Do you recall a time, a few years back, when the media wouldn’t shut up about a supposed outing of an agent? Yup, the left and the media were pissed.

I bet you could just imagine the firestorm of coverage that would result if instead of a former Secretary of State leaking a name it was our President….right?

Guess not:

Just a week ago the establishment media was aflutter with news that a CIA double-agent had thwarted a new type of underwear bomb attack targeting U.S. flights in a plot devised by al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula.

But as the week progressed, a developing bombshell story got buried under President Obama’s gay marriage announcement. Not only is the supposed CIA asset not a CIA asset at all, but the entire operation was exposed prematurely and the double-agent’s life was immediately threatened by an intelligence leak that very well may have come out of the White House for political gain.

As the story broke, the establishment media was more than happy to attribute the intelligence coup to the CIA and the Obama administration, describing the mole as a “CIA informant.”

It turns out that wasn’t true. The double-agent hadn’t been recruited and placed by the CIA, but by British intelligence, who also managed the operation. In fact, the Americans had only recently been made aware of the joint British-Saudi effort.

The leaks about the operation from the American side have infuriated British intelligence officials, who had hoped to continue the operation. The leaks not only scuttled the mission but put the life of the asset in jeopardy. Even CIA officials, joining their MI5 and MI6 counterparts, were describing the leaks as “despicable,” attributing them to the Obama administration.

As the stillborn investigation into the leaks continues (stillborn, because if the leaks are in fact traced to the White House, there will be no repercussions), the zeal with which the establishment media trumpeted the supposed CIA coup won’t likely be surpassed by the more important story of how the Obama administration attempted to score political points at the expense of one of the most important intelligence operations since 9/11.

Wait, for “political gain?”

Wasn’t the left and the media very upset that non-spy Valerie Plame’s name was uttered by Richard Armitage for “political gain?”

Weren’t there hearings and trials and all that? Or was I just imagining that?

And here we had a Yemeni deep cover agent that we may get once in a generation:

One US official has noted that “this operation could have gone on for some time … when it was cut off by a leak”. Even once the agent turned up in Saudi Arabia, it was clear that his intelligence was helping to target a spate of crucial drone strikes within Yemen – including one that killed AQAP’s head of external operations, a man responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

If the group learnt of their member’s defection from the media, who knows what countermeasures they took? How did that stymie further arrests or airstrikes? AQAP’s chief bomb-maker, Ibrahim Al-Asiri, might even have escaped as a result.

After all, the agent was reportedly evacuated from Yemen two weeks before the appointed date for his attack. He might have remained quietly operational for that entire period, contacting his colleagues and passing on their location. This leak appears to have frustrated a painstaking and risky operation, of the sort that cannot come around very often.

But the Obama administration deliberately scuttled that huge undercover operation, and put the life of a British agent in jeopardy to boot. For what? To boost his re-election hopes. This wasn’t some non-spy desk jockey at the CIA. This was someone who had infiltrated al-Qaeda for god’s sake!

But the MSM and the left are ignoring it.

At least one Democrat lawmaker isn’t

Senator Diane Fienstein:

“AQAP is the number-one threat to our country. … The leak really did endanger sources and methods, and the leak, I think, really has to be prosecuted.”

Congressman Peter King:

“This was more secret than any operation I’m familiar with — even more classified than bin Laden. … That’s why I’m saying the FBI should do a full and complete investigation, because this really is criminal in the literal sense of the word to leak out this type of sensitive, classified information on really almost unparalleled penetration of the enemy.”

Congressman Mike Rogers:

“This has been a damaging leak. We shouldn’t underestimate what really happened here. When you jeopardize our foreign-service liaison partners, any of them that may or may not have been involved, or you jeopardize the conclusion of wrapping up all of the people involved, that’s dangerous to our national security.”

Paging Patrick Fitzgerald….paging Patrick Fitzgerald

Exit thought….ya think they will make a movie about this?

There are few realists who will argue that the MSM isn’t functioning as a propaganda bureau for Obama. There are a few operatives for the Left who complain with righteous indignation that media is in the “tank” for the GOP, but no one in touch with reality takes this outlandish diversion seriously. Most people are intuitive enough to recognize blatant dishonesty, especially when the subject matter requires the reader/viewer to ignore common sense to accept the premise of the deception.

Vogue is the medium, Asma al-Assad (wife of the Syria’s hereditary dictator for life) is the subject, and deception is the game, but deception for the sake of deception is little more than the musings of a pathological liar. No indeed, our propagandists are not pathological liars, they have definitive purposes to justify their lies and deceit.

To understand the nuances, we must travel back in time to the period leading up to the Islamic Spring of 2011. When Americans were asking why our president only backed certain Islamic Fundamentalists in their bids for freedom and seemed to ignore secular struggles, like those by students in Iran and Syria. It was as if he had a secret playbook and would only use the considerable leverage of America when we could help those closely aligned with our enemies, like the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is times like this that fluff rags like Vogue can gin up support for the president’s peculiar partisan support of radical Islamic Fundamentalists by portraying a murderous dictator’s wife as a beautiful reformer and as a positive influence on the bloody henchman that is her husband. Unfortunately, propaganda can often be exposed, even in innocuous articles like “A Rose In The Desert.”

“Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic – the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies,” writes Joan Juliet Buck, of Syria’s first lady, for her introduction of Asma in the fluff article of the type for which Vogue is well known and respected. She describes her “energetic grace” and stylish shoes. Ms Buck tends to get carried away with her flowery penmanship:

“The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen, encourage them to engage in what she calls ‘active citizenship.’ ”

While writing the glowing and meaningless report, Buck never thought to do independent research. Journalism is not part of her mission, her mission is to provide covering for Obama and his exposed ass in the wind. If she must write believable prose that dresses tyranny up as a fashion statement, she will do it; otherwise, her role in the propaganda industry becomes vulnerable.

Unfortunately, Buck’s propaganda appeared on news stands as Syrians took to the streets to demonstrate against the tyranny that Buck tried so desperately to mask for her president. Unfortunately, the blood splatter from 9,000 victims of Assad’s stained the pages of Vogue and the face of Ms Buck.

First Lady Asma made no attempts to mask her priorities or her contempt for young people seeking “active citizenship,” for while her young people were being slaughtered in the streets by her husband’s goons, Asma continued to shop online, according to leaked emails, for designer shoes and jewelry from boutiques in Paris and London, but Ms Buck did mention Asma’s keen sense of fashion and when you are married to Syria’s hereditary president for life, you must look your best, especially when the blood of martyrs is flowing in the streets.

Oh the article caused many people, who, like the author, peruse magazine covers in grocery checkout lanes, to gasp in disbelief when the March 2011 Vogue magazine featured Asma. However, Vogue had the presence of mind to make the glowing propaganda that had turned sour disappear. Oh, the printed page is history, but the cyber ink is no longer in existence. There were 3,200 words of cyber ink, and now there are none. The article and its CTPA (covering the president’s ass) motive has been scrubbed from Vogue’s website. Obviously, the article will be around a long time despite the hypocrisy and deception of Vogue.

Propaganda seems to be a benign enterprise; especially, when you are promoting and supporting your “Gift from God” (Nancy Pelosi quote), but there are often unintended consequences for writing lies and deception. Ms Buck and Conde Nash, the author and owner of Vogue, have just experienced what it is like to be humiliated when your lies and deceptions are exposed.

Ms Buck is now saying it was “horrifying” to be near the Assads and her biggest regret is that Vogue asked her to cover the story. Is her regret a result of being exposed as a fraud or an honest appraisal. Since honesty and integrity are compromised from the onset of this debacle, we may safely assume Ms Buck is horrified at the thought of being exposed as a liar.

Still the world is left to ponder why President Obama allows the wholesale slaughter of secular dissidents with western style philosophies of freedom, but not dissidents who are Islamic Fundamentalists. Sadly, propaganda never uses the truth, unless it benefits the purpose of the promotion; consequently, it is hard to judge the truth from the lies. Therefore, by applying simple logic, none of the product of the MSM media can be judged as being factual or legitimate.

Epilogue: Apparently the Assads liked the article, they are the ones who have chosen to preserve it for prosperity, oh the irony of failed propaganda.

A Blast From The Past...This Is How The Left Viewed Bush Then

As I wrote about in an earlier post, the hypocrisy of the left in regards to Obama’s policy of allowing assassinations of United States citizens is quite telling.

Take for example this speech given by our Attorney General in 2004:

With all due respect to President Reagan, the problem is not government. The problem is with those who run the government. In the struggle against terrorism, these people have made a mockery of the rule of law…

And yet a disturbing pattern has emerged. Lawyers for this administration have attempted to sanction the wholesale roundup and extended detention of Middle Eastern men on routine immigration violations, and the indefinite detention of American citizens with minimal judicial supervision, and without access to legal counsel.

Now I understand that we live in difficult times, and that we face an extraordinary, unprecedented threat. We cannot be naive in how we expect to conduct this struggle. This is not a time for the liberal community to see our enemy for anything other than what they are: murderers bent on the destruction of our way of life, which is superior to that which they seek to impose. We must be aggressive in the conduct of the war, and in the interrogation of prisoners taken in that war. But this Administration’s view, that the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief can almost always overcome what it views as burdensome laws, restrictive International treaties, and tired old customs is extremely dangerous.

Our history is replete with scandals and miscues that are tied to the unrestricted exercise of Executive Branch power, in peace and in war. We must employ techniques in the current struggle that are consistent with the spirit of our founding documents, and that will also stand the test of time. We must feel comfortable, fifty years from now, looking back at our actions in a way that we do not when we examine for instance, the detention of American citizens during World War II.

Now let me be clear. This is not to equate American al-Qaeda sympathizers with law abiding Japanese-American citizens. But citizenship must mean something. The guarantees that come with it must be respected.

The war on terrorism can be won and our tradition of respect for civil liberties can be respected. The tension that this administration sees existing between the two simply is not correct.

That was then, this is now:

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asserted on Monday that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible.

