Recently in Jihad Category

COLUMBUS, Ohio November 16, 2009 --Dozens of Christian activists descended on Columbus Monday morning to rally in the name of Rifqa Barry, the central Ohio teenager who converted from Islam to Christianity. Bary fled to Florida during the summer, saying she feared her father would kill her because of her conversion. Would she be another "honor killing" victim in the U.S. or in Sri Lanka, should she be sent back by her family to their Muslim relatives back home?

Bary is now back in Ohio under foster care. Her case is moving through the legal system. A hearing scheduled for Monday was postponed until December 22.

Rally-goers said they are worried about Bary's safety if she is returned to her parents.

"There is the larger question of, 'Is Aamerica going to protect religious freedom at this time and allow this girl to make a choice in conscience to be a Christian, rather than a Muslim," asked Robert Spencer, a co-organizer of the rally.

Spencer was interviewed at the rally about the threat of Islam, which has two aspects of concern to America: violent jihad and stealth jihad. The Fort Hood murderer Major Nidal Hasan is a violent jihadist killing "infidels" in the name of Islam. Those Muslims who constantly seek special privileges for Islamic practices or to silence all criticism of Islam as "racist" are examples of stealth jihadists. The ultimate goal of jihad is universal rule of Islam in the world, including Islamic law replacing the Constitution in the United States.

The interviewer of Robert Spencer in the video clip below is an ex-Muslim Nabil Qureshi. Spencer is one of the most knowledgeable students of Islam in the world.

Political correctness and multiculturalism are major obstacles in the battle to preserve Western civilization.

Is Mark Steyn the only sane person writing about jihadism who will bluntly describe the insanity he sees and hears in this diversity and multiculturally plagued society?

Who else has the spine to call Army Chief of Staff General Casey "brain-addled" for his incredibly appalling and and morally bankrupt statement that if Fort Hood turns out to be a setback for diversity it would a worse outcome that the massacre itrself?.

Mark quotes his fellow warrior in the fight for freedom of speech in Canada Ezra Levant who made this chilling observation:

Ezra Levant, my comrade in a long battle to restore freedom of speech to Canada, likes to say that the Danish cartoons crisis may one day be seen as a more critical event than 9/11. Not, obviously, in the comparative death tolls but in what each revealed about the state of Western civilization. After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; after the cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core Western values for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this past week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a "tragedy" but a national scandal, already fading from view.

Mark in full.

Mark Steyn: A jihadist hiding in plain sight
By MARK STEYN in the Orange County Register
2009-11-13 11:55:01
Shortly after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how no one would ever hijack an American airliner ever again - not because of new security arrangements but because an alert citizenry was on the case: We were hip to their jive. The point appeared to be proved three months later on a U.S.-bound Air France flight. The "Shoebomber" attempted to light his footwear, and the flight attendants and passengers pounced. As the more boorish commentators could not resist pointing out, even the French guys walloped him.

But the years go by, and the mood shifts. You didn't have to be "alert" to spot Maj. Nidal Hasan. He'd spent most of the past half-decade walking around with a big neon sign on his head saying "JIHADIST. STAND WELL BACK." But we (that's to say, almost all of us; and certainly almost anyone who matters in national security and the broader political culture) are now reflexively conditioned to ignore the flashing neon sign. Like those apocryphal Victorian ladies discreetly draping the lasciviously curved legs of their pianos, if a glimpse of hard unpleasant reality peeps through we simply veil it in another layer of fluffy illusions.

Continue reading . . .

American columnist Diana West makes an excellent point: We are playing into Islam's hands in its war of world conquest by refusing, because of fear of offending Muslims or the corrosive habit of political correctness (and perhaps fear of violence), to speak of "the gross incompatibility of Islamic ideology with Western liberty."

Fudging with words and terms such as "Islamist" and "Islamofascism" and "radical Islam" is to confuse Americans who need to know the truth about Islam's true nature and why it must be tamed or turned back. The problem with Islam is its core ideology as contained in the Koran and proclaimed and acted out by Mohammad. Our problem is not with fringe groups who have hijacked Islam. Mohammad's Islam is a religion of war, not of peace, and it has been so for 1400 years. Jihad until Islam rules the world is the duty of every true believer Muslim.

But we must not say that.

Muslim organizations are working on "hate-crime" legislation in the UN and in various countries, including the United States, to make it a punishable offense to criticize Islam. The Attorney General of the United States under the leadership of President Obama is currently advocating expanded coverage of hate-crime legislation. (Dutch pro-freedom parliamentarian Geert Wilders and American Islam expert Robert Spencer both support all hate-crime laws.)

We may have the First Amendment and free speech in the United States, but, it we stifle ourselves from telling the truth about Islam, it is as if free speech doesn't exist.

There is an Islamic network of organizations active in the United States today working on their program of subverting the country from within with the goal that one day Sharia, Islamic law, will replace the U.S. Constitution.

