Dick Durbin -- Islamic Terrorists Have Rights Too

Dick Durbin has a problem. He's got the same problem a lot of Americans have. He cannot get it through his head that Islam is a religion -- and much more. Islam is a religion, a political doctrine and a military. Because it is a political doctrine and a military, those who embrace this belief system are not protected by the Constitution. It's that simple. And there's 1,400 years of Islamic history that shows the world exactly where the practice of Islam leads.

Durbin wants to empower people who violently oppose virtually every right granted to us in the Constitution. Islam simply cannot tolerate Freedom of Speech nor Freedom of Relgion. Inasmuch as Islam proclaims that the Koran is the infallible word of their god, muslims do not permit the pursuit of anything that suggests their god is not all-knowing and all-powerful. That's a problem. A big problem.

Senate to hold hearings on Muslims' rights

March 22, 2011

Just weeks after House Republicans held a hearing looking at the dangers of radical Muslims in the U.S., Senate Democrats are countering with a hearing of their own, scheduled for after Congress returns from a 10-day vacation, to examine Muslims' civil rights.

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, announced the subcommittee hearing Tuesday, saying there has been a spike in anti-Muslim bigotry in the last year that demands closer attention.

“Our Constitution protects the free exercise of religion for all Americans,” Mr. Durbin said. “During the course of our history, many religions have faced intolerance. It is important for our generation to renew our founding charter’s commitment to religious diversity and to protect the liberties guaranteed by our Bill of Rights.”

The hearing will be the first ever before the Judiciary Committee's new subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and human rights, which Democrats created this year. Mr. Durbin is the chairman of the subcommittee.

Earlier this month House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, New York Republican, held the first in what he said will be a series of hearings to look at problems posed by radicalized Muslims in the United States.

In 2009, the latest FBi statistics available, anti-Islamic hate crimes accounted for 9.3 percent of the 1,376 religiously motivated hate crimes recorded. That's far less than the 70.1 percent that were anti-Jewish.

General Petraeus tries to put out a Fire

A number of American leaders want Reverend Jones to drop his plan to burn Korans. They complain that burning Korans is a bad idea, though they admit it's legal. The complainers, General Petraeus among them, have listed the negative consequences and ill will that are likely to follow.

The complaints sound remarkably similar to those emerging from the debate about building a mosque on Park Place next to Ground Zero. In one case, Americans are imploring other Americans to put their displeasure and anger aside, and show instead that Americans are tolerant people who can solve problems rather than express hate, even though they have the Constitutional right to express themselves as Reverend Jones hopes they will.

However, in the other case, muslims are telling America they can build a mosque wherever the law permits, because, well, because they can. And if America doesn't like it, then America can lump it. Tough noogies. Are any muslims telling the leader of the mosque that maybe it would show good faith to build the mosque somewhere else? No.

It seems this is how things always go with muslims. Last week, when the leader of Israel and the leader of some Palestinians were preparing to meet, Palestinian gunmen from Hamas murdered four Israelis in the West Bank. One of the dead was a pregnant woman. Did Israel launch an attack on Hamas, the governing body of Gaza? No. Did the Hamas government begin an investigation and attempt to catch the killers? No.

Instead, cheers and praise. To commemorate the killings, about 3,000 muslims gathered in Gaza to celebrate the slaughter, hailing it as a heroic deed. They handed out sweets to passersby, the usual muslim celebratory practice. And so it goes.

From the New York Times -- September 8, 2010

Gen. David H. Petraeus warned on Tuesday that any video of Americans burning the Koran “would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence,” endangering the lives of American soldiers.

A State Department spokesman called Mr. Jones’s plan “un-American.” Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said any activity “that puts our troops in harm’s way would be a concern to this administration.”

Several clergy members in Washington and Florida said that there were efforts to dissuade Mr. Jones from proceeding with the event, but that he appeared unlikely to relent.

The religious leaders in Washington said in their statement, “We are appalled by such disrespect for a sacred text that for centuries has shaped many of the great cultures of our world.”

Interfaith events are not unusual, but this one was extraordinary for the urgency and passion expressed by the participants. Some of the same religious leaders later met with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to urge him to prosecute religious hate crimes aggressively.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said: “We know what it is like when people have attacked us physically, have attacked us verbally, and others have remained silent. It cannot happen here in America in 2010.”

The clergy members said that those responsible for a poisoned climate included politicians manipulating a wedge issue in an election year, self-styled “experts” on Islam who denigrate the faith for religious or political reasons and some conservative evangelical Christian pastors.

The Rev. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, said: “To those who would exercise derision, bigotry, open rejection of our fellow Americans of a different faith, I say, shame on you. As an evangelical, I say to those who do this, you bring dishonor to those who love Jesus Christ.”

The summit meeting was initiated by leaders of the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella group of mosques and Muslim groups, who contacted Jewish and Christian leaders they know from years of joint interfaith projects.

A Catholic priest, the Rev. Mark Massa, executive director of ecumenical and interreligious affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote the draft of the statement. About three dozen clergy members representing Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, evangelical and Orthodox Christian groups refined it at the meeting.

They did not take a stand on whether to support the proposed mosque and community center near ground zero in Manhattan, saying, “Persons of conscience have taken different positions on the wisdom of the location of this project, even if the legal right to build on the site appears to be unassailable.”

Talking Turkey

Erdogan and the Decline of the Turks

When I asked the prime minister about stories alleging a U.S.-Israeli murder and organ selling scheme in Iraq, he could not bring himself to condemn them.

Israeli special forces and their commanders were apparently shocked to find their boarding attempt on the Mavi ("Blue") Marmara met with violence. They should not have been. I have no doubt that the Turkish "peace activists" aboard the ship regarded Israeli troops as something akin to the second coming of Hitler's SS.

To follow Turkish discourse in recent years has been to follow a national decline into madness. Imagine 80 million or so people sitting at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. They don't speak an Indo-European language and perhaps hundreds of thousands of them have no meaningful access to any outside media.

What information most of them get is filtered through a secular press that makes Italian communists look right wing by comparison and an increasing number of state (i.e., Islamist) influenced outfits. Topics A and B (or B and A, it doesn't really matter) have been the malign influence on the world of Israel and the United States.

