Steep Cost -Worth The Ride? - Obama's World of Change!

An editorial in a Romanian paper. The writer sees the greatness of America, understands the benefits of freedom; something that escapes the Obama, Reid and Pelosi crowd. (See 1 below.)

With us or 'agin' us. A former president once said that. (See 2 below.)

Don Feder, offers more evidence of selective freedom of speech and campus hypocrisy in the world of academia. (See 3 below.)

Go while the going is good because we lack the will, motivation and leadership. (See 4 below.)

Iran the only issue discussed during Netanyahu's visit? (See 5 and 5a below.)

Stratfor analysts do a thorough review of all issues pertaining to Ft. Hood. (See 6 below.)


Historian, Victor Davis Hanson's, thoughts as well. (See 6a below.)

PC'ism has pitfalls and they outweigh the benefits when carried to the absurd as we have done. (See 6b below.)

Most presidents change many of their original views after they enter the Oval Office. Why? Because dealing with reality alters one's perspective from the theoretical when observed from a distance. Is this beginning to happen to Obama? Will the failure of his dreaminess impact his decision making or is he so ideologically gripped by his background, experience, learning and associations he is dead set in his view of what change should create and is needed?

The White House can deny all they want but the mood of the nation has shifted in terms of how many now view whom they thought they elected and what Obama would do to/for our nation. They assumed, after selectively listening to his rhetoric, they were electing a man who would bring racial harmony, who would polish our 'tarnished' world image and who would get the economy back on track. They did not believe he would radically bring about the type of change(s) he seeks in health care delivery, government control of half our economy and spending like a drunken sailor.

Those who did not get sucked in by Obama's 'Music Man' act are even surprised at how radical he has turned out to be but are not surprised to discover he remains mostly an empty suit. Many ignored a resume thin enough to see through and were willing to further ignore the fact that Obama and those he relied upon and sought counsel from had never run anything approximating a business or met a payroll.

Partisans have no recourse but to continue to defend Obama in the face of the change he is imposing. Though, more and more are turned off by his policies, they continue to maintain they like him as a person and see in him good and worthy intentions. In time, should he accomplish most if not all the change he seeks, I suspect the sound of angst and discord will grow. Particularly will this be so should the economy continue in the doldrums and unemployment remain historically high. Obama's blaming GW for all our nation's sins made for good theatre but we are now well into Obama's own production and his name is on the marquee.

Even if there is a swing back in 2010, the damage the Pelosi-Reid crowd will have imposed will never be totally reversed. It is not in the nature of government to revert back - there is no restart button as Sec. Clinton would have the Russian's believe.

So regardless of what follows, I submit, Obama will have effectively changed our nation in ways we will not recognize until many years hence. Some will be for the good but I suspect most will not. I envision an America that will be left economically poorer, with a vastly altered and lower standard of living, a decline in the ability of Capitalism to be as creative as in the past. Technology still remains the best hope of overcoming many of the negative Obama impositions but even here restrictions on entrepreneurship will be restrained and stultified.

Government does not reward initiative. Government does not produce anything but red tape. Government demands bureaucratic sameness. Government does not 'cotton' to those who march to their own drum beat because they are seen as being out of line. Go along and get along. This is how so many make it to the top in D.C.

We already see evidence of chafing by executives brought in to run businesses saved by government funding and now under its control. Executive compensation reached obnoxious and outrageous levels but the market was not allowed to bring it down to more realistic levels. Czars now set salary levels and, in time, this will impact personal initiative. For better or worse, wealth is how you keep score in a Capitalistic system. I have often said only Capitalism could have created the wealth that supports our bloated and wasteful government.

Obama believes wealth must be shared with those incapable of achieving it on their own initiative. This concept will neither elevate the bottom and certainly will disincentive the top. Obama believes power is evil and our nation must apologize for its arrogance. A weakened and grovelling America will neither deter our enemies nor make the world safer. It might even serve to embolden them.

Finally, Obama believes government control is the vehicle best suited to achieve these goals because he does not trust free markets nor free people. For the moment, the market, fueled by dollars with no place else to go, is enthralled but I argue it is only a matter of time before reality confronts those who see opportunity which is mostly a mirage. Inflation will be the consequence of all of this unbridled spending and lowered interest rates. The dollar's direction is telling us nothing less.

So welcome to Obama's world of change. The cost will be steep in my humble opinion and perhaps not worth the ride unless you are discontent with America The Beautiful and see only America The Ugly.


Dick


1)An Ode to America ~
By Cornel Nistorescu

Why are Americans so united? They would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs.

On 9/11, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the Army, or the Secret Service that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby to gape about.

Instead the Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand.

After the first moments of panic , they raised their flag over the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of the nation al flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a government official or the president was passing. On every occasion, they started singing: 'God Bless America !'

I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed other hundreds or thousands of people.

How on earth were they able to respond united as one human being? Imperceptibly, with every word and music al note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put into collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy. What on earth can unites the Americans in such way? Their land? Their history? Their economic Power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk of sounding commonplace, I thought things over, I reached but only one conclusion... Only freedom can work such miracles.

2)It Isn't Political Correctness, It's Shariah
By Pamela Geller

In surveying the cultural carnage in the wake of the worst terrorist attack on a military installation in US history, it bears noting that there have been seismic shifts in America. When America was free of the shackles of Islam, say, fifty years ago, the current response to such an attack by an enemy faction would have been unthinkable.

