posted August 16, 2005 12:06 AM            

As for her assertion FBI foreign intelligence services could share information with the FBI; that doesn't speak to case in point. It wasn't FBI intelligence which had the information. It was a DoD agency or operation named Able Danger and it was Clinton Administration lawyers who absolutely refused to permit Able Danger to share their intelligence with the FBI...and they refused 3 times to permit it. The assumed reason being that Atta and his little band of terrorists had green cards or at least Atta did and was in the country legally. So what, what the hell difference does that make? If Atta was setting up terrorist cells or even one cell in the United States that's a national security issue and especially given the bombing of the WTC in 1993, the bombing of 2 US embassies in Africa, the bombing of the USS Cole and the bombing of the barracks in Saudi Arabia...all by al-Qaida. Atta was identified as being connected to al-Qaida by Able Danger.

Gorelick wrote the memo establishing the tighter rules for information sharing but no one should think she didn't run that by the White House and Commander Corruption first.

posted August 16, 2005 01:00 AM            

How desperate must Clinton have been to have Berger steal top secret documents from the National Archives and stuff them in his socks and shorts? And some of those documents went missing...excuse, they were copies. But, those copies went through the distribution list when they were originally circulated and recipients make notes on the margins; notes in the margins which would have been devastating to the Clinton administration, which is why they were swiped and disposed of in the first place!

posted August 16, 2005 10:16 AM            

At a time when bin Laden was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 WTC bombing, Commander Corruption refused 3 times to permit Sudan to hand bin Laden over to the United States....using Clinton Speak to justify his refusal...we couldn't hold him, he wasn't wanted for anything here.

Hello! Bin Laden was an unindicted co-conspirator, unindicted only because he was not within the jurisdiction of United States courts at the time. Taking custody of bin Laden when Sudan made the offer...3 times...would have put bin Laden within the jurisdiction of the United States federal courts where he could have been prosecuted.

Now, in typical lying leftist fashion, Clinton tells us how bad he wanted bin Laden...how much he wanted to attack him and presumably, how much better job Commander Corruption would have done against bin Laden...if only he had had the chance. Hello! Is 8 years of constant attacks against the United States not enough time? Are 3 different offers to turn bin Laden over to the United States not sufficient chance to deal with bin Laden. Only in lying leftist speak..it wasn't.

Monday, Aug. 15, 2005 10:41 p.m. EDT
Clinton: I Would Have Attacked Bin Laden

Ex-president Bill Clinton now says he would have taken out Osama bin Laden before the 9/11 attacks – if only the FBI and CIA had been able to prove the al-Qaida mastermind was behind the attack on the U.S.S. Cole.

"I desperately wish that I had been president when the FBI and CIA finally confirmed, officially, that bin Laden was responsible for the attack on the U.S.S. Cole," Clinton tells New York magazine this week. "Then we could have launched an attack on Afghanistan early."

"I don’t know if it would have prevented 9/11," he added. "But it certainly would have complicated it.”

Despite his failure to launch such an attack, Clinton said he saw the danger posed by bin Laden much more clearly than did President Bush.

posted August 16, 2005 10:39 AM            

Rep. Curt Weldon said Monday that one or more members of an elite team of military intelligence officers who had identified al Qaeda hijacker Mohamed Atta as a terrorist threat two years before he led the 9/11 attacks are prepared to go public.

"I can guarantee you that you will be able to have one on your show," Weldon told ABC Radio host Sean Hannity. "You might want to go with your TV show with this, because it will be a major story," the Pennsylvania Republican urged. "And you can interview him directly."

"When the American people see the credibility of this guy and what he's done for our country, along with the others, you become convinced that we have some major problems here," Weldon said.
He also addressed questions that arose over the weekend about whether the claims of the team, code named Able Danger, amounted to "much ado about nothing."

"Like any patriotic American, if I'm confronted with career senior military intelligence officials who have information that they felt the 9/11 Commission should have looked at, because it directly impacted the events leading up to the attack against us, then I would want that to be taken seriously."

The House Armed Services Committee member also revealed that an FBI witness has confirmed attempts by the Able Danger team to share information about Atta.

"We even now have located the FBI liaison officer who they talked to about setting up the meetings [with the FBI]," he told Hannity. "That person acknowledged that there was a request made to formally bring the FBI in.

"But they couldn't do it because they were told, no," he explained.

Weldon confirmed a report in Sunday's Bergen Record which revealed that the intelligence team had pinpointed Atta's whereabouts for an entire year before the attacks, while he lived at a Wayne, New Jersey motel and met with other members of the hijack team.

The House Republican indicated he was aware that the Able Danger revelations could have severe political consequences, but he said that the full story was too important to keep from the American people. "If people get embarrassed along the way, I'm sorry for that," he said. "But we're talking about the deaths of 3,000 Americans here."

He remains concerned, however, that the Able Danger witnesses may be subject to retribution, explaining, "I've got to protect their careers and I've got to protect their reputations . . . Unfortunately I've seen some brave Americans who've simply told the truth, who bureaucrats, for one reason or another, want to go after."

posted August 17, 2005 09:25 AM            

Four months after President Clinton refused a Sudanese offer to have Osama bin Laden arrested, the State Department warned the White House that the blunder would have disastrous consequences.

