Terrorism

Yesterday Scott Brown tried to justify Joseph Stack flying an airplane into the federal building in Austin by saying “no one likes paying taxes”.

This all seems to play nicely with FOX declaring that this isn’t domestic terrorism.

Yeah – who is weak on terrorism? Cue Dick Cheney in 3…2…..

When you ignore Afghanistan for 7 years then you never get stories like this:

The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.

This is a great accomplishment for the military and administration, but for some reason I feel Dick Cheney will consider it a major failure.

Wow South Carolina is really ahead of the curve on fighting terrorism. I expect Osama is already packing up shop:

Terrorists who want to overthrow the United States government must now register with South Carolina's Secretary of State and declare their intentions -- or face a $25,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

The state's "Subversive Activities Registration Act," passed last year and now officially on the books, states that "every member of a subversive organization, or an organization subject to foreign control, every foreign agent and every person who advocates, teaches, advises or practices the duty, necessity or propriety of controlling, conducting, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States ... shall register with the Secretary of State."

There's even a $5 filing fee.

That’s amazing and it comes from one of the reddest states in the union. We should do this with everything. Require drug dealers, murderers, rapists and whoever else to pre-register. That would get rid of any need for defense or law enforcement. Of course the bad side is all that added bureaucracy in our government.

Wait?

Republicans are adding bureaucracy?

Yup – again the hypocrisy stinks, but that stench is overshadowed by the over all reeking of stupidity from this idiotic law. And to think the Republicans want America to take them seriously on combating terrorism. Hell you got a better chance of Mark Sanford keeping it in his pants.

This has got me absolutely speechless:

Mr. 9/11 himself, the man who was the mayor of the town that took the biggest hit on 9/11, is now denying it ever happened?

"What [Obama] should be doing is following the right things Bush did. One of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama," Giuliani said.

I hope people start asking him why he is denying that 9/11 actually happened. Again we have another example of Republicans who care nothing about terrorism, except as a political tool.

UPDATE:

George Stephanopoulos, who interviewed Giuliani when he made this absurd claim, posts the following on his blog:

“What he [Obama] should be doing is following the right things that Bush did -- one of the right things he did was treat this as a war on terror. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama,” Giuliani said. “Number two, he should correct the things that Bush didn’t do right. Sending people to Yemen was wrong, not getting this whole intelligence thing corrected.”

The former Republican presidential candidate is specifically taking issue with the fact that the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is being tried in a civil court instead of a military tribunal.

Some how George claims to be a journalist, but didn’t even bother himself to correct Rudy’s totally false claim.

This is something interesting that I never thought of. It’s from the Guardian, so it is in the U.K., but I bet the same thing would apply here:

The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.

Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to "virtual strip-searching" and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.

Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.

They also face demands from civil liberties groups for safeguards to ensure that images from the £80,000 scanners, including those of celebrities, do not end up on the internet. The Department for Transport confirmed that the "child porn" problem was among the "legal and operational issues" now under discussion in Whitehall after Gordon Brown's announcement on Sunday that he wanted to see their "gradual" introduction at British airports.

When you buy a gun you may have a background check, depending on where you buy it from. Go to a local gun show and buy one from some fellow enthusiast there and chances are you won’t receive a background check, unless that person is registered as a federal dealer. That’s the extent of it.

So I am sitting here wondering why all these Republicans are screaming for profiling of darker skin men before they get on the airplane. Why didn’t we hear this after  Major Nidal Malik Hasan took his personal weapons into a building on a United States Army base and killed 13 people while wounding 30 others? Why didn’t one of these Republicans call for better “profiling” on potential gun owners? If you would even bring this up to a Republican they would yell and scream about you taking away their 2nd amendment rights, but profiling also violates our Constitution, and no where in the Constitution does it say one right trumps the other.

Take this picture:

That is the view of Newark airport today after the terminal was reopened. Bob points out how easy of a target it would be for a suicide bomber, which it would be, but imagine a Major Hassan going in there and opening fire. This is before any security checks and sneaking a gun, or 20 in would be very simple. If that happened I can guarantee that Republicans still wouldn’t talk about profiling potential gun buyers. They would rather see a law requiring everyone to be naked before that.

So the next time some Republican is on the television going on about profiling people who don’t look like them, then would the host of that show please ask them if they would support profiling potential gun buyers. It’s time to put them on the spot to see exactly how serious they are about terrorism.

With all the debate going on about the full body scanners, I think I have come up with a great solution. Why don’t we just waterboard all airline passengers? Think about it:

• Waterboarding provides accurate and reliable intel
• Waterboarding isn’t torture.
• Waterboarding is nothing but a “dip in the pool”.

So let’s drop the body scanners, saving billions of dollars, and institute 3 hour waterboarding sessions for all airline passengers. I say before hand though we run this idea past the Republicans to make sure they are on board.