“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”

…While Mr. Holder is not the first administration official to address the targeted killing of citizens — the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, did so last month at Yale Law School, for example — it was notable for the nation’s top law enforcement official to declare that it is constitutional for the government to kill citizens without any judicial review under certain circumstances. Mr. Holder’s remarks about the targeted killing of United States citizens were a centerpiece of a speech describing legal principles behind the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.

“Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Holder said. “This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

I agree wholeheartedly with Bush’s practice of fighting this war on terror and I agree wholeheartedly with Obama’s new policy.

But the hypocrisy is mindboggling.

I never thought I would link to Glenn Greenwald but he is especially pissed at the hypocrisy from his side of the aisle:

(1) The willingness of Democrats to embrace and defend this power is especially reprehensible because of how completely, glaringly and obviously at odds it is with everything they loudly claimed to believe during the Bush years. Recall two of the most significant “scandals” of the Bush War on Terror: his asserted power merely to eavesdrop on anddetain accused Terrorists without judicial review of any kind. Remember all that? Progressives endlessly accused Bush of Assaulting Our Values and “shredding the Constitution” simply because Bush officials wanted to listen in on and detain suspected Terrorists — not kill them, just eavesdrop on and detain them — without first going to a court and proving they did anything wrong. Yet here is a Democratic administration asserting not merely the right to surveil or detain citizens without charges or judicial review, but to kill themwithout any of that: a far more extreme, permanent and irreversible act. Yet, with somerighteous exceptions, the silence is deafening, or worse.

How can anyone who vocally decried Bush’s mere eavesdropping and detention powers without judicial review possibly justify Obama’s executions without judicial review? How can the former (far more mild powers) have been such an assault on Everything We Stand For while the latter is a tolerable and acceptable assertion of war powers? If Barack Obama has the right to order accused Terrorists executed by the CIA because We’re At War, then surely George Bush had the right to order accused Terrorists eavesdropped on and detained on the same ground.

That the same Party and political faction that endlessly shrieked about Bush’s eavesdropping and detention programs now tolerate Obama’s execution program is one of the most extreme and craven acts of dishonesty we’ve seen in quite some time.

He goes on write and link to my post, saying “By stark contrast, right-wing leaders, pundits and bloggers are being commendably consistent”

Yup. We have.

I agreed with the policy then and do now.

And I completely agree with Glenn when he writes that the hypocrisy of the left is “the most extreme and craven acts of dishonesty we’ve seen in quite some time.”

Obama in 2006:

The bottom line is this: Current procedures under the CSRT are such that a perfectly innocent individual could be held and could not rebut the Government’s case and has no way of proving his innocence.

I would like somebody in this Chamber, somebody in this Government, to tell me why this is necessary. I do not want to hear that this is a new world and we face a new kind of enemy. I know that. I know that every time I think about my two little girls and worry for their safety–when I wonder if I really can tuck them in at night and know that they are safe from harm. I have as big of a stake as anybody on the other side of the aisle and anybody in this administration in capturing terrorists and incapacitating them. I would gladly take up arms myself against any terrorist threat to make sure my family is protected.

But as a parent, I can also imagine the terror I would feel if one of my family members were rounded up in the middle of the night and sent to Guantanamo without even getting one chance to ask why they were being held and being able to prove their innocence.

This is not just an entirely fictional scenario, by the way. We have already had reports by the CIA and various generals over the last few years saying that many of the detainees at Guantanamo should not have been there.

But it’s ok to assassinate that person without judicial review now eh?

Where’s the terror for your family members now?

H Y P O C R I S Y

In a sign that the left’s hypocrisy may not be going over so well is this editorial from the NYT’s today:

Perhaps most disturbing, Mr. Holder utterly rejected any judicial supervision of a targeted killing.

We have said that a decision to kill an American citizen should have judicial review, perhaps by a special court like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes eavesdropping on Americans’ communications.

Mr. Holder said that could slow a strike on a terrorist. But the FISA court works with great speed and rarely rejects a warrant request, partly because the executive branch knows the rules and does not present frivolous or badly argued cases. In Mr. Awlaki’s case, the administration had long been complaining about him and tracking him. It made an earlier attempt to kill him.

Mr. Holder said such operations require high levels of secrecy. That is obvious, but the FISA court operates in secret, and at least Americans are assured that some legal authority not beholden to a particular president or political party is reviewing such operations.

Mr. Holder argued in his speech that judicial process and due process guaranteed by the Constitution “are not one and the same.” This is a straw man. The judiciary has the power to say what the Constitution means and make sure the elected branches apply it properly. The executive acting in secret as the police, prosecutor, jury, judge and executioner is the antithesis of due process.

While the NYT’s editorial pages maybe coming around to their hypocrisy, we do not hear the wailing and the crying from the rest of our media, the rest of the Democrat party, the rest of the liberals.

H Y P O C R I S Y

Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant cleric who was an American citizen, was killed in Yemen.

While I don’t disagree with the Administration over this policy, I find the whole situation ironic. It was just a few years ago liberals were crying and protesting all over the fact that the United States waterboarded a few high level terrorists.