I have watched in abject horror the stunning reaction of elites in this country to this act of war. The denial, the submission, the excuses, the dodging, the self-flagellation, the shame, the deceiving of the American people by the media, the military, society, law enforcement, authorities and politicians, all the way up to and including the White House, amounts to the enforcement of Shariah law.


Shariah law forbids criticism of Islam. And here we are.


We are witnessing an Islamized America. This is well beyond political correctness. We are enforcing Shariah law. We will not insult Islam. That is Shariah law. We self censor. That is Shariah law. We disrespect ourselves, our nation, so that we might respect Islam. This is dhimmitude. We should be raging. We should be outraged. We should be strategizing for this worldwide conflict. We should be debating about which leader will best handle Islam's war on the West. And yet we have not one leader who begins to understand the conflict -- that's how feared the subject matter is. Not one leader.


Recently there was an interesting debate at National Review Online between soft conservatives who soft-pedal Islam and those who stand for reality of Islamic doctrine, conservative principles and the essential truth. By and large, the conservatives have dropped the ball on Islamic jihad. This has been made painfully clear by the lack of a leader (any leader) on the right who speaks to and takes up the fight against the sweeping Islamization of America. America has no Geert Wilders.


The conservatives are not really as bad as the Left is on Islam, but they only get real when there is jihadi "intervention" that invades and destroys the delusion of their narrative.


It is interesting to me that the hierarchy of the conservative movement (take CPAC, for example) stays far away from the counter-jihad forces (i.e., Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom, myself) except at moments like these. Last year there was not one speaker, one event at CPAC that spoke to the greatest threat this nation faces -- which is why I staged the Geert Wilders event at the Omni Hotel, during CPAC (but not a CPAC event) last year.


When the reality of war, Islamic doctrine and bloodshed lays bare the nature of the enemy and the battle we are in, the door creaks open and Robert Spencer starts getting invited to appear on radio shows, and NRO finally runs pieces by Bostom and Spencer that show up the soft conservative narrative on Islam, which is soft and fuzzy and stupid (i.e., "Islamist" vs "Islamic"). Of course, we bad boys will be put back in our boxes until the next terrible time the jihad comes calling.


It pains me to say it, but expect to see us more frequently in the coming months and years. For the giant con job on the American psyche continues apace: He was a crazy! It was "vicarious" Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder! It was "Pre-Traumatic" Stress Disorder! It was radical extremism! It was part of a tiny fringe! It doesn't represent Islam!


All lies. He was devout. He was a jihadist. Period. And many Muslims admire what he did. The Left worries about Muslim backlash. How about Muslim backlash against the infidels? Every "Soldier of Allah" who goes jihad is an enemy combatant. Every devout Muslim who believes in the word of the Quran has his or her duty to Islam, his call to jihad. Hence this terrible act of war, the 14,363 Islamic attacks across the world since 911, and all of the relentless plots, plans and to take down America in the past month alone. Devout Muslims should be prohibited from military service. Would Patton have recruited Nazis into his army?


I am writing this on Veterans Day. I call upon all Americans to step back, consider the unfathomable loss at Fort Hood, the ensuing apologia, and the tragic consequences of such behavior. This is a call to action. You're either with us or against us.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs Web site and is former associate publisher of the New York Observer.

3)Academic freedom for thee but not for me
By Don Feder

Of all the sins of the campus left, the worst is hypocrisy. Academic freedom is a spigot they turn on and off at their convenience.


This evening, Ray Luc Levasseur, a convicted terrorist who served 18 years of a 45-year sentence, will participate in a "Colloquium on Social Change," at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, sponsored by a "progressive" faculty group called "Social Thought and Political Economy."


Levasseur was the leader of the United Freedom Front, which worked for social change from 1976 to 1984 by bombing government buildings, robbing banks, murdering a New Jersey state trooper and attempting to murder two Mass. state cops. Given the academic mindset, the only surprise here is that, unlike William Ayers, Levasseur isn't a professor.


On October 6, the U. Mass. administration cancelled Levasseur's participation, due to an outcry by police unions and pressure from Governor Deval Patrick, who doesn't need additional baggage when he runs for reelection next year.


On Monday, the University reversed its earlier decision, and paraded its virtue in the process.


"I am opposed to convicted terrorist Raymond Luc Levasseur speaking at the University of Massachusetts," President Jack Wilson boldly proclaimed. "The University of Massachusetts stands squarely against the outrageous actions he has committed in the past." (Some would say "outrageous actions" was a rather mild description of being an accomplice to murder, attempted murder, bombings and armed robbery.)


Still, Wilson preened: "As a university, we defend the principles of free speech and academic freedom."


In a pig's eye.


My mistake was never leading a terrorist group that blew things up, killed a cop and knocked over banks.


I was invited by the University Republicans to deliver a lecture on March 11 of this year, on hate crimes laws as a form of censorship (punishing ideas as well as actions). The administration didn't prevent me from speaking. But it didn't even try to stop student groups like the International Socialist Organization from shutting down my lecture.


When I tried to speak that evening, I was met by 150 protestors. The young scholars heckled, stamped their feet, shouted slogans, waved signs and banners and did everything short of assault to silence me.


After 20 minutes of being interrupted roughly once every 15 seconds, I called it quits.


There were four uniformed and armed campus police in the lecture hall at all times (as well as plainclothes officers) who did absolutely nothing to maintain order, despite constant pleas from the president of the Republican group.


