Jose Maria Aznar Drops Some Science on the Left

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The indispensible LGF points us to a blogosphere exclusive. In an article in the Italian periodical Il Messaggero, Jose Maria Aznar -- former Prime Minister of Spain -- addresses the true nature of the global war on terror.

Attention, Messrs. Oliphant, Teepen, Herbert, et. al.: do you think -- perchance -- the former Prime Minister of Spain   knows just a skosh more about the war on terror than, say, any of you?

Drink deeply from the chalice of wisdom and read the whole thing:

...The adversary who stands before us is an enemy who has declared war on us: very simply, he has declared it and he has acted on his declaration. Just like Adolph Hitler in his day, Bin Laden has written and repeated very clearly what his objectives are and what his vision is for the world: a theocracy capable of bringing about the restoration of the Caliphate and imposing Koranic law from Al-Andalus (the name the Arabs gave to the Iberian Peninsula in the long period of their dominance), all the way to the Philippine Islands. Bin Laden hates everything that is Western, not only for historical reasons but also for what he sees in the West: a civilization which promotes prosperity over poverty and equality over injustice; a civilization which, in the place of intolerance, advances the ideals of religious pluralism and the separation of Church and State. He hates us, in essence, because of what we are. It is irrelevant, therefore, to connect the London bombings with any other concrete action or event. Islamic terror operates on a very different set of motivations in determining when and how it will strike. Whether we like it or not, the fact is that Al Qaeda is at war with us. And in time of war, one must necessarily change one’s mindset... if Al Qaeda, in spite of recent events, still is weaker today than it was in the past, this fact is due to the aggressive action and constant pressure applied by the United States with the cooperation of the international coalition in places as remote as Afghanistan, the Philippines, Mauritania, and Iraq. Yes, Iraq. The activities of intelligence agents, soldiers, and special forces have substantially reduced the ability of Bin Laden’s men to plan and carry out new attacks. Without a doubt, Al Qaeda is weaker today because it has not left us waiting for a new strike...

THE WAY TO FIGHT TERRORISM IS TO KEEP OUR GUARD UP by Jose Maria Aznar

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, Joe Wilson

This drawing, included in a patent application, shows how an inflatable space shield could help a satellite evade detection. Observers believe the satellite known as Misty may have used such a shield (MSNBC)

The distant ringing sound you just heard was the death knell on the Rove story. The LA Times is now asking, "If Karl Rove was source No. 2, who was source No. 1?"

For those not practiced in the partisan ways of the LA Dog Trainer Times, this basically translates to, "Like a slippery eel, the diabolical Rove has escaped our grasp; therefore, who else in the administration could we nail to the wall?"

The Democrats were so close they could taste it. And, once again, they've been stymied - with the door slammed shut in their faces at the very last moment. The key question remains: what secret is Judith Miller still holding dear, now that Rove is out of the picture?

If the MSM/DNC is so concerned about national security leaks, perhaps they could investigate the following incident, which makes the Plame affair look as significant as a dropped jalapeño at the Texas State Chili Cook-Off.

Late last year, the AP reported that the Justice Department had been asked to investigate the disclosure of classified information regarding a "stealth US spy satellite program."

Four Democratic senators had gone public with details of the highly sensitive program: Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Carl Levin (D-MI), and Ron Wyden (D-OR), ostensibly because they were concerned about its cost:

...last month, several U.S. senators openly blew the whistle on a mystery spy satellite program, critical of its high cost... One lawmaker, Jay D. Rockefeller, D-W.V., the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, openly criticized the program on the Senate floor. He said the program "is totally unjustified and very wasteful and dangerous to national security," adding that he has voted to terminate the program for two years, with no success. There is now a delicate dance under way between issues of national security and open public scrutiny about taxpayer dollars being spent wisely or squandered. Meanwhile, the swirl of secrecy seems to be revolving around a top-secret "stealthy" satellite project, code-named Misty...

