helped launch Barack Obama’s political career.

None of this background, of course, is being mentioned by those anxious and eager to interview McClellan, even though virtually all of his former friends say that what he is writing and saying now doesn’t sound like him at all. The obvious explanation is that, for whatever reason or motivation, he is reading from a script prepared by Osnos & Company and the far left.

The ploy is working. So far, according to the firm’s website, McClellan’s interviews are scheduled to include:

• NBC-TV "Today" - 5/29
• CNN "The Situation Room" - 5/30
• CNN "American Morning" - 6/2
• Comedy Central "Daily Show" - 6/2
• NPR "Fresh Air" - 6/3
• NPR "Talk of the Nation" (LIVE from the Newseum in DC) - 6/11

Favorable stories about the book have already appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, and USA Today.

This is quite impressive until you realize that Osnos says that every book he publishes includes a dedication to Benjamin C. Bradlee, I.F.Stone and Robert Bernstein, former head of Random House. The first two are worth mentioning. Bradlee was the executive editor of the Washington Post, famous for once remarking that, during coverage of the Iran-Contra affair under President Reagan, he was having "the most fun since Watergate." Bradlee was hoping to bring down Reagan, as they had brought down President Nixon in the paper’s coverage of the Watergate scandal.

Nixon had developed a national reputation as a Congressman and had laid the basis for his runs for national office by helping expose Soviet spy Alger Hiss in the State Department and a communist network inside the U.S. Government. Interestingly, one of Bradlee’s reporters on the Watergate story was Carl Bernstein, whose parents were members of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party.

Iran-Contra did not bring down Reagan, but the far-left apparently hopes the McClellan book will help bring down or further damage President George W. Bush. It can also, in their view, do some collateral damage to McCain.

It is a tactic that has been employed time and time again. Pegging their coverage to a book, the media create the appearance of a "scandal," this time with a former "insider," and try to inflict political damage that benefits the Democrats. The problem for McClellan is that he appears transparently foolish, reciting charges about the Iraq War and so forth that have mostly been raised before by the President’s political enemies. McClellan, who never objected to the policies when he promoted and defended them, is acting like a puppet.

Osnos is the key to understanding the network that is working behind-the-scenes. A former national news editor of the Post, Osnos was an assistant to I.F. Stone in the 1960s. Stone postured as an independent radical writer but was exposed as a Soviet agent in the transcripts of Soviet messages known as the Venona intercepts and by other sources.

Former Soviet KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin had identified Stone as a Soviet agent, but under pressure from Stone’s friends in the media later backed away from that precise description. However, in his book, The First Directorate: My 32 Years in Intelligence and Espionage Against the West, Kalugin still identified Stone as a "fellow traveler" of the Soviet Union who "made no secret of his admiration for the Soviet system" over a period of many years and had regular contacts and lunches with him.

Osnos is still one among many far-left journalists who do not want to accept the terrible facts about their hero and icon. But as AIM founder Reed Irvine told the New York Times back in 1992, "The charge that I.F. Stone was a Soviet agent does not surprise those who knew that as a fellow traveler, if not a [Communist] party member, Stone remained a faithful Stalinist through the purges, the Hitler-Stalin pact and the absorption of Eastern Europe…"

Braudy’s book about the Boudins, Family Circle, has a lot to say about Kathy Boudin and her uncle, I.F. Stone, also known as Izzy. Before turning to a life of crime as a communist terrorist, she had wanted to work for her uncle’s newsletter, which is also where Osnos worked. On page 72 of the book, which tends to avoid harsh judgments, she tells us that Stone tried to organize opposition to U.S. involvement in the Korean War, in order to make South Korea safe for communism, and that he would later work to remove U.S. forces from South Vietnam, in order to pave the way for a communist military victory there. Stone and his comrades were successful in the case of Vietnam. His pro-communist record was clear for all to see, except to Osnos and his ilk.

According to Braudy, Stone had "achieved fame in the 1950s for fighting for the rights of people who were accused of having been members of the American Communist Party."

But none of this apparently bothered Osnos, who went to work for Stone in the 1960s. And Osnos’s tie to Stone didn’t bother the Post. "After working for I.F. Stone, Peter Osnos became a correspondent around the world for The Washington Post and the newspaper’s foreign and national editor," the official I.F. Stone website proclaims.

I first came across Osnos back in 1980, just a year or so after coming to Washington, D.C., when he was guest-lecturing at the pro-Marxist Institute for Policy Studies (IPS.) I signed up and covered the Karen DeYoung class on "foreign reporting."

DeYoung, then a foreign reporter for the Post, is now an associate editor at the paper. The IPS class was being held during a time when the old Soviet Union and its surrogate, Communist Cuba, were destabilizing Central America and hoping to install a series of communist governments. Reagan had stopped the Soviet takeover at a critical juncture when he ordered the military liberation of communist-controlled Grenada. However, Reagan was also supporting the democratic government of El Salvador, which faced a communist terrorist movement, and freedom fighters in Nicaragua. It was the latter that led to the "Iran-Contra affair" when National Security Council staffer Oliver North arranged for unofficial assistance to the Nicaraguan resistance when the liberal Congress was attempting to cut off their aid.

To Karen DeYoung, as she told the class, "most journalists now, most Western journalists at least, are very eager to seek out guerrilla groups, leftist groups, because you assume they must be the good guys." This betrayed the left-wing media bias that continues to this day and is reflected in the publication of the McClellan book. Any Republican president who dares to take on America’s enemies is targeted for destruction.

For his part, as I noted in an April 1983 Human Events article, "The IPS and the Media: Unholy Alliance," Osnos exhibited a strange view of communism. He claimed not to know why the Soviets behaved as they did. But he had visited Cuba, where he found no evidence of Soviet control, and came away convinced that there was "’apparently genuine rapport" between Castro and the Cuban people.