The administration was well aware of the potential for chaos. It even charged the Republicans an extra $444 for security for the event. But, other than stopping a student from bringing a rat into the lecture hall, the campus cops didn't lift a finger to stop the disruptions. No one was removed. No names were taken for disciplinary action. No one was even asked to shut up.


Other than serving the savages milk and marijuana, it's hard to see how the guardians of campus order could have been more obliging. After the event, I asked several why they stood by while my First Amendment rights were trampled. They smiled ruefully or shook their heads. It was plain they were ordered not to engage demonstrators.


Allowing a speaker to be shouted down is every bit as effective a way to censor him as it is to withdraw an invitation to speak.


To this day, the University lies about what happened at my non-lecture.


In an April 13 letter to The Boston Globe, U. Mass flak Ed Blaguszewski spun the following yarn: "While Feder was heckled, the police handled the situation in the room without difficulty. ... Feder chose to discontinue his speech."


I chose to discontinue my speech because: 1. I had a change of heart 2. I was tired and kept falling asleep in the tranquil surroundings, 3. I didn't like the color of the room or 4. I couldn't be heard above the tumult and decided that trying to continue was futile. The administration still pushes its fiction, even though the event was videotaped and posted on YouTube.


That's the way the University of Massachusetts defends "the principles of free speech and of academic freedom" -- for conservatives.


On March 11, I joined a distinguished fraternity of conservative speakers who've been shouted down, booed and jeered off the stage, harassed, threatened and (in at least one case) assaulted.


The victims of academic freedom include Ann Coulter (University of Connecticut 2005), David Horowitz (Emory University 2006), Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol (University of Texas 2006), Star Parker (Penn State 1999), who said she "feared for my life," and Jim Gilchrist of the Minuteman Project (Columbia, 2006). In the latter case, members of the Chicano Caucus and my old friends in the International Socialist Organization rushed the stage and knocked over tables and chairs to keep Gilchrist from speaking.


On most college and university campuses, academic freedom is a one-way street - for them, but not for us. Besides allowing conservative speeches to be disrupted and conservative papers to be trashed, administrators have devised numerous ways to short-circuit intellectual freedom.


Campus speech codes are the most popular. These are fences erected to safeguard the left's cherished idols. Open inquiry does not extend to challenging affirmative action or any article of the feminist canon.


At Ohio State University's Mansfield campus, a librarian faced charges of sexual discrimination and harassment for recommending three conservative books to incoming freshman. The entire faculty voted to engage in this intellectual book-burning. After a public outcry, the University quietly dropped the matter.


Recently, East Georgia College dismissed Professor Thomas Thibeault for criticizing the school's sexual harassment policy. To question revealed truth was itself deemed sexual harassment. Academic freedom does not excuse blasphemy.


After a campaign by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), the college reinstated Thibeault, but issued a "reprimand" for "offensive speech" -- the verbalization of bad thoughts. Imagine Jefferson's reaction to the proposition that being offended trumps freedom of expression.


Students have faced disciplinary action for holding "affirmative action bake sales" (to highlight the absurdity of racial quotas), putting up posters lampooning "gay awareness week," asking "disruptive questions" at a campus lecture celebrating abortion, stepping on Hamas and Hezbollah flags at an anti-terrorism rally (for this desecration, students at San Francisco State University were told they were under investigation for "incivility," "intimidation" and creating a "hostile environment") and advocating Second Amendment rights.


Academic freedom? The typical college campus is the most repressive place in America - an intellectual gulag with tenured guards and draconian punishment for questioning authority.


At least Stalin didn't claim to be for freedom of anything.

4)It's Time to Surrender in Afghanistan
By Michael Filozof

It's time to surrender in Afghanistan. Yep, that's right. Surrender.


Let's sign a document of surrender, apologize for our "aggression," withdraw the troops, and let Osama and the Taliban have a ticker-tape parade in the streets of Kabul before they force women back into their burkas, outlaw education for girls, and start executing homosexuals and Christians again.


It might sound a bit odd for me to make such an outrageous proposal. After all, I'm a hawkish, pro-military conservative, and I've been a lifelong adherent of the "nuke 'em 'til they glow" school of foreign policy. But I say we should surrender because the facts are plain: we have already surrendered in deed, if not in name.


On December 7, 1941, we were attacked by a fanatical, suicidal, non-democratic, non-Western enemy who had a disciplined, motivated, state-of-the art military. The attack killed some 2,000 uniformed military personnel on what was then a territorial outpost.


Our response was to conscript 12 million people into our armed forces, detain all members of the enemy's race for the duration of the war, defeat the enemy in less than four years by using nuclear weapons against his cities, and maintain a military presence in the enemy's nation for the next 65 years after his defeat.


On September 11, 2001, we were again attacked by a fanatical, suicidal, non-democratic, non-Western enemy. The enemy had no disciplined military. He employed only improvised and primitive methods of war. The Islamist militants killed 3,000 people, mostly civilians, in New York and Washington, the economic and political capitals of our nation. We identified stone-age Afghanistan as the origin of the attacks.


Our response was to send a few thousand volunteers to Afghanistan. Eight years later, we have failed to defeat Afghan militants that are largely illiterate and have no uniforms, no tanks, no ships, no aircraft, no satellites, and no armored vehicles. They are equipped only with Communist-designed rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and improvised explosives.


