MUWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — In another blow to the Taliban senior leadership, Pakistani authorities have captured Mullah Abdul Kabir, a member of the group’s inner circle and a leading military commander against American forces in eastern Afghanistan, according to a Pakistani intelligence official.

Mullah Kabir was detained several days ago in Nawshera, in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province, the Pakistani official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Mullah Kabir is a member of the Quetta Shura, the small group of leaders who direct the Taliban’s operations and who report to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the group’s founder. The group is named for the Pakistani city where many of the Taliban’s leaders are thought to be hiding.

Mullah Kabir is the second member of the Quetta Shura to be captured in Pakistan in recent weeks. Last month, American and Pakistani intelligence agents captured Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s top military commander and the head of the Quetta Shura. He was hiding in Karachi.

NYTimes

From here on in when a Republican opens their mouth to try to hit President Obama on national security, every person in the room should point at them and start laughing....loudly.

Headline Win

56 Percent of Americans Are Too Soft to Fight Terrorism

Spencer Ackerman

Another One Bites The Dust

Its gotta really suck to be a Hill Republican these days. Just when you thought you could hit the President on national security, one of your traditionally stronger issues, he just keeps catching Taliban leaders that we have been after for years.

What the hell are you to use to fear monger with now?!

Another leader of the Afghan Taliban has been captured by authorities in Pakistan working in partnership with U.S. intelligence officials. Taliban sources in the region and a counterterrorism officials in Washington have identified the detained insurgent leader as Mullah Abdul Salam, described as the Taliban movement's "shadow governor" of Afghanistan's Kunduz province.

Taliban sources told NEWSWEEK's Sami Yousafzai that Salam was grabbed by Pakistani security forces in the city of Faisalabad about a week ago—close to the same time that Pakistani forces, again with American support, captured the Afghan Taliban's No. 2 leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, in Karachi. The Taliban sources said that Mullah Salam was arrested with three other militants.

Mullah Salam was one of the Taliban's most effective commanders in northern Afghanistan and therefore one of the men most wanted by U.S. and NATO forces fighting there. Salam's soldiers are reputed to have been particularly deadly in their attacks on German troops fighting in northern Afghanistan.

Pretty soon folks will just point and laugh when GOP asshats try to hit President Obama on terrorism. And it won't be soon enough...

Bob Barr Destroys All Of Bill O'Reilly's Fear Mongering Arguments

Facts really are pesky little things.

On Fearing KSM's Propaganda...

Spencer Ackerman has an excellent take down for all these wingnut asshats running around with their hair on fire because they contend that putting Khalid Sheik Muhammed on trial will give him an opportunity to rail against America and spew propaganda to his fellow extremists.

What’s an actual insult to the victims of 9/11 is the idea that America is not strong enough to withstand the blatherings of a mass murderer. For me, the prospect of KSM grandstanding at his trial falls into I-wish-a-motherfucker-would territory. I want to hear how KSM builds a case against America, because everyone will hear how laughably conspiratorial and clownish it is. Think of what a cathartic moment it will be when America sees the face of the man considered to be UBL’s most efficient henchman and he delivers a pitiful harangue to a bank of cameras. No one will be emboldened to do anything but laugh. The only downside will be his inevitable discussion of how CIA operatives tortured him.

My hope for the KSM trial is that it does more than all this. It should forever shatter the pernicious myth that al-Qaeda is composed of supermen — supermen against whom America has no choice but to alter its character and most precious laws in order to confront. I suspect we’ll have an Eichmann-in-Jerusalem moment — and sorry for the unfortunate Nazi/al-Qaeda analogy; al-Qaeda are not the Nazis; but I couldn’t really think of any other parallel — except instead of the banality of evil, we’ll see the lunacy and vanity and self-absorption of it. That’s because al-Qaeda’s weltanshauung depends on a myth that holds America to be implacably determined to snuff out the glory of Islam. In reality, most Americans couldn’t give a fuck about Islam and only started to know the first thing about it because of 9/11. But that America — an America bearing no resemblance to the actual America — will be what KSM seeks to counter-indict. It’s farcical, and farcical in ways that can only benefit the real America.

You know I loved that I-wish-a-motherfucker-would line! LOL

I will make a distinction though and this comes from a comment I left on his blog.

You see (Republicans) aren't REALLY afraid of what KSM will say or do during the trial. What (they are) REALLY afraid is that a Democratic administration will do what a Republican administration didn’t. And that is show that our system of justice is stronger than any terrorist in some far off land living in a cage. And also that we will NOT show cowardice by bending to their will by not giving them a fair trial and thus becoming the caricature that they try to make out of our country. And finally that a Democratic administration will show more deference to our founding fathers than Bush or Cheney would have ever dreamed.

