It is obviously important that OBL (Osama bin Laden) not be simply hunted down and shot to death. He should be captured and interrogated until all the information he has about his terrorist network has been extracted from him – then he should be summarily executed. No trials, no being "brought to justice."
What, then, would the most efficient and effective form of interrogation be?
The 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) once commented on accusations that a political opponent of his was lying regarding an important issue before Parliament: "It is worse than a lie - it is a blunder."
We can be sure that the Earl of Beaconsfield (the peerage awarded to Disraeli by Queen Victoria) would make the same observation today over the travails of George Bush and the port scandal.
There is no secret deal here. CFIUS, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, that vets these things, ran it through 12 agencies including Defense, Treasury, State, Homeland Security, and the White House National Security Council. Their approval was unanimous. Had just one objected, it would have been put on a 45-day investigative hold.
Bush was blindsided on this out of sheer naiveté. He still can't accept as real the bottomless mendacity of Democrats. For Barbara Boxer and Chuck Schumer to foment in protest over a deal with America's closest Arab ally, when they have gone far more ballistic at any suggestion that Arabs be profiled at US airports - well, I guess it's standard liberal chutzpah.
Outdoing Bush in naiveté are Republicans in Congress being led with rings in their noses by Boxer and Schumer into an orgy of Bush-bashing. It would be nice if they all took a deep breath, switched on their brains, and began thinking of how to take advantage of this fiasco.
A good man has withdrawn from the campaign.
Fred Thompson, as I predicted, withdrew from the campaign after his predictably disappointing performance in South Carolina. But he has surprised me by not endorsing John McCain...yet.
Thompson hinted days earlier that South Carolina would be conclusive for him, but it was emotionally taxing on his wife. One thing at a time. He may yet endorse, although in a conference call to his maxed-out donors yesterday (1/24), he said he would not.
Perhaps he is waiting to see whether McCain or Romney wins the very competitive Florida primary on Tuesday. Indeed, the winner of that primary has a real leg up on Super Tuesday. And for one candidate, Rudy Giuliani, it could be a life line, or the last gasp.
It's beginning to sink in to a lot of folks - from the State Department to the French Foreign Ministry to Egyptian intelligence - that Iran's Ahmadinejad is far more dangerous and wacko than the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Perhaps most interesting is that France is bellying up to the anti-Iran bar. There has been a major fallout, for example, between France and Hezbollah, the Iran-sponsored terrorist outfit. Chirac is so worried now about a major Hezbollah terrorist attack in Paris that he threatened Iran he would retaliate with nuclear missiles.
Finally we have arrived at Yogi Berra's fork in the road. Yogi advised that, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." When both France and the US agree that the Ahmadinejad regime in Tehran has to be removed, you know we've arrived.
A scandal is emerging in the Pentagon that may be the most strategically ominous case of official misconduct since the Clinton administration's China-gate.
It began with the firing last month of Stephen Coughlin, a major in the Army Reserves working as a civilian contractor for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he ran afoul of Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England's point-man on Moslem community outreach, Hashem Islam.
Mr. Islam is an admirer of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization designated by the Justice Department as a front for the Moslem Brotherhood (Ikhwan Muslimi).
As we discussed last week in The Cartoon Religion, Moslems have made a colossal blunder in exposing a fatal weakness of their religion to the world: that it melts under the heat of ridicule. The ongoing crisis has now exposed an even graver weakness: that it crumbles under the scrutiny of doubt.
Islam is a mechanistic religion (an awful pun could be made here about it being Mecca-nistic, but let’s not go there). It is a shame religion. It is a religion of appearance rather than substance. Everything is about outward appearance, humiliation and shame, robotically and unthinkingly repeating the same exact word-for-word prayers five times a day at precisely the same times.
The Koran is not a book to be read, it is a chant to be robotically recited in order to put one into an unthinking trance.
As such it is an impersonal religion, an un-individual religion in which the Moslem believer has no personal relationship with God – as the Christian believer does.
This is the great gulf between Christianity and Islam.