Our problem is not tactical inferiority, but a lack of political will and a surfeit of political correctness. Following the 9/11 attack, President Bush declared that "Islam is a religion of peace." Try to imagine for a moment that FDR held a press conference on Dec. 8, 1941, to declare that "Japan is a nation of peace." You can't.


At this point it's not even true that Afghanistan is the still the primary locus of Islamic terrorism. Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons for years. Pakistan -- already armed with nuclear weapons, and probably harboring Osama bin Laden -- could become unglued at any moment.


Yet our political pusillanimity has only gotten worse in the eight years since 9/11. Hardly a day goes by that we don't outdo ourselves in craven groveling and self-debasement before the enemy.


One of President Obama's first acts in office was to ban the phrase "war on terror" in favor of "overseas contingency operations" in government usage. He then traveled to Cairo, declared that he had "known Islam on three continents," and falsely claimed that Muslims had "enriched the United States" since its founding and that Islam has a "proud tradition of tolerance." (Perhaps he might ask the folks at Cantor Fitzgerald and United Airlines about Islamic "enrichment" and "tolerance.") He then apologized for American involvement in a coup against Iranian socialist Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 (a brilliant masterstroke of American foreign policy that kept both the Soviets and the U.S. out of Iran for 26 years), yet stood idly by while the Iranian theocrats rigged their own election this summer. It's now evident that Obama will not prevent the Islamic Revolutionary State from getting nuclear weapons. There will be no military action -- and no sanctions, either. Iran will get the bomb.


In October, only a week after Islamist militants stormed the headquarters of the Pakistani military, Secretary of State Clinton traveled to Pakistan. The radical Yale-educated feminist donned a headscarf in submission -- and the Islamist fanatics responded to her visit by killing hundreds in suicide attacks.


We have reached a point in Afghanistan that the Soviet Union reached in the 1980s: we no longer believe our own propaganda. The Soviets claimed that they lived in a workers' paradise and they were merely bringing the great benefits of communism to Afghanistan. But they knew it was a lie.


Similarly, we say that we're going to bring freedom and democracy to Afghanistan. Maybe we could, of course -- if we wanted to. But we don't. That would require remaking Afghan society the way we remade Japanese society. And President Obama campaigned on the promise of remaking America -- not Afghanistan.


This summer, the president stated that he's "not comfortable" using the term "victory" in Afghanistan. How can he possibly ask troops to risk life and limb in that country after saying that? His subsequent three-month indecision with regard to the Army's request for 40,000 more troops further betrays the fact that we're simply not committed to victory. One can scarcely comprehend FDR openly debating, in full view of Hitler and the world, a request for reinforcements during the Battle of the Bulge.


The assassination of thirteen American troops at Ft. Hood by a Muslim officer in the U.S. Army is the last straw. Despite the overwhelming evidence, our political and military leaders refuse to acknowledge that Maj. Hasan was motivated by militant Islamist ideology. President Obama believes that Hasan just "snapped" from the stress of military life. Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano told an Arab audience that she hopes the assassinations at Ft. Hood don't lead to reprisals against Muslims in the U.S.


And Gen. George Casey -- unbelievably -- actually said that if "diversity" in the military were to suffer, it would be an even greater tragedy than the Ft. Hood murders.


If political correctness makes us unwilling or unable to defeat militant Islam from within the officer corps of the U.S. Army at Ft. Hood, Texas, then it's perfectly evident that we're not going to defeat militant Islam in Afghanistan after eight years of trying.


The enemy has not defeated us in battle. They can't. But the Ft. Hood assassinations show that we've already surrendered. There's no sense putting our troops in harm's way in the field if we won't protect them in Texas.

5) Iran was the only subject on the Obama-Netanyahu, Gates-Barak agendas


Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Barack Obama focused on the single subject of Iran when they met in Washington Monday, Nov. 9 - as did Netanyahu and French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, Wednesday, Nov. 11. Iran also occupied the meeting between defense minster Ehud Barak and US defense secretary Robert Gates Monday. Washington sources disclose that briefings to the media and joint communiqués were disallowed for the sake of blacking out the content of the conversations Israeli leaders held in Washington and Paris.

Leaked reports that the Palestinian issue and Mahmoud Abbas' future were discussed in Washington and peace talks with Syria in Paris were window-dressing, as were the power games widely reported as leading up to the Netanyahu's reception at the White House.

The conversation in Sarkozy's private apartment at the Elysee was a continuation of Netanyahu's talks with Obama two days earlier and marked their coalescence around the next steps on Iran.

Back home, the defense minister stressed the importance of "not discounting the peace signals coming of late from Syria" and said that "many barriers fell" at the Netanyahu-Obama meeting "recreating a good foundation for renewing the peace process and reaching accord with our Palestinian neighbors."

This statement was part of the smoke screen set up by mutual consent to conceal the content of Barak and the prime minister's overseas meetings. It was necessary to addressing the minister's need to bolster his shaky position as leader of the left-leaning Labor party and lift Israel's image in Europe which is fixated on the Palestinian issue.

At the same time, a very senior American official related his description of falling barriers between President Obama and the prime minister was spot on and deserved a full stop. The rest of his comment applied to Israeli politics.

5a)Obama's Iran Diplomacy Isn't Working: The mullahs are tightening, not unclenching, their fists
By CON COUGHLIN

Five months after the first street protests against the sham re-election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rocked the regime to its core, it's time to assess the Obama Administration's "outstretched hand" policy. From the stalled nuclear talks to the Islamic Republic's deteriorating human-rights situation, it seems the mullahs have tightened, not unclenched, their fists.