For example, while there was much hand-wringing in our own media about "Who lost Turkey?" when U.S. forces were denied entry to Iraq from the north in 2003, no such introspection was evident in Ankara and Istanbul. Instead, Turks were fed a steady diet of imagined atrocities perpetrated by U.S. forces in Iraq, often with the implication that they were acting as muscle for the Jews.

The newspaper Yeni Safak, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's daily read, claimed that Americans were tossing so many Iraqi bodies into the Euphrates that local mullahs had issued a fatwa ordering residents not to eat the fish. The same paper repeatedly claimed that the U.S. used chemical weapons in Fallujah. And it reported that Israeli soldiers had been deployed alongside U.S. forces in Iraq and that U.S. forces were harvesting the innards of dead Iraqis for sale on the U.S. "organ market."

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (left) has distanced himself from allies such as the U.S. and curried favor with the likes of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The secular Hurriyet newspaper, meanwhile, accused Israeli soldiers of assassinating Turkish security personnel in Mosul and said the U.S. was starting an occupation of (Muslim) Indonesia under the guise of humanitarian assistance. Then U.S. ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman actually felt the need to organize a conference call to explain to the Turkish media that secret U.S. nuclear testing did not cause the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

One of the craziest theories circulating in Ankara was that the U.S. was colonizing the Middle East because its scientists were aware of an impending asteroid strike on North America.

The Mosul and organ harvesting stories were soon brought together in a hit Turkish movie called "Valley of the Wolves," which I saw in 2006 at a mall in Ankara. My poor Turkish was little barrier to understanding. The body parts of dead Iraqis could be clearly seen being placed into crates marked New York and Tel Aviv.

It is no exaggeration to say that such anti-Semitic fare had not been played to mass audiences in Europe since the Third Reich.

When I interviewed Prime Minister Erdogan (one of several encounters) in 2006, he was unabashed about the narrative.

Erdogan: "I believe the people who made this movie took media reports as their basis . . . for example, Abu Ghraib prison—we have seen this on TV, and now we are watching Guantanamo Bay in the world media, and of course it could be that this movie was prepared under these influences."

Global View Columnist Bret Stephens explains why Israel's best friend in the Middle East is now an adversary.

Me: "But do you believe that many Turks have such a view of America, that we're the kind of people who'd go to Iraq and kill people to take their organs?"

Erdogan: "These kind of things happen in the world. If it's not happening in Iraq, then its happening in other countries."

Me: "Which kind of things? Killing people to take their organs?"

Erdogan: "I'm not saying they are being killed. . . . There are people in poverty who use this as a means to get money."

I was somewhat taken aback that the prime minister could not bring himself to condemn a fictional blood libel. I should not have been. He and his party have traded on America and Israel hatred ever since.

There can be little doubt the Turkish flotilla that challenged the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza was organized with his approval, if not encouragement. Mr. Erodogan's foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, is a proponent of a philosophy which calls on Turkey to loosen Western ties to the U.S., NATO and the European Union and seek its own sphere of influence to the east. Turkey's recent deal to help Iran enrich uranium should come as no surprise.

Sadly, Turkey has had no credible opposition since its corrupt secular parties lost to Mr. Erdogan in 2002.. The Ataturk-inspired People's Republican Party has just thrown off one leader who was constantly railing about CIA plots for another who wants to expand state spending as government coffers collapse everywhere else in the word. What's more, Turks remain blind to their manifest hypocrisies.

Ask how they would feel if other countries arranged an "aid" convoy (akin to the Gaza flotilla) for their own Kurdish minority and you'll be met with dumb stares.

Turkey's blind spot on the Kurdish issue is especially striking when you recall that Turkey nearly invaded Syria in 1998 for sponsoring Kurdish terrorism. Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan then bounced around the capitals of Europe, only to be captured in Kenya and handed over to the Turks by the CIA. Turkey's antiterror alliance with Israel and the U.S. couldn't have been more natural.

Yet Prime Minister Erdogan was one of the first world leaders to recognize the legitimacy of the Hamas government in Gaza. And now he is upping the rhetoric after provoking Israel on Hamas's behalf. It is Israel, he says, that has shocked "the conscience of humanity." Foreign Minister Davutoglu is challenging the U.S: "We expect full solidarity with us. It should not seem like a choice between Turkey and Israel. It should be a choice between right and wrong."

Please. Good leaders work to defuse tensions in situations like this, not to escalate them. No American should be deceived as to the true motives of these men: They are demagogues appealing to the worst elements in their own country and the broader Middle East.

The obvious answer to the question of "Who lost Turkey?"—the Western-oriented Turkey, that is—is the Turks did. The outstanding question is how much damage they'll do to regional peace going forward.

No Mosque, No Mosque -- Islam "a 7th Century Death Cult coughed up by a psychotic pedophile."

Looks like Mark Williams nailed it. But now that he's alerted the world about his views on Islam, he had better think of how to avoid the fate of Theo van Gogh, who was murdered by muslims angered by the movie he made showing the miseries of muslim women.

Seems the mayor's office is "appalled" by Williams' comments. Actually, it is more like the mayor is "shocked, shocked" to hear someone speak as Williams spoke. Unfortunately, state senator Daniel Squadron is utterly clueless about the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. Based on his comments he is ignorant of the new building's design, the part about making it more likely to survive an attack of the type used by muslims.

By the way, today is Mock Muhammad Day. The day non-muslims devote to creating cartoons of Muhammad.

Tea Party leader Mark Williams says Muslims worship a 'monkey god', blasts Ground Zero mosque

DAILY NEWS

Published:Wednesday, May 19th 2010

A National Tea Party leader protesting a proposed mosque near Ground Zero set off a firestorm of anger Wednesday by saying that Muslims worship "the terrorists' monkey god."

Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, blogged about the 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center planned at Park Place and Broadway, calling it a monument to the 9/11 terrorists.

"The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god," Williams, a frequent guest on CNN, wrote on his Web site.

His statements drew a sharp rebuke from City Hall and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim civil rights and advocacy group.

"It's appalling," a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg said of Williams' comments, adding that the land is private and is zoned for a number of uses including a religious facility.

"It would be shocking if such ignorant comments failed to elicit a strong response not only from Tea Party leaders, but from other parties throughout the political spectrum," said Corey Saylor, the Muslim rights group's national legislative director.

