Bloodthirsty Liberal

I knew Lady Gaga was behind the Wikileaks fiasco, I just couldn’t be sure how:

An innocuous-looking memory stick, no longer than a couple of fingernails, came into the hands of a Guardian reporter earlier this year. The device is so small it will hang easily on a keyring. But its contents will send shockwaves through the world’s chancelleries and deliver what one official described as “an epic blow” to US diplomacy.

The 1.6 gigabytes of text files on the memory stick ran to millions of words: the contents of more than 250,000 leaked state department cables, sent from, or to, US embassies around the world. …

The US military believes it knows where the leak originated. A soldier, Bradley Manning, 22, has been held in solitary confinement for the last seven months and is facing a court martial in the new year. The former intelligence analyst is charged with unauthorised downloads of classified material while serving on an army base outside Baghdad. He is suspected of taking copies not only of the state department archive, but also of video of an Apache helicopter crew gunning down civilians in Baghdad, and hundreds of thousands of daily war logs from military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It was childishly easy, according to the published chatlog of a conversation Manning had with a fellow-hacker. “I would come in with music on a CD-RW labelled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’ … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing … [I] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s Telephone while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history.” He said that he “had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months”.

Manning told his correspondent Adrian Lamo, who subsequently denounced him to the authorities: “Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public … Everywhere there’s a US post, there’s a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. Worldwide anarchy in CSV format … It’s beautiful, and horrifying.”

Is that what he was after? Worldwide anarchy? Well then, he’s happy.

Doesn’t he look happy?

I suggest that this too shall pass. It can be terrible when friends reveal themselves to be snakes, and the answer to “does this dress make me look fat” is always no.

Though people are embarrassed, these documents reveal if not the truth of how the government felt, at least a side of the truth. World leaders may behave like children, but they are big boys and girls. These revelations cannot have come as any surprise.

Get over it. You’re just revealing yourselves to be the immature crackpots we privately thought you were. And maybe the American public can wake up from its delusion that there’s much out there for us to relate to. Like anyone else, I want friends more than enemies, but I do not mistake my enemies for friends.

We stand with Israel and anyone else who wants to join us against the world. And I like our chances.

Hey Aggie!

I’ve got it! How we make our millions and give up this useless blogging racket.

The Traitor Tour:

We’ve got aiders and abetters of the Times Square bomber in Watertown; Russian spies in Cambridge; and now the Wikileaker has accomplices in Boston and Cambridge!

Army investigators are broadening their inquiry into the recent disclosure of classified military information to include friends and associates who may have helped the person they suspect was the leaker, Private First Class Bradley Manning, people with knowledge of the investigation said yesterday.

Two civilians interviewed in recent weeks by the Army’s criminal division said that investigators were focusing in part on a group of Manning’s friends and acquaintances in the Boston area. Investigators, the civilians said, apparently believed that the friends, who include students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston University, might have connections to WikiLeaks, which made the documents public.

…

One of the civilians interviewed by the Army’s criminal division, who asked for anonymity so that his name would not be associated with the inquiry, said yesterday that the investigators’ questions led him to believe that the Army was concerned that there were classified documents in the Boston area.

“I was under the impression that they believed that perhaps Bradley had used friends in Cambridge as a mechanism for moving documents,’’ he said.

We’ll buy a duck boat (rechristen it the Beneduck Arnold), and show our clients all the locales of greater Boston’s contributions to the overthrow of the country. (And we can moor the scow in Rhode Island to avoid paying onerous state taxes—don’t ask me where I came up with that brilliant idea!)

In addition to the sights named above, we’ll trundle past Noam Chomsky’s and Skip Gates’ offices, the sites of Sacco’s and Vanzetti’s armed robberies in Braintree and Bridgewater, Barney Frank’s favorite bars, and Ted Kennedy’s birthplace in Dorchester. I can only imagine the frisson the tourists will feel while standing in Harvard Yard among the traitors of tomorrow. Imagine the possibilities of betrayal!

Just as the lame Freedom Trail has a red stripe painted on the sidewalk, we’d paint a yellow streak along the Traitor Tour.