On March 12, 2008, as he was preparing publication of McClellan’s book, Osnos found enough time to pay tribute to I.F. Stone on the anniversary of Stone’s birthday. Others paying tribute were Robert Kaiser, associate editor and former managing editor of the Washington Post, and Myra MacPherson, author of a book about Stone and former reporter for the Washington Post.

This is the milieu that has spawned the McClellan book. Whatever you may think of Bush, McCain or the Iraq War, there can be no doubt that Bush’s former press secretary has fulfilled the function of "useful idiot."

Once again, the media are having their fun.

Via The Mexican Times;

Army Spc. Raymond Medina Torres, 25, was released Friday from the Cereso prison in Juárez after Mexican authorities dismissed weapons charges against him.

"He was transferred this Friday to the National Institute of Migration after federal judicial authorities revoked the formal arrest order against him and ordered he be set free immediately," Cereso spokesman Mauricio Rodriguez said.

"Before he left the facility, he was given a medical exam, and doctors who examined him reported that he was in excellent health."

Rodriguez said the soldier, a U.S. citizen, was taken to the border to be turned over to U.S. authorities.

The soldier was detained April 21 in Juárez after Mexican customs officers found an AR-15 rifle, a .45 caliber handgun and numerous round of ammunition and knives in his vehicle.

Medina Torres claimed he took a wrong turn and crossed the border into Mexico with the weapons by mistake. He said the weapons were part of his personal collection.

U.S. officials also investigated him and found no indication of arms-trafficking.

He was on his way from Fort Hood, Texas, to visit his mother in California.

——

I don’t know what it is, but something stinks about this soldier and his story.

President Bush presents Army Sgt. 1st Class William Tomlin III with the Silver Star. (Contributed photo)

BY JIM MOORE REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN

DENVER — State Sen. Jennifer Veiga said Focus on the Family founder James Dobson is using "scare tactics" in condemning the signing of a bill she sponsored that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation in housing and public accommodations.

The Denver Democrat was responding Thursday to a statement by Dobson, who said the bill would allow men to go into women’s bathrooms, putting them and their children in danger.

Dobson said the bill signaled the end of gender-specific restrooms.

"Henceforth, every woman and little girl will have to fear that a predator, bisexual, cross-dresser or even a homosexual or heterosexual male might walk in and relieve himself in their presence," Dobson said in a written statement.

Veiga called Dobson’s comments offensive and said she was frustrated with his "scare tactics." "There’s absolutely nothing in the bill that would allow sexual predators to thrive," she said.

Veiga’s bill, signed by Gov. Bill Ritter Thursday, expands the ban on discrimination against homosexual, bisexual and transgender people to 23 areas, including housing, employment, education, health care and public accommodations, which includes bathrooms.

Last year, Veiga sponsored a bill signed by Ritter that prohibited employers from firing people solely because they are gay.

Veiga said Dobson used a similar argument to attack her bill last year, with no proof that people who are not gay were taking advantage of the legislation.

"They can point to absolutely no example that this happened in Colorado or other states," said Veiga, adding that about 16 other states have implemented similar laws.

Dobson’s statement also criticized the Legislature, saying, "This is your government in action." This month, the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family and Colorado Family Action aired radio ads urging listeners to tell Gov. Bill Ritter to not sign the bill.

Source

A number of U.S. congressmen and their families — including former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert — have personally profited from congressional earmarks they slipped into federal legislation, a FOX News documentary reveals.

The documentary, “Porked: Earmarks for Profit,” hosted by Chris Wallace, premieres Sat., May 31, at 8 p.m. EDT on FOX News Channel.

Budget earmarks became a national scandal — and a national joke — after some wasteful schemes made headlines recently: a $223 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska, a $500,000 teapot museum in North Carolina, a $10 million extension to Coconut Road in Florida.

Many lawmakers earmark taxpayer money for projects supported by contributors to their campaigns.

But the FOX News investigation exposes a far more disturbing practice: federal lawmakers earmarking taxpayer dollars on projects that offer them not just political advantage, but personal financial gain.

The FOX documentary focuses on three current and former congressmen — two Republicans and one Democrat.

The most recognizable name is Illinois Republican Dennis Hastert, who stepped down as Speaker of the House in 2007.

In February 2004, Hastert, with partners and through a trust that did not bear his name, bought up 69 acres of land that adjoined his farm some 60 miles outside Chicago. The price was $340,000. In May 2005, Hastert transferred an additional 69 acres from his farm into the trust.

Two months later, Congress passed a spending bill into which Hastert inserted a $207 million earmark to fund the “Prairie Parkway” which, when completed, would run just a few miles from the 138 acres owned by Hastert’s trust.

After President Bush flew to Hastert’s district in August 2005 to sign the bill, Hastert and his partners flipped the land for what appeared to be a multi-million dollar profit.

Hastert declined repeated interview requests from FOX News, but on Thursday, after FOX began to promote the program, Hastert’s lawyer emailed the documentary unit producer Jason Kopp.

“As you might imagine we are very sensitive to even a suggestion, innuendo, or inference that Speaker Hastert’s work on the Prairie Parkway was improper or illegal,” attorney J. Randy Evans wrote.

Click here to see the e-mail from Hastert’s attorney.

“The purpose of this communication is to be clear with you that any suggestion, direct or indirect, that there was any connection between Speaker Hastert’s longstanding support (which pre-dates his service in Congress) for the Praire Parkway project and his purchase of property adjoining his home (indeed, his residence) would be false and improper.”

Click here to see correspondence between FOX News and Haster’s attorney.

“Speaker Hastert has denied that the facts that you have stated are accurate,” Congressman Joe Bonner, R-AL, a member of the House Ethics and Appropriations Committees, tells FOX News’ Greg Jarrett, who did most of the field reporting for the documentary.

