Money for ballparks for millionaires, but none for bringing terrorists to justice?
Remember when the Obama administration decided accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would face trial in a federal courtroom in New York City, close to where the World Trade Center once stood? It appears billionaire New York City Mayor- for-Life Michael Bloomberg has gotten his way. NBC News is reporting that the administration has decided not to try Mohammed in the city.
Bloomberg has been whining lately about money the added security would cost the city, reportedly an extra $216 million. If I was the billionaire mayor of New York City, I’d pay for the added security out of my own pocket. No price would be too high for the privilege of bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to my city so that he could get some payback for what he did.
What’s $216 million to a billionaire? Keep in mind that New York City paid $370.9 million to build the new Yankee Stadium. They also shelled out $138 million for the new Mets’ Citi Field. It’s good to know that they evidently have money to build ballparks for millionaires, but not for bringing to justice someone that helped kill 2,605 New Yorkers.
Evidently some New Yorkers are frightened of the idea of trying terror suspects in New York City. That somehow it will make New York City a much bigger target to Islamic terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. As if the city of New York isn’t already a huge target for terror.
I don’t understand the thinking behind this. If one of my loved ones was killed by a terrorist or any other criminal, I would make it my life’s work in making sure whoever killed them paid for what they did.
I would not care what it cost.
Turns out al-Qaeda double-agent was not as double as the CIA originally thought
It turns out the suicide bomber that killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan was a double-agent the CIA recruited to find al-Qaeda leaders. From the BBC:
The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan was an al-Qaeda double agent, US media reports say.
He is said to have been a doctor from Jordan, arrested there a year ago.
He was then reportedly recruited by the Jordanians and CIA, who wrongly thought they had turned him, and given a mission to find al-Qaeda leaders.
Whatever the CIA is doing, they need to stop doing it. I don’t understand why this government agency is still in existence. One might think that after the intelligence debacle known as September 11, the CIA would have been deactivated and our nation’s intelligence needs would be performed by some other massive government agency, an agency not called the CIA.
The CIA is the same intelligence agency that didn’t know the Berlin Wall was coming down until they watched it happen on CNN like the rest of us.
Let this be a lesson to the CIA: you can’t “turn” a member of al-Qaeda like you could an East German. During the Cold War, you could simply throw a bunch of money at an eastern European communist and expect him to more or less do what you wanted. Members of al-Qaeda are radical religious extremists that cannot be trusted.
Nigerian Muslim tries to blow up Northwest Airlines airliner
Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian Muslim flying on board a Northwest airliner from Amsterdam to Detroit tried to ignite some kind of mystery powder and blow up the plane. He was tackled by some of his fellow passengers before the power could do whatever it was intended to do.
He has told investigators that he was acting on the behalf of Al-Qaeda.
Good thing there were some able bodied passengers on hand to give Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab the beating he richly deserved. It’s not like the flight attendants could have done it. If there’s one thing we learned on September 11, 2001, it was that flight attendants that weigh 105 lbs might be pretty to look at, but they are entirely unless when it comes to stopping a Saudi with a box cutter.
If it was up to me, I would have taken the billions of dollars TSA spent staffing pointless checkpoints and shoe inspectors and instead used it to pay former Army Rangers and other military types to be flight attendants. Not coffee. tea, or me type of flight attendants made popular in the 1950’s and 60’s, but flight attendants for the new century. Flight attendants that might not know how to make you a good Bloody Mary, but they would know how to kill you with a pencil.
Obama to send ‘about’ 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan
Look like President Obama is going to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Maybe.
From CBS News:
Tonight, after months of conferences with top advisors, President Obama has settled on a new strategy for Afghanistan. CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that the president will send a lot more troops and plans to keep a large force there, long term.
The president still has more meetings scheduled on Afghanistan, but informed sources tell CBS News he intends to give Gen. Stanley McChrystal most, if not all, the additional troops he is asking for.
McChrystal wanted 40,000 and the president has tentatively decided to send four combat brigades plus thousands more support troops. A senior officer says “that’s close to what [McChrystal] asked for.” All the president’s military advisers have recommended sending more troops.
So when does Obama become more of a “war president” than George W. Bush? Bush enjoyed refering to himself as the war president, but Obama already has more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush did, even during the Iraq surge.
I’m not sure what the point in this is. More troops to Afghanistan isn’t going to fix anything. At the end of the day, Afghanistan will always be Afghanistan. It’s an awful place filled with awful people. Invading Afghanistan may have made sense ten years ago, back when al Qaeda used it as a training base and before the terror attacks on 9-11. Now, al Qaeda is in neighboring Pakistan.
I just don’t see the point. Military force should only be used when there is a clear, obtainable military objective to be archived. Is that possible when it comes to Afghanistan?
I think not.
Fort Hood shooter tried to contact al Qaeda
U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan had been attempting to reach the al Qaeda terrorist network.
