Politics and Government in America

I don’t think I could have said it any better myself. This is Brett Stephens from the Wall Street Journal:

Nancy Pelosi is “pushing back” against charges that she was aware of — and acquiesced in — the CIA’s harsh interrogations of terrorist detainees nearly from the moment the practice began, reports the Politico Web site. Maybe she’s suffering from amnesia.

AP

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Maybe, for instance, the speaker doesn’t remember that in September 2002, as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, she was one of four members of Congress who were briefed by the CIA about the interrogation methods the agency was using on leading detainees. “For more than an hour,” the Washington Post reported in 2007, “the bipartisan group . . . was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

“Among the techniques described,” the story continued, “was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder.”

Or maybe the speaker never heard what some of her Democratic colleagues were saying about legal niceties getting in the way of an effective counterterrorism strategy.

“Unfortunately, we are not living in times in which lawyers can say no to an operation just to play it safe,” said Democrat Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the 2002 confirmation hearing of Scott Muller to be the CIA’s general counsel. “We need excellent, aggressive lawyers who give sound, accurate legal advice, not lawyers who say no to an otherwise legal opinion just because it is easier to put on the brakes.”

Or maybe the speaker forgot that after 9/11, the operative question among Americans, including various media paladins, wasn’t whether the Bush administration had gone overboard. On the contrary:

“I asked the president whether he and the country had done enough for the war on terror,” writes Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in his book “Bush at War.” “The possibility of another major attack still loomed. . . . Was it not possible that he had undermobilized given the threat and the devastation of September 11?” (My emphases.)

Or maybe the speaker missed what former CIA Director (and Bill Clinton appointee) George Tenet writes in his memoir, “At the Center of the Storm,” about the CIA interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:

“I believe none of these successes [in foiling terrorist plots] would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal — read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted his client simply shut up. In his initial interrogation by CIA officers, KSM was defiant. ‘I’ll talk to you guys,’ he said, ‘after I get to New York and see my lawyer.’ Apparently he thought he would be immediately shipped to the United States and indicted in the Southern District of New York. Had that happened, I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats to the American people.”

Mr. Tenet continues: “From our interrogation of KSM and other senior al Qaeda members . . . we learned many things — not just tactical information leading to the next capture. For example, more than 20 plots had been put in motion by al Qaeda against U.S. infrastructure targets, including communications nodes, nuclear power plants, dams, bridges and tunnels.”

Maybe, too, the speaker no longer recalls what she knew, and when, about the Bush administration’s other much-reviled counterterrorist program, the warrantless wiretaps.

“Within weeks of the program’s inception,” writes Mr. Tenet, “senior congressional leaders were called to the White House and briefed on it. . . . At one point in 2004 there was even a discussion with the congressional leadership in the White House Situation Room with regard to whether new legislation should be introduced to amend the FISA statute, to put the program on a broader legal foundation. The view that day on the part of members of Congress was that this could not be done without jeopardizing the program.”

Maybe, finally, the speaker has forgotten the role that previous grand congressional inquisitions played in gutting U.S. intelligence.

“After the Watergate era,” the bipartisan 9/11 Commission reported, “Congress established oversight committees to ensure that the CIA did not undertake covert action contrary to basic American law. . . . During the 1990s, tension sometimes arose, as it did in the effort against al Qaeda, between policy makers who wanted the CIA to undertake more aggressive covert action and wary CIA leaders who counseled prudence and making sure that the legal basis and presidential authorization for their actions were undeniably clear.”

The speaker and her partisans are the current beneficiaries of this politics of amnesia. It won’t be so forever. And when the time comes to pay the price for their forgetfulness, it will not be small.

Barack Obama seems to have decided that he can use his rock star status to keep America safer. Earlier this week, David Axelrod proclaimed that it was no longer cool to hate America. Meanwhile the administration released a handpicked set of memos designed to make the previous occupant of the White House look like a torturous thug, and is set to relese forty-four pictures that are intended to create the same image of our military.