But Bonner added that if the allegations are true, what Hastert did was “wrong, and it would be indefensible.”

The FOX News documentary team also investigated the case of Pennsylvania Democratic congressman Paul Kanjorski, who earmarked millions of taxpayer dollars for a company run by his family.

In a startling interview, Joe Yudichak, who ran the non-profit Regional Equipment Center in Kanjorski’s district, says the congressman initially tried to bully him into helping Kanjorski direct the money to Kanjorski’s family members.

In the documentary, Yudichak recounts his conversation with Kanjorski:

“He said, ‘You’re telling me I can’t take care of my family?’ He said, ‘Well, I’m telling you, it’s gonna be done. And it’s gonna be done with you or without you.’ And he said, ‘I’ll bury you. I’ll destroy you.’”

Kanjorski later earmarked more than $10 million directly to the company run by his family. The money was supposed to fund the development of new technologies to help turn around desperate coal towns and make them prosperous.

The company, Cornerstone Technologies, went bankrupt.

Harold Shobert, head of Pennsylvania State University’s Energy Institute, and a leading expert on anthracite coal, worked with Cornerstone on one project.

“It was clear that these guys were clueless as to how to do research and development,” Shobert told FOX News. “It was sort of like trying to collaborate with the cast of Looney Tunes.”

Kanjorski and his family declined repeated interview requests by FOX. But on Thursday his office also sent FOX News a statement.

“These six year old allegations have already been dismissed as false. I remain committed to the job of standing up for the middle class people of Northeastern Pennsylvania. I am proud of our efforts to bring high-tech, high-wage jobs to the area, as well as our efforts to stand up to those who want to privatize Social Security and those who oppose increasing the minimum wage. The idea that I have done anything in office to benefit myself is ludicrous on its face. My wife Nancy and I have lived in the same modest home for more than 25 years and anyone who visits us knows that we live by the same middle class values that we always have.”

Kanjorski closed by claiming, “This is a political attack by the Republican machine and nothing more.”

Click here to see the e-mail from Kanjorski’s office.

Brian Gaffney, executive producer of the FOX News Documentary Unit, dismissed the charge.

“Two of the three congressmen examined in the program are Republicans,” Gaffney said. “Our producers and reporters are top-flight journalists who follow the truth wherever it leads.”

Representative Bonner of the House Ethics and Appropriations Committees declined to talk about Kanjorski’s case.

“If a member of Congress is personally benefiting, or his or her family is personally benefiting, then that may involve the Department of Justice,” Bonner tells Jarrett in the documentary. “In which case I can’t comment on it.”

The third case investigated by FOX involves Congressman Ken Calvert, R-CA, who has earmarked millions in taxpayer dollars to build roads and a transportation hub near commercial real estate properties he personally owns.

Calvert also refused to sit down with FOX News for an interview, although his staffers did call FOX producers, stating that Calvert pushed the earmarks at the request of local government authorities, and that the House Ethics Committee ruled, in effect, that it was ethical for a congressman to earmark money for a project that he’d personally benefit from — so long as others were making money, too.

That is true, but several experts told FOX that the ruling illustrates how problematic the practice is.

The ruling certainly does not sit well with Rep. Ken Flake, an Arizona Republican, one of the most tireless opponents of earmark abuse in Congress.

“I was completely floored when I heard that,” Flake tells Jarrett of the Ethics Committee’s decision. “I hope that nobody takes comfort in that ruling, because I don’t think that the Department of Justice sees it that way.”

GOP leaders, including President Bush, have told FOX News they think earmark abuse was a big reason the Republicans lost control of Congress in 2006.

Earmarks have also become an issue on the presidential campaign.

Arizona senator John McCain has attacked New York senator Hillary Clinton’s proposed $1 million earmark for a museum commemorating the 1969 rock concert at Woodstock.

“My friends, I wasn’t there,” the presumptive GOP nominee said during an October Republican primary debate sponsored by FOX News. “I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event. I was tied up at the time.”

In August of 1969 Senator McCain was being held captive in the notorious Hanoi Hilton, a prisoner of war camp in the North Vietnamese capital.

“Porked: Earmarks for Profit” was produced by Ed Barnes and Jason Kopp.

Source

 Via Prime Time Politics: 

Charles Krauthammer at his best, brilliantly making the point that not only is Al Qaeda on the run in Iraq, they’re being humiliated:
 VIDEO

Heads_Up FR

When businessman David Barnish treated his family to a holiday at a luxury resort, he was soon dismayed to find their hotel dominated by Germans.

But it wasn’t an abundance of beach towels on the sunbeds by breakfast time which was to spoil the family’s fun - rather that the sports activities and entertainment were only offered in German.

Today Mr Barnish told of his delight after a judge awarded him £750 compensation from tour operator Thomson after agreeing that the firm’s brochure had mislead him by failing to make clear that the hotel on the Greek island of Kos catered for a mainly German clientele.

The self-employed finance broker had paid almost £4,000 to take wife Karen, 36, and daughters Molly, aged 12, Gemma, 19, and 21-year-old Kim, on a week-long holiday to the Grecotel Park Royal in Marmari last August.

But he took Thomson to Stoke-on-Trent county court claiming the all-inclusive holiday was spoilt because the family could not understand German and were unable to join in events.

Mr Barnish, 47, told the Daily Mail: ‘My youngest daughter wanted to take part in activities with the kids club, but its timetable was only published in German.

‘There was a treasure hunt which she liked the look off, but again, the clues were only given in German and she couldn’t understand it.

‘We tried to join a windsurfing lesson and yoga classes but all the instructions were in German so we gave up.

"Even the advertised satellite TV was all in German except for one channel - the BBC World News.