The downtown project is being spearheaded by the Cordoba Initiative and the American Society for Muslim Advancement. Neither group had any immediate response to Williams' comments.

The glass-and-steel building - which would also include a 500-seat performing arts venue, a swimming pool and a basketball court - would be built two blocks from the World Trade Center site, in the old Burlington Coat Factory.

This month, Community Board 1's financial district committee unanimously approved the project.

In an e-mail to the Daily News, Williams was unapologetic - saying his comments were specifically aimed at the terrorists, which he described as "the animals of Allah."

"If CAIR equates terrorists with Muslims then they apparently have a little [political correctness] problem of their own now don't they?" Williams said.

The Tea Party Express headed by Williams has organized nationwide protests in recent months, drawing in angry voters who feel ignored by Washington. The Tea Party backed outside-the-Beltway candidates like Rand Paul of Kentucky, who won the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Muslim rights group, pointed out other offensive statements Williams has made about Muslims on his Web site, including calling Islam "a 7th Century Death Cult coughed up by a psychotic pedophile."

At the Community Board 1 committee meeting May 5, Daisy Khan, executive director of the American Society for Muslim Advancement, defended the project as a plus for the community.

"Whatever concerns anybody has, we have to make sure to educate them that we are an asset to the community," she said.

"Religious intolerance, demagoguery and fear-mongering have no place in the discussion about development on and around the World Trade Center site," State Sen. Daniel Squadron (D-Manhattan/Brooklyn) said.

When You Absolutely Have to Get There Overnight

Fortunately, Faisal Shahzad was too dumb to hide in plain sight. He chose the wrong way to escape, which happens during those times the pressure is high. When it comes to jetting out of town in a hurry, hopping an international flight is a risky way to leave the country and the odds against walking away freely after landing on the other side of the planet are slim. On the other hand, hiding in Bridgeport, CT is easy.

Security slip let suspect on plane, near takeoff

May 4, 2010

WASHINGTON (AP) - The no-fly list failed to keep the Times Square suspect off the plane.

Faisal Shahzad boarded a jetliner bound for the United Arab Emirates Monday night before federal authorities pulled him back. Although under surveillance since midafternoon, he had managed to elude investigators and head to the airport.

The night's events, gradually coming to light, underscored the flaws in the nation's aviation security system, which despite its technologies, lists and information sharing, often comes down to someone making a right call.

As federal agents closed in, Faisal Shahzad was aboard Emirates Flight 202. He reserved a ticket on the way to John F. Kennedy International Airport, paid cash on arrival and walked through security without being stopped.

By the time Customs and Border Protection officials spotted Shahzad's name on the passenger list and recognized him as the bombing suspect they were looking for, he was in his seat and the plane was preparing to leave the gate. They knew to look for him because of updates to the no-fly list made earlier in the day.

At the last minute, the pilot was notified, the jetliner's door was opened and Shahzad was taken into custody.

After authorities pulled Shahzad off the plane, he admitted he was behind the crude Times Square car bomb, officials said. He also claimed to have been trained at a terror camp in Pakistan's lawless tribal region of Waziristan, according to court documents. That raised increased concern that the bombing was an international terror plot.

Shahzad, a Pakistani-born U.S. citizen, was charged Tuesday with terrorism and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction in Saturday evening's failed Times Square bombing. According to a federal complaint, he confessed to buying an SUV, rigging it with a homemade bomb and driving it into the busy area where he tried to detonate it.

Shahzad had been under constant watch at his Bridgeport, Conn., home since 3 p.m. Monday and federal authorities had planned to arrest him there that evening, two people familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press. Authorities believe he decided to flee after being spooked by news reports that investigators were seeking a Pakistani suspect in Connecticut, one of the people said.

Shahzad somehow lost the investigators who were trailing him, the two people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.

The FBI and the NYPD declined to comment.

The Obama administration played down the fact that Shahzad, a U.S. citizen born in Pakistan, made it aboard the plane. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wouldn't talk about it, other than to say Customs officials prevented the plane from taking off. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the security system has fallback procedures in place for times like this, and they worked.

And Attorney General Eric Holder said he "was never in any fear that we were in danger of losing him."

But it seemed clear the airline either never saw or ignored key information that would kept Shahzad off the plane, a fact that dampened what was otherwise hailed as a fast, successful law enforcement operation.

The no-fly list is supposed to mean just that. And Shahzad's name was added to the list early Monday afternoon as a result of breaking developments in the investigation, according to a law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

But when Emirates sold the ticket, it was working off an outdated list. Airline officials would have had to check a Web forum where updates are sent if it were to flag him. Because they didn't, law enforcement officials were not aware of his travel plans until they received the passenger list 30 minutes before takeoff, the official said.

By that time, passengers are usually on board.

Gibbs blamed the airline but emphasized a more positive bottom line: U.S. authorities did get Shahzad on the no-fly list and he never took off.

"There's a series of built-in redundancies, this being one of them," Gibbs said. "If there's a mistake by a carrier, it can be double-checked."

The list is only as good as the nation's intelligence and the experts who analyze it. If a lead is not shared, or if an analyst is unable to connect one piece of information to another, a terrorist could slip onto an airplane because his name is not on the watch list.

Officials allege that's just what took place ahead of the attempted Christmas Day attack on a Detroit-bound jet. In the case of the Times Square suspect, the intelligence process worked: Shahzad's name was on the list, but the airlines didn't check it when he bought his ticket.

Shahzad went through normal airport security before he boarded the plane. He was unarmed and had no explosive material on him when he was arrested.

Emirates did not return repeated calls for comments. Earlier in the day, the company issued a general statement saying it was cooperating with investigators and takes every precaution to ensure its passengers' safety.

The reliance on airlines to check government lists has been a known problem for years. The government has long planned to take over the responsibility for matching passengers to watch lists, but the transition has taken longer than expected. The new program is still in the test phase for domestic airlines and is still months away from beginning with international carriers.

I'm Shocked, Shocked a Muslim tried to bomb Times Square

It's a good thing muslims are generally incompetent. The muslims who want to kill non-muslims seem to have spent most of their time developing their hostilities rather than their bomb-making skills. As a result, we feel a small amount of relief.

