Invite a terrorist to lunch and Ship of Fools!

We drown ourselves in tears and are more concerned about water-boarding than protecting our nation, our assets, our way of life and our freedom. How can you win against radical terrorism in a politically correct way? Perhaps we should each invite a terrorist to lunch!

George Friedman suggests with improvement in Iraq, on the ground, even Obama's position has modified and appears more in line with McCain. Every candidate wants to withdraw and assuming al Qaeda does not expand its influence and presence the issue of withdrawal is more a matter of when and how fast.

Friedman further suggests that we think presidents have more historical influence when, in fact, they are really captives of events that truly shape their moves and leaves them little determining room. (See 2 below.)

No change in Israel - Sderot gets bombed and the IDF responds. (See 3 below.)

Glick reminds the reader about the actions of Jordan and the Palestinians regarding the terrorist, Habash. (See 4 below.)

Yes, I am dating myself when I say I remember the appliance salesman, Al Pearce ,I believe was his name, on the Fibber McGee and Molly Radio Show. All he did was knock on the door and say I hope, I hope , I hope. Sounds like the voice of change speeches we have been drowning in lo these past months. The candidates all tell us what they are dreaming, intend to do and where they want to take us. Not one word about how they intend to get there, what it will cost, what budget sacrifices they are prepared to ask for and on and on it goes. And we just sit and suck it all up and applaud wildly as if we are the passengers aboard the ill fated "Ship of Fools."

Dick



1) US intel: al-Qaida may move outside Iraq
By PAMELA HESS

WASHINGTON - The director of national intelligence said Tuesday he is concerned that al-Qaida in Iraq is shifting its focus to attacks elsewhere in the region.


"They may deploy resources to mount attacks outside the country," Mike McConnell told a Senate hearing, although he also said that fewer than 100 terrorists have moved to establish cells in other countries.

At the same hearing, CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly confirmed for the first time the names of three suspected al-Qaida terrorists who were subjected to a particularly harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, and why.

At the same hearing, CIA Director Michael Hayden publicly confirmed for the first time the names of three suspected al-Qaida terrorists who were subjected to a particularly harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, and why.

"We used it against these three detainees because of the circumstances at the time," Hayden said. "There was the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were inevitable. And we had limited knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings. Those two realities have changed."

Hayden said that Khalid Sheik Mohammed — the purported mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States — and Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were subject to the harsh interrogations in 2002 and 2003. Waterboarding is an interrogation technique that critics call torture.

Waterboarding induces a feeling of imminent drowning with the restrained subject's mouth covered and water poured over his face.

"Waterboarding taken to its extreme, could be death, you could drown someone," McConnell acknowledged. He said waterboarding remains a technique in the CIA's arsenal, but it would require the consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.

McConnell also told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the Taliban, once thought to be routed from Afghanistan, has expanded its operations into previously peaceful areas of the west and around the capital of Kabul, despite the death or capture of three top commanders in the last year.

The al-Qaida terrorist network in Iraq and in Pakistan and Afghanistan has suffered setbacks, McConnell said, but he added that Osama bin Laden's organization remains the No. 1 threat.

"Al-Qaida remains the pre-eminent threat against the United States, both here at home and abroad," McConnell said. He said that al-Qaida maintains a "safe haven" in Pakistan's tribal areas, where the group is able to stage attacks supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani tribal areas provide al-Qaida "many of the advantages it once derived from its base across the border in Afghanistan, albeit on a smaller and less secure scale," allowing militants to train for strikes in Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa and the United States, McConnell said.

Terrorists use the "sanctuary" of Pakistan's border area to "maintain a cadre of skilled lieutenants capable of directing the organization's operations around the world," he said.

U.S. officials have said they believe that bin Laden is taking refuge in the region, likely on the Pakistani side of the border.

The U.S. has expressed growing concern that al-Qaida figures who fled Afghanistan after the ouster of the Taliban regime in 2001 have been able to regroup inside tribal regions, posing a threat not just to U.S. forces across the border, but offering a potential base for global operations.

