Pelosi is the ultimate hypocrit!

Pelosi promises an “inventory” of every American’s carbon footprint

Video: Inventorying Pelosi
from Hot Air.com
May 29,2009
by Ed Morrissey

It’s an interesting time when an American political leader goes to China — and winds up sounding more authoritarian than the government in Beijing. Nancy Pelosi managed it while discussing the way green policies will be enforced in the Democratic regime in Washington DC. When pressed on specifics, Pelosi promised an “inventory” of every American’s carbon footprint (via Say Anything):

In answering a question from a student about how Pelosi was going to get Americans to cut back on their carbon emissions, the leading Democratic lawmaker said it was important to educate children on how to conserve energy and for citizens to build more environmentally friendly homes.

“We have so much room for improvement,” she said. “Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory … of how we are taking responsibility.”

Hmmm …. and who would conduct these “inventories”? A YouTube video speculates on that question:



Make no mistake about it. The climate-change activists want state control of energy production and use, which will allow the government control over every aspect of our lives. It’s the lifelong dream of utopian elitists. This only counts as a gaffe under the definition of the term as “the accidental telling of an embarrassing truth by a politician”.

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Obama gets schooled on terror: Cheney bests him in speech duel — by sticking to the facts

from The New York Daily News
by Michael Goodwin
May 24, 2009

It was a tale of two speeches. One was clear, direct and powerful. Barack Obama gave the other speech.

It would have been heresy to write those words any other time, so commanding has President Obama been with the spoken word. But the real Mission Impossible was to imagine that wheezy old Dick Cheney would be the speaker to best Obama.

Yet that happened last week, and I predict it won't be a fluke. From here on out, results will increasingly trump the sensation of Obama's high-toned lectures every time.

Especially if they are as dreary as last Thursday's, which was so disingenuous and self-reverential as to be one of the low moments of his presidency. Besides not being able to clearly lay out his plan for Guantanamo detainees, Obama never mentioned what will happen to others we capture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps we will take no more prisoners?

Meanwhile, the occasion showed that Cheney, the darkest of dark horses, is emerging as a fact checker in exile. With Democrats holding all Washington power, the ex-veep's willingness to challenge Obama's narrative of the war on terror is a poor substitute for an institutional check-and-balance, but it's all we have.

In that sense, Cheney's ability to outduel Obama could mark a turning point in the debate on this and other critical issues. His TKO over the President recalls the three most important things in real estate: Location, location, location.

The key to Cheney's powerful performance: Facts, facts, facts.

Cheney, whose wife jokes that calling him Darth Vader "humanizes" him, coughed his way through a 40-minute defense of the Bush administration's anti-terror strategy. He glossed over huge lapses, such as the flawed intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq, but used to great effect the most compelling fact - no successful attacks on America since 9/11.

In a contrast-and-compare sequence, he challenged Obama's approach, including the release of the so-called torture memos and talk of prosecuting Bush officials.

"To the very end of our administration, we kept Al Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems," Cheney said. "We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed."

For his part, Obama sounded like a put-upon plaintiff arguing a Supreme Court case. The heavy symbolism of his setting, the National Archives in front of an original copy of the Constitution, added to the worrisome impression he is lost in the legal and political weeds.

Ironically, his criticism that Bush took his eye off the ball to invade Iraq has a corollary in Obama's fixation on interrogation techniques. He is missing the larger point.

After conceding terrorism presents unique challenges, Obama argued "the decisions that were made over the last eight years established an ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable - a framework that failed to rely on our legal traditions and time-tested institutions; that failed to use our values as a compass."

Whoa Nellie - are the terrorists going to hit us again or not? That's what people want to know, not whether a bunch of lawyers think we're being too tough on them.

Unfortunately, Obama was less than reassuring, saying: "Neither I nor anyone else standing here today can say that there will not be another terrorist attack that takes American lives."

That's a fact, of course, but it's also a fact that he's been warned his policies will make it more likely we will be hit again.

It's a warning he dismisses at America's peril.
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Roosting Chickens Plague Obama

image by rees
article from Pajamas Media
by Jennifer Rubin
May 24, 2009

The Obama administration had the sort of week they’d rather see disappear down the memory hole.

But unfortunately for the president, the trouble may just be beginning.

First, on the economic front the notion that we are going to bounce back soon from the recession is proving to be a pipe dream. The CBO predicted double-digit unemployment continuing to rise into 2010. Rasmussen reported:

The Rasmussen Investor Index dropped 15 points on Friday, the largest single day decline ever recorded in its seven-year history. The drop caps a week of extreme volatility for the Index and now shows investor confidence at the lowest level in two months.

The culprit — both for the volatility and the current low level of confidence — is shifting perceptions on where the economy is heading next. Today, just 24% of investors say the economy is getting better while 47% say it is getting worse. A couple of days ago, the outlook was much less pessimistic: 34% better and 40% worse.

And the ever-growing mound of debt is triggering concern among purchasers of U.S. debt. The Wall Street Journal reported:

The yield of the benchmark U.S. 10-year bond, which moves in the opposite direction to the price, rose by 0.15 percentage point from Wednesday to 3.355%, its highest level in six months. … Thursday’s selloff in U.S. and U.K. government bonds highlights the risks the two countries face as they try to jump-start their economies. The two governments hope that all the money they are borrowing will spur so much growth that the debt will shrink as a portion of their economies. The risk is that growth will be weak, leaving the economies still struggling but with heavy debt loads.

Moreover, the result of the president’s spend-a-thon and the Fed’s hyperactive printing press has been a plunge in the U.S. dollar and renewed fears of stagflation.

This, of course, is the economic picture which Republicans painted when they inveighed against Obama’s stimulus and budget plans. They (and all those Tea Party protestors) warned that the sea of red ink spilling from the U.S. Treasury couldn’t be readily absorbed by purchasers of U.S. debt and the result would soon be higher interest rates and slowed growth. It is the argument they continue to employ in objecting to the gigantic spending items still on the Obama budget.

They now have some evidence to support their arguments. This week the reality was driven home: the Obama economic plan is a faulty and unsustainable one. And those Democrats on the ballot in 2010 had better buckle up — it is going to be a bumpy ride.