Fanciful, you say? Islam has been engaged in this war of conquest against the rest of the world since it was begun by Mohammad. Today, with trillions in oil wealth and more than a billion followers, Islam may be in the best position at any time in its history to press forward with its war.

Strategies of conquest are tailored to the situation in each country. War in Afghanistan, terrror in Nigeria, aggressive immigration, high birth rates and intimidation in Europe, quiet subversion and random terrorism in the United States and building allies for control over human rights and other policies at the UN.

Ms. West delivered her timely warning against pre-emptive surrender to Islam at the free speech conference of the International Free Press Society held in Denmark's parliament on June 17th.

The Impact of Islam on Free Speech in America

Americans are proud, and rightly so, of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which, among other things, protects speech from government control. The Amendment says in part: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."

Increasingly, however, Americans seem content to regard the First Amendment not as the fundamental working tool of democracy, but as a national heirloom, a kind of antique to admire rather than put to use. I don't think many of my countrymen perceive how profoundly their attitude toward free speech has changed. But there is a difference between having freedom of speech and exercising freedom of speech, one that has become glaringly and distressingly obvious to me since September 11, 2001. So, while it is true that the US government is not Constitutionally empowered to make laws that censor Americans, it is also true, I believe, that Americans have come to censor themselves. But why?

Jeff Jacoby contrasts what Ronald Reagan did with his opportunity in Berlin and what Obama didn't do in Cairo.

What the Brandenburg Gate was for Ronald Reagan in 1987, Cairo University could have been for Obama. Reagan seized the moment, spoke the truth, and helped liberate half a continent. All Obama did was give a speech.

Oh, well. Maybe there'll be a next time.

In Cairo, the president pandered

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
June 7, 2009

PRESIDENT OBAMA went to the Middle East, he said, to speak frankly and forthrightly about the issues that bedevil America's relations with the Muslim world. "Part of being a good friend is being honest," he had said in an interview just before his trip. He warned his Cairo audience that he intended to be blunt. "We must say openly the things we hold in our hearts and that too often are said only behind closed doors," he declared; so he was going to "speak as clearly and plainly as I can."

About some things, the president was indeed direct. He conveyed his impatience with those -- there are many in the Middle East -- who blame the 9/11 terrorist attacks on a Jewish or American conspiracy. "Let us be clear: Al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day" and "the victims were innocent men, women and children. . . . These are not opinions to be debated; these are facts to be dealt with."

He was even more scornful about Holocaust denial, which is also rife in the Arab world. "Six million Jews were killed" by Nazi Germany, Obama said -- "more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful."

Would that the rest of his remarks had been equally plain-spoken. As the first American president with Muslim roots, Obama benefits from much acclaim and goodwill in the Middle East. Rarely has a president had a better opportunity to openly address the pathologies and prejudices that drag Islamic societies backward, trapping so many of the world's Muslims in cultures that are unfree and unenlightened. As a candidate for president, Obama had argued that his experience of Muslim life gave him the moral authority to speak truth to Islamic power. "I can speak forcefully," he told The New York Times, "about the need for Muslim countries to reconcile themselves to modernity in ways they have failed to do."
Alas, that is just what he didn't do. Instead Obama pandered to his audience. He repeatedly praised Islamic history and teachings, repeatedly drew attention to American or Western shortcomings -- and repeatedly avoided speaking frankly about the dysfunctions in contemporary Islam.

He spoke of democracy, for example, but only in gauzy platitudes about "the freedom to live as you choose" and the need for "government of the people and by the people." Obama could have mentioned that democracy is almost entirely absent from the Arab world, or called for the release of imprisoned dissidents. He could have used his bully pulpit to urge an end to Egypt's repressive "state of emergency," which has lasted 28 years. He could have contrasted Iraq's hard-won constitutional democracy with the Middle East's ugly autocracies and dictatorships. He could have offered hope and encouragement to persecuted reformers and pro-democracy activists. Why didn't he?

"I want to address . . . women's rights," the president said, as well he might, given the appalling subjugation of women in so many Muslim countries. But about that subjugation -- the gender apartheid in Saudi Arabia, the fanatic misogyny of the Taliban, the widespread female genital mutilation, the "honor" killings of women who get pregnant out of wedlock -- he spoke not a word. The closest he came to denouncing the thugs who blow up girls' schools and murder their teachers was to observe tepidly that "a woman who is denied an education is denied equality." He disagreed, he said, with those who think "that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal." But what about women who are forced to wear a hijab? About them, Obama was silent.