Still, McConnell praised Pakistan's cooperation in the fight against extremists, saying that hundreds of Pakistanis have died while fighting terrorists. He said Islamabad has done more to "neutralize" terrorists than any other partner of the United States.

Despite the Pakistani cooperation, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said at the same hearing that the Pakistani military has been unable to disrupt or damage al-Qaida terrorists operating in the tribal border region. And the U.S. military is prohibited by Pakistan from pursuing Taliban and al-Qaida fighters that cross the border to conduct attacks inside Afghanistan.

In other troubling parts of the world, the intelligence director said North Korea was proceeding with a nuclear program despite an agreement last year to suspend operations and Iran was "keeping open the option" of building nuclear weapons.

The United States remains "uncertain about Kim Jong Il's commitment to full denuclearization, as he promised in the six-party agreement," McConnell said, referring to the North's leader and to the nuclear talks involving the U.S., the Koreas, Japan, China and Russia.

Increases in military spending have enabled Russia to reverse deterioration of its military forces that set in as the Soviet Union collapsed, McDonnell said, and China's military modernization "will put American forces at greater risk."

Also testifying, FBI Director Robert Mueller said al-Qaida continues to present a "critical threat to the homeland" and warned that "homegrown terrorists" not directly linked to al-Qaida posed a threat as well.

After terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, McConnell said the threat from cyberattacks to U.S. information systems is the most pressing issue. President Bush signed a classified directive in January outlining steps the federal government is taking to protect its networks.

"It is no longer sufficient for the U.S. government to discover cyber intrusions in its networks, clean up the damage and take legal or political steps to deter further intrusions," McConnell said.

On Cuba, he said the intelligence community is not expecting an immediate political convulsion if ailing President Fidel Castro dies.

"We assess the political situation in Cuba will at least remain stable in the first few months after Fidel's death," McConnell said.

But policy missteps on the part Castro's successor could lead to mass migration of Cubans to the United States, he said.

2) Foreign Policy and the President's Irrelevance
By George Friedman

We are now a year away from the inauguration of a new president, and Super Tuesday has arrived, when it seems likely that the Democratic and Republican nominees will start to become obvious. At the moment, there is a toss-up between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton among the Democrats, while John McCain appears to be moving in front of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee among the Republicans. It seems an opportune time to ask whether it matters who gets the nomination and who ultimately wins the November election, at least from the standpoint of foreign policy.

The candidates’ discussion of foreign policy has focused on one issue: Iraq. Virtually all other major foreign policy issues, from the future of U.S.-Russian relations to the function of NATO to the structure of the U.S. armed forces in the next generation, have been ignored in the public discussions.

The discussion of Iraq has been shaped and reshaped by events. The apparent improvement in the U.S. position in Iraq has quieted that debate as well. At one extreme, Obama has said he favors a rapid U.S. withdrawal, although he has been vague as to the timing. At the other extreme, McCain has endorsed the Bush administration’s handling of the war. This means that even though he has been quite pro-surge, he does not oppose withdrawal in principle but does insist on not setting a time line for one. The others’ views are less clear.

The consensus on foreign policy is the most interesting feature of the election, especially regarding Iraq. We don’t mean the posturing or the shouting or the attempt to position one candidate against the others. We mean two things: first, what the candidates are saying after the passion is boiled away, and second, what they are likely to do if they become president.

There is, of course, a great deal of discussion about who supported or opposed what and when. That is not a trivial discussion, but it doesn’t really point to what anyone will do. On a second level, there is the discussion about whether the United States should withdraw from Iraq. Even here, there is actually little that divides the candidates. The real question is when that withdrawal should take place, over what period of time and whether the time line should be announced.

There is no candidate arguing for the permanent stationing of more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. There are those who believe that political ends can and should be achieved in Iraq, and that the draw down of forces should be keyed to achieving those ends. That is essentially the Bush policy. Then there are those who believe that the United States not only has failed to achieve its political goals but also, in fact, is not going to achieve them. Under this reasoning, the United States ought to be prepared to withdraw from Iraq on a timetable that is indifferent to the situation on the ground.