On the national security front, the week brought a bevy of problems and complications for the president. His own party is in revolt, voting 90-6 in the Senate to defund his scheme to relocate Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. Nancy Pelosi is now reduced to “stonewalling” to fend off reporters’ queries about whether the CIA “misled” her.

Under siege, the president was forced into a speech face-off with Dick Cheney, once the source of eye-rolling and derision from Democrats who couldn’t believe one of the least popular politicians in America could cause a stir. But a stir was indeed caused by the former vice president’s insistence on defending the Bush administration’s record in the war on terror. As Politico observed:

For the first time in his presidency, Americans are getting a glimpse of Barack Obama on defense. Over the past few weeks, Obama has been back on his heels over torture and terror, issues on which he surely thought he had the upper hand. And he spent Thursday charges from a man he surely thought he had vanquished in November, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

But Obama’s speech was devoid of specifics on the issue of the day: what to do with the Guantanamo detainees. And that left congressional Democrats twisting in the wind, as Politico reported:

And even the speech, which stopped short of laying out a detailed plan for the Guantanamo detainees, left some frustration among congressional leaders. “In our perfect world, he would have given this speech before the vote [on stripping funding to close Gitmo]. It was a good speech, but there weren’t enough specifics in it that he couldn’t have nipped this in the bud last week or the week before,” said another leadership aide.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid grumbled that it was not a “game-changer” and that Democrats are “all awaiting the details of the plan and the president is going to come up with one.”

The problem for Obama is obvious: he has committed to closing Guantanamo with no viable plan for dispersing its detainees. In the process he has rekindled concerns as to whether he and his party are tough enough to fight the war on terror. Added to that dilemma is the challenge to manage disappointed allies on the Left who have figured out that despite his rhetorical broadsides against the Bush administration he has adopted many of its policies in the war on terror.

The Los Angeles Times summed up his predicament:

But his lengthy address, in which he conceded that his policies were still evolving, laid out a mixed approach that could be portrayed as squishy.

He defended actions that have angered conservatives, such as ordering the closure of Guantanamo Bay. But he also had to explain to frustrated liberals why he had accepted some of the Bush administration’s detention policies, such as the system of military commissions that tries many of the detainees captured in battle.

The bottom line: this week was one in which reality rudely intruded into the Obama feel-good continual campaign. The bond markets can’t be spun. The unemployment figures can’t be ignored. The value of the U.S. dollar can’t be sustained when we are printing gobs of dollars. And neither congressional Democrats nor the American people can be convinced it makes sense to move hardened terrorists from a distant, secure location to their neighborhood prison for the sake of currying favor with the American Left and European opinion makers.

This governing business is hard stuff. And it is made harder by an administration which has used photo-ops and speeches in lieu of thoughtful policy. This week we saw, as the president’s former pastor once said, that the chickens are coming home to roost.

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What Started The California Wildfires?

from Investor's Business Daily

by Michael Ramirez

Obama in Bush Clothing

from The Washington Post
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, May 22, 2009

"We were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning." -- Unnamed and dismayed human rights advocate, on legalizing indefinite detention of alleged terrorists,
the New York Times, May 21

If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, then the flip-flops on previously denounced anti-terror measures are the homage that Barack Obama pays to George Bush. Within 125 days, Obama has adopted with only minor modifications huge swaths of the entire, allegedly lawless Bush program.

The latest flip-flop is the restoration of military tribunals. During the 2008 campaign, Obama denounced them repeatedly, calling them an "enormous failure." Obama suspended them upon his swearing-in. Now they're back.

Of course, Obama will never admit in word what he's doing in deed. As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush's moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy.

Cosmetic changes such as Obama's declaration that "we will give detainees greater latitude in selecting their own counsel." Laughable. High-toned liberal law firms are climbing over each other for the frisson of representing these miscreants in court.

What about disallowing evidence received under coercive interrogation? Hardly new, notes former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy. Under the existing rules, military judges have that authority, and they exercised it under the Bush administration to dismiss charges against al-Qaeda operative Mohammed al-Qahtani on precisely those grounds.

On Guantanamo, it's Obama's fellow Democrats who have suddenly discovered the wisdom of Bush's choice. In open rebellion against Obama's pledge to shut it down, the Senate voted 90 to 6 to reject appropriating a single penny until the president explains where he intends to put the inmates. Sen. James Webb, the de facto Democratic authority on national defense, wants the closing to be put on hold. And on Tuesday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, no Gitmo inmates on American soil -- not even in American jails.

That doesn't leave a lot of places. The home countries won't take them. Europe is recalcitrant. Saint Helena needs refurbishing. Elba didn't work out too well the first time. And Devil's Island is now a tourist destination. Gitmo is starting to look good again.

Observers of all political stripes are stunned by how much of the Bush national security agenda is being adopted by this new Democratic government. Victor Davis Hanson (National Review) offers a partial list: "The Patriot Act, wiretaps, e-mail intercepts, military tribunals, Predator drone attacks, Iraq (i.e., slowing the withdrawal), Afghanistan (i.e., the surge) -- and now Guantanamo."

Jack Goldsmith (The New Republic) adds: rendition -- turning over terrorists seized abroad to foreign countries; state secrets -- claiming them in court to quash legal proceedings on rendition and other erstwhile barbarisms; and the denial of habeas corpus -- to detainees in Afghanistan's Bagram prison, indistinguishable logically and morally from Guantanamo.

What does it all mean? Democratic hypocrisy and demagoguery? Sure, but in Washington, opportunism and cynicism are hardly news.

There is something much larger at play -- an undeniable, irresistible national interest that, in the end, beyond the cheap politics, asserts itself. The urgencies and necessities of the actual post-9/11 world, as opposed to the fanciful world of the opposition politician, present a rather narrow range of acceptable alternatives.

Among them: reviving the tradition of military tribunals, used historically by George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Winfield Scott, Abraham Lincoln, Arthur MacArthur and Franklin Roosevelt. And inventing Guantanamo -- accessible, secure, offshore and nicely symbolic (the tradition of island exile for those outside the pale of civilization is a venerable one) -- a quite brilliant choice for the placement of terrorists, some of whom, the Bush administration immediately understood, would have to be detained without trial in a war that could be endless.

The genius of democracy is that the rotation of power forces the opposition to come to its senses when it takes over. When the new guys, brought to power by popular will, then adopt the policies of the old guys, a national consensus is forged and a new legitimacy established.