In documents obtained by the legal watchdog group Judicial Watch and provided to the New York Times, the State Department said that allowing bin Laden to escape from Sudan to Afghanistan "could prove more dangerous to U.S. interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum."

Though Clinton administration officials have repeatedly denied any responsibility for bin Laden's escape, the ex-president himself admitted he played a key role the blunder in a February 2002 speech, which was recorded exclusively by NewsMax.com.
"We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again," he told a New York business group. "They released him. At the time, 1996, he had committed no crime against America so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America.

"So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have. But they thought it was a hot potato and they didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan." [End of Excerpt]

The Times report, however, ignored the Clinton admission - as the paper has since NewsMax first reported it on Feb. 15, 2002.

Instead the paper notes: "Clinton administration diplomats have adamantly denied that they received such an offer, and the Sept. 11 commission concluded in one of its staff reports that it had "not found any reliable evidence to support the Sudanese claim."

In his April 2004 testimony before the Commission, Mr. Clinton was confronted with his 2002 comments on the Sudanese offer.

Initially he claimed he had been misquoted, according 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey.

After being told that his remarks were on tape, however, the ex-president changed his story, saying instead that he had "misspoken" during the 2002 speech.

posted August 18, 2005 01:16 AM            

An Army intelligence officer said Wednesday he told staff members from the Sept. 11 commission that a secret military unit had identified two of the three cells involved in the 2001 terrorist strikes more than a year before the attacks.

Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, who said he was associated with the "Able Danger" unit, said that during a 2003 meeting in Afghanistan, he mentioned that the unit had identified Sept. 11 ringleader Mohamed Atta along with three other hijackers as terrorist suspects.

Three months later, in January 2004, Shaffer said he was back in the United States and offered to follow up with the commission, but his offer was declined.

"I just walked away shocked that they would kind of change their mind, but I figured someone with equal or better knowledge ... probably came and talked to them, so they must've taken care of it," Shaffer said.

Shaffer said he was told the commission obtained only two briefcase-size loads of documents from at least 15-plus boxes of information on Able Danger.

Lt. Col. Chris Conway, a Pentagon spokesman, said Wednesday an investigation into Able Danger was under way.

The department "has been working to gain more clarity on this issue. Accordingly, we continue to interview a number of individuals associated with Able Danger," Conway said.

Conway said it was too soon to comment on findings related to the program.

Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the commission's follow-up project, said the commission is awaiting the results of the Pentagon's investigation.

A statement last Friday by former commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice chairman Lee Hamilton said the commission did not obtain enough information on the operation to consider it historically significant.

Shaffer said Able Danger identified Atta and three other Sept. 11 hijackers in 2000, but that military lawyers stopped the unit from sharing the information with the FBI out of concerns about the legality of gathering and sharing information on people in the U.S.

"The lawyers' view was to leave them alone, they had the same basic rights as a U.S. citizen, a U.S. person and therefore the data was kind of left alone," Shaffer said.

Shaffer said he and a Navy officer disagreed with that and tried to set up meetings with the FBI, but each time the idea was rejected by lawyers from the Special Operations command.

"There was a feeling ... if we give this information to the FBI and something goes wrong, we're going to get blamed for whatever goes wrong," Shaffer said.

The statement by Kean and Hamilton said only Atta was mentioned to them as being identified by Able Danger. They were told by a Navy officer about Atta 10 days before the commission released its report in July 2004, but the officer did not have documentation to back it up, the statement said.

The statement also said the Navy officer's dates related to the pre-Sept. 11 whereabouts of Atta did not fit with what they knew.

Shaffer said it did not surprise him the dates would be different.

Able Danger "wasn't about dates and locations. It was about associations and linkages. That's what the focus was," Shaffer said.

Shaffer said Able Danger identified the terrorists using data mining techniques. His relationship to Able Danger was first reported Tuesday night by The New York Times and Fox News Channel.

Shaffer's lawyer, Mark Zaid, said Wednesday that Shaffer does not have documentation related to Able Danger because his security clearance was suspended in March 2004 because of "petty and frivolous" reasons. They include a dispute over mileage reimbursement and a charges for personal calls on a work cell phone, Zaid said.

Shaffer, an Army reservist, has been on paid administrative leave for the past 16 months, Zaid said. He was an active Army major during his involvement with Able Danger, Zaid said.

posted August 18, 2005 01:32 AM            

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton's team ignored dire warnings that its approach to terrorism was "very dangerous" and could have "deadly results," according to a blistering memo just obtained by The Post.

Then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White wrote the memo as she pleaded in vain with Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to tear down the wall between intelligence and prosecutors, a wall that went beyond legal requirements.

Looking back after 9/11, the memo makes for eerie reading — because White's team foresaw, years in advance, that the Clinton-era wall would make it tougher to stop mass murder.

"This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities," wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee.

"The single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism is to insulate the criminal side of the house from the intelligence side of the house, unless such insulation is absolutely necessary. Excessive conservatism . . . can have deadly results."

