If Conservatives Left The Military, There Would Be No Military Left - Liberals Do Not Fight For This Country

Political Extremism Infiltrates the Pentagon
New Defense Department advisor Rosa Brooks is about as far to the left as one can go.

from Pajamas Media
April 24, 2009
by Ryan Mauro

Every once in a while something happens so shocking, so inconceivable, that it threatens to remove the last bastions of confidence I have in the federal government. The appointment of Rosa Brooks, the radical left-wing Los Angeles Times columnist, as an advisor to Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michelle Fluornoy is one of those moments. And by advisor, I don’t mean someone who talks on an informal basis — I mean a full-time advisor so committed to helping formulate policy that she had to leave her position as a fire-breathing partisan columnist.

It’s frighteningly unclear what caused Brooks to receive the appointment. She’s the author of a book about civil liberties during wartime, is a law professor, and is the director of Georgetown University Law Center’s Human Rights Institute. But why was Brooks, out of the thousands of legal experts in the country, chosen to become a high-level advisor? What made her so attractive? It can’t be her admittedly impressive resume, as there surely are other equally prestigious advisors available in this country of 300 million people.

Brooks could only have been chosen for the opinions she’s voiced, so it’s fair to ask what positions she has that made her catch the eye of Fluornoy and whoever else recommended her.

Was it her attitude towards the previous administration, which she described as “local authoritarians”? On more than one occasion, she’s questioned the sanity of President Bush, hardly the tone of respect President Obama sought to bring to today’s “broken politics.” In her piece titled “Straightjacket Bush,” Brooks says that the president and vice president should “be treated like psychotics who need treatment.”

Even more alarming are her stances on important national security issues. She opposed the surge, which she says “someday the history books will have harsh words” for. She also charges the Bush administration with exaggerating the threat from al-Qaeda. “At the time, most experts say, this description of al-Qaeda simply wasn’t true. It was little more than an obscure group of extremist thugs, well financed and intermittently lethal but relatively limited in their global and regional political pull. On 9/11, they got lucky,” she writes.

Brooks clearly does not see the horrid event as the culmination of a failed approach to a gathering threat, but an occurrence based on chance. Now, “al-Qaeda has become the vast global threat the administration imagined it to be in 2001,” she says, owing it to the neocon administration’s warped reality.

The Israeli offensive in Gaza against Hamas also drew ire from Brooks. “The assault in Gaza has more to do with internal politics than its national security,” she writes, apparently thinking that having neighboring territory controlled by a terrorist group that openly states its desire to destroy Israel isn’t worthy of a military offensive. She opines that a military campaign won’t bring about peace because Hamas will inevitably rearm and such actions create extremism which foments the conflict. If this logic is true, then the U.S. might as well leave Afghanistan and stop any attacks on terrorist targets overseas.

Brooks is also a member of the paranoid opposition — the type of political activist who so dislikes their rivals that they become convinced they are capable of all kinds of evil, reduced to an almost subhuman cornucopia of insanity and deceit. She sounded the alarm that the Bush administration was on the war path with Iran, willing to believe intelligence that incriminated their next target and showcase it to the media to make their case. She cast doubt upon the administration’s claims that the Iranians were helping arm the insurgents, giving the mullahs a benefit of the doubt she would never give the administration.

With Brooks’ appointment, this sentiment has gone from simply foolish and disrespectful to dangerous, as her hyper-partisanship has caused her to assume that one must be mentally ill in order to agree with President Bush’s positions. That sort of arrogance and narrow-mindedness, assuming your opponents’ disagreements can only be attributable to a disorder, is exactly the opposite of the type of minds we need at the Department of Defense.

This isn’t talk radio. This is policy formulation. Unless there’s an undisclosed advisor to Fluornoy of an opposite viewpoint, then a partisan enclave where the far left has a monopoly on intellectual discourse has been created in the Pentagon. For the sake of our national security, we must hope that Fluornoy’s admiration for Brooks’ viewpoints is limited to legal matters and hope that the marketplace of ideas hasn’t been banned from the debate on that issue.

Ironically, Brooks has criticized President Bush’s “cooking of the intelligence books.” If the politicizing of national security is of such a concern to Brooks, she should resign immediately.
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Obama is now Politically and Militarily Raping Israel - It Is Undeniable!

