According to Sen. Barack Obama, there is a relatively painless solution to the terrorism problem America faces today: going back to the anti-terrorism tactics of the Clinton years.
"It is my firm belief that we can track terrorists, we can crack down on threats against the United States, but we can do so within the constraints of our Constitution," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee told ABC News last week. "And you know, let's take the example of Guantanamo [Bay]. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks, for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those responsible, put them on trial. They are currently in U.S. prisons, incapacitated. And the fact that the administration has not tried to do that has created a situation where not only have we never actually put many of those folks on trial, but we have destroyed our credibility when it comes to rule of law around the world, and given a boost to terrorist recruitment, in countries that say, 'Look, this is how the United States treats Muslims,' " Obama added, "We could have done the exact same thing, but done it in a way that was consistent with our laws."
It would be difficult to imagine a more perfect example of the "September 10" mentality - including the notion that the United States could pretend that terrorism was just another form of criminal behavior, another problem for police and prosecutors to handle as best they can. Mr. Obama's premise that the World Trade Center bombing trial could serve as a model for today's war is nonsense - dangerous nonsense. On February 26, 1993, a terrorist cell affiliated with al Qaeda detonated a bomb in a parking garage below the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring 1,000. From the beginning, the investigation of the World Trade Center bombing was crippled by the Clinton Administration's disorganization: It had only been in office one month, and Janet Reno had not been confirmed as attorney general. But the problems with the administration's handling of the case ran much deeper than that. Senior officials insisted on treating the case as if it were merely a law enforcement issue and avoiding the question of foreign state sponsorship. Senior administration officials rebuffed efforts by CIA chief James Woolsey to investigate evidence that foreign governments may have been behind the bombing.
In point of fact, there were two trials that took place in mid-1990s involving members of the terrorist cell that conspired to bomb the World Trade Center. The spiritual leader of the terrorist network was Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the blind sheik), a radical cleric who emigrated from Egypt to the United States and had been comrade-in-arms to Ayman al-Zawahiri, who later became Osama bin Laden's deputy in al Qaeda. In the mid-1990s, the blind sheik and members of his terror cell were convicted in the bombing of the World Trade Center and conspiracy to bomb prominent New York City landmarks, including the United Nations, the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels and the FBI's Manhattan headquarters.
Obama suggests that by trying members of the terror cell in open court, the U.S. government was able to fight terrorism in an enlightened, internationally popular way that did not that did not damage U.S. security. He could hardly be more wrong. During the 1995 prosecution of the blind sheik, prosecutors turned the names of 200 unindicted coconspirators over to the defense, as they were required to do under the discovery rules of the civilian criminal justice system. U.S. District Judge Michael Mukasey, who currently serves as attorney general of the United States, presided over the case. He warned defense attorneys that the information could only be used to prepare for trial - not for other purposes. But within 10 days, according to Mukasey, the list was in downtown Khartoum and bin Laden, then operating out of Sudan, knew that the government was on his trail.
"By providing classified evidence to the defense in that terrorism case, we had effectively informed al Qaida as to which of its agents we had uncovered," Republican Sens. Jon Kyl, Jeff Sessions, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn and Tom Coburn wrote last year. The five Republicans, all members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, were making the case against legislation pushed by the panel's chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vermont Democrat, that would give habeas corpus rights to aliens detained as enemy combatants. The Republican senators added: "In another case in which terrorists were tried in the civilian criminal justice system, testimony about the use of cell phones tipped off terrorists as to how the government was monitoring terrorist networks. Again according to Judge Mukasey, 'there was a piece of innocuous testimony about the delivery of a cell phone.' This testimony alerted terrorists to government surveillance, 'and as a result, [their] communication network shut down within days and intelligence was lost to the government forever, intelligence that might have prevented who knows what.' "
Another critical component of the problem was the "wall" that developed as a result of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the primary federal law governing the surveillance of
suspected terrorist communications. As a special FISA review court held in 2002, FISA "as passed by Congress in 1978 clear did not preclude or limit the government's use or proposed use of foreign intelligence information, which included evidence of certain kinds of criminal activity, in a criminal prosecution." (emphasis in the original.) But beginning with a series of judicial rulings in the 1980s, bureaucratic custom began to take hold: Criminal investigators and intelligence agents should be kept apart whenever possible, lest a criminal prosecution become "contaminated" by intelligence information that could not be admitted in court.