‘I feel we were cheated by Thomson because at no stage did they warn us that this hotel was geared up to catering for Germans, not English people.

‘I am not a racist, but when I pay so much money for a holiday, I expect to be able to make use of the facilities and activities we are paying for.’

Mr Barnish said that when he complained to the holiday firm half-way through the break, he was advised to take his family to the cinema in Kos because it screened English films.

Mr Barnish, from Madeley, Stoke-on-Trent, said that the only entertainment that was not tailored to the Germans was the evening cabaret, which he said consisted mainly of Greek dancing.

Grecotel Park Royal: The 700-bedroom hotel - which had just 25 Brits - catered for a mainly German clientele

After a small claims hearing, Deputy District Judge Naish awarded the family £750 - or 20 per cent of the week-long holiday’s cost - in damages from Thomson to compensate for problems created by the language barrier.

Judge Naish said: ‘The customer travelling abroad in these circumstances, going to a hotel which features in an English brochure, doesn’t expect to have to press the hotel and providers of activities to be accessible by them in their own language - so I do take the view that the brochure is significantly misleading in failing to make that clear.’

Mr Barnish, who represented himself at the hearing, claimed he wouldn’t have chosen the hotel - part of the firm’s upmarket Beach Club range - if he had known it catered for a mainly German clientele.

Out of 700 holidaymakers only 25 were English.

He added: ‘I have no problem with the hotel itself - the food, service, location and facilities were all excellent. It is the fact that we could not make the most of it because everything was in German that I am angry about.’

Nathan Smith, the barrister acting for Thomson, told the court the brochure did not ’specifically promise’ all the TV channels or the activities would be in English and said the Barnish’s did not tell hotel staff that they were English and needed help with the language.

A Thomson spokesman said: ‘We are sorry that Mr Barnish did not feel the entertainment on his holiday was what he expected.’

On its website, Thomson describes the Royal Park as a ’superb hotel with a first-class service, all the comforts of home and an international atmosphere.’

Source

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ― A federal court referee is recommending that California’s prison population be cut by nearly 40,000 inmates over the next four years.

There is little agreement over how to accomplish that, leading a special judicial panel on Friday to grant more time for settlement talks.

The three-judge panel says it will set a trial in November if the state, inmate advocacy groups, law enforcement organizations and others fail to agree on ways to solve prison crowding. They have 30 days to reach a settlement.

The federal courts could order an immediate release of inmates or cap the prison population, actions the Schwarzenegger administration and others want to avoid.

The court-appointed referee who is trying to negotiate a settlement says the state’s 170,000 inmates should be reduced to about 132,000 by the end of 2011.

Referee Elwood Lui is proposing the population be trimmed by diverting parole violators and some convicts serving short sentences into community treatment or alternative-punishment programs.

Attorneys for the state, counties and local law enforcement say they are not yet ready to accept his proposed settlement. Republican lawmakers also have raised objections.

I would love to believe the mothership has returned, but we all know she ain’t that damn dumb to ever return to this shit.

Via The Denver Post:

A few minutes of grainy, black and white video show a shadowy creature with big eyes peeping over a windowsill. But does it show a puppet or an alien from outer space?

The video, purportedly capturing proof of alien life, was released this morning during a press conference at the Tivoli Student Union on the Auraria campus in downtown Denver.

Over the course of three minutes or so, the footage shows a white creature with a balloon-shaped head that keeps popping up and down in a windowsill that was 8 feet above ground. The face was white, with large black eyes that seemed to blink.

"If it was a puppet, it would be a very elaborate and sophisticated puppet," said Alejandro Rojas, education director of MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network,

who spoke at the press conference.

Rojas said the video was taken on July 17, 2003, in Nebraska by Stan Tiger Romanek, who set up the camera because he thought peeping Toms had been looking into his house at his two teenage daughters. Romanek did not appear at the news conference.

The creature would slowly pop its head up and peer through the window then drop suddenly down, apparently trying to avoid detection. It raised its head up about a half dozen times. The alien’s other body parts were not visible.

It was unclear whether the creature was taller than 8 feet and was crouching to avoid detection or whether it was standing on something. It also was difficult, because of the faintness of the object, to tell whether it was three dimensional.

Romanek, who moved to Colorado after the recording, claims to have had more than 100 encounters with aliens, Rojas said.

One of many websites detailing Romanek’s encounters shows photographs of him with red marks on his back and arms that Romanek says were inflicted by aliens. He says he was abducted by extraterrestrials and has posted pictures of spherical burn marks in his yard marking where a spaceship hovered or landed.

Since one encounter in which he photographed a UFO on a road trip to Pennsylvania, 44 birds have mysteriously crashed into his car window because of some bizarre electromagnetic effect resulting from the contact, he writes.

But Rojas said preliminary research that he and other experts have done on the video suggests that it is authentic.

"I don’t believe they have the ability or the motivation to fabricate a hoax," Rojas said at the news conference.

About 30 journalists were in the room for the screening, including a dozen TV cameras. Photographers were not allowed to capture images from the footage today because experts are still reviewing it, Rojas said.

The screening, organized by Denver resident Jeff Peckman, was not open to the public.

Peckman says he hopes to

Jeff Peckman speaks at a news conference in Denver on May 30, 2008, about videotape which allegedly captured an alien visitor. (Doug Conarroe | The Denver Post)

provoke debate about the existence of extraterrestrial life.

"We believe this will be somewhat of an historic news conference," Peckman said. "We’re very pleased to see this level of interest."

A documentary is in production that will include much more of the videotape and other evidence, he says. It is due to be released later this year.

Peckman has organized an initiative drive to require the city of Denver to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission to handle alien encounters, saying that the government has not disclosed all it knows about the existence of life beyond Earth.