If that's not bad enough, perhaps the Democrats could investigate reports of a more serious outing incident that makes the Plame affair looking positively trivial in comparison:

...April 11th of this year, Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, during the questioning of John Bolton, who's Bush's nominee to be ambassador to the UN, Senator Kerry said this. KERRY: Could I just take one moment, 30 seconds, Mr. Chairman? This is reading from Mr. Flights' interview where he says, "Did Otto Reich share his belief that Fulton Armstrong should be removed from his position?" The answer is yes. Did John Bolton share that view? Mr. Flight said yes. BOLTON: As I said, I had lost confidence in "Mr. Smith" and I conveyed that. I thought that was the honest thing to do. What you just heard here was John Kerry blowing the cover of a CIA operative in his zeal to attack John Bolton. He identified him by name. This is exactly what Rove is accused of doing and didn't do. Here is John Kerry actually having done it.

I won't hold my breath waiting for Democrats to call for investigations into either of these incidents, which appear far more damaging to the national interest than anything related to Plame.

Update:

Clifford May, writing in the National Review Online, has a theory about who outed Wilson's wife. First, let's review what Novak actually said:

"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction..."

No mention of working undercover, right? So if Novak didn't reveal Plame's supposed status as a NOC, who did? May believes that evidence suggests it was Joe Wilson himself:

The first reference to Plame being a secret agent appears in The Nation, in an article by David Corn published July 16, 2003, just two days after Novak’s column appeared. It carried this lead: “Did Bush officials blow the cover of a U.S. intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security — and break the law — in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?” Since Novak did not report that Plame was “working covertly” how did Corn know that’s what she had been doing? ...Corn... claims that Wilson “will not confirm nor deny that his wife …works for the CIA.” Corn adds: “But let’s assume she does. That would seem to mean that the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson …” On what basis could Corn “assume” that Plame was not only working covertly but was actually a “top-secret” operative? And where did Corn get the idea that Plame had been “outed” in order to punish Wilson? That is not suggested by anything in the Novak column... The likely answer: The allegation that someone in the administration leaked to Novak as a way to punish Wilson was made by Wilson — to Corn. But Corn, rather than quote Wilson, puts the idea forward as his own...

Is the Mainstream Media the Enemy?

The accompanying photo, broadcast and distributed in print throughout the world, depicts an Israeli soldier brutalizing an innocent Palestinian. At least that's what the MSM, including the New York Times, said. The facts behind the picture? The man beaten within an inch of his life is Tuvia Grossman, an American, who was pulled out of his vehicle by a Palestinian mob and assaulted.

The invaluable LGF occasionally posts brief blurbs about the media's odd behavior with respect to the global war on terror. Each is labeled under the heading, "The Media Is the Enemy". And each describes an MSM article or anecdote ranging from disenguous to blatantly dishonest.

Think they're a bit off-kilter in targeting outlets like Reuters and the Associated Press? Well, frankly, how else to explain odd linkages between the press and terror groups? For example, consider the terrorist mastermind who played a role in a Reuters reporter's going-away party:

Top terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi made a “guest appearance” in a video prepared by the staff of Reuters news agency in Israel and the Palestinian Authority as a “going away” gift for a colleague...

Or the report that Agency France Presse and the Associate Press employed reporters who simultaneously received paychecks from the Palestinian Authority?

Agence France-Presse (AFP) and Associated Press (AP) ― have employed journalists with inappropriately close ties to the Palestinian Authority. Majida al-Batsh was a Palestinian affairs correspondent for AFP for many years, while simultaneously being on the payroll of the Palestinian Authority as a reporter for the PA's official organ, Al-Ayyam. If this is not evidence enough of impropriety at AFP, last year Batsh announced she would actually run for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority...

And how else to explain the July Fifth "March against terror" in Iraq, that you never heard about?

On July 5, more than 1,000 Iraqi citizens joined with Iraqi Army and police to march against terror. And mainstream media could not possibly have cared less.

How else to justify calling cold-blooded killers of scores of innocent children "insurgents" rather than what they are: terrorists.

...the use of the term "insurgents" by the mainstream media -- a conscious/unconscious attempt to cloak a rag-tag amalgamation of fascists, jihadists and common criminals in the romantic mantle of Pancho Villa -- should now be placed in the junk pile. "Insurgents," in most historical uses, has referred to groups trying to upset an illegitimate or semi-legitimate regime... It's time for the mainstream media to start calling the terrorists by their true names and ideological identities, such as they are. There is no justification any longer for the use of the euphemism "insurgents," unless you are writing pro-fascist propaganda...