No doubt, the conservative hard-liners are under pressure. Mounting international criticism of the regime's controversial nuclear program and the refusal of the pro-reform movement to submit to the repression have led to an increase in tension among the ruling elite. But rather than compromising, Tehran has resorted to the kind of repression and coercion that have helped turn Iran into an international pariah during the three decades since the Islamic revolution brought the ayatollahs to power.

This week's decision to press espionage charges against three U.S. backpackers who were arrested last July when they crossed, apparently inadvertently, into Iran from Iraq is just the latest development in the regime's campaign to silence its critics—domestic or foreign. Under Sharia law, Iran's legal system, espionage is punishable by death. The three young Americans have become Iranian bargaining chips to pressure the White House.

President Ahmadinejad adopted a similar tactic last spring when Roxana Saberi, a journalist with dual American and Iranian citizenship, was also charged with espionage when her only offense was to have overstayed her work visa. Ms. Saberi's detention took place as President Ahmadinejad was pondering how to respond to U.S President Barack Obama's appeal for direct talks . Ms. Saberi's release a few weeks later was the Iranian president's clumsy goodwill gesture to the new U.S. administration. The three Americans currently languishing in Tehran's notorious Evin prison may well experience a comparable "happy ending," but only if Mr. Obama backs off from confronting Iran over its uranium enrichment activities.

The Israeli Navy's interdiction of a vessel with hundreds of tons of Iranian weapons for Hezbollah, Tehran's key ally in Lebanon, is yet another indication of the regime's confrontational approach. Both Hezbollah and Hamas, its Palestinian client in Gaza, are regarded as vital strategic assets by Iran, to be activated against Israel in the event that the crisis over its nuclear program results in armed confrontation with the West.

Iran officially says it is still considering its response to the Oct. 1 offer by the six powers—the U.S., Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain—to ship uranium to Russia for further enrichment. But it is telling that the Revolutionary Guards thought it prudent to rearm Hezbollah in case their response fell short of international, and particularly Israeli, expectations.

The regime's main priority, though, lies closer to home, where it still hasn't managed to suppress the pro-reform genie that was let out of the political bottle during last summer's election. It's not that the mullahs aren't trying hard enough. After Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, confirmed Ahmadinejad's victory, the regime's security apparatus has moved with ruthless brutality to crush the opposition.

Iranian human-rights groups say that since the government crackdown began in late June, at least 400 demonstrators have been killed while another 56 are unaccounted, which is several times higher than the official figures. The regime has established a chain of unofficial, makeshift prisons to deal with the protesters, where torture and rape are said to be commonplace. In Tehran alone, 37 young Iranian men and women are reported to have been raped by their captors.

In addition, a series of show trials have been conducted by Iran's Revolutionary Courts. Many of the accused are former high-ranking members of previous administrations who supported Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidate.

Yet despite the brutality, the opposition refuses to be cowed. A group of Iranian lawyers, in cooperation with local human rights organizations, has drawn up a list of Revolutionary Guard commanders whom they accuse of war crimes during the post-election crackdown. And last week, crowds of pro-reform demonstrators hijacked the annual commemoration of the 1979 storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Instead of the traditional "Death to America" slogans, the government was alarmed to hear Moussavi supporters chanting "Death to the Dictator," a popular anti-Ahmadinejad refrain.

The protesters' courageous defiance and calls for freedom have led Tehran's clerical dictatorship to close ranks. President Ahmadinejad and the cabinet of hard-line conservatives he has assembled around him have not moderated their approach to the nuclear program. If anything, the regime's attitude is even less compromising. Ayatollah Khamenei dismissed Mr. Obama's diplomatic effort to build a new era of U.S.-Iran relations. The U.S. President's promise of "change" was a "contradiction," he declared at a recent rally at Tehran University. "If anyone violates the rights of the Iranian nation, the nation will firmly stand up to them and make them kneel down." With the Iranian nuclear program making steady progress, it's time for President Obama to acknowledge that his diplomacy has failed.

Mr. Coughlin is executive foreign editor of London's Daily Telegraph and the author of "Khomeini's Ghost: Iran since 1979."


6)The Hasan Case: Overt Clues and Tactical Challenges
By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

In last week’s global security and intelligence report, we discussed the recent call by the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Nasir al-Wahayshi, for jihadists to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets in the Muslim world and the West. We also noted how it is relatively simple to conduct such attacks against soft targets using improvised explosive devices, guns or even knives and clubs.

The next day, a lone gunman, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire on a group of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas. The victims were in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, a facility on the base where troops are prepared for deployment and where they take care of certain processing tasks such as completing insurance paperwork and receiving medical examinations and vaccinations.

Even though the targets of Hasan’s attack were soldiers, they represented a very soft target in this environment. Most soldiers on bases inside the United States are normally not armed and are only provided weapons for training. The only personnel who regularly carry weapons are the military police and the base civilian police officers. In addition to being unarmed, the soldiers at the center were closely packed together in the facility as they waited to proceed from station to station. The unarmed, densely packed mass of people allowed Hasan to kill 13 (12 soldiers and one civilian employee of the center) and wound 42 others when he opened fire.