That's happening before our eyes. The Bush policies in the war on terror won't have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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To close, or not to close. That is the question...

from America's Right
Friday, May 22, 2009

The RNC's New 'Daisy' Ad

Committee uses Democrats' own words, images to illustrate point on closure of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detainee facility.

Yesterday, the RNC released an advertisement touting the indecision among Democrats regarding the closure of the terrorist detainee facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Using the Democrats own words against themselves, all put in front of a backdrop made famous by Lyndon Johnson, the architect of the War on Poverty, was a very nice touch.

The stakes are indeed very, very high, and I don't find it particularly comforting that the president seems to be intent on satisfying the far left, fighting dissent on both sides of the political aisle to do so, and leaving the safety and security of the United States hanging in the balance.

Then again, when even the vice president himself essentially confirms that this decision was indeed made without having any sort of planned alternative, what else can you expect?

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Obama: "Upholding values will shield US from terror" - Yeah, like Al Qaeda cares

If there is a terror attack on the United States while Obama is President, not only will the blood be on his hands, but the American People will never forgive him. They are hearing all this patty-cake chatter from him, and those that voted for him continue to slobber all over themselves.

However, even his own supporters will disown him after the first attack. They understand the difference between the way Bush handled the war on terror, and they see that per Obama's direction there is no war on terror.

When 9/11 happened, there was no Guantanamo Bay or Abu Graib yet to incite the terrorists. Maybe he should review his history.

So what "values were we straying from that undermined the rule of law, alienated us from our allies, energized our adversaries and endangered our national security and the lives of our troops?"
Rees

from Breitbart.com
May 22,2009

President Barack Obama Friday warned America risked its security when it compromised its values, seeking support for his bid to sketch a new legal framework for anti-terror policies.

Obama used the backdrop of the US Naval Academy graduation ceremony to argue that founding US ideals must guide the future battle against terrorism, a day after trying to quell raging debate over Guantanamo Bay in a major speech.

"We uphold our fundamental principles and values not just because we choose to, but because we swear to -- not because they feel good, but because they help keep us safe," Obama told 30,000 graduating navy cadets and family members.

"When America strays from our values, it not only undermines the rule of law, it alienates us from our allies, it energizes our adversaries and it endangers our national security and the lives of our troops."

Obama told the graduates they would face a "full spectrum of threats" from 18th century-style piracy to cyber terrorism.

"As long as I am your commander-in-chief, I will only send you into harm's way when it is absolutely necessary," Obama said, in an apparent veiled criticism of the Bush administration war in Iraq, which the president has argued was unnecessary.

Earlier, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, which Obama has ordered shut by next January, had to be closed because it had become a "taint" on the image of the United States.

"The truth is, it's probably one of the finest prisons in the world today. But it has a taint," Gates told NBC television's "Today" program during a visit to New York.

"The name itself is a condemnation. What the president was saying is, this will be an advertisement for Al-Qaeda as long as it's open," he said.

But McCain was critical of Obama's speech on Thursday, accusing him of making an announcement with great fanfare in January that he would close the camp, without planning properly what to do with the inmates.

"Frankly, the president's speech, where he said he was going to consult with Congress -- that's not a policy," McCain told Fox.

Obama on Thursday vowed no retreat on closing Guantanamo Bay, branding the prison a "mess" and charging that Bush-era anti-terror tactics were rooted in fear and ideology.

He also raised the prospect of holding the most dangerous Al-Qaeda detainees indefinitely in US "super-max" jails, in a speech designed to recapture the initiative in a row over his national security policies.

Obama took on critics on the right who believe "anything goes" in the fight against terrorism, and rebuked allies on the left who he said believed that in all cases transparency should triumph over national security.

Moments later, former vice president Dick Cheney hit back with his own speech at the American Enterprise Institute think tank, vehemently justifying the Bush approach, including harsh CIA interrogations derided by critics as torture and setting up Guantanamo outside the US legal framework.
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The 10 Punches Cheney Landed on Obama's Jaw

from the Telegraph.co.uk
Posted By: Toby Harnden
at May 21, 2009
Posted in: Foreign Correspondents

The spectacle of two duelling speeches with a mile of each other in downtown Washington was extraordinary. I was at the Cheney event and watched Obama's address on a big screen beside the empty lectern that the former veep stepped behind barely two minutes after his adversary had finished.

So who won the fight? (it's hard to use anything other than a martial or pugilistic metaphor). Well, most people are on either one side or the other of this issue and I doubt today will have prompted many to switch sides.

But the very fact that Obama chose to schedule his speech (Cheney's was announced first) at exactly the same time as the former veep was a sign of some weakness.

The venues for the speeches said something. Obama showily chose the National Archives, repository for many of the founding documents of the US, and spoke in front of a copy of the Constitution - cloaking himself in the flag, as Republicans were often criticised for doing.

To hear Cheney speak, we were crammed into a decidedly unglamourous and cramped conference room at AEI, favourite think tank of conservative hawks.

The former veep's speech was factual and unemotional and certainly devoid of the kind of hokey, self-obsessed, campaign-style stuff like this, from Obama's address today: "I stand here today as someone whose own life was made possible by these documents. My father came to these shores in search of the promise that they offer. My mother made me rise before dawn to learn their truths when I lived as a child in a foreign land."

In terms of Obama's purported aim for his speech - to present a plan for closing Guantanamo Bay aimed at placating Congress - he failed. The reception on Capitol Hill was lukewarm with even Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Cheney's speech wasn't stylish, there were no rhetorical flourishes and the tone was bitingly sarcastic and disdainful at times. But it was effective in many respects and Cheney showed that Obama is not invulnerable. Here are 10 of the punches he landed on the President's jaw:

Cheney's speech is in bold letters followed by the comments of the writer of this article

1. "I've heard occasional speculation that I'm a different man after 9/11. I wouldn't say that, but I'll freely admit that watching a coordinated, devastating attack on our country from an underground bunker at the White House can affect how you view your responsibilities."

Anyone who was in New York or Washington on 9/11 (I was here in DC) was profoundly affected and most Americans understand this. Obama was, as far as I can tell, in Chicago. His response - he was then a mere state senator for liberal Hyde Park - was startlingly hand-wringing and out of step with how most Americans were feeling. This statement by Cheney reminds people of the tough decisions he and Bush had to make - ones that Obama has not yet faced.