Most astonishing of all, Obama never spoke the words "Islamist" or "Islamism." In a speech directed to Muslims worldwide, he made no effort to refute radical Islam's endorsement of global jihad. He spoke only of "extremists" -- as in "violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security" -- but said nothing about the totalitarian religious ideology that drives them. For Obama, speaking in the heart of the Arab world at a seat of Muslim learning, it was the perfect moment to strike an intellectual blow against radical Islam. It was the ideal venue to implore Muslims to rise up, vocally and en masse, against the jihadists who preach and commit violence in the name of Islam.

What the Brandenburg Gate was for Ronald Reagan in 1987, Cairo University could have been for Obama. Reagan seized the moment, spoke the truth, and helped liberate half a continent. All Obama did was give a speech.

Obama's Cairo speech unveiling his "inner Muslim" contained much that was astonishing. It misstated and overstated Islamic accomplishments, told lies about the presence of Muslims in America, stated that Islam had a Golden Rule when it does not and cast Israel off to fend for itself against Iran and other Islamic foes. It also gave Iran the green light to acquire nuclear weapons. Ironically, in withdrawing American support for Israel and relinquishing America's role as global policeman of nuclear weapon capability, Obama was reversing or abandoning positions adopted six decades ago by a Democratic president Harry S Truman.

This editorial describes the danger that Truman saw which Obama is plunging America and the world into.

Total Tolerance
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Friday, June 05, 2009 4:20 PM PT Issue of June 8, 2009

Nuclear Proliferation: In the torrent of analysis of the president's Muslim speech, a major policy shift went largely unnoticed. We now endorse equal opportunity regarding what countries can have atomic weapons.

President Obama's Cairo University address to the world's Muslims on Thursday squandered a historic opportunity that perhaps only a president with a Muslim father and a Muslim name could have utilized: effectively rallying the Islamic world against Iran as it pursues nuclear weapons.

Instead, he did pretty much the opposite, declaring that "no single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons."

This is multilateralism taken to its reductio ad absurdum. Since the dawn of atomic weapons, it has been mostly the United States' job -- what Harry Truman called "an awful responsibility which has come to us" -- to act as a kind of global nuclear custodian.
Truman made no bones about defending our building of the bomb, noting that the Nazis "were on the search for it" and that "we know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster which would come to this nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first."

That Democratic president made it clear to the world that "Great Britain, Canada and the United States, who have the secret of its production, do not intend to reveal that secret until means have been found to control the bomb so as to protect ourselves and the rest of the world from the danger of total destruction."

If we are honest with ourselves today, we must admit that even now, nearly six-and-a-half decades into the nuclear age, there remains no foolproof means of controlling the bomb. It continues to be, in Give 'em Hell Harry's words, "too dangerous to be loose in a lawless world."

So it is chilling to hear a U.S. president go to Egypt and, after issuing an unprecedented apology for the 1953 CIA coup that kept Iran and its oil from the clutches of Iran's direct neighbor to the north, the Soviet Union, declare that Iran has "the right" to nuclear power -- which it can easily use to build bombs.

There is nothing new in a president calling for "a world in which no nations hold nuclear weapons," as Obama did in Cairo. Ronald Reagan expressed such hopes. But isn't contending that "no single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons" the opposite of zero nuclear tolerance?

How is it a step toward a nuclear-free world when we announce that the West should stop practicing what might be called "nuclear discrimination?" Tehran will interpret Obama's words as carte blanche to pursue its goal of building a nuclear weapons arsenal.

According to the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has now amassed 1,359 kilograms of low-enriched uranium hexafluoride. It has nearly 5,000 centrifuges up and running -- and is making it more difficult for international inspectors to scrutinize its nuclear program.

Yet at the G-8 foreign ministers conference at the end of this month in Italy, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will rub shoulders with Tehran's diplomatic mission, invited to attend by the Italians, just as if Iran were Finland or New Zealand or any other civilized nation, not the Islamofascist threat to the world that it is.

Neither Europe nor the U.N. has the willingness or the fortitude to "pick and choose" multilaterally which nations can be accepted into the nuclear club. Only the U.S. can lead in such an "awful responsibility."

But last week in Cairo we apparently relinquished that grave duty.

As President Obama flies to Cairo to deliver a speech to the world's Muslims, the Director of Jihad Watch Robert Spencer suggests it is time to end the fantasies and speak clearly and honestly to all Muslims. Their goal of Islamic supremacism and world conquest must be put aside and they should take their place as equals with non-Muslims of the world.

Sadly, Obama may well fan the flames of hatred and division and convince Muslims at last they have have a friend against the Jews.

The speech is at 6:10 a.m. Thursday, June 4th, Eastern Daylight Time.

June 2, 2009
The Speech Obama Should [Have Given] Give in Cairo
By Robert Spencer
Jihad Watch
in the American Thinker

As Barack Obama prepares to give his long-anticipated major address to the Islamic world from Cairo, as a public service I here offer the speech he should give:

Dear friends,

I have said that in this speech I would offer my personal commitment to engagement with the Islamic world, based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. Establishing peace between the forces of the global jihad and America and her ally Israel is something that I would very much love to do. The first thing I must acknowledge, however, is that much as I would love to see this peace dawning over the world, it is not within my power to achieve this.