This has been Obama’s position to this point, and it distinguishes him from other candidates — including Clinton, who has been much less clear on what her policy going forward would be. But even Obama’s emphasis, if not his outright position, has shifted as a political resolution in Iraq has appeared more achievable. He remains committed to a withdrawal from Iraq, but he is not clear on the time line. He calls for having all U.S. combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months, but qualifies his statement by saying that if al Qaeda attempts to build a base within Iraq, he will keep troops in Iraq or elsewhere in the region to carry out targeted strikes against the group. Since al Qaeda is in fact building a base within Iraq, Obama’s commitment to having troops in Iraq is open-ended.

The shift in Obama’s emphasis — and this is the important point — means his position on Iraq is not really different from that of McCain, the most pro-Bush candidate. Events have bypassed the stance that the situation on the ground is hopeless, so even Obama’s position has tacked toward a phased withdrawal based on political evolutions.

It has long been said that presidential candidates make promises but do what they want if elected. In foreign policy, presidential candidates make promises and, if elected, do what they must to get re-elected. Assume that the situation in Iraq does not deteriorate dramatically, which is always a possibility, and assume a president is elected who would simply withdraw troops from Iraq. The withdrawal from Iraq obviously would increase Iranian power and presence in Iraq. That, in turn, would precipitate a crisis between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two powers with substantial differences dividing them. The United States would then face the question of whether to support the Saudis against Iran. Placing forces in Saudi Arabia is the last thing the Americans or the Saudis want. But there is one thing that the Americans want less: Iranian dominance of the Arabian Peninsula.

Any president who simply withdrew forces from Iraq without a political settlement would find himself or herself in an enormously difficult position. Indeed, such a president would find himself or herself in a politically untenable position. The consequences of a withdrawal are as substantial as the consequences of remaining. The decline in violence and the emergence of some semblance of a political process tilts the politics of decision-making toward a phased withdrawal based on improvements on the ground and away from a phased withdrawal based on the premise that the situation on the ground will not improve. Therefore, even assuming Obama wins the nomination and the presidency, the likelihood of a rapid, unilateral withdrawal is minimal. The political cost of the consequences would be too high, and he wouldn’t be able to afford it.

Though Obama is the one outrider from the general consensus on Iraq, we would argue that the relative rhetorical consensus among the candidates extends to a practical consensus. It is not that presidents simply lie. It is that presidents frequently find themselves in situations where the things they want to do and the things they can do — and must do — diverge. We have written previously about situations in which policymakers are not really free to make policy. The consequences of policy choices constrain the policymaker. A president could choose a range of policies. But most have unacceptable outcomes, so geopolitical realities herd presidents in certain directions.

At least at this point in its cycle, Iraq is such a situation. The debate over Iraq thus mostly has focused on whether a candidate supported the war in the beginning. The debate over what is to be done now was more a matter of perception than reality in the past, and it certainly is much more muted today. To the extent they ever existed, the policy choices have evaporated.

The candidates’ consensus is even more intense regarding the rest of the world. The major geopolitical evolutions — such as the re-emergence of an assertive Russia, Chinese power growing beyond the economic realm and the future of the European Union — are simply non-issues.

When you drill down into position papers that are written but not meant to be read — and which certainly are not devised by the candidates — you find some interesting thoughts. But for the most part, the positions are clear. The candidates are concerned about Russia’s growing internal authoritarianism and hope it ends. The candidates are concerned about the impact of China on American jobs but generally are committed to variations on free trade. They are also concerned about growing authoritarianism in China and hope it ends. On the unification of Europe, they have no objections.

This might appear vapid, but we would argue that it really isn’t. In spite of the constitutional power of the U.S. president in foreign policy, in most cases, the president really doesn’t have a choice. Policies have institutionalized themselves over the decades, and shifting those policies has costs that presidents can’t absorb. There is a reason the United States behaves as it does toward Russia, China and Europe, and these reasons usually are powerful. Presidents do not simply make policy. Rather, they align themselves with existing reality. For example, since the American public doesn’t care about European unification, there is no point in debating the subject. There are no decisions to be made on such issues. There is only the illusion of decisions.