2. "The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a law- enforcement problem, with everything handled after the fact: arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed."

This was the pre-9/11 mindset, much criticised after the attacks. Many sense that this is the approach Obama is increasingly taking.

3. "By presidential decision last month, we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public's right to know. We're informed as well that there was much agonizing over this decision. Yet somehow, when the soul searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth."

The release of the documents was a nakedly political move by Obama and Cheney called him on it. This passage from Obama's speech today came across as completely disingenuous: "I did not do this because I disagreed with the enhanced interrogation techniques that those memos authorized, and I didn't release the documents because I rejected their legal rationales -- although I do on both counts. I released the memos because the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known, the Bush Administration had acknowledged its existence, and I had already banned those methods."


4. "It's hard to imagine a worse precedent filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse than to have an incoming administration criminalize the policy decisions of its predecessor. Apart from doing a serious injustice to intelligence operators and lawyers, who deserve far better for their devoted service, the danger here is a loss of focus on national security and what it requires."

Obama's suggestion that Bush administration officials might be prosecuted for legal and policy judgements about what was an was not permissible in interrogations was chilling. I doubt most Americans have any enthusiasm for such a witch-hunt and it flies in the face of Obama's stated desire not to "re-litigate" the Bush years.

5. "We had a lot of blind spots after the attacks on our country, things we didn't know about al Qaeda. We didn't know about al Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we did not think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all."

The political climate is very different now from what it was just after 9/11 but it could change again in a heartbeat if and when there is another terrorist attack. Most Americans do not favour torture but do want the CIA and other agencies to question suspected terrorists very vigorously indeed if there is any chance they might know something about an attack on the US homeland.

6. "On his second day in office, President Obama announced he was closing the detention facility at Guantanamo. This step came with little deliberation, and no plan. Now the president says some of these terrorists should be brought to American soil for trial in our court system. Others, he says, will be shipped to third countries; but so far, the United States has had little luck getting other countries to take hardened terrorists."

Obama's grand announcement at the start of his administration that Gitmo would be closed within a year was clearly not properly thought out. If he fails to achieve what he promised, he will pay a big political price and Cheney was marking his card on the issue.

7. "The administration has found that it's easy to receive applause in Europe for closing Guantanamo, but it's tricky to come up with an alternative that will serve the interest of justice and America's national security."

The notion that Obama makes gestures designed to court popularity abroad is one that could find increasing resonance - many Republicans strongly suspect it already.

8. "If fine speechmaking, appeals to reason, or pleas for compassion had the power to move them, the terrorists would long ago have abandoned the field."

As Cheney said this, sarcasm dripped from his lips. Obviously "fine speechmaking" but no real substance is not a new charge against Obama and it hits home. And Cheney successfully mades the point that much of the rhetoric from the Left tends to suggest that if only the US did not waterboard people, if only the US was viewed as Obama rather than Bush, Venus rather than Mars then it would be universally loved and al-Qaeda would wither away. UNfortunately, that's not the real world.

9. "It's worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the president himself. President Obama has used his declassification authority to reveal what happens in the interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show Americans what did not happen thanks to the good work of our intelligence officials."

Cheney is pushing Obama to declassify documeents relating to the information gained from terrorist suspects who were subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. This puts Obama in a bind. If he does so, it prolongs an argument he wants to move on from and prolongs the Obama vs Cheney meme that is distracting and doesn't really help him. if he doesn't, he looks like he has something to hide.

10. "To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, 7- 1/2 years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized."

It's indisputably an achievement of the Bush administration that it prevented the US from being attacked after 9/11. By ramming this point home, Cheney tees things up for some very tough questioning of Obama in the event that the US is attacked again.
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When It Comes To Obama...The Buck Stops Elsewhere

By the Editors
from The National Review

President Obama wants you to know that nothing is ever his fault.

He gave a speech on national-security matters Thursday the gist of which was: George W. Bush left me a mess, and I’m doing the best I can to clean it up. A more forthright theme would have been: Radical Islam has thrust the United States into a defensive war, and it’s now my duty to protect the nation — despite legal complications created by left-wing lawyers, many of whom are now working in my administration.

President Obama described Bush’s counterterrorism program as an “ad hoc legal approach for fighting terrorism that was neither effective nor sustainable — a framework that failed to trust in our institutions, and that failed to use our values as a compass.” But here Obama must contend with himself as much as with Bush: His own Justice Department has argued, as the Bush Justice Department argued, that the nation is at war, that the laws of war therefore apply, and consequently that enemy combatants may be captured and detained without trial until the conclusion of hostilities.

In point of fact, the Bush administration’s counterterrorism campaign was anything but ad hoc. It was extraordinarily effective, and it is entirely sustainable — which President Obama has shown by sustaining its major elements. Detention of enemy combatants has been a staple of every war the United States has fought, which is why the Supreme Court reaffirmed the practice in the 2004 Hamdi case, even though the combatant at issue was an American citizen. The practice of trying combatants before military commissions traces back to General Washington’s precedent in the Revolutionary War; and though today’s tribunals were originally authorized by the commander-in-chief, as they traditionally have been, their use was reauthorized by Congress in 2006, without material change, in response to a lawless Supreme Court decision that twisted both statutes and the Geneva Conventions beyond recognition.

Bush’s counterterrorism work can be regarded as ineffective only from the standpoint of the ACLU, whose metric is the quantum of due process accorded to terrorists who recognize no law or treaty. From a sensible point of view, the measure of success is the incidence of terrorist attacks — and we have not had one in eight years. By adopting a war-fighting paradigm (the paradigm on which President Obama must rely, lest his assassinations in Pakistan be deemed a violation of international law), President Bush expanded geometrically our intelligence on the enemy, decimated and dislocated the top tiers of al-Qaeda’s hierarchy, and killed and captured thousands of jihadists. At the same time, enforcing laws enacted in 1996 to enable the government to disrupt terrorist cells before their plots could come to fruition, the Bush Justice Department assembled an impressive string of convictions for terrorist conspiracy and financing.