But I guess it’s ok to just a put a bullet in their head rather than making them a widdle bit scared with water eh?

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asserted on Monday that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible.

“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”

…While Mr. Holder is not the first administration official to address the targeted killing of citizens — the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, did so last month at Yale Law School, for example — it was notable for the nation’s top law enforcement official to declare that it is constitutional for the government to kill citizens without any judicial review under certain circumstances. Mr. Holder’s remarks about the targeted killing of United States citizens were a centerpiece of a speech describing legal principles behind the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.

“Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Holder said. “This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

Like I noted, I agree with the Administration.

But the hypocrisy is just mind boggling. If Bush has been suggesting these things heads would be exploding across both coasts.

Oh, one more note from the above article:

Still, the speech contained no footnotes or specific legal citations, and it fell far short of the level of detail contained in the Office of Legal Counsel memo — or in an account of its contents published in October by The New York Times based on descriptions by people who had read it.

Hmmmm, Obama and pals were all fired up to release some earlier memo’s…..oh right, that’s because they were written under Bushitler’s watch.

Libyan militia members man a checkpoint in the capital, Tripoli, in December

Guess no one saw this coming eh?

Armed militias in Libya are committing human rights abuses with impunity, threatening to destabilize the country and hindering its efforts to rebuild, Amnesty International said Thursday.

Militias have tortured detainees, targeted migrants and displaced entire communities in revenge attacks, according to a report the organization released a year after the start of popular uprisings that eventually ended Moammar Gadhafi’s 42-year rule.

“Hundreds of armed militias, widely hailed in Libya as heroes for their role in toppling the former regime, are largely out of control,” the report says.
Detainees at 10 facilities used by militia in central and western Libya told representatives from Amnesty International this year that they had been tortured or abused. Several detainees said they confessed to crimes they had not committed in order to stop the torture, Amnesty International said.

At least 12 detainees held by militias have died after being tortured since September, the human rights organization said, adding that authorities have not effectively investigated the torture allegations.

Well almost-no-one.

Thank you Arab Spring.

Meet the new boss…same as the old boss:

A terrified Libyan man is beaten and tortured with electric shocks by youths who appear to be former revolutionary fighters.

The images, taken from a video handed to The Mail on Sunday in a Tripoli refugee camp, will be seen as fresh evidence that those who deposed Colonel Gaddafi with the help of the West are adopting methods as brutal as the dead tyrant’s.

The film shows three men tying up the blood-spattered man before whipping him repeatedly with cables, touching him on his skin with electric wires and taunting him as he pleads for mercy.

The man being whipped with cables on the video was Saleh Barhoun Gersh, who had run a general store in Towerga – which was loyal to Gaddafi during the conflict until the town was ransacked by fighters from nearby Misrata. When the rebels arrived, Mr Gersh was so frightened he wore women’s clothes to disguise himself

The film shows three men tying up the blood-spattered man before whipping him repeatedly with cables, touching him on his skin with electric wires and taunting him as he pleads for mercy

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s a new chapter all right…a new chapter in Islamic fanaticism. A new chapter in torture and violence. A new chapter in crazy.

Reality is that everyone was happy that Gaddafi was gone, but not everyone had their head in the sand, ignoring the obvious. He was being replaced by thousands of Gaddafi’s.

Mata wrote last October:

But while westerners set aside their normal respect for rule of law and justice, gleefully rejoicing in a particularly bloody end, the arguments some of us have been making about this “new and improved” Libya looking suspiciously like (if not worse) than the old Libya, is gaining traction as more proof surfaces supporting the the Libyan rebels committed war atrocities.

This goes far beyond just Gaddafi, as mass graves with hundreds of bodes are excavated… the count approx 300 in one alone at this writing.. many with their hands bound behind their backs, executed.

Ali Tarhouni of the National Transitional Council excuses the rebels as young boys who had witnessed murders of family and friends, and praised their “self control”. Hey.. you can’t make this stuff up.

And in the end we helped bring down one dictator and helped prop up a radical Islamic regime.

An undated photo of Hamza Kashgari.

A columnist for the Jeddah-based Al Bilad newspaper, Hamza Kashgari, was detained Thursday by Malaysian police after fleeing to the country from Saudi Arabia to escape execution after he insulted the Prophet Muhammad:

Mr. Kashgari’s tweets incited outrage in the conservative Islamic country, where many regarded them as blasphemous, and reportedly prompted the king to call for his arrest. Blasphemy is a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.

More than 13,000 people have joined a Facebook page titled “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari.”

According to The Daily Beast, a friend of Mr. Kashgari, who asked not to be named, accompanied him to the airport and witnessed his detention.

“We were just watching him, waiting for him to pass the immigration checkpoint. Once he submitted his passport, they asked him to step away for a few minutes,” The Daily Beast quoted the friend as saying. “And suddenly these two people without uniforms just arrested him.”

An official from Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who refused to be identified, said Mr. Kashgari would likely be repatriated to Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Kashgari would be sent back “because he is on the watch list of Saudi Arabia,” the official said.