You see once KSM and his cohorts are dragged in front of a jury and are handed down the death penalty, then they lose the super villan with super powers status that Bush, Cheney and just about every Republican in Congress has given them for the last 8 years. And guess what, if there are no more boogey men then Republicans will have a hard time finding someone to fearmonger against when they are pimping their national security cred.

As with most things that have to do with Republican criticism of moves that the Obama administration makes, this has almost nothing to do with what they are actually saying and everything to do with what they see as their political futures. See also, health care, cap and trade, gay marriage…etc

I think its very important that we push back on silly Republican criticizms of the Obama administration. I think its equally important that we always point out that most of these criticisms are rooted in rank politics and not real ideology. Its one thing to be a hypocrite. Its another thing to be a hypocrite just for political gain and discounting how that hypocrisy could put the citizens in this country in harms way.

It is what it is...

Why Are People Surprised?

Dick Cheney is a loathsome, dishonest, war criminal who probably prays every day that we have a major failure in national security so that his policies will be vindicated or at least forgotten. I don't understand why people keep acting surprised at his irresponsible and unpatriotic speeches. The sooner we stop paying him any serious attention the sooner we can move on with fixing all the messes he helped to leave behind.

It is what it is.

Of Course They Did

I'm no doubt outraged, but not at all surprised that Tom Ridge has confirmed that the Bush Administration politicized national security so as to gain electoral victories. i don't know of any credible person who was paying attention for the last 8 years who could have claimed that not to be the case. But it is always a punch to the gut to see it acknowledged by one of the players involved.

"The darkest possibilities of the politics of terrorism became obvious in the summer and fall of 2002 as the midterm elections approached," Mr. Ridge writes. "Members of my own party carried out a campaign of shameless character assassination."

He describes how GOP operatives painted then-Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., a triple amputee from wounds he suffered in Vietnam, as being soft on terrorism because, over personnel issues, he had voted against the creation of the department Mr. Ridge would lead. The assault included a campaign commercial twinning Mr. Cleland's face with that of Osama bin Laden.

"It was an early and brutal example of playing the patriotism card and set a new standard for low," Mr. Ridge said. "But the tactic worked and the GOP picked up a Senate seat. But in the end it was very much a pyrrhic victory. The accusation that we were playing politics was something we dealt with often, and the Georgia campaign gave those accusations a basis in fact."

Mr. Ridge is adamant in rejecting the contentions of Bush administration critics that the often-derided color-coded warning system he helped devise was manipulated for political ends. He depicts an atmosphere, however, in which the motives of some senior officials and Cabinet colleagues sometimes left lingering questions on that score.

The most dramatic example -- and one that Mr. Ridge said would help him confirm his previous plans to leave his post -- came on the eve of the 2004 election between Mr. Bush and Sen. John Kerry.

Osama bin Laden had released a videotape with one more ominous sounding but unspecific threat against the United States. Neither Mr. Ridge nor any of the department's security experts thought the message warranted any change in the nation's alert status.

" . . . at this point there was nothing to indicate a specific threat and no reason to cause undue public alarm," he writes.

But that view met resistance in a tense conference call with members of the intelligence community and several other Cabinet officers including Attorney General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

"A vigorous, some might say dramatic, discussion ensured. Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level and was supported by Rumsfeld."

Noting the correlation found between increases in the threat level and the president's approval rating, Mr. Ridge writes, "I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' "

Keep in mind that this is from a book that Ridge wrote freely, imagine how many more details would come out if he was ever deposed. It is evident at this point that we will never really know just how slimy the Bush Administration was, but from all we already know I can't think of anybody who was any worse.

It Had To Be Said

I don't have much to add to this Frank Rich op ed in the New York Times other than I am glad to see a journalist take on his colleagues for once. Definitely worth the full read but here is an excerpt.

The déjà vu in the news media was more chilling. Rather than vet the substance of Cheney’s fulmination, talking heads instead hyped the split-screen “dueling speeches” gimmick of the back-to-back Obama-Cheney scheduling. Time magazine’s political Web site Photoshopped Cheney and Obama’s faces atop prize fighters’ bodies.

Most of the punditocracy scored the fight on a curve, setting up a false equivalence between the men’s ideas. Cheney’s pugnacious certitude edged out Obama’s law-professor nuance. “On policy grounds, you’ve got a real legitimate fight here,” David Gregory insisted on “Meet the Press” as he regurgitated the former vice president’s argument (“You can’t compromise on these matters”) and questioned whether the president could “really bring” his brand of pragmatism “to the issue of the war on terror.”