In a statement issued after the memos were released, President Obama said that terrorists could have used that as a recruiting tool. Yet, his administration has handed Al-Quida perhaps the biggest recruiting tool of all. And it is all being done under the guise of the Freedom of Information Act. Why? Because all this information is being done because of a FOIA request filed by the ACLU. The Bush administration tried to block the release of these materials because they recognized the value they had to the terrorists. But not so with the Obama administration.

“The disclosure of these photographs serves as a further reminder that abuse of prisoners in U.S.-administered detention centers was systemic,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project. This seems a ready made line to be placed in the Al-Quida recruiting pamphlet. However, The Obama administration seems to think we will be safe because “anti-Americanism isn’t cool anymore.” That is exactly why ibn-Laden attacked us, isn’t it, because it was the cool theing to do. Axelrod also said that Obama is better able to relate to the people of the world because he was a humble man. When someone tells you how humble they are, they ain’t.

Remember when Hillary Clinton announced that it was patriotic to dissent and disagree with the president? Well those days are over now that the Democrats are in power in the United States.  This week after the tax day protests, Paul Begala announced on Don Imaus’ program, “Why are they out there whining with this TEA party thing? Just a bunch of wimpy whining weasels who don’t love their country. There are guys at Walter Reed who gave their legs for my country, and they’re whining because they’re going to have to write a check?”

That’s right, if you oppose the president’s attempts to keep this country safe, you are a patriot. However, if you are opposed to higher taxes and more government spending, you hate America. That is the way that Democrats operate, when no one challenges their patriotism they condemn people who do it, then they turn around and say anyone who thinks that government is not the answer are anti-American.

I wonder how many veterans were in attendance at the tea parties last week? More than show up at a Code:Pink rally would be my guess. The people who attended and put together the tax protests are the people who make our country work. They are the people who remember candidate Obama condemning the president for increasing the deficit by billions and now see President Obama increasing the deficit by trillions.

The Republican party would do well to remember this when the 2010 elections come along. America needs to be reminded that Democrats believe that if you believe in and stand up for the things that made our country great are the ones who actually hate this country. Meanwhile those who believe that everything that made our country strong should be torn down are the real patriots. Please tell your friends.

Yesterday, President Obama called on the U.N. to condemn North Korea’s missile testing. When the U.N. failed to do so, blocked primarily by China and Russia, Obama’s aides were asked what the next step for the President was. Showing this administration for what it really is, they said that this is really an issue for the U.N. and the president would not unilaterally condemn Kim Jung Il’s regime for it’s actions.

That’s right ladies and gents, The United States is so committed to only working with our allies, that we won’t even use angry words without the permission of the rest of the world. If two of the biggest threats to peace and security in the world today decide that it’s not right to condemn North Korea, then we aren’t going to do it. Even if the reason they won’t condemn the actions is because they are supplying North Korea with the equiptment for their missile program, we won’t go against them.

Barack Obama is so eager to prove that he is not George W. Bush, that he is quickly turning into Neville Chamberline. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is ending up trapped in a Peter Sellers comedy, as a tiny, powerless country is making a laughing stock of the superpowers of the world. Obama seems to be once again trying for “peace in our time,” but it is likely that it is going to work out as well now as it did in the 1930’s.

On Friday, it was announced with very little coverage, that the government had authorized the payment of billions of dollars in bonuses to the executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The amount of money payed out in those bonuses was nearly double the amount of money as was payed out by AIG. However, where we were greeted with Democrats foaming at the mouth over AIG during every news broadcast, we have heard no outrage from anyone in the political establishment over these bonuses.

Why haven’t we heard the outrage? Fannie and Freddie are at least as much to blame for the current economic woes as AIG is. However, where AIG is a private company, Freddie and Fannie are one hundred percent own, lock stock and barrel by the U.S. government. In fact, since September 8th of 2008, they have been directly under the control of the treasury department. Doesn’t that mean they should be even more on the hook for wasting tax payer money by paying out big bonuses to top executives?

We will never see outrage over the Fannie and Freddie bonuses, for the same reason that it was impossible to reform them in the past. Fannie and Freddie are really just appendeges of the Democratic Party. They contribute heavily to Democrat candidates and President Obama’s senior economic advisor, Franklin Raines, used to run Fannie. Not only that, but Democrats could never claim to have not know about these bonuses, since they are the ones writing the checks. This just proves once and for all that, at least for Washington Democrats, outrage is a tool of political manipulation and not an expression of values.