She added: "We must face the reality that the way we are proceeding now is inherently and in actuality very dangerous."

White must have felt like Cassandra, foreseeing dangers that proved all too real while no one at Clinton's Justice Department would listen. Team Clinton put up the "wall" in 1995 and it stayed up until after the 9/11 attacks.

Questions about the "wall" recently arose in regard to possible warnings from Able Danger, a pre-9/11 military-intelligence program, but the White memo makes clear that the issue was far, far broader.

In theory, the "wall" was supposed to avoid legal challenges to terror prosecutions. The problem was, as White and her team noted, only prosecutors familiar with a case or a cast of terror players might see the connections that could led to nabbing a suspect or foiling a plot.

Justice honchos overruled White's plea — even though her team knew better than anyone else in law enforcement what the real risks were. White's team won a host of convictions — including Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, and blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who plotted to bomb landmarks like the Statue of Liberty.

Equally troubling is that the 9/11 Commission, charged with tracing the failure to stop 9/11, got White's stunning memo and several related documents — and deep-sixed all of them.

The commission's report skips lightly over the wall in three brief pages (out of 567). It makes no mention at all of White's passionate and prescient warnings. Yet warnings that went ignored are just what the commission was supposed to examine.

So it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the commission ignored White's memo because it was a potential embarrassment to the woman to whom it was addressed: commission member Jamie Gorelick. (White has declined to discuss the matter, and Gorelick didn't immediately respond to requests for comment yesterday.)

White wrote the memo after her earlier pleas against the "wall" were rejected. She enlisted the help of her "Bomb II Team" — prosecutors working on terror bombings like the 1993 Twin Towers attack.

They gave six pages of detailed reasons why it was a mistake to create too much of a wall between intelligence and prosecutions. White forwarded that analysis to Gorelick and added her own notes on the Clinton-era decision "to keep prosecutors in the dark about intelligence investigations."

"What troubles me even more than the known problems we have encountered are the undoubtedly countless instances of unshared and unacted-upon information that reside in some file or other or in some head or other or in some unreviewed or not fully understood tape or other," White wrote. "These can be disasters waiting to happen."

For instance, in August 2001 — a month before the attacks — the FBI learned that two dangerous characters, future hijackers, might have arrived in the United States but didn't connet the dots to see that as a priority.

Also in August 2001, FBI headquarters failed to see the significance of the fact that arrested "20th hijacker" Zaccarias Moussaoui had taken flight lessons — despite desperate bids by field agents to sound the alarm.

Could some of those dots have been connected, absent the wall? There's no way to know — but surely the 9/11 Commission should have examined the issue.

Deborah Orin is The Post's Washington Bureau chief.
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/51981.htm

posted August 18, 2005 01:47 AM            

A very interesting memo from former US Attorney for Manhattan Mary Jo White apparently escaped being smuggled out of the National Archives in Sandy Burglar's pants. It turns out that White, who aggressively prosecuted terrorists responsible for the first WTC attack, told Jamie Gorelick that the infamous wall she built between intelligence and criminal justice would lead to disaster.

"This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities," wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee.

"The single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism is to insulate the criminal side of the house from the intelligence side of the house, unless such insulation is absolutely necessary. Excessive conservatism . . . can have deadly results."

She added: "We must face the reality that the way we are proceeding now is inherently and in actuality very dangerous."

In fact, the memo made it to the 9-11 Commission, but nobody took much note of it. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to have a person implicated in the memo sitting on the Commission. Conflict of interest is obvious here.

We are now into cover-up territory. And it is a huge story. The 9-11 Commission was charged with a responsibility of utmost seriousness. Instead of reporting honestly on the problems which led to the 9-11 plotters remaining unmolested by those charged with protecting us, the Commission ignored serious evidence of a major flaw.

Remember that we undertook a huge reorganization of government based on the recommendations of the Commission. Recommendations that were inherently flawed because of a cover-up of as yet unknown dimensions.

The media Democrats will have no interest in pursuing the story, of course, because it implicates the entire Clinton Administration, highlighting its fundamental unseriousness about the terror threat. But they won't be able to bottle-up the story. It is far too juicy. By downplaying the story, they are slitting their own throats, losing audience and convincing more people that they are not to be trusted.Note* They are most certainly NOT to be trusted

The average voter is worried about terror, and remains deeply offended by the atack. Decades of media obsession with Watergate have taught us all the cover-up scandals are fascinating and important. And the mascot of the whole affair, portly Sandy Berger with documents stuffed in his pants, is just far too funny an image to be ignored.

Thomas Lifson 8 17 05
http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=2876

posted August 18, 2005 02:22 AM            

quote:

---

Let me suggest you mind your own business and stay out of mine...little boy. Let me further suggest you refrain from reading my posts in the first place and the articles I post. They're way over your head and ability to connect the dots, as your responses have shown.

---

Good to know I still have the magic touch.

I'd love to refrain from reading your posts. Stop posting them, and none of us will have to ever read them again. It's a win-win. You won't look like yourself, and we won't have to deal with you. I can't imagine a better solution.