I think you’d be better leading the tours, Aggie, and you’d be quite fetching in starched and pressed Soviet military fatigues and a red beret, if I may say so. I’ll drive.

I know nothing of business models, but at, say, $20 a pop, maybe 50 people per tour, we split a thousand bucks every ride (minus expenses). Run two or three a day, and we’ll be John Kerry rich on no time.

Whaddya say, Aggie? You in?

I’ve heard references to this disgraceful, treasonous affair in Ted Kennedy’s senatorial past, but it’s time to air it completely.

We used to shoot people for such offenses in the past, but it’s understandable why many might not have wanted to pull the trigger in this case.

The issue is a remarkable 1983 KGB document on Kennedy, which I published in my 2006 book, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (HarperCollins). The document is a May 14, 1983 memo from KGB head Victor Chebrikov to his boss, the odious Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov, designated with the highest classification. It concerns a confidential offer to the Soviet leadership by Senator Kennedy. The target: President Ronald Reagan.

…

According to the memo, Senator Kennedy was “very troubled” by U.S.-Soviet relations, which Kennedy attributed not to the murderous tyrant running the USSR but to President Reagan. The problem was Reagan’s “belligerence.”

This was allegedly made worse by Reagan’s stubbornness. “According to Kennedy,” reported Chebrikov, “the current threat is due to the President’s refusal to engage any modification to his politics.” That refusal, said the memo, was exacerbated by Reagan’s political success, which made the president surer of his course, and more obstinate — and, worst of all, re-electable.

On that, the fourth and fifth paragraphs of Chebrikov’s memo got to the thrust of Kennedy’s offer: The senator was apparently clinging to hope that President Reagan’s 1984 reelection bid could be thwarted. Of course, this seemed unlikely, given Reagan’s undeniable popularity. So, where was the president vulnerable?

Alas, Kennedy had an answer, and suggestion, for his Soviet friends: In Chebrikov’s words, “The only real threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations. These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”

Therein, Chebrikov got to the heart of the U.S. senator’s offer to the USSR’s general secretary: “Kennedy believes that, given the state of current affairs, and in the interest of peace, it would be prudent and timely to undertake the following steps to counter the militaristic politics of Reagan.”

Let us give the late Senator the benefit of the doubt (which the record does not seem to support) and allow that he offered to betray the elected President of the United States to a foreign power not merely for electoral benefit (for Walter-[bleeping]-Mondale, as it turned out), but for some deeply held personal motivation.

I know, I know. But that’s just the kind of guy I am.

But trust me, sincerity does him no favors. I’m not sure when he first joined the Senate Armed Services Committee, but someone who served in the Senate as long as he did (in an era of Soviet expansionism), whose own brother stared down the same Soviet monsters over missiles in Cuba and who sought to counter their moves in Southeast Asia—I think it’s fair to say that Ted Kennedy knew full well with whom he was double-dealing.

Orrin Hatch loved him, thousands of constituents had him to thank for favors and personal notes of kindness.

But to the extent this story is true, he has forfeited any gratitude he may be owed from the nation. Burial in Arlington seems obscene in this context.

How do you think a backward fiefdom like China got to be an enormously wealthy backward fiefdom?

A Chinese-born engineer in the United States has been found guilty of passing space shuttle technology secrets to China, for more than 30 years.

Dongfan “Greg” Chung, 73, is the first person to be found guilty under a federal law, introduced in 1996, to counter economic espionage.

Mr Chung worked for Rockwell International, and then Boeing, until the FBI investigation began in 2006.

If China doesn’t have something, they steal it, pirate it, or make an underhanded deal to acquire it. This is why I find the concept of “international law” so laughable. Most countries cite it only when it suits their purposes, and ignore it or disdain it when it does not.

Sorry for the sexism in the title, but it’s justified. Besides, there are names I would call men (would I ever!) that I would never use on a lady—or Diane Feinstein:

A senior U.S. lawmaker said Thursday that unmanned CIA Predator aircraft operating in Pakistan are flown from an air base in that country, a revelation likely to embarrass the Pakistani government and complicate its counter-terrorism collaboration with the United States.