During the press conference, Peckman frequently referenced the initiative. A petition drive is currently underway. Peckman needs 4,000 signatures for the item to make it onto the November ballot.

Peckman also said the technological benefits of making contact with extraterrestrials make it a very worthwhile endeavor.

Governments and industry giants have an incentive to keep a growing body of evidence of the existence of aliens hushed up, Peckman said, because the technology they could bring eclipses anything available on Earth.

Natascha Kampusch, left, chats with Austrian former Formula One champion Niki Lauda on her new television talk show.

VIENNA, Austria - Television was once her only window on the world. Now Natascha Kampusch — still adjusting to life after spending 8 1/2 years in an underground cell — is starting an improbable new career as a TV talk show host.

Less than two years after staging a dramatic escape while her captor was distracted with a phone call, the young Austrian woman whose ordeal stunned people worldwide is going prime time.

"Natascha Kampusch Meets …," a chat show featuring local celebrities, debuts Sunday evening on Puls4, a new private cable channel.

A Puls4 trailer shows Kampusch typing on a laptop computer, pouring herself a glass of mineral water and grinning as makeup artists give her a final touchup on the set. She wears her long blond hair down and sports a sweater and a floral-patterned skirt — both in purple, her favorite color.

‘Challenge’
But Kampusch, 20, is the first to acknowledge she’s an unlikely talk show host.

"So much has been written about me, and so many people want to know what it’s like to be on the other side" of the interviewer’s table, she told Austrian media this week.

"It’s not easy for me to get all my ducks in a row. But I’ll gladly take on this challenge. As long as you keep overcoming, you keep developing."

Kampusch was a freckle-faced 10-year-old when she vanished while walking to school in Vienna in March 1998. Her abduction was Austria’s greatest unsolved criminal mystery until Aug. 23, 2006, when — pale, feeble and nearly blinded by the light of day — she stumbled to freedom.

Suicide
Within hours of her escape, kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil — who had confined her to a cramped, dingy, windowless cell beneath his suburban home — took his own life by leaping in front of a rush-hour commuter train.

Kampusch, who was 18 when she escaped, drew fresh attention last month after a similar but even more horrific case surfaced in Austria.

Police allege that Josef Fritzl, 73, confessed to holding his daughter captive for 24 years in a windowless prison beneath his home in Amstetten, west of Vienna, and fathering seven children with her — including one whose body he tossed into a furnace after it died in infancy.

Kampusch has offered financial assistance to Fritzl’s alleged victims and said she wants to meet with his 42-year-old daughter, who was 18 when she was confined to the cellar.

Metamorphosis
Those who have closely followed Kampusch’s metamorphosis won’t be surprised at her new career: Since she resurfaced, she repeatedly said she was considering a job in journalism, even though she has no formal training and is still completing her high school education. She has also expressed interest in photography, acting and art.

Kampusch was remarkably poised and articulate when — just two weeks after escaping — she gave her first nationally broadcast interview, repeatedly shutting her still-sensitive eyes against the glare of the spotlights.

During her captivity, Kampusch was allowed to watch TV and videos, listen to the radio and read books in her cell, which included a bed, toilet and sink.

Executives at Puls4 said they plan to air her 50-minute talk show once a month. The show will be prerecorded rather than broadcast live.

Puls4 declined to say how much it’s paying Kampusch, and she did not immediately respond to a request for an interview with The Associated Press.

‘Really excited’
Kampusch told the Austria Press Agency she’s "already really excited" about what kind of reaction the show will get.

As a host, she said she intends to engage her guests "very openly in front of the camera — and also reveal quite a lot about myself."

"I really want to know how my guests view their lives, their jobs, their friends. Are they content? What are their dreams?" she said.

But Kampusch said she’s also bracing for criticism about her unusually bold move into the public eye, saying she’s "certain" to wind up with detractors.

Paparazzi photographers
Since she got her life back, Kampusch has tangled with autograph hounds and paparazzi photographers who have tracked her to cafes and discotheques. Some are likely to see her new public persona as at odds with her insistence that people respect her right to privacy, or dismiss the concept of her show as tasteless and voyeuristic.

"How much elbow room does one have? Where are the borders? How will viewers and the public react in the long run?" she said.

So far, she’s gotten mostly accolades from those who admire her courage.

They include her first guest: Niki Lauda, an Austrian former Formula One race car driver who now runs Lauda Air, a small airline.

Lauda told the Kurier newspaper he had misgivings about going on Kampusch’s show because of her inexperience, and insisted on meeting with her first.

"But she was very professional," he said. "And she asked me questions that no one’s ever asked me before."

Source

The former Senate majority leader and 1996 Republican presidential candidate sent a nasty e-mail to McClellan calling him a "miserable creature" for his latest book blasting the Bush administration, FOX News has learned.

In the e-mail, Dole basically describes the former White House press secretary as a traitor looking to cash in on the "liberal" media’s distaste for President Bush.

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues," the five-term Kansas senator wrote to McClellan. "No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."

He continues: "When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, ‘Biting The Hand That Fed Me.’ Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years."

White House officials have sharply decried McClellan’s book — "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception," which criticizes the administration’s handling of the Iraq war.

Dole wrote that if McClellan had misgivings about the president’s foreign policy, he should have spoken up long ago "like a man," or quit his job.

"That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively. You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?"

This is the original e-mail:

Scott,

There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique.

In my nearly 36 years of public service I’ve known of a few like you. No doubt you will "clean up" as the liberal anti-Bush press will promote your belated concerns with wild enthusiasm. When the money starts rolling in you should donate it to a worthy cause, something like, "Biting The Hand That Fed Me." Another thought is to weasel your way back into the White House if a Democrat is elected. That would provide a good set up for a second book deal in a few years.