From ABC News:
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
According to the officials, the Army was informed of Hasan’s contact, but it is unclear what, if anything, the Army did in response.
I’m guessing the Army did nothing with the information. If Congress can question Major League Baseball about it’s players using performance enhancing drugs, they can certainly question the U.S. Army on whythey allowed a Muslim man who wanted out of the Army, who had been trying to contact al Qaeda, was allowed to stay in the military.
His co-workers reported Hasan to their commanding officers in 2008 for comments he made concerning his religion and his duty as an officer in the U.S. Army. Reportedly he told co-workers that he was a Muslim first and an Army officer second. The Army’s response?
They promoted Hasan to major in May 2009.
The kicker in all this is that if instead of trying to contact al Qaeda, Hasan had instead gone on Craig’s List and attempted to seek out another man for gay sex, he would have been quickly discharged.
Our service members deserve better than this.
Bush considered sending U.S. troops to Buffalo
Just when I thought the Bush administration couldn’t have been worse, it turns out that it could have been worse. Much worse. According to the New York Times, Bush seriously considered sending U.S. troops into a Buffalo area neighborhood to apprehend the Lackawanna Six.
From the New York Times:
Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.
Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.
Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.
The absurdity if all this is that there was absolutely no reason to even think of doing this. We dedicate a massive amount of our resources towards having civilian domestic law enforcement. Not only do we have civilian police at the local and state level, we have law enforcement at the federal level such as the FBI. We spend billions of dollars a year to have civilian law enforcement in this country, one of the main reasons is so that we don’t have to have our military going around the country acting as a police force.
I have to wonder, would American troops follow an order to engage in combat on U.S. soil? That’s what it would be, combat. It’s a scary prospect to think that the U.S. military could be used on American soil.
Roscoe Bartlett refers to Democrats as the enemy
Area Republicans gathered at the Clarion Hotel & Conference Center on Saturday for the Maryland GOP spring convention where they talked about how awful Democrats were and how courageous Rush Limbaugh is.
From Hagerstown’s newspaper of record, the Herald-Mail:
As Democrats strengthen their federal control, U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., said he feels ambivalent.
Even while outnumbered, Republicans can fight full bore for their causes. Or they can be content to watch Democrats overspend and make bad policy decisions, benefiting the GOP, Bartlett said.The conventional wisdom, he said, is “when your enemy is committing suicide, you shouldn’t interfere.”
And I thought Roscoe Bartlett’s enemy, like all Americans, was al Qaeda. I should have realized Bartlett would put his political party before his country. Silly me.
Bartlett told the crowd that he was with Rush Limbaugh. He said that Limbaugh had the courage to not say that he wanted Barack Obama to succeed.
It should be no surprise that Roscoe Bartlett would think that a draft-dodger like Rush Limbaugh is courageous. Rush Limbaugh avoided military service during the Vietnam conflict by claiming to have an “old football injury”, and then claiming to having a pilonidal cyst on his buttocks. Roscoe Bartlett avoided military service during World War Two by claiming he wanted to pursue a career in the ministry, though ne never actually did.
This is the man that once called for higher gas prices. He failed to report roughly $1 million in property sales in official documents. He also bowed to Reverend Sun Myung Moon at a crowning ceremony held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, DC.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter what Roscoe Bartlett says or does. The people of the 6th district of Maryland will continue to reelect him to the U.S. House of Representatives every two years.
Who knew the Cookie Monster was part of al-Qaeda?
This is an actual cover from Sesame Street Magazine, 1976. This was before Muslim radical fundamentalists began to hate us for our freedoms.
I don’t know what’s more hard to believe; that the Cookie Monster exists, but he is much larger then we thought or that he enjoys eating concrete buildings, not cookies. I know from experience that the two don’t taste anything alike.
Except fat-free cookies.
For some reason, the Cookie Monster never struck me as being a terrorist. Sure, he has the word monster in his name, but he also has the word cookie.
I think the two words cancel each other out.
Sean Hannity and Neal Boortz agree that teachers are more dangerous then terrorists
A least the uppity ones that join unions. This from Think Progress:
Last night on Fox News’s Hannity and Colmes, right-wing radio host Neal Boortz claimed that teachers unions are “destroying a generation” and are “much more dangerous than al Qaeda.” He stated, “Look, Al Qaeda, they could bring in a nuke into this country and kill 100,000 people with a well-placed nuke somewhere. Ok. We would recover from that. It would be a terrible tragedy, but the teachers unions in this country can destroy a generation.” Sean Hannity agreed, noting, “They are ruining our school system.”
Neal Boortz? I’m still not convinced he is a real person. Part of me thinks he is a fictitious character created for the sake of comedy.
I wonder what the troops would think if they heard what Sean Hannity and Neal Boortz had to say about the enemy they are fighting. That al Qaeda are a bunch of pussies compared to unionized teachers. I’m tempted to say that they would be demoralized, but I have to believe they would simply think that Hannity is an idiot. I doubt the troops have ever heard of Boortz.
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