zenpundit.com

NEVER AGAIN

In memory of those who died 11 September, 2001.

Special thanks to the soldiers, sailors, airmen and officers of our intelligence community currently serving in harm’s way in the long war and, most of all, to those who will never return. America is in your debt.

RECOMMENDED READING

Top Billing! SWJ Blog – “General Petraeus / Ambassador Crocker – Boots on the Ground Assessment“

Dave and Bill should be thanked – the post includes access to the full transcript and briefing slides. How many bloggers in the next few days are going to bother reading in full before launching into their pre-scripted ( and largely cocked up) talking points ?

Co-Top Billing! CKR – “The Presidential Candidates’ Foreign Policy Statements: Early Observations” plus “The Presidential Candidates’ Foreign Policy Statements: Rudolph Giuliani” and “The Presidential Candidates’ Foreign Policy Statements: John Edwards“

Kudos to Cheryl Rofer for the heavy lifting on this important series.

Callimachus – “Contemptible“

I never liked Brian De Palma anyway. Overrated ripoff artist at his best.

Col. Pat Lang – “Petraeus and Crocker – Interesting “

The colonel gives his ” old hand” take on the report testimony

Nonpartisan – “9/11: The Mouse that Roared “

NP, the motive force behind ProgressiveHistorians blog, writes from the Left in the first of a 9/11 series, with a critique of Orson Scott Card (which will interest some readers here) and he draws on the actuarial argument about terrorism risk assessment ( also of interest).

Soob – “The Other Long War “

Nice post. I’d say bite the bullet and decriminalize. Addicts will then be a public health issue but the global revenue flows of narcotics trafficking will no longer be a national security issue.

Steve DeAngelis -“Explaining Development-in-a-Box™“

Required reading for understanding the evolution of the Sys-Admin spectrum.

That’s it!

TWO DEMOCRATS WHO REALLY SUPPORT TERRORISTS

Steve Guerra, convicted FALN supporter, top Illinois state government official and protege of Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Il).

Hyperbolic charges are thrown with great regularity and unfairness in American politics. Character assassination is a form of art and negative campaigning is the norm. Most of the time, it’s a useful rule of thumb to take whatever perjoratives are commonly used with a grain of salt. And then there are the exceptions that are so absurd as to make the usual slander an understatement.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich – who hired Steve Guerra as his $ 120,000 a year deputy

The Chicago Sun-Times on Saturday ran a front page expose on Steve Guerra, a top official in the administration of Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was hired despite having gone to prison for refusing to testify before a Federal grand jury about what he knew regarding a terror bombing campaign carried out by the Puerto Rican terrorist group, the FALN. The revelation has caused an uproar among the family members of the victims of the FALN terrorists and only slightly less outrage among Illinois Democrats and Republicans in the legislature who were already unhappy with Gov. Blagojevich.

Why would Governor Blagojevich, currently floundering even among his own Democratic supporters, take a risk and hire a sinister figure like Guerra, a felon who obstructed a murder investigation of one of the FALN’s victims with his refusal to testify ? Two reasons:

First, Illinois politics is replete with shadowy tough guys, mobbed-up businessmen and fixers with criminal pasts who cracked a few skulls here and there in their youth. Such folks, who like Mr. Guerra, often appear to lack a neck, are not rare here. From, Taylor Street in Chicago to Cicero to Rosemont to small towns in the collar counties, you have lots of people in both political parties involved in retail politics who are “connected”. Granted, they usually mean to men nicknamed “Big Tuna” or ” the Clown”, and not to Marxist terror groups, but chances were that if Guerra had kept a low profile, no one living in a glass house themselves was going to be seen pitching stones any time soon.

Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D-Il) – a history of pulling strings for convicted FALN terrorists

Secondly, Guerra is a close, personal, friend of far-left but Daley machine-backed, Congressman Luis Gutierrez of Chicago. Representative Gutierrez has made constituent services to imprisoned FALN members something of a minor hobby during his years in Congress. It was also Gutierrez who helped persuade President Clinton to grant clemency to FALN terrorists convicted of bombmaking, sedition, robbery, conspiracy and other lesser charges. By hiring Guerra, the struggling Governor Blagojevich was reinforcing a political connection to an influential figure in the Daley machine and Chicago’s Puerto Rican community.

The remarkable aspect of this episode is not that in this day and age, an American politician would knowingly hire or assist an individual with strong ties to a terrorist group but that the moral state of politics in Illinois is so low, that hiring Guerra raised no eyebrows among party insiders in Springfield.

At least until the story hit page one.

THE LITERARY WINDFALL OF THE BLOG

This will amuse certain parties.

A few weeks ago, I had a post on William Gibson and in the course of the post, solicited reader opinions on Gibson. This sparked a lively discussion and many recommendations for further sci-fi reading in the comments section.

The other night, Mrs. Zenpundit had a surprise gathering for me, to honor the annual increase in my age, at one of the better local restaurants. One of the frequent lurkers here, “Dona Julia” and her husband “The Brown Guitar“, had read the post and comments and, as a result, presented me with copies of:

All Tomorrow’s Parties
Idoru
Virtual Light
Ender’s Game
Speaker For the Dead

A rare instance of life imitating the blogosphere. Much thanks to Dona Julia, her Guitar and Mrs. Z. for yesterday evening and to the readers for their helpful suggestions.

OSAMA BIN WINGNUT?

What to make of Osama Bin Laden sounding less like a radical Salafist in his recent video than the infantile Sean Penn on a hysterical political rant, throwing in an homage to Noam Chomsky and global warming ? Well, government sources are pointing “Azzam the American”, the young Californian convert, Adam Yahiye Gadahn as the origin of the more childish rhetoric that seems to be ripped from the memes of the Lefty Wingnut blogosphere.

In my opinion, that is a stupid interpretation. If it comes from our intelligence agencies, and not some staffer at the White House, all the worse for us.

First of all, such an analysis gives far too much emphasis to the role of Gadahn, a relatively juvenile character. Al Qaida does not lack members with the ability to read English or surf the internet. The radical Islamist-terrorist community have long monitored American websites, particularly those related to military and intelligence circles; one of their favorite theorists appears to be none other than William Lind! Gadahn’s help in video production is a triviality, not a primary concern.

Secondly, the hodgepodge nature of the speech with Bin Laden zooming from Sarkozy to tax rates is indicative of an intentional raising of the noise to signal ratio. Much of this verbiage appears to me to be – well – irrelevant crap. It attracts media attention while distracting observers from two of the more ominous elements present in bin Laden’s speech – his continuing fascination with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the call to embrace Islam. The latter being a religious duty for pious Muslims prior to the unleashing of war and ruin upon an enemy; a call once uttered by the generals of Arab caliphs and Turkish sultans half a millennium ago, before the sacking of infidel cities by Muslim armies.

The Germans just rolled up a major al Qaida cell days before an attack was to take place. Perhaps we should be looking at potential problems just a little bit harder ourselves.