U.S. citizen from Pakistan arrested in Times Square bomb case

Washington Post
Tuesday, May 4, 2010; 6:17 AM

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced early Tuesday that an arrest had been made in the failed Times Square car bombing, saying that Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old American, was taken into custody at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he tried to fly to Dubai on Monday night.

Authorities said Shahzad, who is of Pakistani origin and lived in Connecticut, had paid cash for a Nissan Pathfinder that was found packed with explosives Saturday night on a tourist-crowded block in midtown Manhattan. The vehicle was set ablaze but failed to detonate.

Officials located Shahzad after a sweeping two-day investigation that yielded what senior Obama administration officials described as a flood of international and domestic clues suggesting a plot involving more than one person.

"It was clear that the intent behind this terrorist act was to kill Americans," Holder said at a rare middle-of-the-night news conference at the Justice Department, nearly three hours after the suspect was pulled from an international flight that had already left the departure gate.

Administration officials said President Obama had been repeatedly briefed on the incident -- which authorities said could have led to significant casualties if the explosives had detonated properly -- since it began unfolding Saturday night. It bore some resemblance to the attempted bombing of an airliner in Detroit last Christmas Day, with citizen watchdogs earning much of the credit for averting the crisis and the White House scrambling to discover clues about a young male suspect with apparent ties that stretched beyond the United States.

Still, within 48 hours, agents from Customs and Border Protection arrested Shahzad and took him into custody. It was not immediately clear what the charges were or where he was being held -- or whether other arrests were imminent. The U.S. attorney's office in New York said Shahzad will appear in Manhattan federal court Tuesday to be formally charged.

Authorities became aware of Shahzad's identity Monday afternoon, and he was arrested at about 11:45 p.m. Monday. Shahzad's flight to Dubai had left the gate and was headed toward the runway when authorities discovered that he was on board and wanted. He was removed from the plane and taken into custody, an official said.

Officials were reluctant to discuss Shahzad's potential ties to foreign extremists, except to say that they believed he was fleeing the country at the time of his arrest.

Shahzad recently returned from a five-month trip to Pakistan, a government official said.

The centerpiece of the investigation was evidence gathered about the sale of the car. "That was the key factor to our getting the guy so quick," a U.S. law enforcement official said. Shahzad allegedly bought the car for $1,300 about a week ago, responding to an Internet listing, the official said.

A listing on www.nothingbutcars.net that appears to match the car sold from Bridgeport, Conn., offers a "Grey 1993 Nissan Pathfinder (automatic) (sold as is) with 141,000 miles CLEAN inside and out!!"

"It does have some rust as you can see in the picture," the owner said in the listing.

An FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force had taken over the investigation Monday amid growing indications of a possible international connection, U.S. officials and law enforcement sources said.

Investigators and agents also were scouring international phone records showing calls "between some of the people who might be associated with this and folks overseas," according to a U.S. official who has discussed the case with intelligence officers. Investigators uncovered evidence -- a piece of paper, fingerprints or possibly both -- that also indicates international ties, according to a federal official briefed on the investigation. Before Shahzad's arrest, the official said the material points to "an individual who causes concern to [investigators], who has overseas connections, and they are looking for him."

An overseas angle does not necessarily mean that the incident was planned or financed by al-Qaeda or another organized group, investigators said. "Think smaller," said one senior law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Even as investigators emphasized that the probe was in its early stages and little was definitively known, they were pursuing what Obama administration officials characterized as a flood of new leads, both foreign and domestic. The Pathfinder's registered owner, for example, told investigators that he sold it several weeks ago to a stranger, in a cash transaction through Craigslist.

On Monday, a day of fast-moving developments from Manhattan to Washington, Holder said in the morning that it was too early to designate the failed bombing as an attempted terrorist incident. By afternoon, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs was calling it just that.

"I would say that was intended to terrorize, and I would say that whomever did that would be categorized as a terrorist," Gibbs said, sharpening the administration's tone. Holder's statement early Tuesday called the incident a "terrorist act."

Differences also emerged over the significance of a surveillance video that caught a man in his 40s changing his shirt in an alley and looking over his shoulder near where the Pathfinder was parked. New York City police officials had characterized the man as acting suspiciously, but multiple federal law enforcement officials said he may not be the focus of the investigation.

"It looks like he was just taking off his shirt because he was hot," said one law enforcement official. Investigators were seeking to find another person captured on video running north on Broadway away from the area where the smoking sport-utility vehicle caused an evacuation of Times Square on a crowded weekend night.

Police said the bomb would have created a fireball that likely would have killed or wounded many people, making it the most serious bombing attempt in the United States since the Christmas Day attack aboard a commercial flight bound for Detroit.

The growing evidence of terrorist connections in the Times Square case prompted the New York-based terrorism task force to take the lead in the investigation, which had been overseen by the New York Police Department, a senior U.S. law enforcement official said. That indicates that the failed bombing is being investigated as a terrorist incident with international connections, the official said.

FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko of the New York field office said in a statement Monday night that the "FBI JTTF [Joint Terrorism Task Force] and NYPD are working this case jointly and have been since the beginning." The New York police force, known for its expertise in terrorism matters, is represented on the task force and will remain heavily involved in the probe, officials said.

In the rear of the SUV, police found a makeshift bomb made up of three tanks of propane similar to those used in backyard barbecues; two jugs of gasoline; dozens of M-88 firecrackers, which are legal for purchase in some states; and a metal gun case holding 100 pounds of fertilizer that police said was incapable of exploding.

Some officials cautioned that the international focus did not mean that other possibilities, such as domestic terrorism or an individual acting alone, were being ruled out. Neither did it mean, they said, that international ties automatically constituted a well-formed plot.

One federal law enforcement official, for example, said international communications don't necessarily "get you to an international plot, a multi-organizational plot."

"We're just not there," the official said.

The nature of the possible international connection also remained murky.

The Pakistani Taliban had asserted responsibility for the attempted bombing in a video posted on YouTube, but New York police and federal investigators have said no evidence had surfaced linking the group to the bomb.

On Sunday night, a second video was posted by apparent representatives of the Taliban, showing the group's commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, promising to launch attacks in the United States.