The disclosure by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, marked the first time a U.S. official had publicly commented on where the Predator aircraft patrolling Pakistan take off and land.

At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise over Pakistani opposition to the campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Islamic extremist targets along Pakistan’s northwestern border.

“As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base,” she said.

The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much deeper relationship with the United States on counter-terrorism matters than has been publicly acknowledged. Such an arrangement would be at odds with protests lodged by officials in Islamabad, the capital, and could inflame anti-American sentiment in the country.

Wanna get away?

Honest to God, do they get any dumber than Democrats? First they blow my grandchildren’s inheritance, and now they torpedo any chance we have of zapping terrorists from the sky. Isn’t this treason? Shouldn’t she get the Rosenberg treatment?

We… are… doomed.

The Arab Street.

I didn’t criticize President Obama for giving the first interview of his presidency to Al Arabiya TV. At least it wasn’t Al Jazeera, I thought, and I could also see the case for his taking a message to the Muslim world.

But you know what his default mode is when traveling overseas, don’t you? Remember the Berlin speech?

I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.

Same s**t, different continent:

All too often the United States starts by dictating — in the past on some of these issues — and we don’t always know all the factors that are involved. So let’s listen….

What we want to do is to listen, set aside some of the preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years. And I think if we do that, then there’s a possibility at least of achieving some breakthroughs…

We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect. But if you look at the track record, as you say, America was not born as a colonial power, and that the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago, there’s no reason why we can’t restore that. And that I think is going to be an important task.

Iran seized the hostages 29 years ago; Hezbollah bombed the US barracks in Lebanon 25 years ago; CIA station chief in Beirut, William Francis Buckley, was kidnapped, tortured, and executed 24 years ago—what the hell is he talking about?

This man is dangerous!

Dangerously ignorant.

My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.

…

To the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.

But we are the enemy of some Muslims, are we not? Can you at least be honest about that? Otherwise, you’re bombing a lot of innocent Pakistani children to kingdom come for no reason.

My job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives.

What, like we can’t figure that out for ourselves? We need you to interpret “the Muslim world” for us? Get over yourself.

No one has a problem with those “extraordinary” people; it’s the “extraordinary” people who deliberately put their children in harm’s way, who recruit them to fight, who indoctrinate them with the most vile racial hatred that we have a problem with. And given all the disgusting clips we keep posting from MEMRI, they watch TV, too. I wish you had spared a few words for them.

What we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations — whether Muslim or any other faith in the past — that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name…

What faiths in particular, Mr. President? Go ahead, we’re waiting…

And so you will I think see our administration be very clear in distinguishing between organizations like al Qaeda — that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it — and people who may disagree with my administration and certain actions, or may have a particular viewpoint in terms of how their countries should develop. We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful.

Oh, this is just gobbledygook. If you have nothing to say, don’t say anything.

I see the flag pin is back. Appropriate for a President of the United States.

May I also observe that if you’re going to travel halfway across the world (in broadcast terms) to prostrate yourself in front the mullahs, imams, and the “extraordinary people” of the “Muslim world”, it would also be appropriate if you refrained from licking their boots?

It took a few days for the story to be fleshed out, but we have to retract and apologize for the story we linked to the other day which suggested that Barack Obama had undermined the policy of the US government while on his summer tour of foreign capitals:

The charge — that Obama asked the Iraqis to delay signing off on a “Status of Forces Agreement,” thus delaying U.S. troop withdrawal and interfering in U.S. foreign policy — has been picked up on the Internet, talk radio and by Republicans, including the McCain campaign, which seized on the story as possible evidence of duplicity.

The Obama campaign said that the Post report consisted of “outright distortions.”

Lending significant credence to Obama’s response is the fact that — though it’s absent from the Post story and other retellings — in addition to Obama and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, this July meeting was also attended by Bush administration officials, such as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and the Baghdad embassy’s legislative affairs advisor Rich Haughton, as well as a Republican senator, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Attendees of the meeting back Obama’s account, including not just Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., but Hagel, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffers from both parties. Officials of the Bush administration who were briefed on the meeting by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad also support Obama’s account and dispute the Post story and McCain attack.