Some reports have suggested that Mr. Kashgari wanted to seek asylum abroad. But the foreign affairs official said Malaysia does not grant asylum out of respect for the laws of other countries. “It’s not our practice to grant political asylum,” the official said, adding that the ministry had contacted the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

The official said Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country, had good diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

What was it that was so horrible for him to earn the ire of puritanical Islamists and calls for execution? What was his crime? He twittered:

In one Twitter post, which has since been deleted but was published by Agence France-Presse, Mr. Kashgari wrote to the Prophet: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you. I will not pray for you.”

The Daily Beast:

Last week, just before the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth, Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old Saudi writer in Jidda, took to his Twitter feed to reflect on the occasion.

“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you,” he wrote in one tweet.

“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more,” he wrote in a second.

“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more,” he concluded in a third.

Really?! Seriously?!? That’s it!?! This constitutes an outrageous insult and blasphemy against the Prophet?

Actually, not at all surprising for the thin-skinned fanatics of the religion of perpetual rage (to clarify this for new readers: I aim this at the Salafis, Islamists, Taliban, Qutbists, and likeminded puritanical Islamic fundamentalists).

Twitter quickly flooded with responses to Kashgari, registering more than 30,000 within a day. He was accused of blasphemy, and enraged Saudis called for his death. By the time he removed the tweets and issued a long apology, backtracking on his comments and begging for forgiveness, the danger had already expanded beyond the Web. Someone posted Kashgari’s home address in a YouTube video, and, his friends say, vigilantes came looking for him at his local mosque. The Saudi information minister banned Kashgari’s local newspaper column and barred outlets across the country from publishing his work. Nasser al-Omar, an influential cleric, called for him to be tried in a Sharia court for apostasy, which is punishable by death. Other leading clerics decried Kashgari on their own, and Saudi Arabia’s council of senior scholars issued a rare and harshly worded communiqué condemning him and his tweets and demanding that he be put on trial. Yesterday, Saudi Arabia’s leading news site, SABQ, reported that the king himself had issued a warrant for Kashgari’s arrest.

With the pressure mounting, Kashgari fled to Southeast Asia earlier today. Hours later, in his first interview with the press, he told The Daily Beast that he was stunned by the turn of events but resigned to the fact that he can never return home. “It’s impossible. No way,” he said. “I’m afraid, and I don’t know where to go.” Kashgari says he is now planning to apply for asylum abroad.

Though Saudi Arabia has seen uproars over controversial newspaper articles or scholarly works before, no great calls for Sharia trials have ever sounded in the kingdom on account of a few tweets—and the furor has gone viral, snowballing into a bigger scandal than anything the country has seen in the recent past.

When he caught wind of the tweets, Fouad al-Farhan, a respected liberal and Saudi Arabia’s most influential blogger, knew Kashgari was in trouble. He quickly got in touch with the young writer and urged him to issue the apology. “Don’t try to be a hero,” he told him. “You will lose big time.”

Well….I bet this is one of those times when he is not loving Muhammad but feeling the hate.

By tweeting about the prophet, al-Farhan says, Kashgari crossed a line that even Saudi liberals won’t dare to touch. Even so, al-Farhan was surprised by the level of rage that Kashgari inspired, and how quickly it spread. In a span of just days, the issue came to dominate social media—from the onslaught of tweets under the hashtag #HamzahKashghri to vitriolic YouTube videos and a Facebook group, currently boasting nearly 8,000 members, called “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari”—and reached all the way to top clerics and the king. “There was an amazing anger. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” al-Farhan says, noting that the outrage in Saudi Arabia has exceeded even the levels seen after a Danish newspaper infamously published a cartoon of Muhammad in 2005.

“I think it’s because this is an extremely unique case. We’ve never had our own Salman Rushdie before. We’ve never had a case as extreme as this one of someone crossing the line,” al-Farhan says.

Al-Farhan has been harshly critical of Kashgari’s tweets. Even Kashgari’s friends, all of whom requested anonymity, say they’re reluctant to come to his defense—and have even felt the need to attack him themselves. “Everyone who tried to objectively deal with this case was immediately stigmatized and labeled an enemy of the prophet, who therefore should suffer the same fate Hamza is awaiting,” says one.

Adds another: “Right now we’re not worried about freedom of speech. We’re worried about the safety of our friend. And right now we can only help his safety if we condemn him, and [from there] try to rationalize what he said.”

Kashgari says he never expected such an outcry—“not even 1 percent.” But he knows the mindset of his critics well. He was raised as a religious conservative in a traditional Salafi community, becoming more liberal and “humanist,” in the words of one friend, as he grew older and embraced the Web. His writing also grew more provocative, particularly on Twitter, where he had attracted the ire of conservatives who kept a close eye on everything he wrote. Ahmed Al Omran, who keeps the popular blog Saudi Jeans, says it’s common for conservative activists to keep watch over liberal-minded social-media feeds. “They wait for the moment when they say something controversial to use it against them. Hamza is apparently one of the people they’ve been monitoring,” he says. “Most people feel strongly about the situation. But at the same time, I feel that conservatives are trying to take advantage of the situation, make an example out of him, and show their strength.”