I've done perhaps 1700 surveys and focus groups. Generally, I've maintained that published polls affect pundits, insiders, and donors - not voters. But I've been saying for awhile that this year (the way the primaries are clustered and with the hyper-media coverage) would be different, and it is.
What happens in each primary is affecting national numbers. And national numbers are affecting what happens in each primary. There is a momentum effect, and people are looking for validation. That's why I have long predicted Rudy's collapse, and how national polling numbers would change, and even when they would change.
Yet I find it easier, at this point, to count out winner Huckabee than no-show Rudy. Anything is possible in this volatile environment, including a brokered convention. So here are a few thoughts on where the main candidates are on the eve of the South Carolina primary (1/19), and where I am, and why I continue my view from last year that McCain has the inside track.
By now, everyone is aware of the Great Mohammed Cartoon Fiasco – but you learned about it way back in October in To The Point’s Blasphemous Cartoons.
As the controversy gained steam, we talked about it again last month in Standing Up To Moslem Bullies, which noted:
The question we need to ask Moslems is: Until you start showing respect and tolerance for our values, religion, and civilization, why should we show any respect and tolerance for yours?
Since then, a number of newspapers in Europe have stood up to Moslem bullies and published the cartoons – even the BBC showed them! (All 12 of the original cartoons, plus the original article publishing them in Jyllands-Posten, are here.)
It’s interesting that Europeans are rejecting the Moslem bullies, while no US newspaper has so far had the guts to do so. The world’s biggest honorary Euroweenie turned out to be Bill Clinton, who condemned the “totally outrageous cartoons against Islam.”
As the fat kid who wore the Big Boy jeans while his mom ran a call-girl service back in Hot Springs, and who is so under-endowed his girlfriends in Arkansas called him Little Willie, he has a pathological compulsion to be popular – even with Islamofascists.
So we can dismiss him. For the battle has finally been joined. Who would have guessed the Clash of Civilizations would be comedic?
Finally, Islam has picked a fight with the West in which the West will actually fight back, has picked a fight it will lose. Finally, folks are figuring out that Islam has a fatal weak spot: it is so insecure that it can’t take the heat of ridicule.
Last May, French voters elected Mr. Sarkozy as president because he had promised to restore the authority of the Republic over France's 751 no-go areas, the so-called zones urbaines sensibles (ZUS, sensitive urban areas), where 5 million people live - 8 percent of the population, almost all Moslem immigrants or their children.
Eight months later, the situation in the ZUS has remained as "sensitive" as before.
People get mugged, even murdered, in the ZUS, but the media prefer not to write about it. When large-scale rioting erupts and officers and firemen are attacked, the behavior of the thugs is condoned with references to their "poverty" and to the "racism" of the indigenous French.
The French media never devote their attention to the bleak situation of intimidation and lawlessness in which 8 percent of the population, including many poor indigenous French, are forced to live. Moslem racism towards the "infidels" is never mentioned.
Xavier Raufer, a former French intelligence officer who heads the department on organized crime and terrorism at the Institute of Criminology of the University of Paris, thinks that bribes from organized crime has a lot to do with the indifference of the French establishment.
Dennis “The Wizard” Turner only sleeps on the Jewish Sabbath. Every other day and night he spends at the Aroma Café in Jerusalem with his laptop, sending me a never-ending stream of emails telling me how wrong I am about things.
About twenty-seven times a day, I get an emailed article from him with a note, “Jack, you are so wrong about Sharon… Jack, you are so wrong about Gaza… Jack, you are so wrong about Olmert and Kadima…” So I can just imagine how totally wrong Dennis will say I am about Hamas winning the Palestinian elections.
For I don’t think it’s a disaster at all. I think it’s an opportunity. I’m happy Hamas won. (Dennis has now collapsed into a twitching heap on the café floor. I hope he didn’t let his laptop crash on the floor as well.)
It’s time to celebrate the end of moral goo, the end of pretending Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority were “people we could work with,” the end of all the evasion and desperate avoidance of reality. At last, it’s the End of Pretend.