During a meeting with senior officials in Iran, Hugo Chavez has said that he hopes to “reset” relations with the United States during a continental summit later this month. This is the same Hugo Chavez that earlier in the week accused the United States of genocide in Iraq and called President Bush the devil. He continues to refer to the United Staes as an enemy of his “revolution,” his term for the dictatorship he has established.

So what has changed? The answer to that question is simple, the same American celebraties that continue to pump money and support to Hugo Chavez are also supporters of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. If that is not enough to prove that Obama is supporting a leftist agenda, then I don’t know what is going to do it.

People tried to tell the country about the Obama campaign showing open support for leftist Che Gueverra, but nobody wanted to listen. We warned you about his “friendly” relationship with William Ayers, but we were told to stop “creating issues.” There were reports about him being the most Liberal member of Congress, but that was swept under the rug. Well know we have an admitted leftist dictator, one who is meeting with our enemies and allowing a newly beligerant Russia to base it’s forces within striking distance of our country, deciding that Obama is a guy that he can work with and get along with.

It is time for America to make a choice. Do we want to go down the road to the disaster that gripped Eastern Europe for nearly 50 years and continues to grip Venezuala, Cuba, and China? Or do we want to return to the principles and ideas that made the United States the world leader that it is? We need to find our way back out of the wilderness and stop supporting people just because they claim to be Republican. We need to get back to the core Republican values of lower taxes, smaller government, and respect for the individual. Anything that distracts from that message needs to be cut out and cast off, like the dead wood that it is. The conservatives in the Republican Party need to realize that if we stick to these three principles and get rid of everything else, then we can take back our party and rebrand ourselves, just like the Democrats did in 2000. It’s time for a change, but not the one which Barack Obama and Hugo Chavez are pushing for. The change we need is a return to the ideas of the Reagan revolution. Everything else is just dragging the conservatives down.

Today, Barack Obama held one of his town hall meetings in France where he was greeted by adoring French and Germans who hung on his every word. “I’ve come to Europe this week to renew our partnership,” he announced, saying that America squandered the goodwill created by 9/11 by becoming “sidetracked by Iraq.” Obama then said that Americans are arrogant, dismissive, and derisive.

Obama’s statements show that he has a very tenuous grasp on the historical facts of the situation.  In November of 2002, Europe had it’s chance to make it’s intent know on Iraq when they voted unanimously to pass U.N. Resolution 1441. Either France or Germany could have killed the Iraq War with a single no vote, but the did not. They supported taking action against Iraq, as long as it just involved words. However, when it became clear that Iraq was not going to play ball with the U.N. then they decided not to get on board.  Later it became clear why, when the Oil for Food scandal broke and it became clear that France and Germany were getting rich off of Saddam Hussein.

However, the actions of the president are even more disturbing because they show the kind of man that he really is. Why would a U.S. President travel to a foreign country and use the opportunity to be critical of his own country? What does it say about Obama as a man and a president that he would ally himself with those who disagree and oppose the country he is suppose to represent? Obama later said, “but in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual, but can also be insidious. Instead of recognizing the good that America so often does in the world, there have been times where Europeans chose to blame America for much of what’s bad.” How is that any different from what Obama has been doing in Europe during his trip? Regarding the stress between Europe and the U.S., he added “I think it is important for Europe to understand that I am president and George Bush is not president.”

“In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world,” Obama added. “There have been times where America’s shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.”  Maybe it is because Europe has looked for the United States to take the lead for the past 50 years or more. Not to put too fine a point on the matter, but whenever there is trouble in the world, the world turns an anxious face to the United States looking for leadership. The nations of Europe have given us a great treasure. Most Americans have European ancestry and can look to Europe for their heritage. However, the time has come where the child has surpassed the parents.  Europe has squandered the great intellectual and cultural advances of the ages by embracing socialism and medocraty instead of embracing progress and exceptionalism. Sadly, Obama wants to take us down the same road that Europe has already traveled on.