All of these problems with FISA existed well before the Clinton Administration. But they were exacerbated by Jamie Gorelick, the number two person in the Clinton Administration Justice Department. Mrs. Gorelick authored a 1995 directive that made it more difficult for the FBI to locate two of the September 11th hijackers who had already entered the United States by the summer of 2001. In April 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft, declassified a four-page directive sent by Gorelick to Mary Jo White, the New York-based U.S. attorney investigating the first World Trade Center bombing, as well as FBI Director Louis Freeh. In the memo, Gorelick ordered White and Freeh to to follow information-sharing procedures that "go beyond what is legally required" in order to avoid "any risk of creating an unwarranted appearence" that the Justice Department was using FISA warrants instead of ordinary criminal investigative procedures in an effort to undermine the civil liberties of terrorism suspects. In testimony before the September 11th commission, Ashcroft explained how Jamie Gorelick's wall made it much more difficult during the summer of 2001 to find Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, two of the September 11th hijackers.
One might counter that Ashcroft is a partisan Republican who spent eight years in the Senate fighting against virtually every major policy proposal made by the Clinton Administration. Yet his testimony dovetails almost perfectly with that of Stewart Baker, who served under President Clinton as general counsel of the National Security Agency in 1993-94. In 1994, after leaving his NSA job, Baker argued in favor of leaving in place the "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence and even suggested that the wall be raised even further (which is exactly what Gorelick did with her 1995 directive). In retrospect, "I was wrong, but not alone, in assigning a high importance to theoretical privacy risks," Baker wrote in Slate magazine on December 31, 2003. "In hindsight, that choice seems little short of feckless, for it made the failures of August and September 2001 nearly inevitable." What "failures" was he referring to? The inability to locate al-Mihdhar and Alhazmi. Two and a half weeks before the September 11th attacks, the U.S. government knew that the two men were inside the United States. They were living here under their own names, which they were using to carry out financial transactions, go to flight school, earn frequent flier miles and obtain a California identity card. Despite an extensive paper trail, the U.S. government failed to find them.
The reason for that, Baker demonstrated, was the fact that the FBI, acting on legal advice, refused to involve its criminal agents in the investigation. When an FBI intelligence agent looking for the two terrorists requested help from the criminal division just weeks before September 11th, FBI headquarters sent him a memo warning him that members of the FBI's criminal division could not participate in the investigation. In a reply message, the New York agent protested the decision, in what turned out to be disturbingly prescient terms: [S]omeday someone will die - and wall or not - the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain 'problems.' Let's hope the [lawyers who gave the advice] will stand behind their decisions then, especially since the biggest threat to us now, UBL [Usama bin Laden, is getting the most 'protection.' "
I am shocked that you oppose Barack Obama and belong to the Republican Party. We must get over ourselves and realize there is room at the top for everyone and we must get there by helping each other — instead of agreeing with policies and old politics that are proven not to work.
To endorse John McCain, a person who will not make it easier for the underprivileged, is just too much. How can a fellow black American feel this way?
Your Former Supporter
Dear Former Supporter,
Do you have any Republican friends, let alone black ones? If so, how many of them want to make it harder "for the underprivileged"?
You also might want to familiarize yourself with the history of the Democratic and Republican parties, and see which party has stood up longer for the rights of people of color. Do you know that Democrats opposed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution — abolishing slavery, granting citizenship rights to newly freed slaves, and guaranteeing the right to vote (at least on paper) to blacks, respectively? Do you know that most of the politicians who stood for segregation were Southern Democrats? Do you know that the Ku Klux Klan was founded by Democrats, one of whose goals was to stop the spread of the Republican Party? Do you know that, as a percentage of the party, more Republicans than Democrats voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
Do you know that inner-city parents want vouchers — the right to determine where their children go to school? Do you know most Democrats, including Barack Obama, oppose this? Republicans, for the most part, support vouchers. Where vouchers have been tried, kids appear to perform better, with higher parental satisfaction. You tell me, how many things are more important than a child's education?