True to his September 10 philosophy, President Obama declared on Thursday that the civilian courts were “tough enough” to convict terrorists. That has never been the question. The problems are that the criminal-justice system cannot apprehend many terrorists (only 29 terrorists, mostly low-level, were prosecuted during the eight years of attacks leading up to 9/11), and that the few trials it manages become intelligence troves for the many thousands of terrorists remaining at large. Bush’s counterterrorism policies, particularly as supplemented by Congress in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the above-mentioned Military Commissions Act of 2006, afforded captured alien combatants an unprecedented degree of due process — far beyond that accorded at the Nuremberg Tribunals that President Obama is fond of citing as a testament to the “rule of law.” This due process includes a right of appeal to the civilian federal courts (which was expanded in 2008 by the Supreme Court’s wrongheaded Boumediene decision).

So it was strange to hear President Obama on Thursday, castigating the military-commission system that he has chosen to revive with only cosmetic changes. It is true, as the president points out, that the commission system has convicted only three terrorists of war crimes, but this is in no small part because the trials have been endlessly delayed by legal maneuvering from some of the very lawyers who now hold important positions in Obama’s administration. Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, for example, represented Osama bin Laden’s confidant Salim Hamdan in the Supreme Court case that derailed the commissions until Congress reversed the Court. Harold Koh, the attorney Obama has nominated to be State Department legal adviser, filed an amicus brief in behalf of the detainees in the same case. Attorney General Eric Holder’s old firm has represented at least 18 enemy combatants. Because of the thick web of relationships between terrorism suspects, Holder, and other like-minded lawyers he has recruited, the Justice Department has been forced to set up elaborate protocols for recusing prosecutors, including the attorney general himself, from various national-security cases.

And it was President Obama himself who delayed commissions for 21 terrorists back in January — some of whose trials were imminent. But instead of reinstating those proceedings, the president is delaying them still further, while his administration makes trivial procedural tweaks that will allow him to pretend his policies constitute a real departure from those of his predecessor.

The president insisted in his speech that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and enhanced interrogation techniques (which he characteristically referred to as “torture,” a term both legally inaccurate and morally obtuse) increased terrorist recruitment. In fact the leading driver of terrorist recruitment is successful terrorist attacks. That is what convinces the fence-sitters that radical Islam can win, and that Osama bin Laden is correct when he argues that the United States is a weak horse that will retreat when things get tough enough. The counterterrorism policies of the Bush administration prevented new terrorist attacks and assured the world’s bin Ladens that the United States was committed to their defeat. We hope that assurance still holds; if it does, it is only because President Obama, for all his unseemly disparagement of his predecessor, has picked up the tools George W. Bush left him and made them his own.
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Obama: Flip-Flops and Governance

Our president isn't quite as advertised...

from The Wall Street Journal
By KARL ROVE
May 21, 2009

Barack Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. This is a stunning and welcome about-face.

For example, President Obama kept George W. Bush's military tribunals for terror detainees after calling them an "enormous failure" and a "legal black hole." His campaign claimed last summer that "court systems . . . are capable of convicting terrorists." Upon entering office, he found out they aren't.

He insisted in an interview with NBC in 2007 that Congress mandate "consequences" for "a failure to meet various benchmarks and milestones" on aid to Iraq. Earlier this month he fought off legislatively mandated benchmarks in the $97 billion funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mr. Obama agreed on April 23 to American Civil Liberties Union demands to release investigative photos of detainee abuse. Now's he reversed himself. Pentagon officials apparently convinced him that releasing the photos would increase the risk to U.S. troops and civilian personnel.

Throughout his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama excoriated Mr. Bush's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, insisting it could not succeed. Earlier this year, facing increasing violence in Afghanistan, Mr. Obama rejected warnings of a "quagmire" and ordered more troops to that country. He isn't calling it a "surge" but that's what it is. He is applying in Afghanistan the counterinsurgency strategy Mr. Bush used in Iraq.

As a candidate, Mr. Obama promised to end the Iraq war by withdrawing all troops by March 2009. As president, he set a slower pace of drawdown. He has also said he will leave as many as 50,000 Americans troops there.

These reversals are both praiseworthy and evidence that, when it comes to national security, being briefed on terror threats as president is a lot different than placating MoveOn.org and Code Pink activists as a candidate. The realities of governing trump the realities of campaigning.

We are also seeing Mr. Obama reverse himself on the domestic front, but this time in a manner that will do more harm than good.

Mr. Obama campaigned on "responsible fiscal policies," arguing in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006 that the "rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy." In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to "go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work." Even now, he says he'll "cut the deficit . . . by half by the end of his first term in office" and is "rooting out waste and abuse" in the budget.

However, Mr. Obama's fiscally conservative words are betrayed by his liberal actions. He offers an orgy of spending and a bacchanal of debt. His budget plans a 25% increase in the federal government's share of the GDP, a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a near tripling of it in 10 years.

On health care, Mr. Obama's election ads decried "government-run health care" as "extreme," saying it would lead to "higher costs." Now he is promoting a plan that would result in a de facto government-run health-care system. Even the Washington Post questions it, saying, "It is difficult to imagine . . . benefits from a government-run system."

Making adjustments in office is one thing. Constantly governing in direct opposition to what you said as a candidate is something else. Mr. Obama's flip-flops on national security have been wise; on the domestic front, they have been harmful.

In both cases, though, we have learned something about Mr. Obama. What animated him during the campaign is what historian Forrest McDonald once called "the projection of appealing images." All politicians want to project an appealing image. What Mr. McDonald warned against is focusing on this so much that an appealing image "becomes a self-sustaining end unto itself." Such an approach can work in a campaign, as Mr. Obama discovered. But it can also complicate life once elected, as he is finding out.

Mr. Obama's appealing campaign images turned out to have been fleeting. He ran hard to the left on national security to win the nomination, only to discover the campaign commitments he made were shallow and at odds with America's security interests.

Mr. Obama ran hard to the center on economic issues to win the general election. He has since discovered his campaign commitments were obstacles to ramming through the most ideologically liberal economic agenda since the Great Society.

Mr. Obama either had very little grasp of what governing would involve or, if he did, he used words meant to mislead the public. Neither option is particularly encouraging. America now has a president quite different from the person who advertised himself for the job last year. Over time, those things can catch up to a politician.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.
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Obama to admit "closing GITMO was a hasty decision" - Ya think!

Eric Holder backed into a corner - and squirming!