One New York Daily News columnist summed up Cheney’s supposed TKO this way: “The key to Cheney’s powerful performance: facts, facts, facts.” But the facts, as usual, were wrong.

At the McClatchy newspapers’ Washington bureau, the reporters Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel detailed 10 whoppers. With selective quotations, Cheney falsified the views of the director of national intelligence, Adm. Dennis Blair, on the supposed intelligence value of waterboarding. Equally bogus was Cheney’s boast that his administration had “moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks.” In truth, the Bush administration had lost Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, not least because it started diverting huge assets to Iraq before accomplishing the mission of vanquishing Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. That decision makes us less safe to this very minute.

You can find a link to the complete Landay-Strobel accounting of Cheney’s errors in the online version of this column. The failure of much of the press to match their effort has a troubling historical antecedent. These are the same two journalists who, reporting for what was then Knight Ridder, uncovered much of the deceit in the Bush-Cheney case for the Iraq war in the crucial weeks before Congress gave the invasion the green light.

On Sept. 6, 2002, Landay and Strobel reported that there was no known new intelligence indicating that “the Iraqis have made significant advances in their nuclear, biological or chemical weapons programs.” It was two days later that The Times ran its now notorious front-page account of Saddam Hussein’s “quest for thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes.” In the months that followed, as the Bush White House kept beating the drum for Saddam’s imminent mushroom clouds to little challenge from most news organizations, Landay and Strobel reported on the “lack of hard evidence” of Iraqi weapons and the infighting among intelligence agencies. Their scoops were largely ignored by the big papers and networks as America hurtled toward fiasco.

Another reporter who was ahead of the pack in unmasking Bush-Cheney propaganda is the author Ron Suskind. In his 2006 book on the American intelligence matrix, “The One Percent Doctrine,” Suskind wrote about a fully operational and potentially catastrophic post-9/11 Qaeda assault on America that actually was aborted in the Bush years: a hydrogen cyanide attack planned for the New York City subways. It was halted 45 days before zero hour — but not because we stopped it. Al-Zawahri had called it off.

When Bush and Cheney learned of the cancellation later on from conventional intelligence, they were baffled as to why. The answer: Al-Zawahri had decided that a rush-hour New York subway attack was not enough of an encore to top 9/11. Al Qaeda’s “special event” strategy, Suskind wrote, requires the creation of “an upward arc of rising and terrible expectation” that is “multiplied by time passing.” The event that fits that bill after 9/11 must involve some kind of nuclear weapon.

“What are the lessons of this period?” Suskind asked when we spoke last week. “If you draw the wrong lessons, you end up embracing the wrong answers.” They are certainly not the lessons cited by Cheney. Waterboarding hasn’t and isn’t going to save us from anything. The ticking time-bomb debate rekindled by Cheney’s speech may be entertaining on “24” or cable-news food fights, but is a detour from the actual perils before the country. “What we’re dealing with is a patient foe who thinks in decades while we tend to think more in news cycles,” Suskind said. “We have to try to wrestle this fear-based debate into something resembling a reality-based discussion.”

The reality is that while the Bush administration was bogged down in Iraq and being played by Pervez Musharraf, the likelihood of Qaeda gaining access to nuclear weapons in a Taliban-saturated Pakistan was increasing by the day. We know that in the month before 9/11, bin Laden and al-Zawahri met with the Pakistani nuclear scientist Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood. That was the real link between 9/11 and nuclear terror that the Bush administration let metastasize while it squandered American resources on a fictional link between 9/11 and a “nuclear” Saddam.

And where are we now? On the eve of Obama’s inauguration, David Sanger reported in The Times that military and nuclear experts agree that if “a real-life crisis” breaks out in Pakistan “it is unlikely that anyone would be able to assure an American president, with confidence, that he knew where all of Pakistan’s weapons were — or that none were in the hands of Islamic extremists.”

Pakistan is the time bomb. But with a push from Cheney, abetted by too many Democrats and too many compliant journalists, we have been distracted into drawing the wrong lessons, embracing the wrong answers. We are even wasting time worrying that detainees might escape from tomb-sized concrete cells in Colorado.

What we need to be doing instead, as Suskind put it, is to “build the thing we don’t have — human intelligence. We need people who are cooperating with us, who step up and help, and who won’t turn away when they see things happening. Hearts and minds — which we’ve botched — must be corrected and corrected quickly. That’s what wins the battle, not going medieval.” It’s not for nothing, after all, that Powell, Gen. David Petraeus and Robert Gates, the secretary of defense — among other military minds — agree with Obama, not Cheney, about torture and Gitmo.