Mehsud, who U.S. and Pakistani authorities initially believed was killed in a January drone strike, was recorded saying, "The time is very near when our fedayeen will attack the American states in their major cities . . . in some days or a month's time."

The video is marked with the logo of the Pakistani Taliban's official media wing, Umar Studios, and appears to be credible, according to Evan F. Kohlmann, a terrorism consultant at Flashpoint Partners.

Fly Or No Fly?

Despite warnings from Washington insiders of shock expected to follow from reading an unclassified report about the ease with which the latest muslim airline bomber boarded a plane, in fact, it is not shock we readers will feel. It is disgust. And anger.

The solution to the threat of muslim terrorists flying the unfriendly skies? Diane Feinstein nailed it.

She said we should create a "very comprehensive no-fly list"

In an interview, she said the definition of who can be included should be expanded to include anyone about whom there is "a reasonable suspicion."

Since 100% of airborne terrorist attacks have been committed by muslims, and roughly 99% of ground-based attacks have also been the work of muslims, the people who belong on the No-Fly list are...? Can you guess?

However, if we accept the democratic principle of the Department of Homeland Security that ALL people are equally likely to be airborne terrorists, therefore making it necessary to impose onerous security procedures on everyone, let us put EVERYONE on the No-Fly list and require EVERYONE to demonstrate their fitness to board an airplane before removing them from the No-Fly list and allowing them the privilege of air travel.

National security adviser: Airline bomber report to 'shock'

WASHINGTON — White House national security adviser James Jones says Americans will feel "a certain shock" when they read an account being released Thursday of the missed clues that could have prevented the alleged Christmas Day bomber from ever boarding the plane.

President Obama "is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on," Jones said in an interview Wednesday with USA TODAY.

"That's two strikes," Obama's top White House aide on defense and foreign policy issues said, referring to the foiled bombing of the Detroit-bound airliner and the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in November. In that case, too, officials failed to act when red flags were raised about an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Hasan. He has been charged with killing 13 people.

Jones said Obama "certainly doesn't want that third strike, and neither does anybody else."

The White House plans to release an unclassified report Thursday on what went wrong in the incident involving a 23-year-old Nigerian man who tried to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight.

In Detroit Wednesday, the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was indicted on charges that include attempted murder and trying to use a weapon of mass destruction to kill nearly 300 people. Abdulmutallab, who faces life in prison if convicted, is to appear for the first time in federal court Friday.

He has told investigators that he was trained and equipped in Yemen by a group affiliated with al-Qaeda. His father had gone to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria to warn American officials that his son seemed to be turning to extremist ideology.

Even so, Abdulmutallab's visa to the U.S. wasn't revoked and he wasn't placed on the "no-fly" list.

Jones said the remedies involve "tweaks" rather than the overhaul that followed the Sept. 11 attacks— for instance, hiring for intelligence agencies so analysts aren't overwhelmed by their workload.

"We know what happened, we know what didn't happen, and we know how to fix it," Jones, a retired four-star Marine general, said in an interview in his West Wing office. "That should be an encouraging aspect. We don't have to reinvent anything to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said a "very comprehensive no-fly list" would be "the greatest protection our country has." In an interview, she said the definition of who can be included should be expanded to include anyone about whom there is "a reasonable suspicion."

Secure Air Travel -- Ban muslim Passengers

Whenever a policy affecting hundreds of millions, if not billions of people, is embraced, it is a simple matter for a small percentage of people to evade or thwart the policy. In the case of air travel, the policy is aimed at stopping people from boarding commercial aircraft and committing terrorist acts such as attempting to detonate bombs inside the aircraft, or commandeer the aircraft and thereby convert it into a flying bomb.

However, in our own brand of lunacy, our security people have designed a strategy incapable of stopping the people we most want to stop. Our security policy for protecting air travelers is based on fairness and sensitivity to those who might feel wrongly implicated due to religion or ethnicity.

On the other hand, we face an enemy who understands we consult our lawyers before approving any security procedure that might identify too many people from one or two groups of people worldwide.

To ensure this fairness and sensitivity, we inconvenience and hassle hundreds of millions of passengers. We infuriate huge numbers of paying customers with the false hope that our policy will protect them.

Instead, how about infuriating a much smaller number? Let us focus on few thousand people by simply prohibiting them from flying into the US. Our "No-Fly" List contains the names of problematic travelers. Let those on the list remove suspicion from themselves before they are allowed on a plane. Let us make flying a privilege that can be taken away in the name of public safety.

How about some reality? In the 1960s and 1970s a number of commercial airliners were hijacked. In virtually all of those hijackings, the hijackers forced the planes to land in places like Cuba where they then attempted to escape. Passengers were rarely injured, and few if any were killed. Unfortunately, things changed.

Terrorists realized the value of destroying an airplane. After the joyriding hijackings of the 60s and 70s ended, muslim hijackers added the new dimension of murder, then graduated to total destruction of aircraft in flight. In short, with only two exceptions, every commercial aircraft destroyed in flight was destroyed by muslim bombers or hijackers.

What is the solution to airborne muslim terrorism? Ban them from commerical airliners. At least 99% of air travelers would fall down in weary glee and relief.

Spotty enforcement for new US air screening rules

On the first day of what was supposed to be tighter screening ordered by the U.S. for airline passengers from certain countries, some airports around the world conceded Monday they had not cracked down.

The United States demanded more careful screening for people who are citizens of, or are flying from, 14 nations deemed security risks. But enforcement of the U.S. rules appeared spotty.

"Everything is the same. There is no extra security," said an aviation official in Lebanon, one of the countries on the list. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The Obama administration ordered the changes after what authorities say was a failed attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up a jetliner bound from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration said the enhanced screening techniques would include full-body pat-downs, searches of carry-on bags, full-body scanning and explosive-detection technology.

On Monday, passengers arriving on international flights reported they had been patted down individually, or had their luggage inspected by hand - steps that have been in place on many international flights since the failed bombing.

Passengers on a flight from Stockholm to Newark, N.J., were patted down and had their bags checked at the gate, flier Mark Biddle said. He said no passengers had been singled out for special attention.

2010 to 2020 -- Some Likely Events

Some Deaths in this Decade:

Finally and inevitably we will get to applaud the death of Fidel Castro. An even more despicable tyrant close to the end of his days is Robert Mugabe. Two dictators both responsible for the economic failure of their countries. Both close to death.