That may surprise many of you. You have grown accustomed to thinking that the tensions between Muslims and the United States - tensions that boiled over on September 11, 2001 and on the occasions of many other acts of jihad terrorism as well - are entirely the fault of the United States. Americans have been told that we are hated because of our support for Israel, and because of our attempts to bring freedom and stability to the overwhelmingly Muslim people of Iraq and Afghanistan. We are hated because we have spent American treasure to try to secure a better life for Muslims the world over, spending billions of dollars in aid for Egypt, Pakistan, and other Muslim countries.

I must speak honestly with you. It puzzles and pains Americans to see ourselves vilified and hated for trying to help others. Now, unlike the Islamic Republic of Iran and other Islamic entities, we seek no apologies, no restitution. We do not ask for a word of thanks for our numerous attempts to help Muslim societies become safe, prosperous places to live for all their citizens. We do not ask for your approval. But at this point we are going to cease efforts to build bridges of understanding with the Islamic world that have turned out to be fruitless, and even self-defeating.

We have showered billions on Pakistan to enable the Pakistani government to fight the Islamic jihadists, only to see a great deal of that money being funneled to those same jihadists, who are now stronger than ever.

We have tried to establish democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, only to see non-Muslim minorities treated worse than ever, such that they have been streaming out of Iraq in unprecedented numbers, while the few that remain in Afghanistan are subject to increasingly violent persecution.

We have brokered peace treaty after peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians - from Camp David to Oslo to the Road Map for Peace - only to see the Palestinian side again and again trample upon its commitments to recognize and respect Israel's basic right to exist.

I have offered you America's outstretched hand. In doing so I have followed a path blazed by my predecessors. But that gesture of conciliation has never been reciprocated. And so now, even as my good will is still extended to you, I must act more realistically.

Pakistan and other Muslim countries will not receive another penny of American aid unless and until they demonstrate - in a transparent and inspectable fashion - that they are working against, not abetting, the forces of the global jihad. This will include instituting comprehensive nationwide programs to teach against the jihad doctrine of Islamic supremacism, teaching that Muslims and non-Muslims must live together as equal citizens on an indefinite basis, without any attempts by Muslims to subjugate non-Muslims as inferiors under the rule of Islamic law.

I trust you will understand that we cannot continue to fund the cutting of our own throat.

Afghanistan and Iraq must immediately guarantee the equality of rights of women and non-Muslims, or American arms will no longer devote themselves to keeping regimes in power that do not guarantee those rights.

I will call upon Israel to make no further territorial concessions. The withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 demonstrated only that such concessions whet, rather than sate, the appetites of Islamic jihadists for more concessions. The assumption that territorial concessions will bring peace ignores not only recent history, but also the stated goal of the jihadist movements arrayed against Israel: the destruction of the Jewish state.

That state is an American ally - a more reliable one than any Islamic state has ever been. And we will do whatever is necessary to preserve and defend that ally.

Our hand is outstretched, but we are not unrealistic about the nature of the world. The animus between us is as much, if not more, the result of the doctrines of jihad and Islamic supremacism as it is a result of American policy. I am telling you today that we understand this, and will be acting accordingly. Ultimately a policy based on realism will be much better for both of us than policies based on the fantasies and half-truths that have hitherto prevailed.

Thank you, and may God bless you.

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Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and author of the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad.

President Obama is not only betraying over 60 years of mutual cooperation and support with Israel, he is endangering Americans everywhere with his indifference to the North Korean and Iranian nuclear threats. Is it ignorance? Or is he deliberately forfeiting America's position as the world's military superpower, allowing the Lilliputians to tie us down so we sink to the same level of unreality as the blindly dovish of Europe? Or is he boosting the self-prestige of the Islamic world by allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and put Israel under the thumb of the Islamic world? It has to be more than just anti-Semitism.

Caroline Glick says what Israel must do in the face of the Obama betrayal:

[D]ue to the timeline Obama has set, it is clear that before he will be ready to lift a finger against Iran, the mullocracy will have already become a nuclear power.

Today Israel stands alone against the mullahs and their bomb. And this, like the US's decision to stand down against the Axis of Evil, is not subject to change.

Israel and the Axis of Evil

May. 27, 2009
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

North Korea is half a world away from Israel. Yet the nuclear test it conducted on Monday has the Israeli defense establishment up in arms and its Iranian nemesis smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Understanding why this is the case is key to understanding the danger posed by what someone once impolitely referred to as the Axis of Evil.

Less than two years ago, on September 6, 2007, the IAF destroyed a North Korean-built plutonium production facility at Kibar, Syria. The destroyed installation was a virtual clone of North Korea's Yongbyon plutonium production facility.

