HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Proof of bin Laden's demise!
















Roubini concerned about Europe and forecasts a double dip recession. (See 1 below.)
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My friend, Elliot Chodoff on bin Laden's assassination. (See 2 below.)
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Maureen Dowd dumps on GW for sulking but believes we are entitled to celebrate. No mention of Clinton who also chose not to accompany the Messiah.

I wonder what Dowd would have written had Osama been killed on GW and Cheney's watch?


The last time Dowd was sighted she was riding a broom over Pakistan dripping ink on terrorists . (See 3 below.)
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HAPPY MOTHER"S DAY TO ALL MY GIRL FRIENDS!
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Dick
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1)Roubini: Europe is Headed for a Double-Dip Recession
By Forrest Jones

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1diggdiggThe European Central Bank will toss periphery nations back into a recession if it keeps raising interest rates, says New York University economist Nouriel Roubini.

Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Italy are already battling weak economic activity, and higher interest rates are only going to make things worse by strengthening the euro.

"Unfortunately the ECB has started to increase interest rates, these increasing interest rates are leading to a strengthening of the euro," Roubini says, according to the BBC.


Nouriel Roubini
(Getty Images photo)
"The euro becoming stronger and stronger is preventing the resumption of economic growth."

Peripheral eurozone economies are laden with too much debt, and lower interest rates would help them better recover.

Those embattled countries got a break recently when the European Central Bank voted to leave interest rates unchanged at 1.25 percent.

European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet did say the bank would "monitor very closely" all risks to inflation, which leaves market watchers expecting rates to say put in June although they'll likely rise again in July.

"We believe that the ECB will be wary about raising interest rates aggressively due to the growth headwinds facing the eurozone and the problems higher interest rates will cause for Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain," says Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight, according to the Associated Press.

Trichet has said monetary policy authorities will move rates higher to fight inflation, which is running above the bank's goal of just under 2 percent.

© Moneynews. All rights reserved
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2)Getting Bin Laden
By Elliot Chodoff

The long-awaited elimination of Osama Bin Laden marks a great success, if not a victory, for US counter-terrorist forces. After years of searching, good intelligence fieldwork backed up by competent analysis led to the successfully executed operation that put an end to the elusive leader of al Qaeda. However, a sober assessment of the event must lead to the conclusion that it was more a “win” for the US and its allies than it was a “loss” for its adversaries.

True, the al Qaeda organization has suffered a serious setback, but hardly the “body blow” claimed by certain US officials. Bin Laden was certainly an important feature of the organization, but al Qaeda is well-networked, and it will survive the loss. Others will step up, and Jihadi terrorism will continue to threaten lives and property in the West as well as the Muslim world.

Killing Bin Laden had little to do with justice, as summary execution can hardly be considered in that category. He was killed, not in an attempted arrest, but in a targeted operation more for what he continued to advocate and plan than for punishment for earlier crimes. Nonetheless, Bin Laden’s execution in the field is an important event in the war on terrorists in the message it transmits to both sides of the conflict.

A critical lesson of this operation is that no matter how far away, in time or distance, terrorists, their leaders, and their operations will be tracked down, disrupted, thwarted, and killed. This was the Israeli lesson of the Entebbe operation of 1976, in which hostages were rescued 2,500 miles from Israel’s borders, and the hunt for Ali Hassan Salameh, the Black September terrorist and organizer of the 1972 attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Munich, who was eliminated in 1979 after a six year hunt. Bin Laden may now join this list.

The operation is yet another reminder that lots of people are working behind the scenes in tedious, stressful, and often dangerous jobs to insure that the average citizen can live life untrammeled by daily concerns related to terrorist threats and attacks. Intelligence gatherers and analysts, who usually come to light following failures, are tasked with making sense of disparate shards of data and turning them into a coherent, operational picture. Special Forces troops, whose successes are usually classified and hidden in files never to see the light of day, operate in places and conditions that most people would prefer not to dream about, let alone experience. This operation allows a rare insight into their world, and an opportunity to appreciate, if briefly, their tense and hazardous routines.

Persistence counts for a great deal in war in general and in fighting terrorists in particular. In this case, a decade of searching, followed by nearly a year of tracking, and culminating in a daring raid to finish the job prove that the fight against terrorists can succeed but will not be achieved through quick, slick Hollywood-style fixes. The full-length feature film that will certainly be produced will dedicate 98% to the action and the rest to the preparation, planning, and training involved in making for the successful mission. The true proportions are reversed in reality.