Hasan is a U.S.-born Muslim who, according to STRATFOR sources and media accounts, has had past contact with jihadists, including the radical Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki is a U.S.-born imam who espouses a jihadist ideology and who was discussed at some length in the 9/11 commission report for his links to 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Al-Awlaki, who is currently living in Yemen and reportedly has contacts with al Qaeda, posted a message on his Web site Nov. 9 praising Hasan’s actions. Despite Hasan’s connections to al-Awlaki and other jihadists, it is unknown at this point if he was even aware of al-Wahayshi’s recent message calling for simple attacks, and therefore it is impossible to tell if his attack was in response to it.

However, one thing that is certain is that investigators examining Hasan’s computer hard drive, e-mail traffic and Internet history will be looking into that possibility, along with other indications that Hasan was linked to radicals.

We noted last week that by their very nature, individual actors and small cells are very difficult for the government to detect. They must somehow identify themselves by contacting a government informant or another person who reports them to the authorities, attend a militant training camp or conduct correspondence with a person or organization under government scrutiny. In the Hasan case, it now appears that Hasan did self-identify by making radical statements to people he worked with, who reported him to the authorities. It also appears that he had correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki, whom the government was monitoring. Because of this behavior, Hasan brought himself to the attention of the Department of Defense, the FBI and the CIA.

The fact that Hasan was able to commit this attack after bringing government attention to himself could be due to a number of factors. Chief among them is the fact that it is tactically impossible for a government to identify every aspiring militant actor and to pre-empt every act of violence. The degree of difficulty is increased greatly if an actor does indeed act alone and does not give any overt clues through his actions or his communications of his intent to attack. Because of this, the Hasan case provides an excellent opportunity to examine national security investigations and their utility and limitations.


The Nature of Intelligence Investigations

The FBI will typically open up an intelligence investigation (usually referred to as a national security investigation) in any case where there is an indication or allegation that a person is involved in terrorist activity but there is no evidence that a specific law has been broken. Many times these investigations are opened up due to a lead passed by the CIA, National Security Agency or a foreign liaison intelligence service. Other times an FBI investigation can come as a spin-off from another FBI counterterrorism investigation already under way or be prompted by a piece of information collected by an FBI informant or even by a tip from a concerned citizen — like the flight instructors who alerted the FBI to the suspicious behavior of some foreign flight students prior to the 9/11 attacks. In such a case, the FBI case agent in charge of the investigation will open a preliminary inquiry, which gives the agent a limited window of time to look into the matter. If no indication of criminal activity is found, the preliminary inquiry must be closed unless the agent receives authorization from the special agent in charge of his division and FBI headquarters to extend it.

If, during the preliminary inquiry, the investigating agents find probable cause that a crime has been committed, the FBI will open a full-fledged criminal investigation into the case, similar to what we saw in the case of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and his followers in Detroit.

One of the large problems in national security investigations is separating the wheat from the chaff. Many leads are based on erroneous information or a misidentification of the suspect — there is a huge issue associated with the confusion caused by the transliteration of Arabic names and the fact that there are many people bearing the same names. Jihadists also have the tendency to use multiple names and identities. And there are many cases in which people will falsely report a person to the FBI out of malice. Because of these factors, national security investigations proceed slowly and usually do not involve much (if any) contact with the suspect and his close associates. If the suspect is a real militant planning a terrorist attack, investigators do not want to tip him off, and if he is innocent, they do not want to sully his reputation by showing up and overtly interviewing everyone he knows. Due to its controversial history of domestic intelligence activities, the FBI has become acutely aware of its responsibility to protect privacy rights and civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and other laws.

And the rights guaranteed under the Constitution do complicate these national security investigations. It is not illegal for someone to say that Muslims should attack U.S. troops due to their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that more Muslims should conduct attacks like the June 1 shooting at a recruiting center in Little Rock, Ark. — things that Hasan is reported to have said. Radical statements and convictions are not illegal — although they certainly would appear to be conduct unbecoming a U.S. Army officer. (We will leave to others the discussion of the difficulties in dealing with problem officers who are minorities and doctors and who owe several years of service in return for their education.)

There are also many officers and enlisted soldiers in the U.S. Army who own personal weapons and who use them for self-defense, target shooting or hunting. There is nothing extraordinary or illegal about a U.S. Army major owning personal weapons. With no articulable violation of U.S. law, the FBI would have very little to act upon in a case like Hasan’s. Instead, even if they found cause to extend their preliminary inquiry, they would be pretty much limited to monitoring his activities (and perhaps his communications, with a court order) and waiting for a law to be violated. In the Hasan case, it would appear that the FBI did not find probable cause that a law had been violated before he opened fire at Fort Hood. Although perhaps if the FBI had been watching his activities closely and with an eye toward “the how” of terrorist attacks, they might have noticed him conducting preoperational surveillance of the readiness center and even a dry run of the attack.

Of course, in addition to just looking for violations of the law, the other main thrust of a national security investigation is to determine whom the suspect is connected to and whom he is talking to or planning with. In past cases, such investigations have uncovered networks of jihadist actors working together in the United States, Canada, Europe and elsewhere. However, if all Hasan did in his correspondence with people such as al-Awlaki was exercise his First Amendment right to hold radical convictions, and if he did not engage in any type of conspiracy to conduct an attack, he did not break the law.