Finally, one MSM outlet has put a stake in the ground. Yesterday's editorial in the Dallas Morning News offered stark admission of some fundamental flaws in MSM nomenclature (Call Them What They Are: Those who murder Iraqi civilians are terrorists):

Today, this editorial board resolves to sacrifice another word – “insurgent” – on the altar of precise language. No longer will we refer to suicide bombers or anyone else in Iraq who targets and kills children and other innocent civilians as “insurgents.” ...As children crowded around U.S. soldiers handing out candy and toys in a gesture of good will, a bomb-laden SUV rolled up and exploded. These children were not collateral damage. They were targets. The SUV driver was no insurgent. He was a terrorist. People who set off bombs on London trains are not insurgents. We would never think of calling them anything other than what they are – terrorists. Train bombers in Madrid? Terrorists. Chechen rebels who take over a Russian school and execute children? Terrorists. Teenagers who strap bombs to their chests and detonate them in an Israeli cafe? Terrorists. IRA killers? Basque separatist killers? Hotel bombers in Bali? Terrorists all. Words have meanings. Whether too timid, sensitive or “open-minded,” we’ve resisted drawing a direct line between homicidal bombers everywhere else in the world and the ones who blow up Iraqi civilians or behead aid workers. No more. To call them “insurgents” insults every legitimate insurgency in modern history. They are terrorists.

It's high time the diminishing readership of mainstream newspapers told the editors and publishers what's on their minds before cancelling their subscriptions. It's one thing to offer honest dissent and criticism. Collaboration, obfuscation or encouragement of the enemies of the United States? That's another thing altogether. As it stands, the MSM is about as relevant as a can of lard in a GNC store. More and more citizens simply ignore it.

1776

Picture credit: http://www9.sbs.com.au/
The dead-enders struck again on Wednesday, this time detonating a car bomb that killed 32 people. Most of them were children, who had gathered around a group of U.S. soldiers handing out candy.

Oops, I'm sorry, according to bloated geniuses like Michael Moore, the terrorists are "minutemen":

The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win. Get it, Mr. Bush?

Moore is hardly a lone voice among the cacophony of today's Left-leaning celebrities. How about NBC's Brian Williams? At the end of June, he compared the founding fathers of the U.S. with the terrorists:

...several U.S. presidents were at minimum revolutionaries, and probably were considered terrorists of their time...

1776 (IMDB)

Beheadings, suicide bombings, mass-murder of children, extreme religious intolerance... nope, I'm not coming up with images of John Adams, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson in my head. But maybe that's just me.

Maybe it's time that the Moores and Williamses of the world watched -- Clockwork Orange-style -- the musical 1776. At least then they'd have no excuses for demonstrating their Olympic medal-class ignorance.

Mega-Tsunami

Picture credit: http://www.occultopedia.com
If you don't have enough things in your life to stress you out, there's always the Mega-Tsunami:

La Palma is the largest of the Canary Islands, a territory of Spain located 700 miles off the west coast of Africa. It is a dormant volcano. In 1949 during its last eruption, a huge slab weighing an estimated 500 billion tons sheared loose, slid down a few feet towards the Atlantic Ocean below, and stopped. Today it hangs there precariously, effectively an arrow on a drawn-back bow aimed at the heart of America. A small nuclear detonation in just the right place could set it loose to slide the rest of the way into the Atlantic, with disastrous consequences. As noted by the British Broadcasting Corporation, "What will happen when the volcano on La Palma collapses? Scientists predict that it will generate a wave that will be almost inconceivably destructive, far bigger than anything ever witnessed in modern times. It will surge across the entire Atlantic in a matter of hours, engulfing the whole US east coast, sweeping away everything in its path up to 20km inland. Boston would be hit first, followed by New York, then all the way down the coast to Miami and the Caribbean."

Mega-Tsunami

The New York Papers are on a Roll

Picture credit: http://sonicgallery.com
It's true, I've noticed some exceptional news coverage and analysis from the New York papers recently. Pity the Times hasn't risen to the challenge.

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First item: the Sun's Seth Lipsky astutely points out that Bush's sentiments regarding Supreme Court nominations are effectively restated by this editorial:

The Supreme Court, by its very nature, must be a conservative body; it is the conservator of our institutions, it protects the people against the errors of their legislative servants, it is the defender of the Constitution itself. To place upon the Supreme Bench judges who hold a different view of the function of the court, to supplant conservatism by radicalism, would be to undo the work of John Marshall and strip the Constitution of its defenses. It would introduce endless confusion where order has resigned, it would tend to give force and effect to any whim or passion of the hour, to crown with success any transitory agitation engaged in by a part of the people, overriding the matured judgment of all the people as expressed in their fundamental law.