Do you know that 36 percent of babies aborted are black, while blacks make up 17 percent of live births? Do you know that polls show blacks are more pro-life than are whites? Yet the Democratic Party — to which over 90 percent of blacks belong — is the party of Roe v. Wade, requiring states to legalize abortion on demand. Do you know that Margaret Sanger, the founder of the organization that became Planned Parenthood, believed that poor blacks were inferior and that aborting their babies made our society better? Look it up.
Do you know that blacks stand to benefit more than whites through Social Security privatization, a position opposed by Obama but supported by McCain? Are you even familiar with the issue and what a powerful income-generating vehicle it would be for blacks? If not, take a look at the research done by the libertarian think tank Cato Institute and the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation.
Porous borders enable illegal aliens to enter our country and threaten the jobs and lower the wages of Americans, many of whom are unskilled people of color. Which party is more determined to deal with this — Republicans or Democrats? Obama called the foes of the House anti-illegal immigration bill "ugly and racist." I did not support the bill, but vehemently object to characterizing those who did as "ugly and racist."
You speak of policies that have "proven not to work." What about the "war on poverty" that began in the '60s, the policies that Obama and his party want to continue and expand? Do you know that today 70 percent of black children and over 50 percent of Hispanics are born outside of wedlock? The welfare state — which Democrats want to expand — has played a huge role in discouraging marriage and destabilizing families.
Speaking of helping the "underprivileged," I'd suggest you read a book called "Who Really Cares," by Arthur C. Brooks. A non-Republican professor raised by Democrats, he examined the charitable spending habits of Democrats and Republicans. The results surprised him. Brooks found that Republicans give far more of their money and time for charitable purposes than do Democrats. And the giving is not confined to their churches or other houses of worship. This, by the way, has nothing to do with income. Poor Republicans give more than poor Democrats.
Compassion is not about making people dependent on government. Compassion is about encouraging personal responsibility, and getting people to understand that life is about making choices. Poverty does not cause crime. Crime causes poverty. Poverty does not cause a child to have a child. A child having a child causes poverty. Finishing high school is a choice. Not joining a gang is a choice. Not having a child until you have the maturity and the means to raise that child is a choice.
You ask how can a "fellow black American feel this way"? Quite a statement. You may disagree, but it doesn't make me less caring and compassionate than you are. I'm sure you truly consider yourself open-minded and tolerant. But based on your letter, tolerance ends — especially with "fellow black Americans" — if someone has an opposing point of view.
2. "they are freer now than they ever were. Iraqi women can now Vote! We stopped Sadam from killing his own people, and putting them in mass graves, or is this something you support, genocide?"
92,067 civilians killed in Iraq to date is that the "freedom" your speaking of? Saddam was hung for killing 144 people although the actual number varies depending on your source that was the number cited in the trial. Look up the "Rwandan Genocide" as one example, your religion has a much larger number than all of the sources concerning Saddam added together for genocide, really check the bible also.
3. "Abortion on the other hand takes the life of innocent human beings for no good reason other than convenience , and human selfishness."
And the war in Iraq is not one of convenience , and human selfishness?
4. "It's roots in America..."
I believe your speaking about "Margaret Sanger" who didn't actually start Planned Parenthood but ran it at a later date. Although not as colorful nor not as supportive in your argument "Mary Dennett, Clara Gruening Stillman and Jessie Ashley" are credited as the actual founders and their agenda was birth control not abortion as was Margaret Sanger's. I don't agree with most of Sanger's ideas but Abortions are not free even at Planned Parenthood but the contraceptives are.
You know Thomas Edison was an Atheist but I bet you use light bulbs?