This past March the Swiss daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung reported that Iranian defector Ali Reza Asghari, who before his March 2007 defection to the US served as a general in Iran's Revolutionary Guards and as deputy defense minister, divulged that Iran paid for the North Korean facility. Teheran viewed the installation in Syria as an extension of its own nuclear program. According to Israeli estimates, Teheran spent between $1 billion and $2b. for the project.

It can be assumed that Iranian personnel were present in North Korea during Monday's test. Over the past several years, Iranian nuclear officials have been on hand for all of North Korea's major tests including its first nuclear test and its intercontinental ballistic missile test in 2006.

Moreover, it wouldn't be far-fetched to think that North Korea conducted some level of coordination with Iran regarding the timing of its nuclear bomb and ballistic missile tests this week. It is hard to imagine that it is mere coincidence that North Korea's actions came just a week after Iran tested its solid fuel Sejil-2 missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers.

Aside from their chronological proximity, the main reason it makes sense to assume that Iran and North Korea coordinated their tests is because North Korea has played a central role in Iran's missile program. Although Western observers claim that Iran's Sejil-2 is based on Chinese technology transferred to Iran through Pakistan, the fact is that Iran owes much of its ballistic missile capacity to North Korea. The Shihab-3 missile, for instance, which forms the backbone of Iran's strategic arm threatening Israel and its Arab neighbors, is simply an Iranian adaptation of North Korea's Nodong missile technology. Since at least the early 1990s, North Korea has been only too happy to proliferate that technology to whoever wants it. Like Iran, Syria owes much of its own massive missile arsenal to North Korean proliferation.

Responding Monday to North Korea's nuclear test, US President Barack Obama said, "North Korea's behavior increases tensions and undermines stability in Northeast Asia."

While true, North Korea's intimate ties with Iran and Syria show that North Korea's nuclear program, with its warhead, missile and technological components, is not a distant threat, limited in scope to faraway East Asia. It is a multilateral program shared on various levels with Iran and Syria. Consequently, it endangers not just the likes of Japan and South Korea, but all nations whose territory and interests are within range of Iranian and Syrian missiles.

Beyond its impact on Iran's technological and hardware capabilities, North Korea's nuclear program has had a singular influence on Iran's political strategy for advancing its nuclear program diplomatically. North Korea has been a trailblazer in its utilization of a mix of diplomatic aggression and seeming accommodation to alternately intimidate and persuade its enemies to take no action against its nuclear program. Iran has followed Pyongyang's model assiduously. Moreover, Iran has used the international - and particularly the American - response to various North Korean provocations over the years to determine how to position itself at any given moment in order to advance its nuclear program.

For instance, when the US reacted to North Korea's 2006 nuclear and ICBM tests by reinstating the six-party talks in the hopes of appeasing Pyongyang, Iran learned that by exhibiting an interest in engaging the US on its uranium enrichment program it could gain valuable time. Just as North Korea was able to dissipate Washington's resolve to act against it while buying time to advance its program still further through the six-party talks, so Iran, by seemingly agreeing to a framework for discussing its uranium enrichment program, has been able to keep the US and Europe at bay for the past several years.

THE OBAMA administration's impotent response to Pyongyang's ICBM test last month and its similarly stuttering reaction to North Korea's nuclear test on Monday have shown Teheran that it no longer needs to even pretend to have an interest in negotiating aspects of its nuclear program with Washington or its European counterparts. Whereas appearing interested in reaching an accommodation with Washington made sense during the Bush presidency, when hawks and doves were competing for the president's ear, today, with the Obama administration populated solely by doves, Iran, like North Korea, believes it has nothing to gain by pretending to care about accommodating Washington.

This point was brought home clearly by both Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's immediate verbal response to the North Korean nuclear test on Monday and by Iran's provocative launch of warships in the Gulf of Aden the same day. As Ahmadinejad said, as far the Iranian regime is concerned, "Iran's nuclear issue is over."

There is no reason to talk anymore. Just as Obama made clear that he intends to do nothing in response to North Korea's nuclear test, so Iran believes that the president will do nothing to impede its nuclear program.

Of course it is not simply the administration's policy toward North Korea that is signaling to Iran that it has no reason to be concerned that the US will challenge its nuclear aspirations. The US's general Middle East policy, which conditions US action against Iran's nuclear weapons program on the prior implementation of an impossible-to-achieve Israel-Palestinian peace agreement makes it obvious to Teheran that the US will take no action whatsoever to prevent it from following in North Korea's footsteps and becoming a nuclear power.

During his press briefing with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last Monday, Obama said the US would reassess its commitment to appeasing Iran at year's end. And early this week it was reported that Obama has instructed the Defense Department to prepare plans for attacking Iran. Moreover, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, has made several recent statements warning of the danger a nuclear-armed Iran will pose to global security - and by extension, to US national security.

