Tag: War On Terror
Radical Islam By Any Other Name…
Honesty and transparency in government are rare commodities, especially in the United States. While some information is legitimately kept from the public for reasons of national security, still other information – and quite a lot when the information flow from the Obama Administration is concerned – is either kept from the public or manipulated for the public’s consumption, having been so for ideological and/or political purposes. The subject of radical Islam and the terrorism that jihadis use as their chief tactic to bring about political “change” is not immune from these politically and ideologically opportune manipulations. Because of this the majority of the public is illiterate in the seriousness of the global challenge that faces Western Civilization.
Upon ascending to the office of the presidency, Barack Obama assembled a cabinet that understood the value of controlling information. Even during his campaign, his staff guarded information and controlled the message. Politically, it is a winning formula even if it raises many legitimate questions when the candidate is less than forthright about his past, influences, associations, intentions, motives and loyalties. Today, as President Obama exits the “honeymoon period” that every president enjoys, he and his staff are still executing a “control the message campaign,” and doing so with a vicious effectiveness, aided by a complicit mainstream media. But is this serving the best interest of the public? Is this acting in the best interests of the country?
Shortly after Hillary Clinton was named Secretary of State, the Obama Administration issued a declaration that the term “global war on terror,” erroneously coined by the Bush Administration, would cease to be used in an official capacity. In a memo issued to Pentagon staff members by the Office of Management & Budget, the Executive Branch agency that reviews the public testimony of administration officials before it is delivered, it was ordered:
“…this administration prefers to avoid using the term ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ [GWOT.] Please use ‘Overseas Contingency Operation.'”
The conflict with aggressive and violent radical Islamist ideology (a correct description), was put through the process of information manipulation so as to soften the concept for the public, the electorate, those to whom President Obama promised he would end “the war.”
In his classic – and eerily relevant – book, 1984, George Orwell wrote about the concept of “newspeak” and “doublethink”:
“…Winston thinks again about the idea of ‘doublethink,’ or in Oldspeak, ‘reality control.’ It means to be able to think two contradictory things at once without being aware of the contradiction. In other words, one is conscious of telling the truth while telling lies, forgetting whatever one needs to forget and then remembering it when needed, only to forget again. Doublethink is essential for political orthodoxy.”
When one listens to the declarations made by fundamentalist Islamist leaders from around the world – and we would have to believe that the Obama Administration is competent enough to understand the value of “listening to our enemies” seeing as they believe there is value in “talking with our enemies” – it becomes clear that the Obama Administration’s penchant for word manipulation – or use of “newspeak” and “doublethink” – has spilled over from their goal of achieving political superiority into their Constitutional duty to protect the citizenry.
Sufi Mohammed, the 78-year old leader of the pro-Taliban group behind the now defunct peace agreement between the Pakistani government and the Taliban, declared the democratic system of government “un-Islamic,” saying there was no need for a constitution in Pakistan. “All those who believe in democracy are infidels,” he declared in an interview with a private Pakistani television channel.
Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, said in January of 2009, “Israel is our enemy and the enemy of our nation. It will remain as such even if some make peace with it. The US administration fosters Israel and protects it, so this administration will remain our enemy and the enemy of our nation…”
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran has stated repeatedly and emphatically, that he quests for the elimination of the nation of Israel as he pontificates on the evils of the West and the United States:
“Israel must be wiped off the map…The establishment of a Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world…The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of the war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land… You [the United States], who have used nuclear weapons against innocent people should be tried as war criminals in courts… “They [the United States] think they are the absolute rulers of the world.”
And no less than Osama bin Laden has declared:
“To kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque [Jerusalem] and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim.”
The idea that the Obama Administration played fast-and-loose with manipulating words to affect “change” for political gain is a valid one. The American people are compromised in their ability to employ critical thinking skills where matters of politics and world affairs are concerned. A glad-handing politician armed with hollow promises of “hope” and “change” – and facilitated by an agenda-driven, one-world Progressive-Left mainstream media – easily entranced (or should I say enchanted) a citizenry that hadn’t formulated a respect for the seriousness of the threat posed by fundamentalist Islamists. And while it was easy for Obama to demonize the hard choices and actions taken by President George W. Bush in the conflict with radical Islamist aggression when he was running for office, when all he had to do was take issue with President Bush’s approach to the conflict, today the hard choices are his to make.
As we stand at a moment when Iran has most likely acquired nuclear capability, when al Qaeda and the Taliban are waging violent jihad just 60 miles from the capitol of Pakistan – a nuclear nation and as Sharia law is encroaching on people’s liberties in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Indonesia and around the world, it is now painfully obvious that we have to formulate a definitive plan for defending not only the United States but Western Civilization itself. To pay this conflict “lip service,” to apply “doublethink” and “newspeak” to this most graven of issues, is to abdicate Constitutional responsibility to defend the American people. It is to place the country and her citizens in grave danger.
Mr. Obama, diminishing the severity of the words used to describe the threat of radical Islam doesn’t make those who champion the violent and oppressive ideology any less lethal.
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'” – George Orwell, 1984.
CIA: Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of ‘Enhanced Interrogations’
I’m going to say this as nice as I can. Impeach the corrupt lying Bitch!
Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.
In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered “EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah.” EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.
The issue of what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has become a matter of heated debate on Capitol Hill. Republicans have accused her of knowing for many years precisely the techniques CIA agents were using in interrogations, and only protesting the tactics when they became public and liberal antiwar activists protested.
In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi’s office said today that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal technique to use in interrogations.
“As this document shows, the Speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used,” said Brendan Daly, Pelosi’s spokesman.
Pelosi’s statement did not address whether she was informed that other harsh techniques were already in use during the Zubaydah interrogations.
In December 2007 the Washington Post reported that leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees had been briefed in the fall of 2002 about waterboarding — which simulates drowning — and other techniques, and that no congressional leaders protested its use. At the time Pelosi said she was not told that waterboarding was being used, a position she stood by repeatedly last month when the Bush-era Justice Department legal documents justifying the interrogation tactics were released by Attorney General Eric Holder.
The new memo shows that intelligence officials were willing to share the information about waterboarding with only a sharply closed group of people. Three years after the initial Pelosi-Goss briefing, Bush officials still limited interrogation technique briefings to just the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the so-called Gang of Four in the intelligence world.
In October 2005, CIA officials began briefing other congressional leaders with oversight of the intelligence community, including top appropriators who provided the agency its annual funding. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam and an opponent of torture techniques, was also read into the program at that time even though he did not hold a special committee position overseeing the intelligence community.
A bipartisan collection of lawmakers have criticized the practice of limiting information to just the “Gang of Four”, who were expressly forbidden from talking about the information from other colleagues, including fellow members of the intelligence committees. Pelosi and others are considering reforms that would assure a more open process for all committee members.
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