There is a deeper reason as well. The United States does not simply decide on policies. It responds to a world that is setting America’s agenda. During the 2000 campaign, the most important issue that would dominate the American presidency regardless of who was elected never was discussed: 9/11. Whatever the presidential candidates thought would or wouldn’t be important, someone else was going to set the agenda.

The issue of policies versus character has been discussed many times. One school of thought holds that the foreign policies advocated by a presidential candidate are the things to look at. In fact, the candidate can advocate whatever he or she wants, but foreign policy is frequently defined by the world and not by the president. In many cases, it is impossible to know what the issue is going to be, meaning the candidates’ positions on various topics are irrelevant. The decisions that are going to matter are going to force the president’s hand, not the other way around.

The most important decisions made by Roosevelt before and during World War II were never anticipated by him or by the voters when he was first elected. Wilson didn’t know he would be judged by Versailles, Truman didn’t know he would be judged by Korea and Bush didn’t know he would be judged by 9/11 and its aftermath. None of them had position papers on these issues because none of them anticipated the events. They couldn’t.

That is why it is not disturbing that the candidates are drifting toward consensus on Iraq and have no clear and divergent positions elsewhere. This is not simply a consequence of the interest or lack of interest of the American public. It has to do with a hidden dimension of presidential power, and indeed, with the limits of power everywhere. History deals up the agenda, and the options in response are severely constrained. If Thomas Dewey had been elected in 1948, do we really believe the Korean War would have played out differently?

Presidents are not to be judged by how they make history. They are to be judged by how gracefully they submit to the rules that history lays down. The consensus or disinterest of candidates is not important. What is important is this: The dominant foreign policy issue facing the candidates is going to hit them out of the blue one day. Their options will be few, and how quickly they recognize what must be done as opposed to what they would like to do is about all they will be judged by.

We know that Johnson made a terrible hash of Vietnam, while Roosevelt did pretty well in World War II. We strongly suspect that if Johnson had been president during World War II he would be respected and admired today, while if Roosevelt had been president during Vietnam he would be reviled. It’s not that presidents don’t matter. It’s that they don’t matter nearly as much as we would like to think and they would have us believe. Mostly, they are trapped in realities not of their own making.

3) Hamas shoots 14 missiles at Sderot and environs Tuesday. An Israeli air strike kills seven terrorists in Gaza.


Six people were injured by the second Palestinian missile salvo of the day from Gaza. The school building and houses were damaged and electricity was cut off in parts of Sderot.

Earlier, an Israeli air strike killed six Hamas members at a base near Khan Younes in southern Gaza Strip the day after a pair of suicide bombers killed a 73-year old woman, injured 48, in the southern Israeli town of Dimona Monday. Hamas operatives have been ordered to go to ground

During the day, four Palestinian missiles damaged two factories in Sderot and Palestinian sharpshooters fired at farmers in the fields of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where a volunteer was shot dead three weeks ago. Another two Qassams were fired south at the Kerem Shalom crossing, one falling on the Egyptian side of the border.

Monday, a leader of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees was killed in an Israeli air attack targeting his car in Beit Lahiya.

The two suicide bombers who attacked Dimona Monday, Feb. 4, were identified at a Fatah-al Aqsa Brigades news conference in Gaza as Mussa Mahmoud Arafat, 22, from Absan, Gaza Strip, a member of the Popular Front, and Louis Lahuani, 24, from Sabra, Gaza City, member of the Aqsa Brigades. Both reached Dimona from the Gaza Strip through Egyptian territory.

The Fatah spokesmen named their suicide mission “Assuring the Faithful”, which recalls Hizballah’s name for the 2006 Lebanon War “Assurance for the Faithful”, indicating their links with Hizballah. Tuesday, Hamas added its name to the list of claimants.