FYI: There's no way for you to make me feel my intellect is inferior to yours (just an impossibility--perhaps it's my I.Q.), so you may as well not even try that tactic.

posted August 18, 2005 11:12 AM            

I did tell you to keep talking didn't I acoustic? I did tell you the more you talked, the more your radical leftist views would become evident, didn't I? I did tell you, you are a radical leftist and not in any way a liberal, didn't I?

One by one you have tripped the markers which separate radical leftists from liberals acoustic.

Liberals are able to discuss the substance of issues, having IQ's that don't begin with 6, 7, or 8. Liberals are broad minded and actually enjoy adding to their store of knowledge by hearing opposing viewpoints and the substantive arguments from which those viewpoints are derived.

Radical leftists on the other hand cannot mount logical, reasonable or substantive arguments for or against issues, ideas or concepts. For that reason, radical leftists must attempt to shut those who have opposing views up!

Case in point acoustic.

quote:

---

I'd love to refrain from reading your posts. Stop posting them, and none of us will have to ever read them again. It's a win-win....Acoustic

---

Obviously, for those with IQ's which don't begin with 6, 7, or 8, the answer for those who would love to refrain from reading someone's posts, is to simply not read them The solution to that particular problem for a radical leftist is to attempt to shut them up.

posted August 18, 2005 12:55 PM            

Two weeks after the 9/11 the attacks, the Bush administration was told that a special military intelligence unit code named Able Danger had developed actionable intelligence two years earlier that could have foiled the 9/11 plot, a member of the Able Danger team revealed on Wednesday.

Among the Able Danger evidence shared with the Bush National Security Council: a chart put together before 9/11 featuring a picture of lead hijacker Mohamed Atta.

Asked why he didn't go public before this week with the news that his group had been tracking Atta during the Clinton administration, Able Danger team member Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer told ABC radio host Sean Hannity:
"Within two weeks of the attack, this colleague of mine ... she took that very poster [with Mohamed Atta] to Congressman [Curt] Weldon," Shaffer said. "And I have to say he took it right to Michael Hadley, I believe, over at the NSC."

"It's my understanding that he gave him that chart and Hadley had a great deal of interest in it," he added.

Once the Bush administration had been briefed, Shaffer said, he thought the information would be handled properly. "[I felt] that we were good to go - that everything was going to be solved," he told Hannity.

The military intelligence sleuth stressed, however, "I'm not criticizing the Bush administration here. They're doing everything in their power to prevent this now. I think they're fully behind what we're doing. I think the Pentagon right now is fully behind me trying to get the word out and trying to get to the bottom of this."

Shaffer credited his still unidentified Able Danger colleague with managing the technical side of the program.

"The doctor who put this all together is brilliant. I mean, I cannot speak high enough of her and her brilliance in being able to break the code on this. She was able, through the technology used, to somehow pull out of all this amorphous data usable, actionable information."

"And that's where things kind of got off track," Shaffer explained. "Because at the same time she pulled that out, we then were trying to look at how we could exploit that information. And that's where the lawyers got involved."

Shaffer said that immediately after the 9/11 attacks, this same colleague alerted him to the fact that the Able Danger team had developed intelligence on the hijack team, a detail he hadn't noticed.

"My colleague called me in and said, 'Look, we knew these guys.' And I was shocked. It was like, in the pit of my stomach there was just this sinking feeling, like - we knew. We knew this!"

Congressman Weldon has previously described three attempts by Able Danger to brief the FBI on the Atta intelligence, before being blocked by lawyers at the Clinton Pentagon.

posted August 18, 2005 01:02 PM            

The families of 9/11 victims are outraged that military spies were blocked from sharing key intelligence they believe could have averted the terrorist attacks – and are calling for a new commission to investigate.

"I’m angry that my son's death could have been prevented," Diana Horning, whose son was killed at the World Trade Center, told the New York Post.

"It outrages me because it's taken four years to come out."

Horning and other family members of 9/11 victims are up in arms over the disclosure that the elite military intelligence unit "Able Danger" had identified Mohamed Atta and three other Sept. 11 hijackers more than a year before the attacks, but military lawyers stopped the unit from sharing that information with the FBI.

"I don't think you can understate the significance here," Mindy Kleinberg, a member of the Sept. 11 Advocates, a coalition of family members, told the Post.

"You're talking about the four lead hijackers. If we shared information and did surveillance on them, there is no telling what we could have uncovered and what we could have thwarted.

"I think we do need a new commission, and that's really sad."

Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, has said the Sept. 11 Commission did not adequately investigate the report that four of the hijackers had been identified.

And Bill Doyle, whose son was killed on 9/11, ripped Jamie Gorelick, President Clinton's deputy attorney general, who codified the separation between intelligence and investigative agencies in a 1995 memo – then was chosen to serve on the Sept. 11 Commission investigating the attacks.

posted August 18, 2005 08:39 PM            

Recent events proved I was right about this sorry collection of showboating has-beens who had just devoted most of their hearings in New York to attacking such 9/11 heroes as Rudy Giuliani and his police and fire commissioners.