5. "Why do communists/liberals in America oppose punishing murders facing capital punishment? They even have the balls to carry signs that read "Thou Shall Not Kill"! Why they turn right around and fully support organized genocide against helpless babies??"
The Scripture speaks to the effect that Christians are to bind up the broken hearted, and set the captives free! Yes we bombed the crap out of Iraq, but they are freer now than they ever were. Iraqi women can now Vote! We stopped Sadam from killing his own people, and putting them in mass graves, or is this something you support, genocide? If you think you can do better, go over there and try!
Abortion on the other hand takes the life of innocent human beings for no good reason other than convenience , and human selfishness. It's roots in America are founding upon paganism, and racism. Planned Parenthoods founder was a student of Hitler, and was into the occult just like Hitler was. Maybe you are not aware of the 'Negro Project' where they purposely targeted blacks for abortion in order to keep their numbers down, and weaken their political power. www.blackgenocide.org
Heres one for you!
Why do communists/liberals in America oppose punishing murders facing capital punishment? They even have the balls to carry signs that read "Thou Shall Not Kill"! Why they turn right around and fully support organized genocide against helpless babies??
Do you realize that no matter what we do, drill here drill there use eco friendly fuel, the price of gas wont be falling anytime soon. We as people use oil everyday, in the production of almost every product we buy. Ok so we say lets make ethanol, nice idea just grow corn and burn it, but no. It doesn't quite work that way. And not only is it not that simple but its make the price of all other foods go up. Rice is out of control. not to mention corn as well. Ethenol at the pump itself is just as high as regular gas. Hybrid cars are even a waste of money unless you plan on keeping the car till it falls apart. There is no clear way of doing anything except to stop being dependant on foreign oil. Hell we only keep 5% of the oil the land of America produces. If we kept 90% we might be better off. Also maybe if people would stop getting up in arms about "global warming" (which isn't real and I'll explain that in a second) and just get over it we might be ok. Global warming isn't real. This planet has had coolings and warmings for many eons and we didn't cause any of it. It's Earths natural course to warm and cool and warm and cool. I mean come on the ice age melted on its own. It was cause by itself too. First Dinosaurs had a nice hot earth then it got really cold for a long time then heated up to melt tons and tons of ice and its just still there. So no matter what its all fucked..
This week's minor controversy about Barack Obama's claim that an uncle liberated Auschwitz was quickly put to rest by his campaign. They conceded that it was a great uncle whose unit liberated Buchenwald, 500 miles away.
But other, much more troubling, episodes have provided a revealing glimpse into a candidate who instinctively resorts to parsing, evasions and misdirection. The saga over Rev. Jeremiah Wright is Exhibit A. In just 62 days, Americans were treated to eight different explanations.
First, on Feb. 25, Mr. Obama downplayed Rev. Wright's divisiveness, saying he was "like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don't agree with." A week later, Mr. Obama insisted, "I don't think my church is actually particularly controversial," suggesting that Rev. Wright was criticized because "he was one of the leaders in calling for divestment from South Africa and some other issues like that."
The issue exploded on March 13, when ABC showed excerpts from Rev. Wright's sermons. Mr. Obama's spokesman said the senator "deeply disagrees" with Rev. Wright's statements, but "now that he is retired, that doesn't detract from Sen. Obama's affection for Rev. Wright or his appreciation for the good works he has done."
The next day, Mr. Obama offered a fourth defense: "The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation." Mr. Obama also told the Chicago Tribune, "In fairness to him, this was sort of a greatest hits. They basically culled five or six sermons out of 30 years of preaching."
Then, four days later, in Philadelphia, Mr. Obama finally repudiated Rev. Wright's comments, saying they "denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation." But Mr. Obama went on to say, "I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother. . . ."
Ten days later, Mr. Obama said if Rev. Wright had not retired as Trinity's pastor, and "had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended . . . then I wouldn't have felt comfortable staying there at the church." (Never mind that Rev. Wright had made no such acknowledgment.)