The harrowing truth remains unchanged from what it was before Cheney emerged from his bunker to set Washington atwitter. The Bush administration did not make us safer either before or after 9/11. Obama is not making us less safe. If there’s another terrorist attack, it will be because the mess the Bush administration ignored in Pakistan and Afghanistan spun beyond anyone’s control well before Americans could throw the bums out.

Taken along with the op ed from Richard Clarke in the Washington Post and it should very apparent to everyone that our mainstream media needs to take a good long hard look at itself and then make some major changes.

North Korea Is Tripping And I Haven't Got a Clue

North Korea is acting a fool right now and honestly I don't know what to make of it. And here is my blogging philosphy, I know what I don't know. Therefore when there is something important going on but I don't really have a good grasp of it instead of trying to bluff and bluster my way through it in a post I will either decline to speak on it, or I will look to link to someone who is a lot more informed on the issue and present their take on it. Thank fully today former NSA Dr Zbignew Brzizenski was on Morning Joe and he laid out the situation we find ourselves in with North Korea as few probably could.

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That wasn't exactly encouraging news but at least he explained where we are at and what the options are. Hopefully that will give us at least enough information to be somewhat informed on the issue.

Another Out Of Office Republican Comes Out Against Cheney

This time its Chuck Hagel.

Tom Ridge Says Cheney Is Wrong

No wonder why Tom Ridge refused to run for the Senate, he wanted to be able to tell the truth whenever he wanted to. I wonder how many members of the GOP in Congress would like to be able to do the same thing but can't because of their leadership and their base.

GITMO And Transparency

Today President Obama delivered a speech on National Security. Here is the video.

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Here are what I thought were the high points of the speech.

First President Obama led of the speech by going through all of the measures he has initiated since assuming office that helps our national security including redirecting resources to the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan, investing in 21st century technology to help with intelligence, working on nuclear non proliferation that will attempt to track down all "loose nukes" within the next four years, protecting the border, renewing alliances in the war on terror and renewed diplomacy. He said our fundamental values are what help keep us safe and that the founding documents of our country are what we need to cling to in our search for liberty and justice. He made the point that we can't turn our back on those values just for expediency sake.

He made the point that in the past WE were the ones who shut down torture chambers from all over the world.

He made the point that post 9-11 we had to come up with new tools in order to prevent attacks along with prosecuting them after they had been committed or attempted.

He said in the past (see during the Bush Administration) we made national security decisions out of fear rather than facts for expediency's sake.

"We went off course"

Obama made the point that both he and Senator John McCain called for the closing of GITMO and the voters in both parties made them their general election candidates which indicates they agree.

The President before he came into office we were working with an ad hoc legal approach to fight terrorism which was neither effective nor sustainable.

I liked that President Obama used the phrasing "so called" in reference to EITs which most of us know is just a euphemism for torture.

President Obama said HE is the one who sees all of the intelligence and he categorically rejects the notion that waterboarding was or is the most effective method of gaining information and that it undermines the rule of law, is a recruitment tool for terrorists, increases the will of our enemies who will no longer surrender because they believe we will torture them, puts our troops' lives in danger, and did not advance our war on terror.

He made note of the fact that Senator McCain has also spoken out about the propaganda value of torture for terrorists trying to recruit more people into their ranks.

Obama shifted to closing GITMO. He talked about the fact that the Military Commisions have only convicted 3 detainees in 7 years.

The President pointed out that in 2006 the Supreme Court invalidated the Military Court system.

He points out that the whole premise of opening GITMO was to put detainees somewhere that the Bush Administration felt they could hold them beyond the law and that the Supreme court rejected that notion.

He says GITMO itself helped to weaken our National Security.

President Obama asserts that the costs of keeping GITMO open far exceed any complications from closing it.

Obama also pointed out that he was cleaning up a mess that he hadn't created.

He says the problems that exists aren't from GITMO closing, they are from GITMO opening in the first place.

He refuses to pass this problem off to the next President.

He calls out those who have politicized the issue of closing GITMO with fear mongering. He said that those who would do this are using their words to scare people rather than solve the problem.

Unequivical statement that he will not release anyone who threatens national security and or the American people.

He points out that some detainees will end up in SuperMax prisons where nobody has ever escaped in the history of this country.

He references a statement from Senator Lindsey Graham where he said the notion that we couldn't handle these detainees in American jails is ridiculous.

President Obama put detainees into 5 categories.

1. Those that will be tried in federal courts. Points out we have tried many terrorists in federal courts for a long time.

2. Those who have violated the laws of war will be tried into the military commisions courts which have been a tradition in this country. He points out that this is not a reversal of his position and that in 2006 he wanted reform of the military commission that did not happen but he didn't reject the institution outright. He further stated that he will put in the reforms now that he called for then to make them compliant.