Kashgari has since deleted his Twitter account, and he says some like-minded friends have done the same. He declined to comment on his apology and retraction but insisted his battle was still not lost. “I view my actions as part of a process toward freedom. I was demanding my right to practice the most basic human rights—freedom of expression and thought—so nothing was done in vain,” he says. “I believe I’m just a scapegoat for a larger conflict. There are a lot of people like me in Saudi Arabia who are fighting for their rights.”

If Kashgari is to somehow survive this, it’s going to take a mass media international outcry and pressure.

Perhaps, like the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” event, an “Everybody Tweet Muhammad Day” is in order to show support for Kashgari.

What a shock. This President will send troops into Uganda, drop bombs into Libya, back fanatical Muslims in Egypt, but when it comes to Iran….and our top secret technology, he’s a bit timid:

With early knowledge that the aircraft had likely remained intact, the senior U.S. official also told Fox News that President Obama was presented with three separate options for retrieving or destroying the drone. The president ultimately decided not to proceed with any of the plans because it could have been seen as an act of war.

…One official told Fox News on Thursday that the incident is a huge loss and makes the top-secret helicopter tail lost during the Usama bin Laden raid in Pakistan “look like a pittance.” The official said there are real fears the Iranians will share this technology with the Russians and the Chinese, in addition to using it themselves.

What a pansy.

And then he brags about bin-Laden but allows the Muslim Brotherhood to come ever so closer to their dreamed about sixth Caliphate.

The destruction he has done to this country, and it’s future security is breathtaking to behold.

With popular sovereignty and populist revolution bringing Islamofascism (or orthodox Islam) to power across the Arab world, it is important to remember that democracy is not the criterion of legitimacy. To be legitimate, government must be republican. That is, it must serve to establish a system of liberty under law. If the majority use democracy to violate the natural liberty rights of the minority, that “tyranny of the majority” is no more legitimate than the “tyranny of the minority” that is exercised by unelected dictators. Such, at least, is the founding ideology of the United States.

The framers of our Constitution were highly suspicious of democracy, which they often denigrated as “mob rule.” To them democracy was a necessary evil. If we must be ruled, let it be by ourselves. But there are many ways in which we are not supposed to be ruled at all, but are supposed to be free, according to natural law (i.e. according to what can be understood about right and wrong on the basis of moral reason, regardless of whether our capacity for moral reason comes from God or from godless nature).

Hence the enumeration of limited federal powers in Article I of our Constitution, and the enumeration of individual rights in the Bill of Rights (explicitly incomplete). Unfortunately, our Democratic Party seems to take its name literally. They have been systematically breaking down constitutional limits on majority power since the New Deal, when FDR tore down the Constitution’s system of limited federal power.

With the Democrats in control of all of our information industries (academia, news and entertainment media, all of our biggest philanthropies, all of our professional organizations), the priority of liberty is no longer widely understood. As a result, democracy is often held up as a first principle, when in our system it’s value is purely instrumental. It is valued as a way to secure liberty, and it is without value if it fails to be advantageous for that purpose.

Our loss of understanding of the priority of liberty leaves the nation standing perplexed as the Arab world falls in a single sweep to popular tyranny. Democracy—our supposed criterion of right—is leading to the most evil outcome: the empowerment of al Qaeda and Iran in country after Middle Eastern country, while America mumbles half a cheer and a lot of quiet fretting.

Daniel Pipes on the disastrous consequences of regarding democracy as principle in the Middle East

Pipes has a nice piece on our state of impotent discombulation. He does not say anything about democracy not being the correct criterion of legitimacy—very likely he does not understand this point himself—but he nicely sums up the confusion that is created when U.S. policy-makers treat democracy as principle in the Arab-Muslim world:

•Democracy pleases us but brings hostile elements to power.
•Tyranny betrays our principles but leaves pliable rulers in power.

“As interest conflicts with principle,” says Pipes, “consistency goes out the window.”

But is inconsistency really the problem? Obama has actually been perfectly consistent. Where dictators are friendly or pliable, he throws them to the wolves (demanding that Ghaddafi and Mubarak leave). Where they are hostile to the U.S. and not at all pliable, he is silent and unmoved when protesters are slaughtered en masse (Iran and Syria).

The obvious explanation is that Obama himself is not just a Muslim, but is an Islamofascist. (The evidence for both is overwhelming.) He skillfully uses the Democratic Party’s immoral priority of democracy over republicanism to advance democracy where the outcome will be anti-republican, and suppress it where republicanism is likely to prevail.

The key is Iran. A democratic Iran would almost certainly embrace liberty/republicanism, but so long as it remains in the hands of the Islamofascists, it can usurp every populist movement in the area to the Islamofascist side. Hence Obama’s determination to see that Iran gets The Bomb.

Assert republicanism over democracy

Faced with a president who is actively making use of the errant principle of democracy to undermine the national interest, it is not enough to advocate some wise balancing of democracy and interest. Instead, it is necessary to clarify and insist that republicanism, not democracy, is our principle, and that democracy should only be advanced where doing so advances the cause of liberty. Until we get regime change in Iran, that means no-where else in the Islamic world should we be pressing yet for democracy. Iran has to come first, or it will usurp every other attempt at democratic reform.