I specifically mentioned Democrat Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, who I wrote should have been a witness forced to explain how as former Attorney General Janet Reno's deputy she had helped cripple the intelligence community, instead of a being a commission member.

With the recent exposure of the Clinton administration's refusal to accept and act on information concerning 9/11 terrorist Mohamed Atta and three of his fellow hijackers – information that if acted upon might well have prevented 9/11 and saved 3,000 innocent lives lost in that outrage – the recent disgraceful performance of the 9/11 Commission is plain for all to see.

Now a memo written long before 9/11 by then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, a Clinton appointee, has been obtained by the New York Post. In it, White pleaded in vain with Deputy Attorney General Gorelick to tear down the wall between intelligence and prosecutors, a wall the Post noted went beyond legal requirements.

According to the Post's Washington Bureau Chief Deborah Orin, White's team foresaw, years in advance, that the Clinton-era wall would make it tougher to stop mass murder.

"This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities," wrote White. "The single biggest mistake we can make in attempting to combat terrorism is to insulate the criminal side of the house from the intelligence side of the house, unless such insulation is absolutely necessary. Excessive conservatism ... can have deadly results."

The memo was ignored. Orin then turns her keen eye on the 9/11 Commission, which was charged with tracing the failure to stop 9/11 and got White's stunning memo and several related documents – "and deep-sixed all of them.

"The commission's report skips lightly over the wall in three brief pages (out of 567). It makes no mention at all of White's passionate and prescient warnings. Yet warnings that went ignored are just what the commission was supposed to examine."

Concluded Orin, "So it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the commission ignored White's memo because it was a potential embarrassment to the woman to whom it was addressed: commission member Jamie Gorelick."

This whole matter unearthed by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Penn., is a bombshell, but you'd never know it from reading the mainstream media – or rather not reading, it since the mainstream media are all but ignoring it, or even worse, distorting the facts.

According to Rep. Weldon, members of Able Danger, a special intelligence investigative group, were kept out of the 9/11 Commission investigation and ignored in its final report. A member of the group told the Washington Times that despite having briefed commission staff members on two occasions about the Mohamed Atta-led terrorist cell and telling them of a lockdown of information between the Defense Department and the FBI, they were ignored.

Accusations that commission staffers were briefed on the Able Danger operation but ignored the information in the final report came from Rep. Weldon, who said potential political fallout was one reason he was given for the information not being turned over to the FBI.

"How could a top-secret operation against al-Qaeda not be mentioned in the 9/11 document?" Weldon said. "It's outrageous. It looks like someone at the staff level decided not to pursue that information."

This is a major scandal. Had it occurred under the Bush administration the media would be in an uproar and Democrats would be screaming for the president's scalp. But since it happened because the Clinton administration failed to act, the media are all but ignoring it. I guess it doesn't bother the media that 3,000 innocent people died as a result of the Clinton administration's failures. Instead they prefer to concentrate on the ranting and raving of poor Cindy Sheehan.

posted August 19, 2005 01:51 AM            

Still trying to define me to our mutual audience? How much failure does it take before you realize your mistake?

We've seen time and time again your truly fixed nature, J. It doesn't become you to try to speak about being broad-minded, and adding to your store of knowledge. What good is knowledge when processed through a mind that only sees what it wants to see? (Answer: It's no good at all.)

It's also a bit hypocritical to be talking about, "hearing opposing viewpoints and the substantive arguments from which those viewpoints are derived," when you've shown time and time again you can't concede a point that goes against your party.

In fact, no one can be truly objective when you're around, because you don't encourage give and take of ideas. You encourage taking sides and often drama. Using biased media illustrates this (it also indicates more of a radicalism on your part than anyone else here). You can't claim to be intellectually honest whilst showing time and time again you're willing to accept as fact an excessively biased media source. What if those on the left were to do that? Would you not call them on it? That's what I'm doing. Exactly what you would do.

Did you read the Washington Post headlines today? "Prewar Memo Warned of Gaps in Iraq Plans." They're slanted to the left, but they're so fair that they include even this ending paragraph:

quote:

---

A senior State Department official said yesterday that the memo provided no new information. "This isn't a new story," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of department rules. "There's been no shortage of revisiting of decisions made and actions taken."

---

Sounds like a fairly typical response from this administration, but I think it's cool that this biased media source has enough integrity to include this paragraph. You won't find this kind of fairness at NewsMax, will you? Why? Because they, like you, can't show the party as having any weakness or vulnerability. They must worship at the alter of the GOP in all that they do.

Oh, just one other thing...do you realize that people scroll to the bottom of your articles to see the source before even considering reading the articles you post? That's why it's kind of a waste to post that stuff.

Hope you had a nice birthday.

posted August 22, 2005 11:17 AM              

------------------
Gemini sun, Cancer rising, mercury in Gemini, moon in Taurus *29, venus in Taurus, mars in Libra

"You must live in the infinite blackness that exists when I close my eyes. I see you when I fall asleep, I see you when I dream."

posted August 23, 2005 11:17 AM            

The CIA's former bin Laden desk chief revealed Thursday night that Clinton administration lawyers warned counterterrorism agents that Osama bin Laden had to be kept as comfortable as possible if they captured him during planned raids into Afghanistan.

