Bloodthirsty Liberal

Some call it terrorism

It is difficult to tell the difference between activism and terrorism, isn’t it?

CHISINAU (Reuters) - A grenade exploded at a crowded concert in the main square of the Moldovan capital of Chisinau late Wednesday, hurting at least 40 people, security officials said Thursday.

State security officials said the grenade had apparently been left in a box and exploded as the Russian pop group Bravo brought the concert to its climax.

Interior Minister Victor Catan, who confirmed the explosion was caused by a military grenade, told journalists that the explosion was the work either of “representatives of a terrorist group or criminal groups from abroad.”

A criminal investigation was opened on the basis of “terrorism with the aim of intimidating the population,” an interior ministry official said.

Ex-Soviet Moldova, Europe’s poorest country wedged between Ukraine and Romania with a population of 4.5 million, is in the grip of political instability since the powerful communists were defeated in a July election by a pro-Western coalition committed to European integration.

I suggest that we all “show restraint” and see which way this goes. It will be a laboratory. I believe that with restraint, terror will increase. Too bad for the innocent civilians who probably don’t want to be guinea pigs.

- Aggie

Not working

Iran tested a missile-launching system and two types of missiles Sunday, the state-run Press TV said. The missile tests come amid tension over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.

The missiles, fired at targets around the country Sunday, included the Fateh-110, a short-range ground-to-ground missile, and Tondar-69, a short-range naval missile, the station said. Iran plans to test the long-range Shahab missile on Monday.

The tests, which are expected to go on for the next 10 to 11 days, are codenamed “Payghambar-e Azam 4″ or “The Great Messenger 4,” Press TV said.

Will the White House get the message? Israel? Europe? Anyone home?

- Aggie

Thursday—today—was supposed to be an important day in Iran, and they have not disappointed:

Hundreds of young men and women chanted “death to the dictator” and fled baton-wielding police in the capital Thursday as opposition activists sought to revive street protests despite authorities’ vows to “smash” any new marches.

For days, supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have been calling for new protests in Tehran and other cities on Thursday, their first significant attempt to get back on the streets since security forces crushed massive demonstrations nearly two weeks ago in Iran’s postelection turmoil.

Tehran governor Morteza Tamaddon warned that any new march Thursday would meet the same fate.

“If some individuals plan to carry out any anti-security actions by listening to calls by counterrevolutionary networks, they will be smashed under the feet of our aware people.”

…

The calls for a new march have been circulating for days on social networking Web sites and pro-opposition Web sites. Opposition supporters planned the marches to coincide with the anniversary Thursday of a 1999 attack by Basij on a Tehran University dorm to stop protests in which one student was killed.

Though I wish the protesters well, I’m afraid I’ve moved on from expecting regime change in Iran.

So has our president, though he shows it differently:

In January 2007, the US captured five Iranians providing assistance to the Shi’ite extremists in the south of Iran killing US soldiers. The Bush administration identified the five as members of the Quds Force, an elite unit within the Revolutionary Guard, tasked with fomenting terrorism and undermining the US in Iraq. The BBC reports today that the Obama administration has released them today to the Iraqis as a means of allowing them to go free.

Appeasement: it’s what’s for breakfast.

Keep in mind as you read this that the US has imprisoned Jonathan Pollard for life

We are sucking up to the terrorists.

Black September terrorist who plotted to attack Golda Meir released from U.S. prison
By The Associated Press
Tags: Terrorism, Mossad

A Black September terrorist who served only about half his 30-year sentence for planting three car bombs in New York City in 1973 was
released Thursday into the custody of immigration officials to be deported.

Khalid Al-Jawary, 63, was released from the Supermax maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, said Carl Rusnok, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman. Rusnok said a federal immigration judge had signed a deportation order for Al-Jawary.

Al-Jawary’s release date was set for Thursday after he was credited with time served before his sentencing and good behavior.

Rusnok declined to say where Al-Jawary was being held as he awaits
deportation. It’s also not clear when Al-Jawary will be deported or where he will be sent. The mysterious terrorist had many aliases and was known to use fake passports from Jordan, Iraq and France.

Al-Jawary has denied involvement in the 1973 New York City bomb plot; he
claims his real name is Khaled Mohammed El-Jassem. The FBI to this day remains unsure of his true identity; his nom de guerre was Abu Walid al-Iraqi.

Al-Jawary, under that name, was convicted in 1993 of placing two powerful
bombs along Fifth Avenue and a third at John F. Kennedy International Airport 20 years before. The bombs, which failed to detonate, were timed to coincide with the arrival of then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

The case has drawn widespread attention since an Associated Press
investigation last month raised questions about whether Al-Jawary had a role in a murderous letter-bombing campaign and the bombing of an TWA flight in 1974 that killed 88 people.

Al-Jawary was a member of Black September, a terrorist group responsible for many lethal attacks, including the killings of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany.

In 1979, Al-Jawary was arrested in Germany while trying to carry out a
terrorist attack on likely Israeli and Jewish targets. The next year, he
escaped an assassination attempt in Beirut that left two of his aides injured and his car smoldering.