This strategy would expose Obama for what he in fact is doing, using a false principle to advance the Islamofascist cause. Pipes, in contrast, casts Obama as a bumbler, presumably well intentioned. Would that it were the case. Pipes’ suggestions for how to deal with the conflict between democracy and interest are fine as far as they go:

Aim to improve the behavior of tyrants whose lack of ideology or ambition makes them pliable. They will take the easiest road, so join together to pressure them to open up.

Always oppose Islamists, whether Al-Qaeda types as in Yemen or the suave and “moderate” ones in Tunisia. They represent the enemy. When tempted otherwise, ask yourself whether cooperation with “moderate” Nazis in the 1930s would have been a good idea.

Help the liberal, secular, and modern elements, those who in the first place stirred up the upheavals of 2011. Assist them eventually to come to power, so that they can salvage the politically sick Middle East from its predicament and move it in a democratic and free direction.

If Obama was merely a bumbler, he could learn from this advice. Since he is actually an Islamofascist, the only counter is to assert correct moral principle: that our goal is to advance liberty, and that democracy is only on the side of principle where it serves to promote liberty. Otherwise Obama can just continue to pretend to be acting on American values as he helps elevate Islamofascists to power across the Middle East.

Addendum: the New Deal actually ushered in a new (and un-ratified) Constitution

Since everything affects interstate commerce in some way, post-New-Deal Supreme Courts have held that Congress is empowered to regulate anything and everything under its power to regulate interstate commerce. Pre-New-Deal Courts had rejected that interpretation on the grounds that it violated Justice Marshall’s first principle of constitutional interpretation:

It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect; and, therefore, such a construction is inadmissible unless the words require it. [5 U.S. 137, 174 (1803).]

Allowing everything to be regulated under the commerce clause did not just render one clause of the Constitution without effect, it vitiated the entire system of limited enumerated powers.

That system of limited enumerated powers stood in the way of FDR’s desire to implement a Soviet-style command economy, where the government dictates to industry the quantities that it will produce and the prices it will charge. Yes, Roosevelt did actually try to implement such a system, dictating prices and quantities to every major industry in America. That was the job of the NRA (the National Recovery Administration), created by the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA). (See FDR’s Folly, by Jim Powell, chapter 9.)

NIRA was struck down by the Supreme Court, prompting FDR’s infamous court-packing scheme and “the switch in time that saved nine.” Intimidated by a popular president during a time of national agony, the Supremes agreed to abandon the Constitution, and we have never gotten it back.

Crossposted at Error Theory

Sure doesn’t sound like the “rebels” have won

A nervous limbo, punctuated by gunfire, took hold of Libya’s capital Monday, one day after opponents of Col. Moammar Gadhafi rolled triumphantly into the central square here—damping hopes by rebels and their international allies that the strongman’s supporters would melt away.

Machine-gun and antiaircraft fire could be heard throughout the day in Tripoli, as residents said loyalist gunmen had taken up positions in several neighborhoods. Rebels who attempted to turn an old police academy into their military headquarters quickly came under heavy fire, sending a stream of casualties to a makeshift clinic.

Green Square, where rebel troops had celebrated Sunday after marching largely unopposed into Col. Gadhafi’s stronghold capital, appeared to be a no man’s land. Roads leading to the square were made impassable by what locals said were loyalist snipers.

Amid the uncertainty, one of Col. Gadhafi’s sons, thought to have been captured by the rebels a day earlier, showed up at a Tripoli hotel and invited foreign journalists on a tour of the city.

The scenes in Tripoli bucked the day’s widening international sentiment that forces loyal to Col. Gadhafi, who has ruled the oil-rich Mediterranean country for nearly 42 years, had been all but neutralized. Instead, the leader remained unaccounted for as fighting continued. The unease suggested instead that the regime’s end, while broadly expected, may bring more bloodshed, this time in a densely populated urban theater.

As I write this reports are that Gadhafi has given a speech on the radio….looks like civil war is not too far behind:

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said on Wednesday that his withdrawal from his Bab al-Aziziya headquarters was a “tactical move” after the compound was leveled by 64 NATO air strikes.

Speaking in an address on a local Tripoli radio station, which was reported by Al-Orouba TV, broadcasting in conjunction with Al-Rai TV, Gaddafi also vowed “martyrdom” or victory in his fight against NATO.

I’m hoping the scumbag is killed sooner rather than later, but I also have a feeling that the wake left after his death will be something other then rosy. These so called “Rebels” aren’t prepared for this, nor is NATO:

Six months after their revolt broke out, the day-to-day leadership of the anti-Qaddafi movement remains an unanswered question, with no figure emerging as the rebellion’s undisputed leader. Even the common struggle against Colonel Qaddafi never masked latent divisions between east and west, between political leaders and fractious militias, and, some say, between liberal public faces and Islamists in the rebel ranks.