On April 28, at the National Press Club, Rev. Wright re-emerged – not to apologize but to repeat some of his most offensive lines. This provoked an eighth defense: "[W]hatever relationship I had with Rev. Wright has changed, as a consequence of this. I don't think that he showed much concern for me. More importantly, I don't think he showed much concern for what we are trying to do in this campaign . . . ." Self-interest is a powerful, but not noble, sentiment in politics.
The Rev. Wright affair is just one instance where the Illinois senator has said something wrong or offensive, and then offered shifting explanations for his views. Consider flag pins.
Mr. Obama told an Iowa radio station last October he didn't wear an American flag lapel pin because, after 9/11, it had "became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues . . . ." His campaign issued a statement that "Senator Obama believes that being a patriot is about more than a symbol." To highlight his own moral superiority, he denigrated the patriotism of those who wore a flag.
Yet by April, campaigning in culturally conservative Pennsylvania, Mr. Obama was blaming others for the controversy he'd created, claiming, "I have never said that I don't wear flag pins or refuse to wear flag pins. This is the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with and, once again, distracts us . . . ." A month later Mr. Obama was once again wearing a pin, saying "Sometimes I wear it, sometimes I don't."
The Obama revision tour has been seen elsewhere. Last July, Mr. Obama pledged to meet personally and without precondition, during his first year, the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. Criticized afterwards, he made his pledge more explicitly, naming Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Venezuela strongman Hugo Chávez as leaders he would grace with first-year visits.
By October, Mr. Obama was backpedaling, talking about needing "some progress or some indication of good faith," and by April, "sufficient preparation." It got so bad his foreign policy advisers were (falsely) denying he'd ever said he'd meet with Mr. Ahmadinejad – even as he still defended his original pledge to have meetings without precondition.
The list goes on. Mr. Obama's problem is a campaign that's personality-driven rather than idea-driven. Thus incidents calling into question his persona and character can have especially devastating consequences.
Stripped of his mystique as a different kind of office seeker, he could become just another liberal politician – only one who parses, evades, dissembles and condescends. That narrative is beginning to take hold. If those impressions harden into firm judgments, Mr. Obama will have a very difficult time in November.
Simply look on the bottom of every product you buy, and if it says 'Made in China ' or 'PRC' (and that now includes Hong Kong ), simply choose another product or none at all. You will be amazed at how dependent you are on Chinese products, however you will be equally amazed at what you can do without. Who needs plastic eggs to celebrate Easter?
If you must have eggs, use real ones and benefit some American farmer. Easter is just an example, the point is.. do not wait for the government to act.
Just go ahead and assume control on your own.
THINK ABOUT THIS If 200 million Americans refuse to buy just $20 each of Chinese goods, that's a billion dollar trade imbalance resolved in our favor...fast!!
The downside? Some American businesses will feel a temporary pinch from having foreign stockpiles of inventory. Wahhhhhhhhhhhh
** Downside??
The solution ?
Let's give them fair warning and send our own message. Most of the people who have been reading about this matter are planning on implementing this on June 4, and continue it until July 4.
That is only one month of trading losses, but it will hit the Chinese for 1/12th of the total, or 8%, of their American exports. Then they will at least have to ask themselves if the benefits of their arrogance and lawlessness were worth it.
Remember, June 4 to July 4.
OH what the heck . . . START NOW!!
Send this to everybody you know.
Show them we are Americans
and NOBODY can take us for granted.
If we can't live without cheap Chinese
goods for one month out of our lives,
WE DESERVE WHAT WE GET!
Yeah he did a great speech (or so I hear) at the Van Andel. Must be nice now that he is looking for delegates he comes here and makes a big speech like we are then next best thing to sliced bread. However when us Michiganders were bad ones he took his name off the ballot and didn't even come here. NOW he needs us and he is here with big hoopla speeches of how he is going to save the manufacturing sector. At least McCain is forthright and says those jobs are gone and they are. The reason is because of the greedy lazy ass employees who were union workers who didn't so squat and costs the car companies millions in BS time. Save it, all the candidates suck like usual and nothing will ever change because they are all talk and will do anything to get in that office.