The flags of the United States and Israel shouold be flown at half-mast, because we are truly witnessing the death of our relationship with Israel.
Rees

NATO member Turkey and Syria hold first joint military exercise
DEBKAfile Special Report
April 26, 2009

The joint Turkish-Syrian tank and armored infantry exercise backed by air power begins across the Turkish-Syrian border Monday, April 27, and lasts three days.

DEBKAfile's military sources stress that it is the first joint military maneuver any NATO member, including Turkey, has ever carried out with Syria. It appears to have received a nod from the Obama administration and another first: Never before has an important NATO power staged a joint exercise with any Arab army.

Ankara's decision to launch the drill on the day Israeli commemorates its war dead - in league with Iran's leading ally - is a measure of how far Turkey's longstanding strategic pact with the Jewish state has fallen by the wayside of recent changes.

Washington's approval underscores its new policy of boosting the strength of the Syrian army as partner in a strong a three-way military coalition with Turkey and Lebanon.

Ankara made its announcement while US secretary of state Hillary Clinton was on a short visit to Beirut.

It comes only four days after another first US step: Tuesday, April 22, DEBKAfile's exclusive sources reported that the Obama administration had just approved a large Turkish arms sale to the Lebanese army assigning Turkish military instructors to train Lebanese army units (half of whose personnel are Shiites sympathetic to Hizballah.)

Neither of the Obama administration's actions took into account Israel's vital security interests; nor was Jerusalem consulted about the strategic changes on its borders - or even informed.

DEBKAfile reports that both US drastic policy reverses are causing extreme consternation in Israel's top security echelons, which are criticizing the new Netanyahu government for taking too long to respond to the dire security setbacks piling up around its borders. The most troubling development confronting Israel in years is the grouping together of the Turkish, Syrian and Lebanese armies.

According to the statement from Ankara, the joint exercise "aims to boost friendship, cooperation and trust between Turkish and Syrian land forces and to increase the capability of border troops to train and work together."

In recent weeks, too many developments are closing in too fast and too dangerously for Binyamin Netanyahu to put the whole can of worms on hold until he has a chance to figure out his policies and talk to Barack Obama in the coming month. The dynamic on the ground will be in full flight by then. Too late, the Israeli prime minister will find the security situation running out of his control. Turning back the clock will be hopeless and he will find himself fed some unpalatable accomplished facts.
Click to read this and other great articles at the Debka File

Don't Be So Sensitive, Mr. President

photo of Roxana Saberi who continues to be held captive in Iran

Truth comes before reconciliation.

By Christopher Hitchens
Monday, April 13, 2009
from Slate.com

President Barack Obama's visit to Europe afforded us an opportunity to gauge the strengths and weaknesses of his style in operation. And, even though he has almost attained the Holy Grail of public relations—in other words, he is practically at that ineffable and serene point where he gets good press for getting good press—there may come a time when even his trans-Atlantic admirers will have to take a second look.

His speech in Strasbourg, France, was much too long, given the youth of the audience and the way in which presidential sonorousness ate into the time that was to be allowed for questions, but its aim of changing the American tone was largely successful. I thought that the best moment was when he focused on the German and French citizens who had perished in the World Trade Center. George W. Bush always spoke as if the atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001, were an attack on the United States only and drew the corollary in his rhetoric that you are either "with" the United States or with the "terrists" (as he always seemed to think they were called). By underlining the losses suffered by other countries, not only did Obama redress this imbalance, he also gently but firmly reminded Europeans that this was and is their struggle, too.
Related in Slate

One would have liked a bit more of this combination and perhaps very slightly less willingness to make disclaimers about American power. It's absurd to act as if, at NATO and G20 meetings, the United States is just another modest member. In the case of NATO, it is at least "first among equals," or primus inter pares, in that its military strength is greater than that of all the other members of the alliance combined. In the case of the world's economic powers, a disproportionate share of the blame for the current crisis lies with America and so does a comparably vast element of the chance that the decline can be reversed. It is obviously not a moment to strut around impersonating a hyperpower, but that doesn't mean that Madeleine Albright's injunction about the United States being a "necessary" power can be disowned, either.