Also importantly, the US population also showed its allies, its adversaries, and the media that it has a long, clear memory. For those who thought that the “flavor of the day” generation, with its penchant for superficial and vapid news stories, would lose interest in the arch-terrorist behind the 9/11 attacks, the popular reception to the news indicated that amnesia has not set in. Bin Laden was as hated a decade after the attacks as in the immediate aftermath.

In the end, getting Bin Laden was a planning and operational masterpiece that had little to do with justice and much to do with the long fight against global terrorists. It represents a small victory in the battle against terrorists. It is also an important reminder to those who would like to think that the quiet felt on the streets of Western cities results from lack of terrorist interest, that there is an unseen arena in this war that is constantly active and populated by heroes who provide us the security that we enjoy daily.
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3)Killing Evil Doesn’t Make Us Evil
By MAUREEN DOWD

I don’t want closure. There is no closure after tragedy.

I want memory, and justice, and revenge.

When you’re dealing with a mass murderer who bragged about incinerating thousands of Americans and planned to kill countless more, that seems like the only civilized and morally sound response.

We briefly celebrated one of the few clear-cut military victories we’ve had in a long time, a win that made us feel like Americans again — smart and strong and capable of finding our enemies and striking back at them without getting trapped in multitrillion-dollar Groundhog Day occupations.

But within days, Naval Seal-gazing shifted to navel-gazing.

There was the bad comedy of solipsistic Republicans with wounded egos trying to make it about how right they were and whining that George W. Bush was due more credit. Their attempt to renew the debate about torture is itself torture.

W. preferred to sulk in his Dallas tent rather than join President Obama at ground zero in a duet that would have certainly united the country.

Whereas the intelligence work that led to the destruction of Bin Laden was begun in the Bush administration, the cache of schemes taken from Osama’s Pakistan house debunked the fanciful narrative that the Bush crew pushed: that Osama was stuck in a cave unable to communicate, increasingly irrelevant and a mere symbol, rather than operational. Osama, in fact, was at the helm, spending his days whipping up bloody schemes to kill more Americans.

In another inane debate last week, many voices suggested that decapitating the head of a deadly terrorist network was some sort of injustice.

Taking offense after Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said he was “much relieved” at the news of Bin Laden’s death, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, posted the Twitter message: “Ban Ki-moon wrong on Osama bin Laden: It’s not justice for him to be killed even if justified; no trial, conviction.”

I leave it to subtler minds to parse the distinction between what is just and what is justified.

When Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said she was “glad” Bin Laden had been killed, a colleague called such talk “medieval.”

Christophe Barbier, editor of the centrist French weekly L’Express, warned: “To cry one’s joy in the streets of our cities is to ape the turbaned barbarians who danced the night of Sept. 11.”

Those who celebrated on Sept. 11 were applauding the slaughter of American innocents. When college kids spontaneously streamed out Sunday night to the White House, ground zero and elsewhere, they were the opposite of bloodthirsty: they were happy that one of the most certifiably evil figures of our time was no more.

The confused image of Bin Laden as a victim was exacerbated by John Brennan, the Obama national security aide who intemperately presented an inaccurate portrait of what had happened on the third floor in Abbottabad.

Unlike the president and the Navy Seals, who performed with steely finesse, Brennan was overwrought, exaggerating the narrative to demonize the demon.

The White House had to backtrack from Brennan’s contentions that Osama was “hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield” and that he died after resisting in a firefight.

It may be that some administration officials have taken Dick Cheney’s belittling so much to heart that they are still reluctant to display effortless macho. Liberal guilt may have its uses, but it should not be wasted on this kill-mission.

The really insane assumption behind some of the second-guessing is that killing Osama somehow makes us like Osama, as if all killing is the same.

Only fools or knaves would argue that we could fight Al Qaeda’s violence non-violently.

President Obama was prepared to take a life not only to avenge American lives already taken but to deter the same killer from taking any more. Aside from Bin Laden’s plotting, his survival and his legend were inspirations for more murder.

If stealth bombers had dropped dozens of 2,000-pound bombs and wiped out everyone, no one would have been debating whether Osama was armed. The president chose the riskiest option presented to him, but one that spared nearly all the women and children at the compound, and anyone in the vicinity.

Unlike Osama, the Navy Seals took great care not to harm civilians — they shot Bin Laden’s youngest wife in the leg and carried two young girls out of harm’s way before killing Osama.

Morally and operationally, this was counterterrorism at its finest.

We have nothing to apologize for.
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