On the surface, all of this seems to indicate that the Obama administration may be willing to actually do something to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Unfortunately, though, due to the timeline Obama has set, it is clear that before he will be ready to lift a finger against Iran, the mullocracy will have already become a nuclear power.

Israel assesses that Iran will have a sufficient quantity of enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb by the end of the year. The US believes that it could take until mid-2010. At his press briefing last week Obama said that if the negotiations are deemed a failure, the next step for the US will be to expand international sanctions against Iran. It can be assumed that here, too, Obama will allow this policy to continue for at least six months before he will be willing to reconsider it. By that point, in all likelihood, Iran will already be in possession of a nuclear arsenal.

Beyond Obama's timeline, over the past week, two other developments made it apparent that regardless of what Iran does, the Obama administration will not revise its policy of placing its Middle East emphasis on weakening Israel rather than on stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. First, last Friday, Yediot Aharonot reported that at a recent lecture in Washington, US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, who is responsible for training Palestinian military forces in Jordan, indicated that if Israel does not surrender Judea and Samaria within two years, the Palestinian forces he and his fellow American officers are now training at a cost of more than $300 million could begin killing Israelis.

Assuming the veracity of Yediot's report, even more unsettling than Dayton's certainty that within a short period of time these US-trained forces could commence murdering Israelis, is his seeming equanimity in the face of the known consequences of his actions. The prospect of US-trained Palestinian military forces slaughtering Jews does not cause Dayton to have a second thought about the wisdom of the US's commitment to building and training a Palestinian army.

Dayton's statement laid bare the disturbing fact that even though the administration is fully aware of the costs of its approach to the Palestinian conflict with Israel, it is still unwilling to reconsider it. Defense Secretary Robert Gates just extended Dayton's tour of duty for an additional two years and gave him the added responsibility of serving as Obama's Middle East mediator George Mitchell's deputy.

FOUR DAYS after Dayton's remarks were published, senior American and Israeli officials met in London. The reported purpose of the high-level meeting was to discuss how Israel will abide by the administration's demand that it prohibit all construction inside Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

What was most notable about the meeting was its timing. By holding the meeting the day after North Korea tested its bomb and after Iran's announcement that it rejects the US's offer to negotiate about its nuclear program, the administration demonstrated that regardless of what Iran does, Washington's commitment to putting the screws on Israel is not subject to change.

All of this of course is music to the mullahs' ears. Between America's impotence against their North Korean allies and its unshakable commitment to keeping Israel on the hot seat, the Iranians know that they have no reason to worry about Uncle Sam.

As for Israel, it is a good thing that the IDF has scheduled the largest civil defense drill in the country's history for next week. Between North Korea's nuclear test, Iran's brazen bellicosity and America's betrayal, it is clear that the government can do nothing to impact Washington's policies toward Iran. No destruction of Jewish communities will convince Obama to act against Iran.

Today Israel stands alone against the mullahs and their bomb. And this, like the US's decision to stand down against the Axis of Evil, is not subject to change.

The stain of Sharia spreads across Pakistan aided by the Pakistani government. The former tourist destination the beautiful Swat Valley has been handed over to Islamic true believers who will install Islamic law -- and want government troops to help enforce it. Their goal is to take all of Pakistan back to the 7th century rule of Mohammad. They are well on their way.

Not content with forcing women into full head-to-toe covering and isolation at home, they have burned schools for girls and taken to public flogging of women seen in public without a blood male relative (a father-in-law doesn't count).

The Pakistan goverrnment sent as its negotiator with the Swat Valley Taliban Maulana Sufi Muhammad. Muhammad was to work out a "peace" deal with the head of the Swat Valley Taliban Maulana Fazlullah. Not only is Fazlullah his son-in-law, Muhammad founded the Taliban party his son-in-law now leads. Peace would come, they agreed, when the government agreed that Sharia, Islamic law, would reign in Swat Valley. After the Pakistani parliament voted in favor, President Zadari approved the deal.

Now the father-in-law has taken up residence with his son-in-law in Swat Valley and is threatening the government he recently represented. He is demanding the government troops work with the Taliban to enforce Sharia.

And the spokeman for the Swat Taliban Muslim Khan has let the press know that Osama bin Laden is welcome to come and settle among them -- and he will be protected.

The Swat Valley is about 100 miles from the nation's capital Islamabad. In Islamabad, the Supreme Court released from prison the head imam Maulana Abdul Aziz of the Red Mosque which was the violent epicenter of the movement in 2007 to establish Islamic courts in Islamabad. Government troops were forced to storm the mosque and hundreds died. The head imam Maulana Abdul Aziz sought to escape hiding in a female's top-to-toe dress, but was captured. During the height of the insurrection, his female followers watched the chaos below the mosque walls.

