Tag: Terrorism

In Case You’re Not Scared Yet …

Buck Banks

The Bush administration continues to issue vague information alleging that al Qaeda is still trying to kill all of us. This, despite the fact that Iran supposedly has been trying to develop nuclear capabilities for a decade with no success. But hey, a bunch of guys living in caves in Pakistan could really be a threat to everybody living anywhere near Times Square:

Two high-level government intelligence experts testified Wednesday that al Qaeda is intent on attacking the United States with a nuclear weapon but has not developed a nuclear device.

In a hearing, Charles Allen, chief intelligence officer for the Homeland Security Department, said there is no doubt that al Qaeda wants a nuclear weapon. But, he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, “I do not believe that any terrorist organization currently has developed a nuclear device.” He said, however, that this capability “could change drastically” with the recruitment of people with knowledge of nuclear materials and design.

‘We do not yet know when and where they intend to strike us next,” Mowatt-Larssen testified, “but past experience strongly suggests that they are seeking an attack more spectacular than 9/11.’
— Rolf Mowatt-Larssen

His testimony was buttressed by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, director of the office of intelligence and counterintelligence of the Energy Department. Before Sept. 11, 2001, he said, many in the intelligence community believed it was too hard for terrorists to develop a nuclear bomb.

“We should not, however, assume that the technology of a nuclear weapon is beyond the capability of a terrorist group,” Mowatt-Larssen said. “A terrorist group needs only to produce a nuclear yield once to change history.”

Both experts plan to testify before the committee later Wednesday to discuss classified material. “We do not yet know when and where they intend to strike us next,” Mowatt-Larssen testified, “but past experience strongly suggests that they are seeking an attack more spectacular than 9/11.”

Mowatt-Larssen said a global effort must be undertaken to get nuclear materials off the black market and stop global trafficking in them. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., summed up the testimony of both men as sobering.

Matthew Bunn, a nuclear exert at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, said that nuclear stockpile security in Russia “has improved dramatically in the past 15 years” but called for more global nuclear security. He too warned of the threat from a terrorist group.

“This is a real danger,” he said. Homeland Security Department’s Allen said any terrorist nuclear bomb would lack the sophistication of one developed by a country and be of unknown yield. But, he warned, “A nuclear device of any yield could produce thousands of casualties, significant damage to the infrastructure and render large areas uninhabitable.”

Similarly, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ranking member Susan Collins of Maine supported that assessment, saying that a 10-kiloton nuclear device in Manhattan’s Times Square at noon would result immediately in the loss of half a million lives.

Swiftboating Obama: A Look Inside Bogus Rightwing Claims He Has Terror Ties

Jon Ponder

In early January, when Barack Obama was just one among many Democratic candidates, we published Swiftboating Obama’s Religion: He Is Not a Muslim. Now that he is the putative Democratic nominee, here is a look at another potentially Swiftboat-able part of his record — his tenuous connections to William Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, who were members of the Weather Underground in the Vietnam War era — and his one-time professional relationship with Dr. Rashid Khalidi, a one-time PLO media director.
Ayers was a prominent constituent in Obama’s state senate district.
Ayers and Dorhn were involved in the planning and execution of violent protests 40 years ago:

They disappeared in 1970, after a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse, and turned themselves into authorities in 1980. They were never prosecuted for their involvement with the 25 bombings the Weather Underground claimed; charges were dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.

Both have written and spoken at length about their pasts, and today he is an advocate for progressive education and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; she’s an associate professor of law at Northwestern University.

This never-heard-of-him rightwinger offers a taste of the spin to come from his fellow Noise Machiners:

[…]

If Terrorist Came in From Canada, Is Border Fence Far Behind?

Trish

The new faces of terror

It appears the bomber who targeted a military recruiting station in Times Square came in this country via Canada, so you know what that means. Soon the Minutemen will rush north to construct a fence the entire 5,522 miles that separate us from the threat of Canadian extremists. Or not. Maybe they only want to protect our border singular. You know, the brown border. The one with Mexicans on the other side.

High-level law enforcement sources told ABC News that a border stop in Canada has yielded evidence that may be linked to the case, and that individuals are being sought in connection with the case.

O Canada?