I noticed a general message giving birth today – that we should have started focusing on Yemen back in the beginning of the whole war on terror. I can’t say I entirely disagree with that, but what makes it post-worthy is that I am hearing this argument from a lot of GOPers, the same ones who were cheerleading for us to go to war in Iraq.

Given the fact that fighting Iraq stripped our resources from Afghanistan, a fact that is extremely obvious, wouldn’t it have been better for these former Iraq cheerleaders to speak up back in 2002? Instead they took to backing the Bush administration, no matter what. I can only assume that is because “you don’t question the commander in chief at a time of war”, yet that is exactly what they are doing now.

So would someone in the media please ask these people when they spin this whole “we should have been in Yemen for years” mantra, why didn’t they push for this instead of Iraq? Also ask them if they think we could have fought Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq all at once.

We are talking about terrorism and people’s lives, so it’s time to stop the bullshit talking points game and actually address the situation. The best people to do that is the media and after they were accomplice number 1 in lying this nation into war with Iraq, they sure as hell better stand up now and do their jobs.

I been meaning to post about the whole notion the wingnuts (including Lieberman) have been pushing; that we should go to war in Syria. Let’s think about this for a minute. The war started in Afghanistan. That then pushed the terrorists in Pakistan. We are fighting some in Pakistan and now they are moving to Yemen. This is the problem with fighting a war on an ideology – it’s very mobile.

So if President Obama decided that we are going to start fighting in Yemen, then where will the terrorists move next? Maybe Syria or Nigeria. Will we then expand the war into those countries? If we had President McCain right now, I’m sure we would already be in those places. We would be stretching our military so thin that Afghanistan would again descend further and we have to start all over again.

The focus to fight terrorism shouldn’t be the brute force of the military, but rather the surgical approach of law enforcement and intelligence.

This morning on CNN Tom Kean, former member of the 9/11 commission, was talking about how Obama is “taking on to much”, echoing the same right-wing talking point we have heard all year.

Let’s think about that. To a Republican like Kean, Obama shouldn’t be focusing on other things besides terrorism. We just had 8 years of that and look at what it produced – an economic crisis, the loss of a major city and hundreds of lives from Katrina, ignoring our rule of law to “fight terrorism”, etc., etc. If people think that the President should focus solely on terrorism and nothing else, like domestic issues, then let’s just hand this country over to al Qaeda because they have won.

Chris Matthews shows his infinite wisdom yet again:

"And I think we have got to get serious about catching terrorists, not just catching weapons. I‘m waiting for the terrorist who knows kung fu or something that gets on an airplane without a weapon. God knows what that is going to be like."

Welcome to the age of the Steven Seagal/Jean-Claude Van Damme super morphed terrorist! You know – a man who can single handedly take down an entire plan full of passengers with nothing but hand to hand combat.

In other words – Chris Matthews, what a twit!

Tonight Ed Schultz had Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY-29) and while talking about Cheney’s typical fear-mongering response, Massa decided it was time to call Cheney out. He challenges Cheney to a debate. When Ed told Massa Cheney would only do it on Fox, Massa said “so”. This was great and I wonder if Cheney will take him up on it.

For those not familar with Massa, he is a former Republican and retired Navy commander. While serving he was a top aide to General Wesley Clark when Clark was the NATO Supreme Commander. Massa was also a Republican, but left the party mainly over the issue of the Iraq War.

Massa has all the merits to debate how to fight and win this war on terror, so if Cheney feels he is so right about everything then he should have nothing to feat debating Massa. Can we get this scheduled now? I really think the American people deserve to hear a true debate about the war on terror.

Can we have more of this please?

There are numerous other such public statements that explicitly state we are at war. The difference is this: President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered.

That is exactly the right statement to make. Cheney and Bush used terrorism as a political game, instead of taking it seriously. For proof of that look no further than Afghanistan. We need to remind the American people that the President, the very one that Cheney is accusing of being “weak on terrorism”, has expanded the war on terrorism after Bush and Cheney ignored the real front line for years so they could launch a pet-project called Iraq.

People also need to be reminded that chances are the co-conspirators of the Christmas day attempt were released from Gitmo under the Bush administration, and there is a big chance that they became much more radicalized (or maybe even just became radicalized) while in Gitmo. We have seen a serious trend of this happening in the past and the Bush administration chose to ignore it. They turned Gitmo into a terrorist factory, which is why it needs shut down.

It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril.

-Joe “the faux” Lieberman in 2005.

Funny how he felt that way then and now he is one of the leading voices criticizing our commander in chief.

Jim DeMint is on the losing end of an argument and instead of saying “oops, sorry”, he is down right determined to dig in and continue his crusade to keep this country less safe:

A Republican senator who has been blocking President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration complains that Democrats are trying to rush a vote on the nominee without adequate debate.

Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has placed a hold on the nomination of former FBI agent and police detective Erroll Southers.

DeMint said Wednesday that he is concerned that Southers would let TSA screeners join a labor union.