4) Terrorism pays
By Caroline B. Glick


Where does Arab fanaticism come from? Does it come from the mosque? Or does it come from the fanatics' intended targets refusal to close down the mosque? The death by natural causes of George Habash on January 26 indicates strongly that the latter is the case.

Habash, the founder and commander of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was a repugnant, fanatical, mass-murderer. Habash's terror specialties included airplane hijacking, hostage taking, massacre, assassination, and suicide bombings. Far from an Islamic supremacist, Habash was a Christian.

One of Habash's signature tactics was his use of Nazi-style "selections." After his henchmen hijacked passenger jets, they would walk among their hostages, separating the Jews from the non-Jews, or sometimes the Jews and the Americans from the non-Jews and non-Americans. They would let the non-Jews and non-Americans go, and hold the Jews and the Americans hostage.

Habash was not simply a sworn enemy of the Jewish people, Israel and the United States. He was also the enemy of the Hashemites in Jordan. In August and September 1970, Habash conducted five sensationalist airline hijackings. The hijacked aircraft and his Jewish hostages were sent to Jordan. Habash's hijackings were a central component of the PLO's campaign — backed by Iraq and Syria - to overthrow the Hashemite dynasty and to replace it with a Communist Palestinian Soviet-satellite state. The PLO's aims were only scuttled because Israel answered the late King Hussein's pleas for help and stopped the Syrians and Iraqis from invading Jordan.

Rather than hang Habash, Jordan gave him a home. Habash wasn't buried in a potter's field. Thousands attended his funeral and hailed him as a hero for his massacre of Israelis and Jews. And this, 13 years after Jordan signed a peace agreement with Israel.


HABASH'S EVASION of justice for his crimes is typical. In his first term of office, President George W. Bush railed against this harsh reality of non-accountability by referring to it as the "soft bigotry of low expectations." Bush pledged to work to replace Arab bigotry and tyranny which breed fanaticism and embrace terror with tolerance and freedom.

Six years later, Bush is not only ignoring his word, he is undermining it by rewarding regimes and societies that lie to him and systematically break their word to him.

Case in point is Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. In his State of the Union address last week, Bush praised Abbas as a leader who "recognizes that confronting terror is essential to achieving a state where his people can live in dignity and at peace with Israel."

But two days before Bush reaped such praise on him Abbas declared three days of official mourning for Habash's death in the PA and ordered flags to be flown at half mast for the entire mourning period. Abbas referred to Habash as "an historic leader" and declared his death, "a great loss for the Palestinian cause and for the Palestinian people for whom he fought for 60 years."

Rather than hold Abbas and his colleagues accountable upholding mass murderers as heroes, Bush insists that they must be given a state before he leaves office. And last month Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paved the way for the international donors' conference in Paris where the international community pledged $7.4 billion in financial assistance to Abbas and his Habash and Arafat worshipping government.


THE US POLICY of ignoring Arab culpability extends far beyond Jordan and the PA. US policies towards Syria and Saudi Arabia illustrate the breadth of the problem. Syria supports and engages in terror, proliferates weapons of mass destruction, allows terrorists and terror weapons to transit its territory en route to Iraq and Lebanon, and has allowed itself to become an Iranian protectorate. Yet the US invited it to the Annapolis peace conference and is planning to sell it dual-use computers.

Saudi Arabia supports Hamas, and al-Qaida. It is warming its ties with Iran. It finances jihadist indoctrination throughout the world. It refuses to increase its oil output to stabilize the world economy. And it has no human rights to speak of. Yet the administration embraces the Saudis as moderates and Congress is poised to approve the sale of $20 billion in advanced weaponry including JDAMS to Saudi Arabia.


BACK IN the days when Habash was hijacking airplanes, there was a hierarchy for not giving in to his extortion. At the bottom were the British, who insisted on giving in. Then came the Americans who thought the British shouldn't give in unless absolutely necessary. Finally there were the Israelis who said that terrorists must never be negotiated with. Period.

Thirty years later, the British are giving extra welfare checks to polygamists for each extra wife. The Americans are pushing for terror states and Israel is too timid to enforce its laws towards its Arab minority.