Canadian authorities declined to comment on the matter.

Sources said the border stop took place about a month ago, but today U.S. and Canadian authorities were revisiting the incident because of circumstantial evidence noticed at the time of the stop and the behavior of one of four individuals in the car that was stopped.

At the time of the stop, one young man fled the vehicle on foot, law enforcement sources said.

The last time we were threatened by Canada was when Bob and Doug McKenzie foiled a plot by Elsinore Beer’s Brewmeister Smith to take over the world. No one suggested building a fence back then, and I doubt they will now. After all, it’s not like it’s Mexico or something.

Campaigning on Fear in East Texas

Trish

The Houston Chronicle claims that the Democratic race could be decided by East Texas, where early voting makes traditional polling difficult. For the actual results we might have to wait until the votes are counted, something news outlets hate.

Republican candidate for Tom DeLay’s old seat: “What we wanted to do is project mayhem.”

65 percent of the early voting turnout in Houston through Thursday included people who had not cast a ballot in the past three Democratic primaries. At least a quarter of the turnout is black…

And 11,213 — 8.2 percent — were people who previously had voted in the Republican primary…

Clinton has held a lead among white voters of about 7 percentage points and a lead of at least 20 percentage points over Obama among Hispanics. But more than 75 percent of the blacks surveyed supported Obama.

Clinton had more than 60 percent support in traditionally Hispanic South Texas.

Leaving it up to East Texas is an especially disquieting thought, if one of the ten Republicans running against U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson (D-Houston) is any indication. Lampson, you might recall, lost his 9th Congressional District seat after Tom DeLay succeeded in redrawing his district to make it majority Republican. Then in a triumph of irony, DeLay’s ethical challenges forced him to withdraw from his re-election bid in 2006, and Lampson won DeLay’s own neighboring District 22 seat.

Which brings us to challenger Brian Klock. Klock must have decided that the 2004 failed strategy of scaring people into voting Republican didn’t work because it didn’t go far enough. On his web site, he puts the tactic on steroids.

“Showing Houston in flames is reminding them there is a threat,” he added. “What we wanted to do is project mayhem.”

Well good job, Brian. In addition to showing Houston engulfed in a hellish inferno, Klock, who is supported by Houston-based homebuilder and $3 million Swift Boat Veteran for Truth funder Bob Perry, enumerates all the reasons why the area is the country’s premier terrorist target.

• Economic Engine of the Gulf and the entire region
• Home of America’s energy industry and independence
• Headquarters of world-famous pioneering NASA
• City of world’s largest medical and research center
• Gateway to five-and-a-half million people & door to the USA

I’ll concede the NASA link, although that would mean my nearby Cape Canaveral would also be a main target, and I’m doubting that. But I can’t see why having the Texas Medical Center, which is only “largest” by affiliation with 23 government agencies and 23 public and private institutions located throughout Texas and the world, puts Houston at particular risk.

But my doubts are erased by Klock’s urgent reasoning.

The Department of Homeland Security says Houston is one of the highest risk cities in the country, in the same category as New York and Washington…

A strike to the Port of Houston would paralyze commerce and industry throughout the nation — and dramatically increase gas prices and send the national economy into a tailspin.

Similarly, a terrorist attack on Downtown, the Galleria, Sugar Land, or NASA would seriously damage our local economy, destroy jobs, and worsen the recession we are now facing. And, worse of all, we’d lose family and friends, our homes, and our way of life.

Can’t argue with that. Just ask folks from New Orleans, many of whom moved to Houston after losing their “way of life” in a hurricane, a much more likely threat. But it’s not fun to run a campaign against climate disasters, which would probably “paralyze commerce and industry” in the Port of Houston just as effectively as a dirty bomb or plane flown into a skyscraper. Which, by the way, Klock’s web site keeps a news reel of running at all times. You can watch that second plane fly into the World Trade Center as often as you like, and hear the eyewitnesses scream in horror and disbelief as many times as it takes for you to be scared enough to vote for Klock.

I’m betting that Democratic voters in East Texas, including the 8.2 percent who just deserted the Republican party, won’t be swayed by such tactics. On the other hand Hillary Clinton, whose newest ad tells you the phone could ring in the White House at 3 a.m. and it could be very bad news, seems to see it Klock’s way.