"The lawyers were more concerned with bin Laden`s safety and his comfort than they were with the officers charged with capturing him," former bin Laden desk chief Michael Scheuer told MSNBC's "Hardball."

"We had to build an ergonomically designed chair to put him in, [for] special comfort in terms of how he was shackled into the chair," Scheuer explained. "They even worried about what kind of tape to gag him with so it wouldn't irritate his beard."
"The lawyers are the bane of the intelligence community," the former CIA man lamented.

Concerns like that, as well as foot-dragging by the White House, resulted in one missed opportunity after another to get the al-Qaida terror mastermind, Scheuer said.

"We had at least eight to 10 chances to capture or kill Osama bin Laden in 1998 and 1999. And the government on all occasions decided that the information was not good enough to act," he claimed.

Although sharply critical of President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, the CIA counterterrorism specialist put the blame for bin Laden's escape firmly on Clinton.

posted August 23, 2005 12:12 PM            

You went even further suggesting the United States was also responsible for repressing Iraqi citizens by not packaging up a water treatment plant to send to Saddam...one not ordered by Saddam or anyone else in Iraq for that matter. You went even further by suggesting American citizens were also responsible for repressing Iraqi citizens.

This is the kind of mush brained blathering typical of far left radicals, leftist radicals who define themselves with no help needed from me.

I understand your problem acoustic. You are unable to respond in any substantive manner whatsoever to the articles posted from NewsMax. How that must chafe leftist radicals. You think you can divert attention from the substance of articles by attacking the source. You would do well to learn the source doesn't matter, it's the truth of the matter which matters and truth is not on the side of the radical left...your side acoustic.

Your attacks on NewsMax are off point. Considering the state of the leftist press in America, the leftist press whose flagship is the New York Times, you would spend your time more profitably cleaning up the mess in your own ranks. The Times serves a readership of leftists...from liberal left of center to far left radicals like you. Yet, even among the leftist readers of the NY Times, only 21% believe the NY Times accurately reports the news.

It seems to me acoustic that if people are fixated on lies or slanted news coverage, it's the radical left, who continue with the lies printed in your far left publications, posted on radical left websites and continue to spout them long after they've been thoroughly discredited.

Your damning of the United States while only managing a "he wasn't good for his country's citizens" about Saddam frame you exactly where you really are, united with the radical left.

Your hug a terrorist today campaign, try to understand where they're coming from...is sheer idiocy. We already know where they're coming from.

The entire effort of the radical left was to protect their little leftist buddy Saddam Hussein and the campaign has now shifted to protecting the terrorists from US military action.

When I'm talking to you acoustic, I'm talking to you. I'm not into group think as you so obviously are. I don't have a herd mentality and don't need a herd to protect me, support me or agree with me.

If you are unable to be objective, don't blame me. Blame instead your dependency on group think and the need to spout the partyline to be accepted in your little group of leftists.

Speaking of your little group acoustic, the last time people got together off this site to discuss other members...members who were not present, it resulted in an attempted division of the membership here. It came to pass, there were members here who were possessed by demons. I suppose that was the only way they could account for others not agreeing with them...they must be possessed by demons.

That tactic to shut those up who disagreed with them failed. Your attempt to shut me up is doomed to a similar fate acoustic. I've given you the reasonable way out of your problem, the problem you have with your inability to counter articles or comments with reasonable and logical arguments. Of course, it would be helpful if you had the facts and truth on your side but you don't so why not take my advice and simply don't read what I post....your problem is solved.

quote:

---

Oh, just one other thing...do you realize that people scroll to the bottom of your articles to see the source before even considering reading the articles you post? That's why it's kind of a waste to post that stuff. acoustic

---

posted August 23, 2005 02:00 PM            

WorldNetDaily.com

Bringing together anarchists, Marxists and radical Muslims, new coalitions of Americans and Brits are joining forces not only to express opposition to the U.S. presence in Iraq but in some cases to urge outright support for the insurgents there killing GIs on a nearly daily basis.

Writing in a recent edition of the International Socialist Review, Paul D'Amato argues, "If the war is one of imperialist conquest, and the resistance opposes that conquest, then by definition the Iraqi resistance is a legitimate war of national liberation."

D'Amato says that to deny support for the resistance is synonymous with rejecting national independence for Iraq.

The anarchist site anarkismo.net, while teasing the possibility of support for the insurgents, ultimately urges against it, partly because the terrorists in Iraq allegedly are "pro-capitalist."

"Probably most of the fighters in the resistance (also called insurgents) are motivated by a just desire to get rid of foreign occupiers," writes Wayne Price on the group's site. "The movement is heterogeneous. But their leadership seems to be mostly Islamicist authoritarians, who want to establish a theocratic dictatorship and are explicitly pro-capitalist."

Despite the action of the "resistance" to route out the Americans, the characteristics cited by the anarchists, such as the fact their "tendencies have much in common with fascism" appear to disqualify them for support.