Eric Holder is on the hot seat.
from Pajamas Media
May 20, 2009
by Jennifer Rubin

Attorney General Eric Holder is running into a buzz saw of inquiries from Republicans on Capitol Hill. They may not have the votes to derail most of the administration’s agenda items or block its nominees (although a surprising amount of the former is occurring with regard to national security), but that has not stopped them from putting Holder on the hot seat. And their queries may have the effect of rallying public opinion and/or giving the Obama Department of Justice second thoughts about its approach to the war on terror.

On Monday, May 18, following a recent Senate hearing, Sen. Richard Shelby sent a letter to Holder. The questions asked are clearly aimed at drilling down on the Obama administration’s efforts to investigate and potentially punish Bush administration lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo, who drafted the now released memos on CIA enhanced interrogation methods. Shelby’s first question goes directly at Holder personally, inquiring:

During your tenure as the Deputy Attorney General of the United States, 1997 to 2001, did you know that President Clinton approved of and actively engaged in the practice known as rendition? Did you or anyone in the Department of Justice express a legal opinion on, participate in, or approve any rendition? What actions did you take to ensure any such rendition complied with United States or International law? What actions did you take to ensure that any interrogations of any such individuals rendered by the United States were conducted by the receiving country in a manner consistent with United States or international law? Did you or anyone on your behalf ever determine whether any useful intelligence was obtained from any such individuals rendered by or on behalf of the United States? Did you or anyone on your behalf ever attempt to determine how that information was obtained and whether any such individuals rendered by or on behalf the United States was subjected to any treatment that would violate United States or international laws?

What’s that got to do with the Bybee-Yoo inquiry? Well, this is the “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” line of attack. Really, what is to stop some future administration from pursuing prosecution of Holder as well as other Clinton or Obama administration lawyers for their role in questionable practices? After all, if we are going to investigate the involvement of lawyers in “torture” no one should be exempt.

Shelby also inquires on what basis Bybee and Yoo’s work is being attacked and whether those now second-guessing their work have “expertise in constitutional law, intelligence matters, treaty compliance, and/or separation of powers.” And he asks why it was that former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and his deputy criticized the investigation and rejected the idea that one administration should prosecute lawyers from a prior administration. Here the message is clear: this inquest has all the trappings of a partisan witch hunt rather than a sober legal investigation.

But Shelby’s line of inquiry isn’t limited to the Byee and Yoo investigation. Like Sen. Jeff Sessions (who has yet to receive a response to his inquiry), he wants to know if Holder believes that “the president has the legal authority to bring terrorists, former terrorists or anyone who has received terrorist training into the United States and release them into our communities.” And he would like “a copy of that authority.” Once again, Republicans want to know on what basis the Justice Department is going to maneuver around federal law preventing release into the U.S. of those detainees (such as the Uighurs) who had received terrorist training. The president isn’t going to simply wave his hand and claim he’s exempt from following a federal statute, is he? (And of course, Congress has now complicated matters by refusing to fund the detainees’ relocation to the U.S. without at the very least seeing what the administration’s plan looks like.)

And Shelby is not alone in his grilling of Holder. Holder has also come under attack from House Republicans who, in some well-crafted questioning at a recent hearing, went after Holder’s notion that any Bush-era officials can be prosecuted for “torture” absent a showing of “specific intent” — that is, a showing that those administering the interrogation methods had the intent of inflicting severe pain (a standard the Justice Department itself employed in a recent Sixth Circuit case.) The lead prosecutor of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case, Andy McCarthy, sums up:

The bottom line is, Rep. Lungren skillfully steered Attorney General Holder into the truth: As a matter of law, CIA waterboarding — like the same waterboarding actions featured in Navy SEALs training — cannot be torture because there is no intention to inflict severe mental or physical pain; the exercise is done for a different purpose. When Rep. Gohmert’s questioning made it crystal clear that Holder’s simplistic “waterboarding is torture” pronouncement was wrong, the attorney general — rather than admitting error — tried to change the legal definition of torture in a manner that contradicted a position the Justice Department had just urged on the federal courts. It seems that, for this attorney general, there is one torture standard for Bush administration officials, and another one for everybody else.

All of this suggests that the Obama Justice Department is on shaky legal ground, unprepared it seems to substantiate its legal positions on hot button issues. At the very least the new administration’s promised effort to “depoliticize” the Justice Department is under severe scrutiny. Whether on the administration’s decision to prosecute a prior administration’s lawyers or to release Guantanamo prisoners, Republicans suspect, with good reason, that the Justice Department lawyers are not so much interested in applying the law with exactitude but in extracting a pound of flesh to satisfy the administration’s netroot base. And they intend to force Obama’s Justice Department, part of the most “transparent administration in history,” to explain and justify its behavior.

Moreover, by their line of questioning the Republicans hope to provoke, if nothing else, some concern among the current crop of Justice Department lawyers. What sort of precedent do they want to set and could they in the future be caught in the web of recrimination which they may be setting in motion?

We already know that the advice of the Justice Department with regard to release of the detainee abuse photos has been rejected by cooler heads in the White House. Perhaps those same officials who recognized the danger and unsoundness of the lawyers’ advice to release inflammatory photos will exercise some greater supervision of the Justice Department’s work on the Bybee-Yoo investigation and other matters. From Holder’s responses on Capitol Hill and the performance of the Justice Department to date, it seems the Holder Justice Department is badly in need of some strict oversight.
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Hey Nancy: Don't let the door hit you in the...

Nevadans are are sick of Harry Reid, too - Finally!!!

from Michelle Malkin.com
By Michelle Malkin
May 19, 2009

Dingy Harry Reid’s home state constituents are growing as weary of him as the rest of us.

Hope for change lives:

Nearly half of Nevadans have had enough of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as the powerful Democrat heads into his re-election campaign, a new Las Vegas Review-Journal poll finds.

About a third of the state’s voters would re-elect Reid if the 2010 election were held today, according to the poll, but 45 percent say they would definitely vote to replace him. Seventeen percent would consider another candidate.

The findings are echoed by another poll question about Reid’s popularity that finds the four-term incumbent to be a polarizing figure in his home state.

Half of Nevada voters had an unfavorable view of Reid, while 38 percent had a favorable view and 11 percent a neutral opinion.

The statewide poll of 625 Nevadans who vote regularly was conducted by telephone last week by Washington-based Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. for the Review-Journal. It carries a margin of error of 4 percentage points in either direction.