The Post story is “absolutely not true,” Hagel spokesman Mike Buttry told ABC News.

“Barack Obama has never urged a delay in negotiations,” said Obama campaign national security spokesperson Wendy Morigi, “nor has he urged a delay in immediately beginning a responsible drawdown of our combat brigades.”

Buttry said that Hagel agrees with Obama’s account of the meeting: Obama began the meeting with al-Maliki by asserting that the United States speaks with one foreign policy voice, and that voice belongs to the Bush administration.

A Bush administration official with knowledge of the meeting says that, during the meeting, Obama stressed to al-Maliki that he would not interfere with President Bush’s negotiations concerning the U.S. troop presence in Iraq, and that he supports the Bush administration’s position on the need to negotiate, as soon as possible, the Status of Forces Agreement, which deals with, among other matters, U.S. troops having immunity from local prosecution.

Glad to hear it. We’re sorry to have alleged otherwise.

Of course…

Obama did assert at the meeting with the Iraqis that he agrees with those -– including Hagel and Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — who advocate congressional review of the Strategic Framework Agreement being worked out between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government, including the Iraqi parliament.

…

According to one person present at the meeting, Obama told al-Maliki that the American people wouldn’t understand why the Iraqi parliament would get to have a say on the Strategic Framework Agreement, but the U.S. Congress would not, especially since Bush is only months from leaving the White House, regardless of whether Obama or McCain succeeds him.

Maybe that’s reasonable, I’m not sure.

But I have a hard time discerning the value added by a body so craven and confused as the US Congress, which, in the words of John Kerry was for whatever it was before they were against it. Keep your counsel, fellas.

And for Barack Obama, whose default mode toward Iraq is failure and surrender (by his own admission!), to suggest that perhaps he might know better how to proceed there is obscene.

Maybe he’s no traitor, but he’s certainly an ass. I hope he’s happy with the upgrade.

I’ve only started listening to Rush in the past two weeks. I think I wanted to prove that my rejection of what Liberalism has become was self-generated. Which was silly, of course, as I have spent hours listening to Dennis Prager, Bill Bennett, Hugh Hewitt, and many other conservative radio talk shows (the “wrong” ones, Obama would no doubt say). It is worth noting that many of those “wrong” hosts themselves rejected what Liberalism has become.

In any case, via Rush, we now understand the context in which Obama conspired to sabotage American foreign policy.

It’s a Democrat thing; we wouldn’t understand:

One question came up repeatedly in the hearing that deserves more of an answer than it got, however: Why, after all the assistance we’ve given to Iraq over the past five years, was the first major Iraqi oil deal signed with China and not with an American or even a western company? The answer is, in part, because three Democratic senators intervened in Iraqi domestic politics earlier this year to prevent Iraq from signing short-term agreements with Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total, Chevron, and BP.

The Iraqi government was poised to sign no-bid contracts with those firms this summer to help make immediate and needed improvements in Iraq’s oil infrastructure. The result would have been significant foreign investment in Iraq, an expansion of Iraqi government revenues, and an increase in the global supply of oil. One would have thought that leading Democratic senators who claim to be interested in finding other sources of funding to replace American dollars in Iraq, in helping Iraq spend its own money on its own people, and in lowering the price of gasoline for American citizens, would have been all for it.

And who were those three Benedict Arnolds? I’m sure there will be no surprise to learn that… :

Senators Chuck Schumer, John Kerry, and Claire McCaskill wrote a letter to Secretary of State Rice asking her “to persuade the GOI [Government of Iraq] to refrain from signing contracts with multinational oil companies until a hydrocarbon law is in effect in Iraq.” The Bush administration wisely refused to do so, but the resulting media hooraw in Iraq led to the cancellation of the contracts, and helps to explain why Iraq is doing oil deals instead with China.

Utterly despicable. Beneath contempt. I’ve held off creating a Treason category, but this act so detrimental to America’s interests demands it. Still a registered Democrat, I happily voted against John Kerry in the primary vote yesterday (who won without my vote). I barely knew who the other guy was, but he could have been Ayman al-Zawahiri and I would have put his lawn sign in my front yard.