Al-Jawary blamed the attack on Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service. At the time of the failed hit, he was working for Abu Iyad, a top commander in Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s military wing.

Iyad was killed in Tunisia by a rival Palestinian faction in 1991. Al-Jawary was apprehended passing through Rome in January 1991 to attend Iyad’s funeral. Iyad was believed to have helped plan the Munich murders.

Retired FBI agents John Syron and Jim Phelan, who worked the case in 1973, said freeing Al-Jawary was a mistake. The bombs would have killed many people if they had gone off, they said.

“Bad move,” Phelan said. He’s not going to change.

Authorities said Al-Jawary’s family lives in the Middle East but declined to say where.

Before his transfer to ICE custody, Al-Jawary was being held at the Supermax, considered the United States’ most secure federal prison. It’s home to other notorious terrorists including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and Ramzi Yousef, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center attack.

I wonder what on earth we hope to gain?

- Aggie

What a great title, eh? Only CNN could compose it with a straight face

Somali militants vowed to rescue a Saudi supertanker that was hijacked by pirates a week ago, according to residents of a town where the pirates are believed to be based.

The supertanker Sirius Star is loaded with 2 million barrels of oil believed to be valued at $100 million. [valued at less every day - Aggie]

Five armored vehicles loaded with al-Shabab fighters arrived in the central Somali coastal town of Harardhere this weekend, near where pirates are holding the massive oil tanker Sirius Star, said Ahmed Mohamed, a resident of the town.

The fighters told residents they would battle the pirates because the tanker, which is loaded with 2 million barrels of oil, is owned by a Muslim country and should not have been taken, Mohamed said.

Phew! Where do we even start? Bad to steal from and terrorize Muslim countries, good to do it to everyone else? But we’re too polite to point that out. And besides, it might be BS:

Another resident, Hassan Nor, suggested that the al-Shabab fighters’ motive was to share in the multimillion-dollar ransom the pirates have demanded from the supertanker’s owner.

And does appeasement ever work?

More than $150 million has been paid to pirates around the Horn of Africa over the past 12 months, Kenya’s foreign minister said Friday.

The money is encouraging them to continue and become more brazen in their attacks, Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula told a news conference in the Kenyan capital.

Ya’ think? I am reminded of the time, too many years ago to count, when I stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and looked across that awesome expanse. The man standing next to me said: That’s what uncontrolled erosion will get you.

We can apply the same principles to appeasement. There is a divide bigger than the Grand Canyon between those who will steal and bully and murder to get stuff and the rest of us. Appeasement makes it worse.

- Aggie

Someone wrote in to protest that we weren’t telling the whole story. William Kristol tries his hand at explaining this to the wide-eyed crowd

Here’s McCain, in Belton, Missouri:

Just last night, Senator Biden guaranteed that if Senator Obama is elected, we will have an international crisis to test America’s new President. We don’t want a President who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars.

What is more troubling is that Senator Biden told their campaign donors that when that crisis hits, they would have to stand with them because it wouldn’t be apparent Senator Obama would have the right response.

Forget apparent. Senator Obama won’t have the right response, and we know that because we’ve seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign. He opposed the surge strategy that is bringing us victory in Iraq and will bring us victory in Afghanistan. He said he would sit down unconditionally with the world’s worst dictators. When Russia invaded Georgia, Sen. Obama said the invaded country should show restraint.

Now let’s dig a little deeper into what Biden said and let’s think about it, using his terms, the John F. Kennedy administration:

It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking…. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy….

I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate… And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.

So Biden expects a test of the kind Kennedy faced after his disastrous meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna in June, 1961, less than five months into Kennedy’s presidency. Biden’s presumably thinking of the Soviet-backed construction of the Berlin Wall a couple of months later. Kennedy did nothing, and was criticized for his weakness back home.

So–leaving aside the merits of what Kennedy did or didn’t do in 1961–Biden is forecasting that Obama will have what seems to be a weak response to a provocation from, say, Iran or Russia, and he’s urging the liberals of Seattle and elsewhere to stand with Obama against the expected domestic criticism.

In other words, Biden is forecasting inaction by Obama in the face of testing by a dictator. I suspect he’s right in this forecast. McCain might want to clarify this point. It’s not just that Obama’s own running mate expects an international crisis early in his presidency. It’s not just that Obama has a weak foreign policy record. It’s that Biden himself expects what will appear to be a weak response from Obama to testing by a dictator.

Now Biden presumaby thinks such an apparently weak response would be in our long-term interest. But McCain needs to force that debate: “Sen. Obama, will you in fact do nothing in response to a Putin provocation against Ukraine or a final push by Ahmadinejad toward nuclear weapons? Isn’t that what your running mate has forecast? Isn’t it awfully dangerous to forecast weakness on the part of an American president?”

Yes, it is dangerous and yes, Biden is an idiot. Truly an idiot. But, beyond that, he told us the truth. Obama will be tested and he will vote: Present. He will sit on his thumbs. That is called appeasement. The result of appeasement, each and every time, is aggression on the part of dictators and terrorists.

- Aggie