Reid’s approval ratings at home have been subpar for years, particularly since he ascended to Democratic leader in 2004 and to majority leader in 2006…The poll finds Nevadans are bullish on President Barack Obama even as they are unhappy with Reid. Fifty-five percent of those polled viewed Obama favorably, while 30 percent saw him unfavorably and 15 percent were neutral on the new Democratic president, who carried Nevada in last year’s presidential election by 12 percentage points after years of Republican dominance in the state.
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Democrats won't fund Guantanamo closing - But wait, they're the ones that wanted to close it...

from Breitbart.com
by Andrew Taylor
Associated Press Writer
May 19, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama's allies in the Senate will not provide funds to close the Guantanamo Bay prison next January, a top Democratic official said Tuesday.

With debate looming on Obama's spending request to cover military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the official says Democrats will deny the Pentagon and Justice Department $80 million to relocate Guantanamo's 241 detainees.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposed changes to the bill were to be unveiled later.

The administration has yet to develop a plan for what to do with the detainees, and Obama's promise to close the facility is facing strong GOP opposition.

It appears to be a tactical retreat. Once the administration develops a plan to close the facility, congressional Democrats are likely to revisit the topic, provided they are satisfied there are adequate safeguards.

The developments on Capitol Hill came as the Pentagon said it still expects the prison at Guantanamo Bay to be closed by January 2010 as Obama has ordered.

Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters on Tuesday that he sees nothing to indicate the January 2010 deadline will be delayed.

Republicans are poised with an amendment by James Inhofe of Oklahoma that would block any of the 241 Guantanamo detainees from ever coming to U.S. soil to stand trial or serve their sentences.

"Shuttering this facility now could only serve one end: and that is to make Americans less safe than Guantanamo has," said GOP Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The massive war spending measure otherwise sticks closely to Obama's request—unlike a House version that reversed a Pentagon plan to stop production of C-17 cargo planes.

The House bill effectively exceeds Obama's request by almost $12 billion, adding $2.2 billion to foreign aid accounts, refusing to fund the closing of Guantanamo, and funding eight C-17 cargo planes despite Defense Secretary Robert Gates' desire to cease purchases of the aircraft as part of his effort to reform Pentagon procurement.
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Dance Nancy, Dance - Watch The Video, She's A Horrible Liar

from Michelle Malkin.com
by Michelle
May 19, 2009

The House GOP conference picks the perfect background music for Nancy Pelosi’s stammering, stuttering and verbal pirouettes: the Nutcracker Suite.



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Obama's Gitmo-to-Va. Uyghur Plan Hits A Wall: Jim Webb

from The Counter Terrorism Blog
By James Gordon Meek
May 18, 2009

Over the weekend, the Obama administration's ambitious plan to resettle a small group of Guantanamo Bay detainees in the Virginia suburbs of Washington ran into a wall. Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Sen. Jim Webb said "the answer is no" to the proposal that the former enemy combatants - ethnic Turks from China called Uyghurs - will live in Fairfax, Va.

Up 'til then, the debate over the Uyghurs' fate had been mostly down partisan lines, with Republicans led by Rep. Frank Wolf complaining loudly that no former Gitmo inmates should be incarcerated, put on trial or released inside the U.S. With Virginia Democrat Webb unexpectedly becoming an obstacle, Obama's "contingency operations" are now in peril.

I've also reported in the New York Daily News many senior counterterror officials believe the half-dozen Uyghurs eyed for release in Virginia have troubling ties to an Al Qaeda-affiliated terror group, the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), also known as the East Turkistan Islamic Movement. While few officials worry that the Uyghurs will form a cell or commit future acts of terrorism, they view the precautions they have been readying as a big - though manageable - hassle.

"We'll have 24-7 coverage up on them for years," one top U.S. security official told me. "It's extremely labor-intensive. But if we don't do it, we'll be called idiots if anything bad happens."

So why are lawmakers and counterterror officials fretting about the Uyghurs?

The Gitmo group were mostly nabbed fleeing a TIP terror training camp in eastern Afghanistan during the U.S. invasion following 9/11. Their defense lawyers insist the detainees have gotten the "terrorist" rap by the Communist Chinese government, which oppresses Uyghurs.

But we reported in The News today that the TIP, who ran the Afghan camp, released a jihad video last month in which they praised Al Qaeda-in-Iraq and the Uyghurs' former Afghan hosts, the Taliban. The video was released through an Al Qaeda-affiliated Web site, Al-Fajr, and includes clips showing "mujahadeen brothers" blowing up U.S. military Humvees. The Uyghur jihadis "will cause China to experience what America experienced in Iraq and in Afghanistan," a narrator promises, according to a SITE Intelligence Group translation.

It also probably didn't help when Obama's Treasury Department designated the group's leader, Abdul Haq, as "a member of Al Qaeda's Shura Council" on Apr. 20.

TIP's praise for Al Qaeda in its video, "Persistence and Preparation for Jihad in the Cause of Allah," was in some way payback to Osama Bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has mentioned the Uyghurs' plight in China's East Turkistan region five times in his tapes since 2005, according to IntelCenter. East Turkistan has been included in the context of major jihad struggles Zawahiri discussed, such as Somalia and Chechnya.

On Feb. 22, after excerpts of the forthcoming TIP video began appearing online, Zawahiri released a taped rant that included criticism of the United Nations, which has placed the Uyghur terror group on its list of designated terrorists. He said showing "respect for the principles of the United Nations basically means ruling by other than Shari'ah" and is tantamount to blessing UN-member states' oppression of Muslims, including "China’s control over East Turkistan."

Aside from the growing political opposition to relocating the Uyghurs from Gitmo to a Washington suburb, the biggest roadblock may be the detainees themselves. Multiple sources confirm that some do not even want to live in America. And since no other country will accept them, "the question then becomes, can we force them to leave Cuba?" wondered a U.S. counterterror official.
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Dick Cheney: Unplugged and Unashamed - GREAT Article!

The former vice president stands on his principles and doesn't care who criticizes him for it.

from Pajamas Media
May 17, 2009
by AWR Hawkins

Long before Dick Cheney chose Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell as worthy of Republican emulation in a recent Face the Nation segment, he made a name for himself as a conservative of the caliber of Ronald Reagan. Throughout the course of his political career the former vice president, defense secretary, congressman, and oilman has proven to be a stalwart and a leftist’s worst nightmare, for he is not only conservative but seemingly unaffected by the Left’s derisive politics of shame.

As defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, Cheney was one of the few voices that called for a continuation of Reagan’s military buildup after our victory in Desert Storm and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In October 1991, the New York Times mocked Cheney’s stance:

With the evaporating Soviet threat, what should the Pentagon be prepared to defend against? The worst menace anyone can conjure is another Iraq. But even Iraq is much reduced and no other [such threats] are visible.

Isn’t it just like the Left to view our victories in Desert Storm and the Cold War as opportunities for disarmament? Opportunities they approached with phrases like “the rush to modernize can … be safely slowed.”

For the record, “another Iraq” did arise. And contrary to the claims of the New York Times, the second Iraq was worse than the first if only because countries like Iran and groups like al-Qaeda viewed Iraq as a battleground against the West.

So that’s Cheney 1, Leftists 0.

When George W. Bush picked Cheney for his running mate in 2000, liberals went apoplectic.

Leftist fringe groups criticized the fact that Cheney had gone against Colin Powell while defense secretary under Bush 41. They asserted that the “very hawkish” Cheney had proposed “[fighting] a war [in defense of] corporate oil interests in the Gulf … over the opposition of such a plan by Colin Powell.”

But such criticism didn’t stall the momentum Cheney brought to the ticket, so the mainstream media sought to lessen his effectiveness by warning that he was just going to spend his time criticizing Bill Clinton’s weak military stances on the campaign trail. The problem for the hand-wringers in the media was that there was so much to criticize:

[Cheney made it clear] that the Clinton administration had failed in its response to terrorist acts, going back to the World Trade Center bombing, in 1993, and that there had been a pattern of weak responses: not enough response to the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa; [and] none to the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen.

Cheney 2, Leftists 0.

By August 2000 Cheney had added reminders of Clinton’s corruption to his stump speeches, which led to Democrat attempts to shame him into silence. For example, the New York Times accused him of “attacking” Clinton, but Cheney would have none of it. Instead, in Reagan-like fashion he told the paper:

We’ve made it clear what we want to bring to the White House. If it implies
any criticism of the Clinton administration, that’s their problem, not
ours.

In the end, the Bush/Cheney ticket won the 2000 election.

Cheney 3, Leftists 0.

After the attacks on 9/11 and our March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Cheney was the point man for defending our strong response to the threat of terrorism. In January 2004, it was he who stood before our European allies and said, “Direct threats require decisive action.” That the “decisive action” of which Cheney spoke was military in nature was not lost on anyone:

Eva Biaudet, a Finnish lawmaker, said she was shocked by Cheney’s “militarism” and by the fact that his solution for reaching democracy was armaments.

To those of us who listened to Cheney’s European speeches through the prism of America’s 40th president, his words were simply reminiscent of Reagan’s “peace through strength” policy and therefore comforting.

Cheney 4, Leftists 0.

Just a few months later in 2004, Cheney proved to be Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s staunchest defender when prison abuse stories and criticism of “harsh interrogation tactics” flooded the mainstream media. On May 9, 2004, Cheney described Rumsfeld as “the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had” and told people to “get off his case and let him do his job.” Rumsfeld was allowed to “do his job” for two more years, until Democrat gains in the 2006 midterm elections led Bush to jettison him.

Yet even after Rumsfeld’s removal, Cheney’s defense of him continued because it was based on principle not polls. In early 2007, when Senator John McCain said Rumsfeld “will go down in history as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history,” Cheney was there to counter him: “[McCain's] entitled to his opinion. I just think he’s wrong.”

As recently as May 11, 2009, Cheney spoke about “enhanced interrogation techniques” – the techniques that caused so many moderates in the Republican Party (like McCain) to turn against Rumsfeld. And to the dismay of our Europeanized, Obama-worshipping mainstream press, he was “was not apologetic about the use of … enhanced … techniques,” but claimed “it would have been immoral [not to use them against] detainees … which had threatened U.S. interests.”

Cheney 5 (maybe 6 or 7), Leftists 0.

Now that Obama is reversing Bush’s anti-terrorism policies as quickly as possible, Cheney is out front again, warning that America is being put at risk by an administration that’s willing to trade our safety for the praise of the mainstream press. Said Cheney:

Let’s not do terrorist surveillance, let’s not have a robust interrogation program of these al-Qaeda folks when we capture them, let’s not take aggressive action to defend the nation, because then the New York Times will love us and we’ll get editorials written about us all over the country and our numbers will go up in the polls.

Cheney deserves our praise and affection, for he has the courage of his convictions. And even at the cost of being scorned by Europeans, major newspapers, fringe leftists, and moderates in his own party, he has remained conservative and unashamed.

AWR Hawkins is a conservative writer who holds a Ph.D. in Military History from Texas Tech University
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Jon Stewart exposes Pelosi the liar using her own sound bites

THIS IS HILARIOUS!!!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
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from Instapundit.com
by Glenn Renolds
May 17, 2009

A NEW ANGLE ON PELOSI’S FLIPFLOPS, from reader Doug Welsh: “I’m amazed at how Nancy Pelosi’s current circumstances are similar to the Democrats’ accusations that Bush lied us into the Iraq war. They saw the same intelligence that Bush (and Clinton before him) saw, indicating that Saddam had WMD. Few if any questioned the validity of the information. Most voted for the war. But when the war became unpopular they turned and claimed they had been misled by Bush. This was all a lie and political posturing, but it was effective then. I’m glad to see the Republicans are a little smarter this time and are countering more effectively. I wonder if it is possible to tie the Dems current hypocrisy to the earlier event.”

Plus, Pelosi in a Pickle: “Even Richard Nixon didn’t have this much trouble explaining what he knew and when he knew it.” And this:

Pelosi wouldn’t be in such trouble if she’d just acknowledge that she didn’t object to waterboarding because, in the aftermath of 9/11, protecting America was Job One — and Washington didn’t care what it took to get the job done.

As New York’s Sen. Chuck Schumer told a Senate hearing in 2004:

“I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake.”

“It’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used,” he added. “But when you’re in the foxhole, it’s a very different deal.”

Another pro-torture Democrat. There used to be a lot of ‘em. Now it’s their logic that’s tortured.
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