The rebels from the western mountains who stormed into Tripoli on Sunday night often roll their eyes at their ostensible political leadership, the Transitional National Council, which is based in the eastern city of Benghazi…

…Even so, rivalries began emerging on Monday well before Tripoli was fully subdued, along with questions about the rebels’ credibility. Officials of the Transitional National Council in Benghazi said Sunday that their forces had captured Colonel Qaddafi’s son and would-be successor, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi. But then on Tuesday he appeared at a Tripoli hotel housing foreign journalists — moving freely around the city — and even before then some in Tripoli appeared not to trust their Benghazi leadership to handle him.

And if and when these “rebels” do take over…who are they loyal to?

Less than four years before Libya’s popular opposition movement took up arms and revolted against Moammar Gadhafi with enthusiastic U.S. backing, anti-Gadhafi fighters chose another tactic to hit back at the hated dictator: they joined al Qaeda and tried to kill American soldiers in Iraq, according to U.S. documents.

In 2007 the U.S. Department of Defense snatched more than 600 records of al Qaeda’s foreign fighters in Iraq and discovered nearly a fifth of the foreigners were from Libya, according to a report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center released later that year. Within those records, the total put Libya second only to Saudi Arabia in total fighters and “far and away” the largest provider of foreign fighters per capita to the terrorist organization.

Almost all of the Libyan fighters hailed from the east — cities like Benghazi, effectively the current opposition headquarters; Ajdabiya, which was the site of intense fighting overnight; and Derna, a city currently held by the rebels.

“The Libyan pipeline to Iraq,” the report says, “is firmly established.”

The report ties the surge of Libyan recruits to a formal pledge of allegiance to al Qaeda by a major anti-Gadhafi group in 2007.

And now they have a mass supply of weapons:

No one can be sure who controls the Libyan government’s weapons stockpiles, a stew of deadly chemicals, raw nuclear material and some 30,000 shoulder-fired rockets that officials fear could fall into terrorists’ hands in the chaos of Muammar al-Qaddafi’s downfall or afterward.

One immediate worry, U.S. intelligence and military officials say, is that Qaddafi might use the weapons to make a last stand. But officials also face the troubling prospect that the material, which was left under Qaddafi’s control by a U.S.-backed disarmament pact, could be obtained by Al Qaeda or other militants even after a rebel victory is secured.

…A cache of hundreds of tons of raw uranium yellowcake is stored at a small nuclear facility east of the capital.

As I wrote earlier, I’m hoping that Gadhafi’s reign is over….but worried at what will take its place. That worry was well placed in Egypt and Pakistan. And now it’s Libya’s turn.

As far as the war itself, I will leave you with a quote from Mata:

all the Arab nations of the world have made note that to be friends with Obama’s US is to mean they invade your sovereign territory (Pakistan), he will throw you over the side to the sharks (Egypt, Yemen, Israel, and attempted in Bahran). But if you remain our enemy he will leave you alone (Syria, Iran, Somalia etal)

A very sad for our country. 31 members of our country’s best were killed last night after they had assaulted a Taliban stronghold. It’s the single biggest lost of life, in one incident, in the 10 years we have been in Afghanistan.

In the deadliest day for American forces in the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter on Saturday, killing 31 Americans and 7 Afghan commandos on board, American and Afghan officials said. American officials said later Saturday that 22 of the dead were members of a Navy SEAL unit, along with other American servicemembers and the Afghan unit. The helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province to the west of Kabul, one coalition official said, though others said the exact weapon remained in question.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which punctuated a surge of violence across the country, even as American and NATO forces begin a modest drawdown of troops. It occurred after a night raid, a tool that has been praised by American commanders as one of the most effective in the recent military offensive, though the raids have been heavily criticized by Afghan officials and civilians.

…There were conflicting accounts about when the helicopter went down. A spokesman for the Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, said insurgents shot down the helicopter around 11 p.m. Friday as it was starting an operation on a house where the militants were gathering in the Tangi Joyee region of the district of Saidabad in the eastern part of the province. Eight militants were killed in the fight, which continued after the helicopter fell, Mr. Mujahid said…

Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizoy, police chief of Wardak, said the operation began around 1 a.m. Saturday as NATO and Afghan forces attacked a Taliban compound in Jaw-e-mekh Zareen village in the Tangi Valley. The firefight lasted at least two hours, the general said.

It appears that the Seal unit involved was Seal Team Six. The same unit that took down bin-Laden.

U.S. officials tell The Associated Press that they believe that none of the Navy SEALs who died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan had participated in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, although they were from the same unit that carried out the bin Laden mission.

Sources say that more than 20 Navy SEALs were among those lost in the crash in Afghanistan.

The operators from SEAL Team Six were flown by a regular Army crew. That’s according to AP military sources.

Another source says the team was thought to include 22 SEALs, three Air Force air controllers, seven Afghan Army troops, a dog and his handler, and a civilian interpreter, plus the helicopter crew.

My question is how the Taliban knew to hit this specific helicopter? Apparently there were up to half a dozen helicopters used during the raid. Were they all from Seal Team Six or were they tipped off on which chopper to bring down? It seems too coincidental that this would happen soon after taking out bin-Laden.