I have no intention of reading your "exposé" because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job. That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively. You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?

BOB DOLE

Source

McClellan is akin to the traitorous sons of whores at IVAW.

Felix Dennis

Via mediabistro:

Back in April, Maxim publisher Felix Dennis told a reporter — after numerous bottles of wine — that he killed a man. As one might imagine, this news spread rapidly throughout the world and Dennis quickly retracted his statement, claiming it was an April Fools joke.

But good murder stories never die, and BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine
(disclosure) — who pointed out a flaw in Dennis’ excuse — caught up with the man, the myth, the legend and asked him about the rumor:

BW: I’ll just be blunt. Have you murdered anybody?

FD: I’m not speaking about that question. I’ve said everything I had to say about it. You heard it at the thing [a lecture he’d just given to students at Columbia University]. You read that the story was hogwash. The only additional information I will give you is that I spoke to the editor of the Times four times on the telephone before he printed the story. He accepted the story was hogwash. He said, "I know it’s hogwash." I said, "fine. Then you must do what you’re going to do."

(Fine notes that Times‘ spokespeople said James Harding never had this conversation nor has he ever used the word "hogwash.")

Fine’s column on Dennis is here

By Bill Siegel

Barack Obama’s Watertown response to President Bush’s Knesset speech is precisely what Obama himself accuses Bush and John McCain of engaging in: a dishonest divisive attack, or perhaps better stated, a dishonest, distorting, divisive projection of his own thinking.

President Bush said: "Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them that they have been wrong all along. We have heard this before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is: the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

The following is the text of Obama’s response, annotated to point out just some of the dishonesty and distortion that animates much of Obama’s rhetoric:

I do want to say something about yesterday. You know, after almost eight years I did not think I could be surprised about anything that George Bush says. But I was wrong. Yesterday George Bush was before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, to help commemorate the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence. That’s a wonderful occasion and a time for celebration.

It is also a time to demonstrate that he understands the dangerous conditions in which Israel finds itself and that he understands fully the dangerous types of thinking that pervade America and the West that can and have paralyzed the West from taking the actions necessary to adequately assist Israel.

But instead of celebrating and offering some clear ideas about how to move the situation in the Middle East forward,

Bush had presented the Road Map and, rightly or wrongly, is currently actively engaged in what is often called a "peace process." What is Obama’s idea other than to sophomorically suggest that his magical persuasive powers and desires for "change" will bring about a resolution? The arrogance embedded in this position is precisely that suggested in Bush’s historical reference.

the President did something that presidents don’t do - and that is launch a political attack targeted toward the domestic market in front of a foreign delegation.

The intended target is most sensibly the world, including (i) the Israeli population to show that Bush has a certain grasp of the futility of never-ending appeasement, (ii) Europe and others which are often stuck in the thinking Bush has outlined, as well as (iii) Israel’s enemies. To limit the target to our domestic market is Obama, himself, taking a global issue and using it for his own political objectives - the very projection he uses against Bush himself.

On a day when we were supposed to be celebrating the anniversary of Israel’s independence, he accused me

Again, on the surface this seems simple naïve narcissism for Obama to claim victimhood here. Needless to say, an attack on a thinking pattern is being construed as an attack on Obama himself. Additionally, it can appropriately be seen as an attempt to elevate himself to being on a par with Bush, rising above Hillary Clinton, and starting to take the mantle of being the Democratic nominee. Finally, Obama is twisting the outgoing president’s global remarks on foreign soil into his own accusation - another maneuver of projection.

and other Democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists, and said we were appeasers no different from people who appeased Adolf Hitler. That’s what George Bush said in front of the Israeli parliament.

Despite arguments by cable "news" faces who differentiate "appeasing" from "talking," this is a correct statement concerning Obama. In simple terms, appeasement consists of rewarding the enemy’s unsatisfactory actions in an effort to induce it to stop such behavior. This is precisely what Obama and his Democrat partners do when they neuter all of our applications of force while allowing Iran to stall "negotiations" and continue to advance its nuclear program. Iran couldn’t be clearer with its frequently stated proposition that it will never cease its nuclear program.

Now that’s exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and that alienates us from the world.

Embedded in this remark is a laundry list of distortions about our recent history. This "talk" is not at all what divides or supposedly "alienates us" from the world. Rather, we are divided as a country in large part based on the very thinking Bush described. The accurate history is that within months of our successful liberation of Iraq, the Democratic base, assisted by many in the State Department, CIA, and the media did all they could to interfere with Bush’s original plan. That plan was to liberate Iraq from the tyranny of Saddam and have the Iraqis quickly install their own government and then leave. As described in numerous accounts, including Doug Feith’s War and Decision, and Ken Timmerman’s Shadow Warriors, those plans were systematically deconstructed, sabotaged, and discredited. This description does not excuse Bush, as he is the ultimate executive. Nonetheless, our divisiveness exists in large measure because of the great political anti-Bush efforts made by those who currently support Obama. As for alienated allies, having vetted all of the self-interest connected with many European votes against our efforts in Iraq (as well as their having now experienced directly the effects of liberal policies towards Shari’ah motivated Muslims), many of those same European countries are returning to more conservative leadership.

And that’s why we need change in Washington. That’s part of the reason I’m running for President of the United States of America.

Now that was frustrating enough, but then John McCain gives a speech. He gave a speech in the morning where he talked about the need for civility in our politics. He talked about elevating the tone of the debate in our country. He talked about reaching out in a bipartisan fashion to the other side.

And then not an hour later, he turned around and embraced George Bush’s attacks on Democrats. He jumped on a call with a bunch of bloggers and said that I wasn’t fit to protect this nation that I love because I wanted to sit down and negotiate with tough diplomacy with countries like Iran. He accused me of not being fit to protect this nation, a nation that my grandfather served in World War II, this nation that has given me everything that I have. So much for civility.