3. Those who have been ordered released by the courts of which there are 21 people who fall into that category now. 19 of those 21 were ordered released before he got into office. Because we are a nation of laws he has to respect the courts' decisions.

4. Those who can be tranferred to another country. Fifty people so far fit into that category.

5. Those who can't be prosecuted but also can't be released because they are dangerous. He says he will exhaust all legal avenues to insure they never get out.

President Obama acknowledges the political difficulties of closing GITMO. He references fear mongering 30 second Tee Vee ads and direct mailings. But he says we can't govern out of fear and the American people want him to get it right, not political posturing.

Then President Obama shifted to Security and Transparency. He contrasted his decision to release the 4 OLC memos recently with his decision to block the release of the torture photos. Makes the case that sometimes its appropriate to keep some things secret if members of the military's lives are at stake.

But he says that he will insist on oversight from both the Congress and Judicial branches of government. He says someone must always watch over the watchers.

He is concerned about overuse of the states secrets doctrine but has to be used at times.

He says he will not hold back information from the public just because it reveals an illegal act or something that is embarrassing.

He wants a stricter legal test for invoking states secrets.

Obama once again says he will focus on bringing more oversight from "co equal" branches of government.

He then talks about how some people still want to relitigate debates they have lost. IE Dick Cheney still advocating torture.

He is more interested in the Congress and DOJ investigating wrong doing from the Bush Administration than an independent commission.

President Obama talks about the two differing sides on torture on the extremes. On the left those who think we should reveal even our most important intelligence secrets. On the right there are those who, in President Obama's words, think "anything goes". Those who think the President can do whatever they want provided its a President they agree with. He says both sides in that debate are wrong.

Maybe the strongest part of the speech was the ending where President Obama said national security has to be an issue that brings us together not something that divides us. He talks about how some people (*cough*Republicans*cough) try to use national security as a wedge issue. But this is a time for the American people to come together to insure all of our safety.


I thought the speech while not necessarily strong on details of how he will ultimately deal with GITMO was pitch perfect for the American people and what a lot of people in the middle needed to hear from them. We simply can not allow fearmongering to take hold again in this country when we are talking about the serious task of keeping us all safe.

Can We Have More Of This Damnit!

Dick Durbin gave a speech on the floor of the Senate that I have been calling for for weeks. Its time for Democrats to own this issue and pushback on stupid ass right wing talking points about bringing GITMO detainees to American prisons. And I am hoping that maybe this will be the first step in Dick Durbin replacing Harry Reid as Majority Leader!

Democrats, GITMO Detainees, And NIMBY

I for one am getting sick and damned tired of hearing about the GOP ramping up a fear campaign against Congressional Democrats when it comes to National Security. Specifically, now they are going to try to hit Democrats with ads about closing GITMO and "ZOMG teh terrorists will be in America". This is the latest lame ass offering.




Here is the deal, Congressional Democrats have an opportunity here and they are squandering it. What they need to do is stand up and say that they would welcome the opportunity to house some of the detainees in their state. Not only should they project an aura of confidence that American jails can hold foreign terrorists, but also that the move could help create more jobs in their state. They should also point out that those who wouldn’t be similarly enthusiastic about helping to maintain our national security are COWARDS. This NIMBY bullshit that the Republicans are embracing is exactly the chance Dems have been waiting for for years to be able to wrest the mantle of “tough on crime” and “strong on national security” from the GOP. I can’t for the life of me understand why they are scared to take Republican on with this issue. The detainees will be in supermax prisons. They don’t have any frikkin superpowers to be able to break out. And by not confronting the GOP on this and in some cases actually agreeing with them that it would be dangerous to house detainees on US soild they are not only legitimizing what is at its core a nonsensical viewpoint, they are also opening themselves up to charges of being weak on defense of the homeland.

Fuck it, if the Republicans are going to use the issue anyway its time to make them pay for being the bed wetting pussies that they really are. I keep waiting to hear “Send them to us, we know just how to handle them” from ANYBODY in the Democratic caucus but it seems like they are just going to allow Republicans to frame this issue and then turn around and use it as a platform to run against them next year. I can’t tell you how stupid that is and how much it frustrates the hell out of me. We have the WTC bombers in jail in Colorado for pete’s sake along with the Oklahoma City bombers. We have a long and storied history of locking up the most dangerous people in our society and in fact the world in our prisons here. Why in the fuck should Democrats now show so little faith in their consituents that they run away from an issue that they could clearly win on? Somebody needs to step up to the plate and in a frikkin hurry.