The limitations of the Obama manner were exposed in his address to the Turkish parliament and his press conference with the Turkish leadership. The president did not take the opportunity to reiterate his principled stand on the Armenian genocide that we are commemorating this month and took refuge in platitudes about healing and negotiation. It's not as if the Turks don't know what he thinks, so it's difficult to see the value of undue reticence. And it's hardly an accident that, in all successful attempts at settling accounts with the past in other nations, the word reconciliation has invariably been preceded by the word truth. The first duty is to stop lying. Only then can any genuine attempt at settlement get under way.

It was also somewhat naive of Obama to deny that the United States is "or ever will be" at war with Islam. Of course, one cannot exactly make war on a faith, most especially a faith that is currently undergoing a civil war within itself, in which Turkey has several times been attacked by Bin Ladenist forces. But twice in the past, jihad has been officially proclaimed from Turkey's capital. It was in the name of the Quran that the piratical Ottoman provinces known as the Barbary States took hundreds of thousands of American and European voyagers into slavery in the 18th century, until Thomas Jefferson dispatched the fleet and the Marines to put down the trade, and it was from Constantinople that the Ottoman military alliance with German imperialism in 1914 was proclaimed as a holy war binding on all good Muslims. In other words, what one really wants is an assurance that Islam is not, nor ever will be, at war (again) with the United States.

That Obama is confused about this, and also slightly weak, is demonstrated by his earlier attempt at quiet diplomacy, or constructive engagement, or whatever we agree to call it, with Iran. He sent a message to "the people and leaders of Iran" on the occasion of Nowruz, or New Year—a day that he may or may not have known is slightly frowned upon by the Islamic authorities, because it involves fire ceremonies and other celebrations that predate the Muslim conquest of Persia. Any offense they might have taken on that score must have been mollified when the president twice referred to the country as "the Islamic Republic of Iran," as in, "The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations."

Does this boilerplate goodwill represent anything true? In order for the great and civilized nation of Persia to take its rightful place in the community of nations, it would have to be able to demonstrate that its leadership was freely chosen by its own people and that it was willing to abide by agreements and undertakings (on nontrifling matters such as nuclear proliferation) that it had solemnly signed. The mullahs rule Iran on the basis of a Khomeini-ite dogma known as the veliyate faqui, which makes them the owners and "guardians" of all the country's citizens. And they have been covertly seeking enriched uranium of the sort not required for a civilian nuclear program, while never ceasing to proclaim the imminent and apocalyptic return of the 12th or "hidden" imam. In other words, in order to claim its "rightful place" in any recognizable community of nations, Iran would in effect have to cease to be an Islamic republic.

Meanwhile, the theocratic regime has several times exerted its power to arrest and imprison Iranian-Americans for "offenses" that would not be crimes in any civilized country. The most recent such outrage is the imprisonment of journalist Roxana Saberi, framed for allegedly buying a bottle of wine. We should hear more from the White House about her case and less about the sensitivities of her jailers. Some differences cannot be split. Many conflicts are real and do not arise from mere cultural misunderstandings. Obama must learn this or be taught it, whichever comes sooner.
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No To at NATO - Obama's Failure to secure combat troop support from our NATO allies

from Cheat-Seeking Missiles

April 4th 2009
Obama’s NATO Failure
Posted by: Laer

Oh, they love him and think he’s just great, but Prez-O’s going away gift from NATO was just a crummy T-shirt emblazoned with, “I went to France and all I got was 5,000 non-combatant troops.” Charm or no charm, Obama is no more successful than his much reviled predecessor when it comes to moving Europe.

But he’s much better at lying about it:

“I am pleased that our NATO allies pledged their strong and unanimous support for our new strategy. We’ll need more resources and a sustained effort to achieve our ultimate goals.”

Sorry; if you need more resources and sustained effort to achieve our goals, why are you pleased with NATO’s laughably puny decision, and why do you call it “strong?” Is that like calling the debt-hole-digging budget “A New Era of Responsiblity?” It’s more like the same old era of Europe counting on us to defend it, and criticising us when we do.

The 27 other NATO countries agreed to send 3,000 personnel on short-term deployments leading up to Afghanistan’s August elections, so they’ll be there for four months max. Another 1,400 to 2,000 will provide training for Afghanistan’s army. That’s it - but Angela Merle assures us that it’s enough to ensure that “no more terrorist danger emanates from Afghanistan.”

Wanna bet?

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Shun The One? Say It Ain't So...