Meanwhile, the exteme leftist group Codepink is teaming up with radical Muslims to push opposition to American presence in Iraq.

Codepink is joining hands with the Muslim Public Affairs Council to sponsor an event next month in Culver City, Calif., to help unveil a new book, "Why They Don't Hate Us: Unveiling the Axis of Evil" by Mark LeVine, a leftist activist who says an "Axis of Empathy" is the only strategy that can bring about a long-term solution to the war between radical Islam and the West.

The executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council is Baghdad-born Salam Al-Marayati, known for his extreme anti-Israel, anti-American statements dating back to 9-11 and before.

In response to the September 11 attacks, Al-Marayati stated, "If we're going to look at suspects we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list because I think this diverts attention from what's happening in the Palestinian territories so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies."

In the United Kingdom, according to the London Spectator, a steering committee has been organized to coordinate activities of a cooperative effort joining Marxists and other leftists with radical Islamists. The committee consists of 18 from myriad hard-left groups, three from the radical wing of Britain's Labour Party, eight from the ranks of the radical Islamists and four leftist ecologists.

Writes Christopher Chantrill in the American Thinker: "The formal coalition between the hard left and the Islamists is a shock. It is difficult to believe that the secular left could really find common cause with religious fundamentalists of any stripe. But we should remember our history. In World War I, progressive souls sympathized with the German effort to humble the capitalist nation of shopkeepers. In World War II, progressives were indifferent to the fate of the European democracies until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. In World War III, they actively cheered for the Soviets although they denied the right of anyone to complain about it.

posted August 24, 2005 01:47 AM            

First you say:

quote:

---

You would do well to learn the source doesn't matter, it's the truth of the matter which matters and truth is not on the side of the radical left...your side acoustic.

---

And then you go on to say:

quote:

---

Considering the state of the leftist press in America, the leftist press whose flagship is the New York Times, you would spend your time more profitably cleaning up the mess in your own ranks.

---

So is this what you mean when you say things like talking out of both sides of your mouth? The source doesn't matter unless it's the New York Times?

quote:

---

It seems to me acoustic that if people are fixated on lies or slanted news coverage, it's the radical left, who continue with the lies printed in your far left publications, posted on radical left websites and continue to spout them long after they've been thoroughly discredited.

---

You can say that, but who's quoting far left websites here? Who's even quoting the NY Times? No one is. You're making an argument against something that isn't even happening here.

If you want to talk about what IS happening here, it's that you continuously post articles from the obviously, unapologetically biased NewsMax. Why should I go fact check each of these articles when you won't? You blindly believe them at their word without even looking into it. Like that one about the super secret satellite thing. I couldn't find a shred of evidence to back that claim up even at the Department of Justice, which was the agency that was cited. YOU clearly did NOT fact check your own article.

Here's an article about NewsMax: http://www.moderateindependent.com/v1i16tommy.htm

For more accurate perspective on NewsMax, here's another article I find very interesting: http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2001/nmperry.html

There are also plenty of people, it seems, who make a practice of fact checking NewsMax on the internet. I'm not interested to a great enough degree to go on my own rampage to correct their editorials. It's suficient for me that I've read enough of their articles, and seen their testimonials that I will never be convinced of their viability as a news source.

[With regard to the age-old SAddam/Iraq line of attack:]

You can keep bringing this back to Saddam or radical leftism all you want. I'm not going to change the subject in an attempt to divert attention from myself.

quote:

---

When I'm talking to you acoustic, I'm talking to you. I'm not into group think as you so obviously are. I don't have a herd mentality and don't need a herd to protect me, support me or agree with me.

---

Hmmm...reminds me of what one of the above articles said about NewsMax:

quote:

---

Even among conservative news organizations, NewsMax is the herd. It had a hard time generating original copy about the Florida recount, even though it's headquartered in Palm Beach County, one of the epicenters of controversy there. Much of its original copy is gossip-oriented, concurrent with its emulation of supermarket tabloids. The rest is mostly opinion pieces by people like Perry, none of whom are anything less than conservative.

---

If you're simply talking to me, why are you trying to convince me of my radicalism? You know I won't buy it. Why try to paint a picture of me at all? This is just a further diversion from reality. The reality is that you've come to the herd, so you must be speaking to the herd. Otherwise, you're just talking to yourself.

The reason you post is for attention, and you don't mind if it's positive or negative. I get that. That's cool. I just don't understand why you seek out the negative, and discredit your own intellectual prowess by posting articles from NewsMax. Would it not speak more of your intelligence to find the things you want to say in mainstream media? But, of course, every major news vendor is working against you, aren't they? All leftist radicals, the lot of them.

quote:

---

If you are unable to be objective, don't blame me. Blame instead your dependency on group think and the need to spout the partyline to be accepted in your little group of leftists.

---

Irony is your best friend. Don't you see it?

[with regard to the attempted division of LL membership]

This is, once again, a figment of your imagination. The reality is that I'm trying to help everyone here.