In a rally in the capital city of Islamabad, thousands chanted "Our way is jihad!" The clericleading the defiance of the government by establishing a Sharia court has threatened suicide attacks if the government tries to stop him. '[Maulana Abdul] Aziz addressed about 3,000 people at the mosque for a conference on Sharia and jihad - Islamic law and holy war. Listeners filled the courtyard and packed the roof of the red-walled building just a few hundred yards from the city's government district.

Aziz then asked the gathering, "What is our way?" and students bellowed back: "Jihad! Jihad!"

The rule of law in Pakistan is disintegrating. Islamist forces are growing stronger and taking control of more and more of the country. Pakistan, already a nuclear weapons power, is emerging as the greatest danger to the civilzed world.

Taliban in Pakistani: `Welcome, Osama!' By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer Kathy Gannon, Associated Press Writer April 20, 2009 MINGORA, Pakistan - Pakistan was trying to end bloodshed when it let the idyllic Swat Valley fall under Islamic law last week. Instead, it has emboldened the Taliban to extend a hand to militants, including Osama bin Laden.

The local spokesman for the Taliban, which control the valley, told The Associated Press he'd welcome militants bent on battling U.S. troops and their Arab allies if they want to settle there.

"Osama can come here. Sure, like a brother they can stay anywhere they want," Muslim Khan said in a two-hour interview Friday, his first with a foreign journalist since Islamic law was imposed. "Yes, we will help them and protect them."

Khan spoke in halting English he learned during four years painting houses in the U.S. before returning to Swat in 2002. He averted his eyes as he spoke to a female journalist, in line with his strict understanding of Islam.

Pakistan reacted with alarm to his comments, saying it would never let him shelter the likes of bin Laden.

"We would have to go for the military operation. We would have to apply force again," said Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira. "We simply condemn this. We are fighting this war against al-Qaida and the Taliban."

But it is far from clear that the government has the means to do much of anything in the Swat Valley. It agreed to Islamic law in the region -- drawing international condemnation -- after trying and failing to defeat the Taliban in fighting marked by brutal beheadings that killed more than 850 people over two years.

"We lost the war. We negotiated from a position of weakness," said Afrasiab Khattak, a leader of the Awami National Party, which governs the province that includes Swat. He said the region's police force is too underpaid, undertrained and underequipped to take on the militants.

At the behest of the National Assembly, President Asif Ali Zardari last week signed off on a regulation establishing Islamic law throughout the Malakand Division, a strategic territory bordering Afghanistan, and Pakistan's tribal belt where bin Laden has long been rumored to be hiding. The Swat Valley, where tourists once flocked to enjoy Alpine-like scenery, is part of the area.

Whether Swat someday proves an alluring haven for bin Laden could depend on how threatened he feels in his current location, and how successful the Taliban militants are in keeping state forces at bay there.

U.S. officials said they would work with Pakistan to make sure militants aren't safe anywhere.

"With regard to Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, this is not a place where they should be welcome. We believe ... that violent extremists need to be confronted," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Monday.

In an interview with Pakistan's Geo TV, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was asked about U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke's concerns over the Swat deal.

"He doesn't need to worry about that," Gilani said. "This is our country. We know the ground realities better than he does. We will continue supporting this deal if peace comes there. I'm seeing peace is coming there."

On Friday, Taliban fighters in pickup trucks with black flags rumbled through the rutted streets of the valley's main city of Mingora, demanding over loudspeakers that shops shutter their windows and prepare for prayers.

In the city center, a district police station lay in ruins, destroyed by a suicide bomber. The only music blaring praised the Taliban and extolled the young to fight holy war.

Aftab Alam, president of the district court lawyers, took a journalist through an open courtyard and closed the door to his office before whispering in a soft, angry voice about the Taliban.

"They are more than beasts. Our government is impotent, stupid and corrupt. We are helpless (facing) this militancy," he said, calling the Taliban "barbaric" and "illiterate."

Alam said he feared for his life, "but I dare to speak because I am worried about my nation, my religion, my home."

The Swat deal comes as Pakistan's hodgepodge of militant groups appear to be growing increasingly integrated and coordinated.

The Taliban spokesman counted among his allies several groups on U.N. and U.S. terrorist lists: Lashkar-e-Taiba, blamed for last year's bloody siege in Mumbai, India; Jaish-e-Mohammed, which trains fighters in Pakistan's populous Punjab province; the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; al-Qaida, and the Taliban of Afghanistan.

"If we need, we can call them and if they need, they can call us," Khan said.

He said his forces would go to help the Taliban in Afghanistan if the United States and NATO continue to fight there.

"You must tell (the Americans) if they want peace ... to withdraw their forces, keep them on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean," he said.