Civility? As if Obama and his "community organizer" hit men have not been constantly beating up on McCain, deceitfully attaching McCain’s name to Bush’s at every opportunity and attacking McCain’s age and so forth. These tactics, while perhaps expressed in a civil tone, are anything but the type of campaign Obama claims he and the name of "change" stand for. Again, he does precisely that which he claims is a part of the "old" system he will change.

Speaking of names, Obama’s followers attack anyone who cites his middle name "Hussein", again charging a lack of civility and even racism for suggesting Obama is Muslim. As far back as Cassius Clay, blacks have changed their names to Arab-Islamic ones precisely to demonstrate that they are Muslims. Obama’s given name makes clear that he was a Muslim at least at birth. He certainly realized the significance of his name when, in his younger years he changed and went by "Barry." If he so wants to dispel any issue today, he is free to change his name again to Barry rather than holding the rest of the world responsible for ignoring and overlooking the obvious.

I want to be perfectly clear with George Bush and John McCain and with the people of South Dakota. If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate I am happy to have any time, any place. And that is a debate that I will win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for.

[Standing Ovation]

Rhetoric and debate are his strong suits. Perhaps this is why he goes around saying he will talk to anyone. "Talk" is precisely all he stands for and all that his Messianic worshippers "hope" is necessary to rid our world of evil and solve our problems. Again, that is precisely part of the thinking Bush was describing.

George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for. They have to explain why we are now entering our sixth year of war in Iraq. We were supposed to be going over there for weapons of mass destruction that we never found.

Not true. We went into Iraq for a variety of reasons. The most often expressed reason was the failure of the UN to take sufficient action on 17 Security Council Resolutions. WMD was also a reason, given that most who saw the intelligence believed WMD to exist. Even today, numerous sources believe there is clear evidence that WMD were shipped out of Iraq before the liberation. More profoundly, as Obama insists he is the only one who had the good judgment to know in advance that the war was a mistake. Did he somehow know the almost universally accepted intelligence stating Iraq did have WMD and WMD programs was faulty? Or was the "judgment" he trumpets the conclusion that assuming the intelligence was correct, there was insufficient reason to go to enforce the Resolutions. In either case, his tactic of whining that no WMD was found disguises his real philosophy; that which Bush was outlining to the Knesset.

We were told that it was going to last a few months and cost a few billion dollars.

This was the plan until the State Department, under the influence of Democrats, sabotaged its execution and stretched the liberation into an occupation.

We have now spent over 600 billion dollars. Thousands of lives lost, and we have not been made more safe.

Safe by what measure? Obama inappropriately conflates the realities that truly threaten us with conditions that were caused by Bush’s supposed failures. This is where he demonstrates either ignorance or naïveté as to the real threats the West has faced for decades or he is deliberately abusing the truth to sell his candidacy. For all the hardship that has been incurred during the Bush years, it is foolish to think this decades-long battle will be easy. At least a significant portion of America has woken up to and become aware of the powerful force that confronts the West. That is as critical to our safety as any military or police victory.

They’re going to have to explain the fact that Osama bin Laden is still at large and is sending out videotapes with impunity. They need to answer for the fact that al Qaeda’s leadership is stronger than ever because we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan. They’ve got to answer for the fact that Iran is the greatest strategic beneficiary of our invasion in Iraq. It made Iran stronger.

What has made Iran stronger after the Iraqi liberation was America’s show of deep ambivalence with any use of force. It was this fear that Obama’s Democrat cohorts used to paralyze any effective stance against Iran. With the liberation, much of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard had so feared an attack on Iran that they moved themselves and/or their assets out of the country. This was the time that Iran was offering to assist us with efforts against Al Qaeda and the time we had maximum leverage because of our use of force against Iraq. Once America’s Left taught Iran that it was unwilling to take a right turn and deploy force against Iran, the regime became emboldened and began to ignore every attempt to "negotiate" for the cessation of Iran’s nuclear program. Bush is responsible ultimately for inaction but the anti-Bush forces are what informed Iran that it could get away with endless stalling and lying. America has so blatantly communicated its fear of being militarily aggressive against Iran that Iran has done simply that which is expected-been unwilling to negotiate or give anything, stalled, and continued to advance its nuclear program.

George Bush’s policies. They’re going to have to explain why Hamas now controls Gaza, Hamas that was strengthened because the United States insisted that we should have democratic elections in the Palestinian authority. They’re going to have to explain why it is that Iran is able to fund Hezbollah and poses the greatest threat to the United States and Israel in the Middle East in a generation.

That’s the Bush-McCain record on protecting this country. Those are the failed policies that John McCain wants to double down on, because he still hasn’t spelled out one substantial way in which he’d be different from George Bush when it comes to foreign policy.

I’m a strong believer in civility and I’m a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy.

This completely misrepresents his record of virtually no bipartisan efforts. He "talks" well but his actions (specifically the lack of bipartisan action) belie his words.

But that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we’ve seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple of days.

Again with the projection - Obama is very skilled at divisive dishonest attacks, all packaged with a soothing voice and face.

John McCain has repeated this notion that I am prepared to negotiate with terrorists. I have never said that.

This is simply false as his debate responses have made clear- unless he wants to make the evasive distinction between terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism. If he relies on that distinction, he is more naïve than generally thought.

I am adamant about not negotiating with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has vowed to destroy Israel and won’t recognize them. In fact, the irony is that just as John McCain was making these attacks, a story broke that he was actually guilty of the exact same thing that he was accusing me of, and in fact was saying that maybe we need to deal with Hamas.

That’s the kind of hypocrisy we’ve been seeing in our foreign policy. The kind of fear-peddling, fear-mongering that has prevented us from actually making us safer.