The way I'm trying to help you is by providing you with a mirror of yourself, so you can realize the way you come across. I'm also trying to help you reach a point of credibility, because every time a discussion does get started on one of your rants you end up walking away, because you get bombarded with overwhelming evidence to the contrary of your opinion (at least that's what I've seen).

posted August 25, 2005 12:12 PM              

HHHHHHAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH

posted August 25, 2005 12:27 PM            

I don't recall designating you as a fact checker, acoustic. I wouldn't want to give an impossible mission to someone who needs to run to their favorite leftist site to get his opinion on ever issue.

Regarding the Moderate Independent site.... Let's have a look at their moderation and independence.

On Texas...If Texas wasn't a state http://www.moderateindependent.com/v1i9texasstuff.htm

On the American economy...which by the way is roaring right along, but they're calling for a depression. http://www.moderateindependent.com/v3i7economy.htm

How about some headlines from their site
Bush and Cheney celebrate American military deaths in Iraq
"President Bush and Vice President Cheney Celebrate the 200th U.S. Death in Iraq With a Whirl-Wind of Fundraisers, Boasts of "Mission Accomplished"

"Republicans Decide To Do Away With Elections"

"Could Bush Really Be To Blame For Ruining The Economy?"
More leftist blathering

That's enough acoustic...to show your source lied..even in the name they chose for their site.

The rest of your response is typical...no answers, lots of general nonsense and absolutely no response to my proposition that you cannot mount a substantive argument against the issues raised in NewsMax...thus the attack on the source itself.....so:

Let's cut to the chase here acoustic. How would you like a real debate? The kind of debate I've offered others...no posting of articles but a debate of issues from whatever you have stored in your own brain cells. What do YOU know? How well can YOU defend your ideas?

posted August 25, 2005 10:30 PM            

How can you draw a comparison with a paper that takes it upon themselves to close any credibility gaps, and NewsMax? Doesn't really compare does it?

quote:

---

So acoustic, if I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth....then you will be able to post right here on this thread a quote from me suggesting or demanding a member cease and desist from posting NY Times articles....or any other source.

---

This is true. You've pre-empted anyone from ever posting a NYT article with your credibility statement.

Tell me, what would you do if people were posting NYT articles? Would your 21% stat suffice, or do you think you might be a little more severe in your assessment of their news source?

quote:

---

I don't recall designating you as a fact checker, acoustic. I wouldn't want to give an impossible mission to someone who needs to run to their favorite leftist site to get his opinion on ever issue.

---

What is my favorite leftist site, Jwhop? www.linda-goodman.com? Yahoo? You act as if you're knowledgeable in this area, so let's hear it. Where do I go? What am I reading?

I haven't looked that far in to that Moderate Independent site. Looks kinda like NewsMax, doesn't it? And you take issue with it?

quote:

---

That's enough acoustic...to show your source lied..even in the name they chose for their site.

---

Lied? I can see you saying that about it's name, but in what other regard did it lie? Would you care to fact check that site's work? Should I start posting articles from them on here?

quote:

---

The rest of your response is typical...no answers,

---

Yes, that's true. I won't indulge in factchecking NewsMax unless I feel like it. Why should I? Do you think I'm actually going to find the things that they write are actually correct, and the articles they reference are taken in context? That hasn't been my experience. How many Independents and Democrats do you think honestly visit that site for the purpose of finding the truth? (Of course I've worked with a card-carrying Republican who claimed to be an Independent. I used to factcheck the stuff she'd receive by email)

quote:

---

Let's cut to the chase here acoustic. How would you like a real debate? The kind of debate I've offered others...no posting of articles but a debate of issues from whatever you have stored in your own brain cells. What do YOU know? How well can YOU defend your ideas?

---

I have a few thoughts on this:

First, what would we debate? I'm guessing you would set the parameters, as you feel like you've got something to prove, some nugget of information you may be able to rope-a-dope me with. If there are not going to be articles, will there be fact-checking of any sort? Are we just going to spout opinion, and call each other wrong because the other person believes differently? Am I wrong in thinking that premise is a bit silly?

Secondly, I have to ask myself if I really want to spend that kind of time with you. You draw out my mean side, and that's not really a whole lot of fun for me. It's better in controlled spurts.

Thirdly and lastly, what is this really about? It's not about politics. It's about who's more moderate and who's more radical in their thinking and logic. I think this debate is already over and done with. My revealing the faulty logic in posting NewsMax articles is just another example of that.

So please, feel free to discredit yourself, and any semblance of intellect you have by continuing to post NewsMax articles. Just know I may come around to reitterate the same things from time to time if I'm feeling fiesty.

quote:

---

You seem overly invested here acoustic.

---

You're right again. That's why I haven't been reading the news as of late. I catch bits here and there, but I haven't posted an article in some time now.

quote:

---

Are you attempting to run for an office? Or are you just doing what leftists always do...trying to shut those up who you disagree with?

---

I'd love to run for office. I'd love to be a Rep or a Senator. I'd at least attempt to revolutionize politics as we know it by providing my constituents with a means to make their opinion heard through secure voting at my website. Wouldn't it be truly remarkable if our elected officials actually voted based on their constituents desires? (Not to mention that sweet retirement benefit Reps and Senators get.)