Kim Jong Il is another faltering nation destroyer. Based on rumors of a stroke and other medical problems, he is another martinet whose departure will come as great news to millions. Sadly, however, he's got a son who is rumored to be his successor. But, it has been said that Kim Jong Il's son is an irresponsible spoiled lout who will lose control of the starving North Koreans. We can hope.

The king of Saudi Arabia is almost a goner. However, his death will mean little with respect to the mismanagement of Saudi Arabia. The country will remain a stronghold of muslim fundamentalism where all women are forced to wear their burquas; where corporal and capital punishments are carried out in public in Riyadh every Tuesday afternoon.

On the other hand, a revered leader we are likely to lose is Nelson Mandela. Apparently Hollywood has anticipated his demise by producing Invictus.

Meanwhile, the death of another leader is a certainty. In this decade the reviled Osama bin Laden will die.

Most amusing is the possibility of his assassination by people dissatisfied with his now limp brand of terrorism. However, it is possible bin Laden is already dead. It has been said he has kidney problems, perhaps problems serious enough to require dialysis. If this is true, then a life of roaming from cave to cave is eventually going to allow an infection to invade his body and kill him.

There are some Americans on the pending death list. Unlike the tyrants destroying lives in other countries, the Americans will leave behind something of value.

Herman Wouk, writer of the Caine Mutiny and a long list of great novels is 95. Will he see 105? Not likely. Same for J.D. Salinger. He will turn 91 this year.

Warren Buffett will have his 80th birthday this year. Is he likely to celecbrate his 90th? Maybe. Though our geriatric population is growing rapidly, the herd is decidedly thin for those 90 and older. However, the benefits of Buffett's genius will live on.

The next decade will see plenty of corporate deaths. Enron and Worldcom collapsed in scandal in the last decade. GM exists now in corporate limbo, but its life support will end when its leadership fails to develop and market the cars Americans really want. The government has ordered GM to build an electric car -- Chevy Volt -- that is guaranteed to replace the Edsel as the image of a failed automotive venture. After its electric-car debacle the company will go to the corporate graveyard, a victim of the greed of its unyielding union employees mixed with the madness of our government attempting to mandate consumer desires.

The competition for best energy source will result in a winner. The winner is OIL and its related hydrocarbons. The Sun may be our source of vitamin D, but it is not much use as a source for electricity. The realities of Chemistry, Physics and Energy Conversion will leave no doubt that OIL is the best natural resource for powering the world.

If there is a return of sanity to our domestic energy policy, then we will restart our Nuclear Power Industry. But without some serious study of physics and chemistry at the top levels of the US government, as well as similar study in the general population, the return of energy sanity is a long shot.

We will also see the death of Global Warming. Is the atmosphere feeling an impact from human activity? Let's just say Yes, it is. That means something. There are 6.8 billion people walking the Earth today. Demographers expect the global population to reach 9 billion by the middle of the century. That suggests the number of people on the planet will pass 7 billion before 2020.

Every one of them wants greater prosperity. If democracy and capitalism spread, then a growing percentage of them will enjoy that prosperity. It will show in the number of cars, trucks, planes, buses, trains, and other forms of transporatation that are whizzing around. More money, more cars. More people will have computers and some people will get electricity for the first time.

Increasing prosperity means we will put more energy than ever into producing goods and services.

At some point, intelligent people will acknowledge the tragedy in Africa. Every year in Africa unclean water spreads illnesses that lead to 5 million deaths. Right now. Five million people a year die from drinking dirty water. Is there a medical condition tied to Global Warming? Well, if you count high anxiety, then there is ONE.

How crazy is it to obsess about the unknown impact of Global Warming when the climate gurus predict the unknown impact is a century away? How crazy is it to obsess about Global Warming when 5 million people a year die from drinking water that is easily cleaned?

Meanwhile, every year about 500,000 Americans die of smoking-related illnesses. When will the Morons of America Stop Smoking? Is it ridiculous to think people will stop doing something that promises to give them lung cancer and/or emphysema? Is there much likelihood Americans will break their cigarette habit? A growing number probably will. But something continues to seduce a few million new smokers every year.

Healthcare is simple. The price of regaining good health is high. Staggeringly high. But the price of living healthy is nothing. Zero.

There is no medical management strategy that will reduce the individual or aggregate amounts we spend on healthcare. Americans smoke, drink, eat foolishly and get too little exercise. In other words, our lifestyle is killing us. Shortening our lives unnecessarily, and at great expense.

No amount of auditing or medical efficiency practices will lower our healthcare bills. When it comes to medicine, we are too smart for our own good. We know with enough brainpower, enough study and enough experimentation we can conquer almost any illness or medical problem. Whatever it is, we can conquer it -- eventually.

Americans believe in the brilliance of the medical community. In other words, we believe doctors can repair the abuse we willingly inflict on our bodies.

We need a new perspective. We need to avoid illness. It's that simple. Avoid illness by avoiding the activities that cause illness. Smoking, drinking, drugs, bad eating, and lack of exercise -- that's what does us in.

If Americans quit smoking, cut back on alcohol, stopped misusing drugs, ate healthy and took a daily walk, our national healthcare bill would drop by One-Third.

Of course we would still suffer from the ailments for which we do not know the cause. But if we were to eliminate our lung cancer bills by getting Americans to quit smoking, for example, we would have more money to tackle problems that are still medical mysteries. Can we be smart about health?

Iran will collapse. If Iranians are lucky, the collapse will occur when a new student revolution boots the current mad religious regime and saves the nation from a nuclear pounding its leaders are now seeking.

If Iran launches a nuclear attack on Israel, Israel will counterstrike with its own nuclear weapons. However, there will be a vast difference in the outcomes. Iranians, due to their muslim incompetence with all technologies, will launch an a nuclear attack that is, at best, a near failure. But they may succeed in detonating a nuclear weapon somewhere near Israel, which will trigger a response that will leave Tehran in ashes.

Joe Biden will leave the vice presidency at the end of Obama's current term. He vanished from public view several weeks ago, which suggests he opened his big yap in a foolish way -- again. This time, probably in some way that offended Michelle Obama, who told Barack to dump him.