Actually, it is Obama and his "community organizer" cohorts who have mastered fear-peddling and fear-mongering. Obama’s "change" campaign is code for "revolution" as has been so thoroughly articulated and mastered by Obama’s "community organizer" guru Saul Alinsky. One of Alinsky’s tactics, mastered by Obama, are to personalize the target and describe it as 100% evil. Obama has done that perfectly with Bush and then further extends it to McCain. In fact, the essence of Obama’s thesis is that we only really need fear Bush and Cheney as they are completely responsible for our threats. Get rid of them and their representative McCain, and Obama promises you will have nothing to fear. This is perhaps one of his most devious and dangerous projections - the transfer of fear off of our real and appropriate enemies onto those he seeks to destroy.

They’re trying to fool you.

Again, a true investigation into Obama’s roots reveals his alignment with Alinsky. Most of the public has no idea who Alinsky was or what he taught. It is Obama’s fooling them that has allowed him to suggest that "change" means something other than radical revolution.

They’re trying to scare you. And they’re not telling the truth. And the reason is that they can’t win a foreign policy debate on the merits. But it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work this time. It’s not going to work this year.

Our Iran policy is a complete failure right now,

To the extent that is true, it is due to our actions as describe earlier. McCain may hopefully be able to teach the Iranian regime to think differently.

and that is the policy that John McCain is running on right now. He has nothing to offer except the naive and irresponsible belief that tough talk from Washington will somehow cause Iran to give up its nuclear program and support for terrorism.

Actually, it is only when there is a credible threat of tough action, not talk, that we have a prayer of having a successful Iran policy. Obama, the master of "talk" is completely unable to sell any credible threat of action.

I’m running for President to change course, not to continue George Bush’s course.

I believe we need to use all elements of American power to pressure Iran, including tough, principled and direct diplomacy. That’s what John F. Kennedy did. That’s what Ronald Reagan did when dealing with the Soviets. And that’s what the president’s own Secretary of Defense wants to do.

Many have already written on the historical misrepresentations embedded in these faulty analogies, distinguishing talks in secret from summits, talks at the brink of war when the force card is played rather then when force is interpreted to be avoided at all costs, and so on. Obama fails to point out that it was precisely Khrushchev’s perception of Kennedy’s weakness that emboldened the Soviets to take the game to the brink of all out war in the first place. We can not afford to replay that game today with religiously motivated, apocalyptic Mullahs. Simply put, this is more of Obama’s distortive talk. He is able to get away with it because many of his idolaters know no better.

Understand: George Bush’s Secretary of Defense suggests we talk directly to Iran. So I don’t know if George Bush is calling his own Secretary of Defense an "appeaser." I don’t know who he’s talking about.

Didn’t you already narcissistically insist he was talking about you?

It’s time to present Iran with a clear choice. If it abandons its nuclear program, its support for terrorists and its threats to Israel, then it can rejoin the community of nations. If not, Iran will face deeper isolation and steeper sanctions.

This is perhaps the most dishonest element of his speech. None of this is new. These positions have been advanced by the Europeans and America for years. This is precisely what has been attempted and met with challenge from the Russians, the Chinese, and others. Alinsky instructs his followers to recognize that much of the population is ignorant and to utilize that ignorance. Obama deploys that tactic here as he has crystallized in the minds of his followers the illusion that no negotiations have taken place with Iran for years.

But in the Bush-McCain view, everybody who disagrees with their failed Iran policy is an "appeaser." Back during his "No Surrender Tour," John McCain said that anybody who wanted to end the war in Iraq wanted to surrender. He even said later on that he would be willing to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years.

Again he distorts what McCain actually said and clearly intended. Nevertheless, Obama presents himself as the innocent force for good who has been so maliciously misrepresented.

I think he noticed that it wasn’t polling well, because he announced yesterday, he said that suddenly all our troops are going to be home by 2013, although he didn’t explain how he was going to do it.

Projection again? Perhaps what annoys the Clintons more than anything else in losing to Obama is that Obama has hijacked all of the old Clinton strategies and implements them even more skillfully. Every position Clinton took was polled and adjusted and this has become an Obama staple. Then, like a Clinton, he accuses his opponent of the very ploy.

He offered the promise that America will win a victory, with no understanding that Iraq is fighting a civil war. Just like George Bush’s plan isn’t about winning, it’s about staying. And that’s why there will be a clear choice in November: fighting a war without end, or ending this war and bringing our troops home. We don’t need John McCain’s predictions about when the war will end. We need a plan to end it, and that’s what I’ve provided during this campaign.

The American people have had enough of the division and the bluster. Both Bush and McCain represent the failed foreign policy and fear-mongering of the past. I believe the American people are ready to reject this approach and to embrace the future. I think you’re ready for change that unites this country and ends this war and restores our security and standing in the world and that is serious about a bipartisan foreign policy.

This it the true first step towards an appeasement policy. Irrespective of any words, its intention is to convince the crowd that under Obama’s guidance, we will be able to talk our way back to a civil world. As Bush was suggesting, a civil world requires participants who respect and seek civility in terms similar to each other. It is the very fact that our enemies do not share our notion and terms of civility that generates the problem in the first place.

You can’t suggest that you want to be bipartisan and then run the kind of campaign tactics that we’ve been seeing over the last couple of days. You’ve got to start while you’re campaigning. That’s why we’ve got to bring about some change in the White House.

"Change" as Obama truly means it, is anything but bipartisan. His notion of bipartisan is to listen to what those on the other side of the aisle have to say in order to politely tell them that, in fact, he will act only as he has done throughout his career - in the most partisan liberal fashion possible.

Perhaps the most important part of most Bush speeches is truly relevant here - "God Bless America." We will certainly need it.