As you read these lines on January 11, 2008, our troops are in the midst of Operation Phantom Phoenix, a "mini-surge" to squeeze al Qaeda and its fast-dwindling band of allies out of their few remaining safe havens in Iraq.
Iraqi troops fight beside us against a common enemy. Vast swaths of the country enjoy a newborn peace. Commerce thrives again. At the provincial and local levels, the political progress has been remarkable.
As for Operation Phantom Phoenix, our commanders expected terrorist dead-enders to put up a fight. Instead, they ran, leaving behind only booby traps and disgust among the Iraqis they tormented far too long.
The headlines at home? "Nine American Soldiers Killed." No mention of progress or a fleeing enemy on the front pages. Just dead soldiers. Determined to elect a Democrat president, the "mainstream" media simply won't accept our success.
It’s an interesting exercise to connect the dots between news stories – especially when the dots are hidden. Take the headline story appearing last Friday, China Gains $60 Billion in Foreign Investment in 2005. Reuters opened the story with this line:
BEIJING (Reuters), January 13, 2006 - China attracted more than $60 billion in foreign direct investment in 2005 for the second year in a row as firms flocked to take advantage of the country's low wages and fast-growing market of 1.3 billion people.Every news outfit from the Financial Times to the Wall St. Journal to CNN crowed about how “foreign investors” and “multinationals” were pouring their money into China to get a piece of China’s “booming economy.” None of them revealed the story is a sham.
As I edited this column while watching the South Carolina debate last night (1/10), I was struck by the sparse coverage of President Bush traveling abroad. It is surreal that an American President can visit Israel and coverage is relegated beyond the first page.
Yet if we can escape a recession, foreign policy and defense could be back in the national debate. Regardless, we remain in a situation where results in states like Iowa and New Hampshire set in motion events that can profoundly affect Super Tuesday (2/5).
This is such a volatile year that the unthinkable could happen: a virtual two-way race among Democrats could end up divisively, and a multi-candidate Republican primary could end up unified.
In my last column two weeks ago, The GOP Race One Week Before Iowa, I explained why a win by Huckabee in Iowa would help assure, via downward momentum for Romney, a McCain victory in New Hampshire.
Further, I predicted the media spin off New Hampshire would enable McCain to pass Rudy in the national polls, and I still feel that way. Let's quickly summarize the candidates, from the beginning to now.
On the eve of my 60th birthday two years ago, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher called me up and suggested we have dinner at his favorite pizza parlor on Capitol Hill. On our way, he said, he had to drop something off for a colleague at a restaurant called Signatures.
There’s a private dining room at Signatures, and when we walked into it, a group of people jumped up and yelled, “Surprise!” I had been pleasantly set up. Many of my dearest friends in Washington were there, such as Congressmen Chris Cox (now SEC Chairman) and Ed Royce, and the owner of Signatures who had arranged my Surprise Party – Jack Abramoff.
There was no business or politics or “lobbying” discussed – just friends reminiscing and telling stories, mostly of the Reagan days. Since I was the guest of honor, everyone had to laugh at my jokes. We all had a great time.
Since it’s times like this that I think of when I see Jack Abramoff portrayed in the media as an arch-villain out of a comic book, you can imagine how saddening all of this is to me.
In Iraq, as military and security conditions continue to improve, American war politics enters one of its stranger moments in our history. Certainly it is historically odd for war reporting to diminish almost to the point of public invisibility -- just as our troops are starting to gain the upper hand.
Typical of recent polling is the Pew Research Center poll from Dec. 27, which shows that about half the country thinks the military effort is going very or fairly well (up from 30 percent). Despite such optimism, by 54 percent to 41 percent (virtually unchanged from February's 53 percent to 42 percent), the public wants our troops to come home rather than stay!
This polling data suggests that if the Democrats don't see the war as a winning issue, neither can President Bush - for the public now tends to think we are succeeding, but it doesn't think it is worth the effort and would like us to leave pretty soon, anyway.
There would seem to be no higher communications task for the president and his supporters during the coming months than to make a better case that the success that may well be within our grasp is not only worth persisting over now but also that, even knowing what we know now, the war was worth the effort from the beginning.