SFB*: Bush Incoherent at News Conference

Trish

What did he say?

“We’ll see the effects of this pro-growth package,” Bush told reporters at a White House news conference. “I know there’s a lot of, here in Washington people are trying to – stimulus package two – and all that stuff. Why don’t we let stimulus package one, which seemed like a good idea at the time, have a chance to kick in?”

* In the text-speak sense of the term.

Poll: 93% of Muslims Worldwide Condemn 9/11 Attacks – 0% Approve of Attacks on Religious Grounds

Jon Ponder

This poll from Gallup is based on a huge worldwide sample:

One of the largest-ever opinion polls conducted in the Islamic world found that seven percent of Muslims condoned the Sep 11, 2001, attacks on the US, but none of them gave religious justification for their beliefs, according to the figures released Tuesday.

The Gallup organisation’s poll of some 50,000 people in over 35 predominantly Muslim countries found that what motivated those considered “politically radicalised” was their fear of occupation by the West and the US, though most even admired and hoped for democratic principles.

“Politics, not piety, differentiate moderates from radicals” in the Islamic world, said Dalia Mogahed, executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim studies. “Terrorism sympathisers don’t hate our freedom, they want our freedom.”

The overwhelming majority of Muslims – 93 percent – condemned the Sep 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, and most said the biggest obstacle to better relations with the West was the latter’s lack of respect for Islam.

It’s to the advantage of Bush and the fear-mongers to pin the blame for terror attacks on the Muslim religion, writ larger, rather than the tiny groups of right-wing political extremists who perpetrate the crimes.

Like right-wing political extremists in the United States, al Qaeda and the rest justify their hate-filled political agenda on religious grounds.

GOP Trying to See How Far It Can Go In General Election Without Being Called Racist or Sexist

Trish

It’s easy to see why the GOP wants to avoid one thing more than any other in the general election campaign: “undisciplined messaging.” You say you don’t know what that is? Neither did I until Politico explained it.

Republicans know more than one election is at stake if they appear racist or sexist toward the eventual Democratic nominee. But since they really want to attack Obama for being black and/or Clinton for being female, it’s important to know where the line is and to stay just a hair this side of it.

The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate

The Republican National Committee has commissioned polling and focus groups to determine the boundaries of attacking a minority or female candidate, according to people involved. The secretive effort underscores the enormous risk senior GOP operatives see…

…Republicans should expect a severe backlash if they say or do anything that smacks of politicizing race or gender. They didn’t need an expensive poll to learn that lesson, however.

Or maybe they did. Whereas you or I could just tap a coworker, neighbor, or — dare I say it — friend for some input, evidently your average Republican is just a bit more, shall we say, insulated.

“You can’t run against Barack Obama the way you could run against Bill Clinton, Al Gore or John Kerry,” said Jack Kemp, the 1996 GOP vice presidential nominee, who expressed concern that the party could be reduced to an “all white country club party” if it does not tread cautiously.

Reduced to an all white country club party? I thought they cultivated that image and wore it like a big, shiny Girl Scout badge on a sash slung over their jackets. And I’m not the only one who thought so.

Republicans interviewed for this story uniformly believe they will have to be especially careful. Many expect to be held to a higher rhetorical standard than is customary in campaigns, in part because of perceptions of intolerance that still dog the party.

“Fair or unfair, but that’s going to be a reality,” said GOP strategist John Weaver, a longtime confidant of John McCain. “The P.C. [politically correct] police will be out and the standards will be very narrow.”

Don’t you just love it when the people who gave us such terms as “faith-based initiatives” instead of “state-funded religion” and “low food security” instead of “hunger” and now, “undisciplined messaging” instead of “racism and sexism,” complain about the “P.C. police” (instead of “people offended by insults”)?

The real problem for Republicans is that they’re going to have to come out from the shadows this time and they don’t know how to make a case without insinuation meant to push fear buttons. Pointing out Clinton is a woman or that Obama fathered a black child is anticlimactic. What else you got, GOP?

The Secret of Obama’s Success and Why He’ll Keep Winning – He Listens to George Lakoff

Trish

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank captured the angst foes of Barack Obama are feeling.