The Ultimate put-down "A Handshake instead of a Kiss!"

Ouch! Will the 'One' be psychologically scarred from this! Isn't this blasphemy? A hate crime? Please forgive her for she knows not what she has done, or in this case, not done.
Rees

from Don Surber
April 3, 2009

My head is spinning from all these protocol problems in President Obama’s European vacation.

Yesterday’s news was that the Queen put her arm around Michelle Obama, who then put her arm around the Queen. Apparently the rule is no touching the Queen.

Today the controversy, as reported by the London Sun, is Carla Bruni refusing to kiss The Won.

The Sun: “French first lady broke with protocol today as she held out a frosty hand to welcome Barack Obama.”

Reading this, one would think Franco-American relations have not been this frosty since DeGaulle ordered the NATO military out of Paris, ruining a nice overseas tour.

And check out Mrs. Obama’s reaction to the smooch by L’Americain.

Can this marriage between France and America be saved?

Maybe Obama should write President Chirac…
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Who Played The Part of Being STUPID?

This is great. Further proof that no one in the Obama Administration, from the President on down, is ever responsible for anything that goes wrong. It's either someone else's fault, or it's petty finger pointing from the outside. Yeah right!

The White House gave out a dial-in number for a Conference call with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton which actually turned out to be a toll-free number for a Sex Line.

But listen to what the White House had to say when questioned about it:

Asked for comment about this mishap, Deputy White House Press Secretary Bill Burton responded: "A corrected phone number on a press release is probably one of the stupider things FOX News has covered lately."

Yes, he really said that.
Rees

White House Corrects Conference Call Number After Directing Reporters to Sex Line

In a press release, the White House accidentally listed a phone sex number for journalists seeking an "on-the-record briefing call with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor Jim Jones to discuss the NATO summit."

from FOXNews.com
Thursday, April 02, 2009

Journalists seeking to talk a little foreign policy with high-profile Obama administration officials live from the G20 meetings in London this week were solicited for phone sex instead after ringing up the toll-free number given by the White House.

In a press release, the White House accidentally listed a sex line number for journalists seeking an "on-the-record briefing call with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security Advisor Jim Jones to discuss the NATO summit."

But after dialing, a soft-voiced female recording that was clearly not Clinton asked for a credit card number if you "feel like getting nasty."

After several efforts to make sure that the phone number was correctly dialed, a call to the White House resulted in a corrected press release. "If you are having trouble dialing into the call, please try this number as an alternative," and listed the international line included for reporters abroad to dial.

By this time, the conference call was already under way.

Asked for comment about this mishap, Deputy White House Press Secretary Bill Burton responded: "A corrected phone number on a press release is probably one of the stupider things FOX News has covered lately."

Click to go to the article

Police, protesters clash before NATO summit

STRASBOURG, France – Riot police used tear gas and rubber bullets to beat back a crowd of several hundred anti-NATO protesters in Strasbourg on Thursday as the city in eastern France, host of the alliance's 60th anniversary summit, readied for the arrival of world leaders.

Police lobbed hundreds of tear gas canisters during clashes between about 40 riot police and some 200 masked protesters in the neighborhood of Neuhoff, in the southern part of the city near the German border.

The masked protesters had been among a crowd of about 800 demonstrators when they broke away and repeatedly pelted officers with rocks and bottles. There were no immediate reports of injuries. Police said a dozen protesters were arrested. At one point, protesters set fire in the middle of a street to building materials they had scooped up from a nearby construction site.
By late Thursday, calm had returned to Strasbourg, but two more full days of planned protests lie ahead.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators have descended on Strasbourg and two southwest German towns to protest the cross-border summit of members of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance, which begins Friday. In Strasbourg, many shops and small businesses have shut down during the summit.

Twenty-eight world leaders will attend the two-day summit, including President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
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Christian extremist kills 48 at Pakistan mosque -- no, wait...It was actually a Muslim

More Muslims Killing Muslims
from Jihad Watch.com
"A government official accused Islamist militants of carrying out the bombing in revenge for a recent offensive aimed in part at protecting the major supply route for NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan that passes in front of the mosque."

Remember this one the next time you hear a story about Muslims outraged over Americans, or Israelis returning fire from a mosque, or over alleged desecration of a Qur'an, etc.

by Riaz Khan
from Associated Press
March 27, 2009

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A suicide bomber demolished a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers attending Friday prayers close to the Afghan border, killing at least 48 people and injuring scores more, officials said.