Fortunately, presidents are limited to two terms. Thus, at worst, the Obama administration must end in 2016. But he can do a lot of harm in the next seven years. Voters have begun to realize he is a talker unable to accomplish any of the goals he set for his administration. If the nation is lucky, he will lose in the 2012 election.

He promised to close the Guantanamo Bay prison his first year in office. However, that will not happen, and it will not happen partly because he is begining to realize there is no safe place to house the inmates. Meanwhile, returning them to the middle east is no solution. Some of those who were released have already returned to their old terrorist ways.

Sadly, Obama is afraid to end the Cuban Embargo. He has an opportunity to win a war without firing a shot. He can show that occasionally the pen is truly mightier than the sword simply be revoking the embargo. If he were to do that today, the Marxist failure of the Cuban dictatorship would collapse before the end of Obama's first, and possibly only term.

Obama's supporters have begun comparing him to Jimmy Carter. Does it get any worse?

Who Was That Masked Man/Woman?

Halloween comes once a year. But muslims want to pretend every day is a day when women, or men pretending to be women, cover their faces. What will it take for federal and state governments to step in and limit the risk created by muslims completely hidden beneath niquabs and burqas?

Niqabs or Burqas Banned at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences

by Daniel Pipes

http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2009/12/niqabs-or-burqas-banned-at-the-massachusetts

Tarek Mehanna, 27, was arrested on Oct. 21, 2009, in Sudbury, Massachusetts and charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists. He allegedly planned to launch terrorist attacks both inside and outside the United States, specifically planning to attack a shopping mall with automatic weapons. Mehanna was a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS), where his father Ahmed teaches chemistry.

Today, the dean of students at MCPHS issued a directive to students that "any head covering that obscures a student's face may not be worn, either on campus or at clinical sites, except when required for medical reasons." (The full memorandum follows below.)

Comment: Banning niqabs and burqas is an excellent security measure and one that all educational and other institutions should follow. Indeed, every "head covering that obscures" every face should be banned in every public space. For dozens of reasons why, see my weblog entry, "Niqabs and Burqas as Security Threats." (December 8, 2009)

Muhammad -- Mad Bomber

Muhammad is the clown who has inspired suicide bombers for the last 30 years. That is an amazing feat for a 7th-century schizophrenic.

Muhammad: The 'Banned' Images

Gary Hull - Dec 9, 2009

For many decades now, Western intellectuals and politicians have cowed to threats of violence from Islamic radicals. Today we must all take a stand for freedom of speech and reasoned discourse.

The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Gary Hull's new book Muhammad: The “Banned” Images. Learn more about the book at www.MuhammadImages.com.

In August 2009, a New York Times headline announced: “Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammad In New Book.” The book referred to in this headline, The Cartoons that Shook the World by Brandeis professor Jytte Klausen, discusses the events around the cartoons of Muhammad that were published by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. After their publication, sundry Muslim hordes “expressed” their displeasure by rioting, looting, firebombing.

Yale University Press, claiming it did not want to stoke more violence abroad, removed the cartoons, along with other images of Muhammad, that are the very subject of Klausen’s book. Its press renounced the very principles it depends on for its survival — the First Amendment and reasoned discourse — to placate the riotous behavior of nihilists.

The West has a decades-long track record of appeasing and emboldening terrorists. It started in the 1950s when the U.S. allowed Iran to confiscate Western oil.

In 1979, President Carter redoubled the appeasement by capitulating when the Islamic regime in Iran kidnapped U.S. diplomats and called for jihad against the U.S. The West submitted again in 1989 when Khomeini issued a fatwa that declared “blasphemous” Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.

Islamists terrorized many Western bookstores into not carrying the book. President Bush, Sr. did nothing. And here are the consequences.

In the spring 1989, some Collets and Dillons bookstores that carried the novel were bombed. Bombs were discovered at numerous other bookstores. Two bookstores in Berkeley, California were firebombed. In July 1991, the Japanese translator of the novel was stabbed to death at his university in Tokyo. In 1993, the novel’s publisher in Norway, William Nygaard, was shot. In July that year, 37 Alevi intellectuals were burned to death in a hotel that was hosting a conference being attended by another translator of Rushdie’s novel.

In November 2004, Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered while riding his bicycle to work. He was considered a blasphemer because his movie Submission portrayed Muslim women being brutalized by Islamists.

Inaction by Western leaders encouraged the Islamists’ assault on free speech and reasoned discourse. Public endorsement gave them a moral sanction.

Shortly after the publication of the Danish cartoons in 2005, a spokesman for the State Department said that “Inciting religious or ethnic hatreds in this manner is not acceptable.” While in Qatar, Bill Clinton described the cartoons as “these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam.” British Foreign secretary Jack Straw outdid Neville Chamberlain: “I believe that the republication of these cartoons has been unnecessary. It has been insensitive. It has been disrespectful and it has been wrong.”

Rather than being denounced for acting like barbarians, the marauders were told that they have a moral right to feel aggrieved. And aggrieved they acted. The Danish journalists and cartoonists were terrorized. Numerous embassies in Syria were attacked and set on fire. There were violent demonstrations in Denmark. Churches were torched, and hundreds around the world were killed in riots.

The destruction of life and property, the violence to reasoned discourse and civilized behavior are the result of a long chain of events, and could have been avoided if both the Iranian hostage-taking and the Khomeini fatwa had been treated by the West as the declarations of war that in fact they were.

Iran, the world’s greatest state-sponsor of terrorism, should have been dealt with accordingly. As should have been the September 11 attacks, in which almost 3,000 Americans were murdered.

Instead, the West has engaged in eight years of mealy-mouthed policy statements (with the most outrageous being Bush’s statement that Islam is “a religion of peace”), tiptoeing around theocrats, pleading with the U.N., misdirected and anemic military responses (with the biggest joke being a protracted “war” in Afghanistan). Meanwhile, the orchestrators of world-wide terrorism in Iran remain untouched, growing more belligerent and powerful.

Tragically, the Obama presidency is even more appeasing than were previous administrations. The President saw fit to comment on an insignificant conflict between a policeman and a university professor at Harvard, but remained silent when Yale mauled the First Amendment.