The Clintons in the past couple of weeks have done all they could to cook him up into an airy souffle, a candidate so light in substance that he collapses when speared. They exposed him as a guy who copies others’ speeches and makes lofty pledges only to break them.

And yet: The Obama Souffle continues to rise.

Why that is has befuddled many Democrats, particularly Clinton followers. How can Obama score so many wins by offering so little — just hope — and yet everything — hope?

I can answer that question. It’s because Obama gets it. He’s been reading the George Lakoff and Rockridge Institute playbook, Thinking Points and skillfully applying it. Lakoff and Rockridge rewrote the progressive strategy with the concept of framing. Had my guy, John Edwards, followed their advice and like Obama, gone lighter on the policies and heavier on the values, he might be where Obama is today. Dennis Kucinich would have won a primary or two. John Kerry might be president now. Al Gore would not have needed the Supreme Court in 2000.

At some point, Clinton allowed herself to morph into the candidate who does not represent change and derides hope, the authority figure who announces the party is over and it’s time to get back to work. Who wants to vote for that?

Richard Wirthlin, chief strategist for former president Ronald Reagan, made a discovery in 1980 that profoundly changed American politics. As a pollster, he was taught that people vote for candidates on the basis of the candidates’ positions on issues. But his initial polls for Reagan revealed something fascinating: Voters who didn’t agree with Reagan on the issues still wanted to vote for him…

Reagan talked about values rather than issues. Communicating values mattered more than specific policy positions. Reagan connected with people; he communicated well…It was not because all of his values matched theirs exactly. It was not because he was from their socioeconomic class or subculture. It was because they believed in the integrity of his connection with them as well as the connection between his worldview and his actions.

Are Lakoff and Rockridge saying that personality matters more than positions? Pretty much. Because if you don’t have the right kind of the former, you will never get to act on the latter.

Issues are secondary — not irrelevant or unimportant, but secondary. A position on issues should follow from one’s values, and the choice of issues and policies should symbolize those values.

[…]

Bush Getting All Sneaky About FOIA Law

Buck Banks

foia.jpgRemember George Bush’s penchant for signing statements — you know, those little “I signed the bill but now I’m saying it don’t apply to me” post facto add-ons to pieces of legislation. Well, he’s up to his old tricks again, this time seeking to eliminate part of the Freedom of Information Act legislation through an act of legerdemain.

But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-VT., caught him:

In a paragraph improbably located in a portion of President Bush’s fiscal 2009 budget dealing with the Commerce Department, the White House calls for shifting from the National Archives to the Justice Department funds for an FOIA oversight office created under the recently enacted law.

The Office of Government Information Services would house an ombudsman charged with reviewing agency policies, speeding up responses and mediating disputes involving FOIA.

Creation of the ombudsman is one of a series of steps required under the FOIA bill, signed Dec. 31 by President Bush.

But the plan to move the office has caused Leahy and groups advocating government transparency to charge the White House publicly agreed to the measure, but then privately moved to scuttle it in a step comparable to the president’s use of signing statements suggesting he may not be bound by portions of laws he approves.

The Justice Department has long been criticized for its handling of FOIA requests. Basically, the DoJ is quick to deny and slow to fulfill such requests. Add to that the atmosphere of secrecy the administration has created, going so far as to not share the list of visitors Bush has entertained in the Oval Office. And don’t get me started about the millions of “missing” e-mails.

You do have to give the Bushies credit for coming up with a pretty clever, if sinister, tactic to get the Congress to repeal its own law by inserting a little phrase into the omnibus spending bill. And we know how closely those elected officials read important documents, right?

The language in Bush’s budget says the Justice Department will carry out “the responsibilities of the office” created in the bill. The language also says a portion of the FOIA bill dealing with the new office “is hereby repealed.”

Leahy called issuance of the language itself an effort to repeal part of FOIA law. But a Judiciary Committee aide said the provision would only take effect if Congress passed the budget with the section included.

Thank goodness Pat Leahy actually reads that stuff. Even so, the government’s transparency under George Bush is still, as we say in the South, clear as mud.

For a funny suggestion to the commander in thief, check this out.