You guessed it: that was a New York Times editorial from 1916.

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Second item: The Post's John Podhoretz restates the obvious regarding the Wilson-Plame affair:

...a 2004 British inquiry chaired by Lord Butler put it: "We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government's dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded." What isn't controversial is this: Karl Rove didn't "out" Valerie Plame as a CIA agent to intimidate Joe Wilson. He was dismissing Joe Wilson as a low-level has-been hack to whom nobody should pay attention. He was right then, and if he said it today, he'd still be right. And if Valerie Plame wants to live a quiet spy life, she should stop having her picture taken by society photographers and stop getting stories written about her on the front page of the Times...

While the Journal goes on to call Rove a "whistle-blower":

...In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know... As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth.

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Of course, some of the New York papers still employ their long-time, failed theater-critics op-ed columnists, whose rants are frequently eviscerated in embarassing fashion. Witness this takedown of Bob Herbert by Faces from the Front.

“We want to inform the Ummah [all Muslim believers] that your brothers in the Al Qaida organization will not stop Jihad until the Sharia of Allah is the only source of laws on earth.” When I first read those words from an Al Qaida In The Land of Two Rivers press release in April, shortly after the insurgent's failed attack on Abu Ghraib, I was obviously wrong about about their goals and how to deal with terrorism. I am so grateful the New York Time's Bob Herbert and The Guardian's Gary Younge set me straight... Published in 1964, and given its prominence in Muslim political theory, I thought Qutb's Milestones, would be a good foundation from which to understand the roots of [Jihadism]. But, Gary Younge corrects my youthful err, "What he would not acknowledge is that [Blair's] alliance with President George Bush has been sowing the seeds and fertilising the soil in the Gulf, for yet more to grow. The invasion and occupation of Iraq - illegal, immoral and inept - provided the Arab world with one more legitimate grievance." You see, I thought the roots of [Jihadism], at least the philosophical ones, were grown in the late 19th and early 20th Century by Muhammed Abduh, Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Abu'l-A'la Mawdudi. Obviouly the organizations... and philosophies developed by these men play little or no role [in] today's... terrorism. Their complaints about the back sliding of Islam, and the need for Muslims to confront the the west were the rantings of gadflys... As the Time's Bob Herbert notes, "Whatever one's views on the war, thoughtful Americans need to consider the damage it is doing to the United States, and the bitter anger that it has provoked among Muslims around the world. That anger is spreading like an unchecked fire in an incredibly vast field." What was I thinking? [Jihadists] only began to hate the West when Bush was elected. I mean, that bombing of the World Trade Center back in 1993... the Hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985... the Embassy Bombings in 1998--those were all related to something else...

Bathe in the fount of wisdom and read the whole thing.

Maybe some day, the geniuses at the Times will take off their intellectual-dishonesty blinders and have an open, realistic conversation about the world in which we live.

Frog-march Watch

Picture credit: http://pharyngula.org
Leon at RedState neatly ties together the loose ends (hat tip: Ms. Malkin):

Wilson lied about how he got to Niger

Wilson lied about seeing a report that didn't exist at the time

Wilson lied about the conclusions of his own report

Wilson lied about what the administration had been told

...[And] in the course of attempting to discredit the ludicrously false claims, someone in the White House (presumably Rove) told the press that Wilson was sent to Niger on dubious premises in the first place (the recommendation of his wife), without giving the name of Wilson's wife, which Rove apparently did not know. When this story first broke on the scene, I thought that Rove should properly be banished from the administration team, despite the fact that even at that time it was pretty clear that no crime took place. However, given the serial and politically motivated lies of Wilson and Plame, it's clear that the fairy tale the liberals have constructed in which Plame was the heroic CIA agent unjustly outed by Arch-Demon Karl Rove is totally and completely false - and I won't be shedding any more tears about either of their fates.

That being said, if Rove violated any laws, he should prosecuted fully and completely. But I wouldn't look for him to be frog-marched out of the White House anytime soon. We still don't know who told Novak about Plame.