Another issue that complicates national security cases is that they are almost always classified at the secret level or above. This is understandable, considering they are often opened based upon intelligence produced by sensitive intelligence programs. However, this classification means that only those people with the proper clearance and an established need to know can be briefed on the case. It is not at all unusual for the FBI to visit a high-ranking official at another agency to brief the official on the fact that the FBI is conducting a classified national security investigation involving a person working for the official’s agency. The rub is that they will frequently tell the official that he or she is not at liberty to share details of the investigation with other individuals in the agency because they do not have a clear need to know. The FBI agent will also usually ask the person briefed not to take any action against the target of the investigation, so that the investigation is not compromised. While some people will disagree with the FBI’s determination of who really needs to know about the investigation and go on to brief a wider audience, many officials are cowed by the FBI and sit on the information.

Of course, the size of an organization is also a factor in the dissemination of information. The Department of Defense and the U.S. Army are large organizations, and it is possible that officials at the Pentagon or the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command (still known by its old acronym CID) headquarters at Fort Belvoir, Va., were briefed on the case and that local officials at Fort Hood were not. The Associated Press is now reporting that the FBI had alerted a Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) in Washington about Hasan’s contacts with al-Awlaki, and ABC reports that the Defense Department is denying the FBI notified them. It would appear that the finger-pointing and bureaucratic blame-shifting normally associated with such cases has begun.

Even more severe problems would have plagued the dissemination of information from the CIA to local commanders and CID officers at Fort Hood. Despite the intelligence reforms put in place after the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government still faces large obstacles when it comes to sharing intelligence information with law enforcement personnel.


Criminal Acts vs. Terrorism

So far, the Hasan shooting investigation is being run by the Army CID, and the FBI has been noticeably — and uncharacteristically — absent from the scene. As the premier law enforcement agency in the United States, the FBI will often assume authority over investigations where there is even a hint of terrorism. Since 9/11, the number of FBI/JTTF offices across the country has been dramatically increased, and the JTTFs are specifically charged with investigating cases that may involve terrorism. Therefore, we find the FBI’s absence in this case to be quite out of the ordinary.

However, with Hasan being a member of the armed forces, the victims being soldiers or army civilian employees and the incident occurring at Fort Hood, the case would seem to fall squarely under the mantle of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). From a prosecutorial perspective, a homicide trial under the UCMJ should be very tidy and could be quickly concluded. It will not involve all the potential loose ends that could pop up in a federal terrorism trial, especially when those loose ends involve what the FBI and CIA knew about Hasan, when they learned it and who they told. Also, politically, there are some who would like to see the Hasan case remain a criminal matter rather than a case of terrorism. Following the shooting death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah and considering the delicate relationship between Muslim advocacy groups and the U.S. government, some people would rather see Hasan portrayed as a mentally disturbed criminal than as an ideologically driven lone wolf.

Despite the CID taking the lead in prosecuting the case, the classified national security investigation by the CIA and FBI into Hasan and his possible connections to jihadist elements is undoubtedly continuing. Senior members of the government will certainly demand to know if Hasan had any confederates, if he was part of a bigger plot and if there are more attacks to come. Several congressmen and senators are also calling for hearings into the case, and if such hearings occur, they will certainly produce an abundance of interesting information pertaining to Hasan and the national security investigation of his activities.

6a)Same Old, Same Old at Fort Hood
By Victor Davis Hanson

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is accused of murdering last week 13 people (12 of whom were soldiers) and wounding another 30 at Fort Hood, Texas. It was not the first, nor will it be the last, domestic terrorist incident since Sept. 11, 2001.

We now see that authorities had, or should have had, reason to be suspicious of Hasan -- including his contact with a radical cleric and a bizarre "medical" presentation he once gave to Army doctors that focused on Islam and the military.

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Now, we're also learning that someone going by the name Nidal Hasan posted extremist views on the Internet, and that at least one former classmate questioned his loyalty to America.

Yet no one acted.

Was, as there appears to be, a fear among would-be accusers of being charged with politically incorrect bias?

That worry has certainly been evident in the postmortem Fort Hood analysis. Repeatedly the media advised us not to rush to judgment about the motives of Hasan, who, witnesses say, yelled "Allahu Akbar" before he shot the unarmed.

Many commentators were more likely to cite the stresses of hearing patients discuss two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than Hasan's own apparent extremist beliefs.

In truth, the Fort Hood murders fit into a now familiar pattern of radical Islamic-inspired violence that manifests itself in two principal ways.

First are the formal terrorist plots. Radical Muslims have attempted, in coordinated fashion, to blow up a bridge, explode a train, assault a military base, and topple a high-rise building - in ways al-Qaida terrorist leaders abroad warned us would follow 9/11.

This year alone, three terrorist plots have been foiled.

Najibullah Zazi was indicted for plans to set off a bomb in New York on the anniversary of 9/11.

Daniel Patrick Boyd and Hysen Sherifi were charged with conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel at the Quantico, Va., military base.

Hosam Maher Husein Smadi - a 19-year-old Jordanian in the U.S. illegally
- was arrested after being accused of placing what he thought were explosives near a 60-story office tower in Dallas.

In all these cases, the plotter (or plotters) either had ties to terrorists or voiced Islamic-fueled anger at the U.S.

More than 20 other domestic terrorist plots have been stopped by law enforcement agencies since 9/11. On average, in the 98 months since the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, a radical Islamic-inspired terrorist plot has been uncovered every four months.

There have also been "lone wolf" mass murderers in which angry radical Muslims sought to channel their frustrations and failures into violence against their perceived enemies of Islam.