Not only did the Olmert government never considered demanding that Abbas apologize for celebrating Habash. The Olmert government couldn't even see the need to condemn the decision by three Israeli Arab MKs, Ahmed Tibi, Jamal Zahalka and Wasal Taha to travel to Amman to participate in Habash's funeral. There they upheld as a hero the man who hijacked an Air France passenger jet to Entebbe in 1976.

This isn't the first time that these three have acted in a seemingly traitorous manner. In September 2006, just a month after Israel's war with Hizbullah ended, Zahalka and Taha travelled to Beirut with former MK Azmi Bishara who has been on the lam since last April after having been indicted for spying for Hizbullah during the war. MK Tibi for his part has openly served as an agent for the Fatah terror organization since 1994.

The Israeli legislators followed up their trip to Amman with a memorial service for Habash in his birth city Lod where they demanded that he be reinterred. Lod's significance in Habash's life is not limited to the fact that he was born there In 1972 Habash ordered the massacre at Lod airport which left 27 Israelis murdered.

The Arab legislators' embrace of a sworn enemy of the country whose laws they took an oath to defend came just ahead of their call this week for a nation-wide Arab strike. Israel's Arab leaders' newest beef is Attorney-General Menachem Mazuz's decision not to indict policemen for their actions in quelling the Israeli Arab riots of October 2000 during which 13 rioters were killed.

Mazuz, who is usually only too happy to appease Israel's Arab leaders, is constrained in this case by the absence of any evidentiary basis for indicting police officers for using undo force in quelling rioters who were throwing firebombs at them and causing general mayhem while targeting Israeli Jews for attack.


THE REASON that even Mazuz couldn't indict anyone is because at the instruction of the Arab MKs, the families of the 13 refused to cooperate with government investigators. They refused to permit autopsies of the deceased. They refused to respond to questioning from Israeli authorities. As one Justice Ministry official told ynet, "In a law-abiding state one does not submit indictments based on speculations and gut feelings. There is one criminal law, and it stipulates clear and strict conditions for indictments that apply to all men and all events."


THE AIM of the Israeli Arab leaders here is clear. By acting contemptuously towards Israeli laws and law enforcement officers, while stirring hatred and mayhem, Israel's Arab leaders are seeking to reach the point where any attempt by Israeli authorities to apply the laws of the land to Israeli Jews and Arabs equally will be perceived as a violation of Israeli Arabs' human rights. The very notion that Jews have the right to assert authority over Arabs is the primary target of their actions. And, like Habash with the Jordanian authorities and Abbas, Syria and Saudi Arabia with everyone, Israel's Arab leaders are not being held accountable for their actions.

Today the only place where we see Arab leaders acting with any semblance of accountability is Iraq. There ahead of the anticipated US and Iraqi offensive in Mosul, Iraqi leaders joined American military commanders in the city and pledged to purge it of terrorists. There every day Iraqi military forces are fighting al-Qaida and other terrorist forces with a tactical acumen and commitment that only grows over time.

The reason for the disparity is because Iraq is so far the only Arab society that is being given a real opportunity for freedom. And with opportunity comes responsibility.

That's the thing of it. In the name of Arab rights, Arab tyrants, be they terrorists like Habash or Abbas, or autocrats like Bashar Assad or King Abdullah or Saddam Hussein, obliterate the notion of individual rights and with them, individual responsibility. And in the name of tolerance, or progressive values and peace, Israelis and Americans pretend that Arabs can't be held responsible for their actions because doing so will only make them angry and send them into the arms of the fanatics.

But it is the lack of accountability that does that. It is the double standard, the "soft bigotry of low expectations" that argues against applying laws and international norms equally to Arabs that instills in them a contempt for Israel and the West. And that contempt cultivates fanaticism. Whether they kill in the name of Soviet Communism as Habash did, or in the name of Allah as his friends in Hamas, Fatah, Hizbullah and al-Qaida do, terrorists must be held accountable for what they do. It is our willingness to see men like Habash die in their beds that tells people that it is okay to kill.