The attack in the Khyber region was the bloodiest in Pakistan this year and came hours before President Barack Obama was due to unveil a revised strategy expected to emphasize the need to eradicate militant havens along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier.

A government official accused Islamist militants of carrying out the bombing in revenge for a recent offensive aimed in part at protecting the major supply route for NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan that passes in front of the mosque.

"Residents of this area had cooperated and helped us a lot. These infidels had warned that they will take revenge," said Tariq Hayat, the top administrator of the Khyber tribal region. "They are the enemy of Pakistan. They are the enemy of Islam."

Rising violence in Pakistan is fueling doubts about the pro-Western government's ability to counter Taliban and al-Qaida militants also blamed for attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan.

The bomber hit the mosque, a popular stop for travelers motoring between Pakistan and Afghanistan, when about 250 people were attending Friday prayers, said Hayat....
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Poland Fears Betrayal by Obama

Read the official news release of the latest intercept

Watch the video of the latest intercept

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted Monday, March 23, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Alliances: The U.S. has expressed a willingness to barter away missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Now the Polish foreign minister says he hopes his country doesn't regret trusting the United States.

The Brussels Forum is a privately organized high-level meeting of the most influential North American and European political, corporate and intellectual leaders to address pressing challenges currently facing both sides of the Atlantic.

One of the pressing issues discussed at this year's conference was whether the U.S. is serious about bartering away plans for missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for vague Russian promises of using its influence on Iran regarding its move toward developing nuclear warheads to put on its long-range missiles.

On Sunday, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski noted that Poland had taken "something of a political risk" in agreeing to the deployment of 10 ground-based interceptors on its territory. "When we started discussing this with the United States," he said, "the U.S. assured us they would persuade the Russians that it was purely defensive and it would be a noncontroversial decision."

Now we are wishing the Iranians, whose missiles our ground-based interceptors are designed to intercept, a Happy New Year and suggesting to the Russians that if they can do something about Iran's nuclear and missile programs, we would reconsider our missile defense plans and saw off the limb our Czech and Polish allies have climbed out on.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates did not ease our allies' fears when he said at a NATO meeting in Krakow, Poland, on Feb. 20, "I told the Russians a year ago that if there were no Iranian missile program, there would be no need for the missile sites."

This comment came not long after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened to deploy SS-26 Iskander missiles in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, situated between our NATO allies Poland and Lithuania, targeting the Polish site.

The Poles and the Czechs, who have known true freedom for only a short time after enduring both Nazi and Communist oppression, have experienced the consequences of diplomatic betrayal — first at Munich and later at Yalta.

They sense another betrayal coming in a deal with a belligerent Russian aggressor willing to wage war with the former Soviet state of Georgia, as well as threaten the Ukraine and use the Ukrainian pipeline to starve energy-dependent Europeans of natural gas.

"We hope we don't regret our trust in the United States," Sikorski said to an audience of senior world politicians and other leaders.

At the same event, Rep. Ellen Tauscher, who is expected to be named the new U.S. undersecretary for arms control and international security, repeated the administration line that a missile system would not be deployed until it was "proven" to work. It is easier to give away an "unproven" system.

Missile defense has already proved to be eminently workable and successful. According to the Missile Defense Agency, since 2001 there have been 37 successful hit-to-kill intercepts out of 47 attempts, an astounding 80% success rate. We've even shot a decaying and dangerous spy satellite out of the sky.

Former Missile Defense Agency Chief Gen. Trey Obering III has said that after dozens of successful missile intercepts, "Our testing has shown not only can we hit a bullet with a bullet, we can hit a spot on a bullet with a bullet."

Unilaterally scrapping European missile defense could shatter the NATO alliance as we retreat to a Fortress America behind our own ground-based interceptors and Aegis-equipped missile defense destroyers and cruisers.

The basis of NATO's purpose and existence — collective security — would be shredded as we showed a willingness to sacrifice allies for diplomatic convenience. Either we all hang together or we all hang separately.

Our Polish and Czech friends have to wonder: Are we the next Georgia? Are we about to trade away the trust of our allies and our collective security for another empty promise of peace in our time?
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