Since Sept. 11, several Muslim men have run over innocent bystanders or shot random people at or near military bases, synagogues and shopping malls.

After the initial hysteria died down, we were usually told that such acts were isolated incidents, involving personal "issues" rather than radical Islamic hatred of the U.S. Yet a few examples show that was not quite the case.

The just-executed sniper John Allan Muhammad, who, along with an accomplice, killed 10, voiced approval of Osama bin Laden and radical Islamic violence.

Naveed Afzal Haq is currently on trial for going on a murderous rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building. A survivor said Haq stated his attack was a "personal statement against Jews."

Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar ran over nine students at the University of North Carolina. Officers said he told them afterward he wanted to avenge the deaths of Muslims worldwide.

Omeed Aziz Popal struck 18 pedestrians with his car near a Jewish center in San Francisco. Witnesses say he said, "I am a terrorist," at the scene.

No doubt in each case, experts could assure us that there were extenuating personal circumstances - stresses and mental illnesses that
better explain what happened.

Mere mention that such killers typically voiced radical Islamic or virulently anti-Semitic themes often can earn one charges of Islamaphobia, racism or other illiberal biases. Indeed, I expect dozens of angry, accusatory letters in response to this column.

Nevertheless, the facts since 9/11 reveal an undeniable reality.

Every few months either an Islamic-inspired terrorist plot will be foiled, or a young Muslim male will shoot, run down or stab someone while invoking anger at non-Muslims.

In other words, the attack on Fort Hood happened on schedule. It was the rule, not the exception. And something like it will occur again - soon.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."

6b) The pitfalls of political correctness
By Dick Polman,


This was the key passage yesterday in President Obama's Fort Hood eulogy: "It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know - no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice -- in this world, and the next."

Finally, after days and days of political correctness in high places and in the press, we got an acknowledgement, from the president himself, that the alleged killer was driven to his misdeeds not because he was mentally batty or because he was lonely and troubled or because he was stressed by the issue of overdeployment, but because he was an Islamic jihadist.

Obama didn't specifically say that, of course - he obviously wanted to keep the focus on the terrorism victims, and avoid saying anything that might compromise the federal probe - but his line about "faith" clearly refers to Maj. Nidal Hasan's misbelief that he was acting as a true Muslim. Although Obama could have been more explicit in his condemnation (more on that below), he at least signaled that PC Americans should now dispense with the ritual pussyfooting and call out Hasan for what he really is.

Ever since the shootings, too many smart people have preferred to ignore the mountain of evidence about Hasan's true motives, because (a) they don't want to be viewed as "anti-Muslim" or intolerant of religious freedom, (b) they don't want to say anything that might help trigger a backlash against the Muslim-American community, and/or (c) they don't want to believe that we have, living in our midst and even within the military, religious extremists who want to murder us. To cite just one example, respected New Republic thinker and author John Judis was still insisting yesterday that "we don't know yet what motivated Nidal Hasan...I am reluctant to call him a terrorist, particularly because doing so arouses fears of a jihadist conspiracy in our midst that may not exist."

His argument misses the point; it's now clear that extremists like Hasan can terrorize without being part of any organized conspiracy. Yes, he acted alone...but he didn't think alone. This murder spree proves that jihadist thinking is a clear and present danger, in isolated pockets of the Muslim-American community. And we should be able to say that, out loud - without it being misinterpreted as a slur against the peaceful Muslim-Americans who constitute the overwhelming majority, or somehow as an invitation to round them all up and ship them to Guantanamo.

We have enemies among us. Hasan was apparently one of them. The warning signs were clear for a long time, even though the military preferred to look the other way (for many of the same reasons that made people so reticent after the shootings). As an Army shrink, he gave two lectures, complete with PowerPoint, about how America's war on terror was really just a war on Muslims; about how all Muslims should "fight those who do not believe in Allah"; about how suicide bombings are a way of "fighting for God against injustice of the 'infidels'"; and about how "we love death more than you love life!"

Hasan delivered one of these lectures to a Pentagon medical audience; hia topic was supposed to be environmental health, but the course director chose to indulge him. One military officer, speaking on background to Time magazine, says that people in uniform these days are reluctant to challenge people like Hasan "because they're afraid of getting an equal-opportunity complaint that can end careers." This probably explains why nobody on the intelligence side was able to connect all the dots - which included Hasan's contacts with a radical Islamic cleric (who has since praised Hasan), and his reputed attempts to contact al Qaeda. And if yelling "Allahu akbar" as he opened fire isn't enough for the federal investigators, what is?

Obama took steps yesterday to confront the truth yesterday - tentatively so. He referred to the shooter's "twisted logic," but the grim reality is that those who think like the shooter do not see their logic as twisted. Obama said that "no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts," but those who sympathize with the shooter sincerely believe that their faith does justify such acts. Obama said that no God "looks upon them with favor," but, as Hasan himself insisted in his lectures, God absolutely does.

Obviously, this is highly sensitive stuff. Diversity, freedom of religion, and civil liberties are cornerstones of our creed. And, as a practical matter, the military has a dire need for more Muslim-Americans in the ranks - not just as soldiers, but as language specialists who can help us communicate better in hostile settings. At the same time, the Fort Hood shootings are proof that we can ill afford to ignore warning signs in name of political correctness, or to delude ourselves about a domestic danger.