A president who understands his responsibilities to the Constitution should use his moral authority to encourage Yale to publish the book in its entirety. Rather than using his power to berate American businessmen, he should denounce the pillagers of our freedoms.

He should state publicly that Yale — its employees, property, faculty, and students — will be protected fully by every security agency under his authority. And that if a foreign leader so much as mentions the words “fatwa” and “Yale” in the same sentence, that country will have three days to surrender unconditionally — or face, not the umpteenth U.N. resolution, but the righteous and unrestrained use of America’s armed forces.

George Washington warned that “If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

Ours is becoming a self-inflicted dumbness and silence — not “taken away,” but rather given away by those who are ashamed of everything that free speech stands for.

Muslim Cuts Off Wife's Head -- in the US

There's probably a little more to the story than the financial problems of the husband. Maybe the wife was having an affair. She seems to be very good looking and he looks as though he's been eating far too many of the sweets that are account for much of the muslim diet. His butchery reveals the worst of his temperament. A murderous mean streak. A documented history of domestic violence, say the cops.

But he cut off her head. He cut off her head. Is it possible to account for his crime as the act of a psychopath? Or did he act in a way that is consistent with his religious and cultural upbringing? Chopping off heads and limbs is part of the Islamic penal code. It seems he imported the spirit of Koranic law and carried out the sentence after convicting her of a crime -- in his mind.

He's from a culture that punishes people with traumatic amputations. It appears he believes his religious law trumps America's civil and criminal law. This is a problem.

BEHEAD NIGHTMARE -- $$ WOE SPURRED SLAY: COPS



'HAPPY' COUPLE: Muzzammil Hassan, beset by financial woe, allegedly decapitated estranged wife Aasiya.

An upstate TV exec who set up a channel promoting Muslims as peace-loving people was stressed about his failing business in the days before he allegedly chopped off his estranged wife's head, a friend of the couple said yesterday.

An order of protection barring Muzzammil Hassan, 44, from the couple's upstate home had been taken out by his wife, Aasiya, 37, less than a week before she died.

The couple was in the process of divorcing after bouts of domestic violence, her lawyer told the Buffalo News.

Hassan, who founded Bridges TV in 2004 to counter anti-Islam stereotypes following 9/11, turned himself in to cops Thursday in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park. Police later found his beheaded wife in the TV studios.

He was charged with murder.

"He was worried about the station's future," said Dr. Khalid Qazi, a friend of the couple and president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council of Western New York, who last spoke to the Hassans a week ago.

"He was stressed, but this has left me absolutely shocked. I still cannot believe it."

Police have still not found the weapon used in the killing, an officer said yesterday.

Bridges TV was set up with $10 million in backing from more than 50 investors. Two years ago, Hassan told Arab News magazine he needed another $5 million and was reaching out to supporters in Saudi Arabia.

Hassan, a father of four who moved to the United States from Pakistan 25 years ago, worked as a banker in Buffalo before quitting to start up the station.

The family home was empty yesterday. A police note stuck to the door five hours before Aasiya's body was found asked her to contact cops.

Nobody at the Orchard Park Police Department yesterday could explain why officers wanted to speak to her.

Qazi said the killings went against the teachings of Islam and damaged the image of Muslims that Hassan worked to promote.

"Domestic violence is despicable, and Islam condones it in no way whatever," he said.

Murders are being committed in the US every day by people of all faiths."

Land for Peace?

No phrase represents more of a triumph of hope over experience than the phrase "Middle East peace process." A close second might be the once-fashionable notion that Israel should "trade land for peace."

Since everybody seems to be criticizing Israel for its military response to the rockets being fired into their country from the Gaza strip, let me add my criticisms as well. The Israelis traded land for peace, but they have never gotten the peace, so they should take back the land.

Maybe a couple of generations of Palestinians in Gaza living in peace under Israeli occupation and a couple of generations of the occupation troops squelching the terrorists — "militants" for those of you who are squeamish — would establish conditions where the Palestinians would be free to vote on whether they would like to remain occupied or to have their own state — minus terrorists and their rockets.

Casualty totals alone should be enough to show that the Palestinian people are the biggest losers from the current situation, where the terrorists among them, firing rockets into Israel, can bring devastating retaliatory strikes.

Why don't the Palestinians vote for some representatives who would make a lasting peace with Israel? Because any such candidates would be killed by the terrorists long before election day, so nobody volunteers for that dangerous role.

We don't know what the Palestinians really want — and won't know as long as they are ruled by Hamas, Hezbollah and the like.

Whatever the benefits of peace for the Palestinian population, what are the terrorists going to do in peacetime? Become librarians and furniture salesmen?

So-called "world opinion" has been a largely negative factor in this situation. Nothing is easier than for people living in peace and safety in Paris or Rome to call for a "cease fire" after the Israelis retaliate against people who are firing rockets into their country.

The time to cease fire was before the rockets were fired.

What do calls for "cease fire" and "negotiations" do? They lower the price of launching attacks. This is true not only in the Middle East but in other parts of the world as well.

During the Vietnam war, when American clergymen were crying out "Stop the bombing!" they paid little attention to the fact that bombing pauses made it easier for North Vietnam to move more ammunition into South Vietnam to kill both South Vietnamese and Americans.

After Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, if British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had heeded calls for a "cease fire," that would have simply lowered the price to be paid by the Argentine government for their invasion.

Go back a hundred years — before there was a United Nations and before "world opinion" was taken into account.

An Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands at that time would have risked not only a British counter-attack to retake the islands but also British attacks on Argentina itself.

Anywhere in the world, attacks such as those on Israel today would not only have risked retaliation but invasion and annihilation of the government that launched those attacks.

Today, so-called "world opinion" not only limits the price to be paid for aggression or terrorism, it has even led to the self-indulgence of third parties talking pretty talk about limiting the response of those who are attacked to what is "proportionate."

By this reasoning, we should not have declared war on Japan for bombing Pearl Harbor. We should have gone over to Japan, bombed one of their harbors — and let it go at that.

Does anyone imagine that this would have led to Japan's becoming as peaceful today as it has become after Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Or is the real agenda to engage in moral preening from a safe distance and at somebody else's expense?

Those who think "negotiations" are a magic answer seem not to understand that when A wants to annihilate B, this is not an "issue" that can be resolved amicably around a conference table.