Khattak, the provincial politician, described the implementation of Islamic law as replacing traditional judges with qazis, special judges trained in Islamic law. Already, a handful of qazis have begun hearing minor cases. The deal's broker, fundamentalist cleric Sufi Mohammed, has said no regular courts will be allowed in the region.

But Khan said the Taliban envisions an even a broader system: a whole new set of laws following a strict interpretation of Islam, akin to the system Afghanistan's Taliban imposed during their 1996-2001 rule. There, the government banned music and television, restricted girls' education and women's movement and cut off limbs and stoned women to death in public ceremonies.

"We don't need just qazis. We have to change the laws," Khan said.

He said his group wants to expand Islamic law, also known as Shariah, into all of nuclear-armed Pakistan.

"You will see the National Assembly will follow after one year, two years, six months," he said. "I don't know, but they will have to pass Shariah for all of Pakistan."

Already, Taliban fighters have moved unhindered into nearby Buner district -- also part of Malakand Division -- declaring themselves to be the enforcers of Islamic law and threatening tribesmen.

"It used to be that you crossed the Malakand Pass to Swat and you thought, 'I am in heaven,'" said Alam, the lawyer. "Now you think, 'I am in Hell.'"

The two greatest threats to America today are the Obama Administration and radical Islam. As Mark Steyn notes, the Muslim demographic is not only exploding worldwide (ten times faster than the natives in Britain) it is also becoming more intimidating, more violent, more extreme due to the tens of billions of dollars spent over the past 30 years by the Saudis on selling Islam as Mohammad realily meant it to be -- the ruler of the world.

At the same time, the principal defenders of freedom and Western heritage, Britain and the United States, are in the process of dismantling their free market economies and substituting "Can't we all just get along?" capitulation for a strong national defense and civilizational pride.

As the ex-Muslim emigré from Syria Wafa Sultan, now a psychiatrist living and working in southern California, reminds us, we are not engaged in a clash of civilziations with Islam, it is a war between civilzation and barbarism. But who is listening?

A small vignette from a young woman in the Swat Valley of Pakistan (which Mark Steyn talks about in his piece), who has learned of the Pakistani government's agreement that Islamic law will be enforced throughout the valley:

"Today the party of the Mullah announced that 'democracy' is un-Islamic. It is too late. We have lost the battle against the militants. We have seen day by day how government and army have [been] weakened, how they have finally been reduced to talk and to deal. Nobody is accountable for the thousands killed, for the closure of schools, for the beheadings of men and women. Nobody. Someone said to me the other day - 'Don't complain, because the one you complain to will be your enemy.'

"We no longer can turn [to anyone] here to complain. We now have to think about how to survive this. We now have to give up much of what many of us believe in - tolerance, peace, educated women, and freedom."

She believes the North-West Frontier Province is lost. And she questioned whether President Obama understands the extremists. "He seems to think that these people can be contained within their land, or [any] land. He thinks there is a meeting point, a dialogue possibility. Those who think that giving the militants their haven will contain them - well, the rest of the country and the world will see what this will lead to. This is not the end, it is only the beginning."

February 21, 2009, 7:00 a.m.

From Islamabad to Bradford
Degrees of accommodation.

By Mark Steyn in National Review Online

'It is hard to understand this deal," said Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special envoy. And, if the special envoy of the so-called smartest and most impressive administration in living memory can't understand it, what chance do the rest of us have?

Nevertheless, let's try. In the Swat Valley, where a young Winston Churchill once served with the Malakand Field Force battling Muslim insurgents, his successors have concluded the game isn't worth the candle. In return for a temporary ceasefire, the Pakistani government agreed to let the local franchise of the Taliban impose its industrial strength version of sharia across the whole of Malakand Region. If "region" sounds a bit of an imprecise term, Malakand has over five million people, all of whom are now living under a murderous theocracy. Still, peace rallies have broken out all over the Swat Valley, and, at a Swat peace rally, it helps to stand well back: As one headline put it, "Journalist Killed While Covering Peace Rally."

But don't worry about Pakistani nukes falling into the hands of "extremists": The Swat Valley is a good hundred miles from the "nation"'s capital, Islamabad -- or about as far as Northern Vermont is from Southern Vermont. And, of course, Islamabad is safely under the control of the famously moderate Ali Zardari. A few days before the Swat deal, Mr. Zardari marked the dawn of the Obama era by releasing from house arrest A. Q. Khan, the celebrated scientist and one-stop shop for all your Islamic nuclear needs, for whose generosity North Korea and Iran are especially grateful.

From Islamabad, let us zip a world away to London. Actually, it's nearer than you think. The flight routes between Pakistan and the United Kingdom are some of the busiest in the world. Can you get a direct flight from your local airport to, say, Bradford?

Where?

Bradford, Yorkshire. There are four flights a week from Islamabad to Bradford, a town where 75 percent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins. But don't worry, in the country as a whole, only 57 percent of Pakistani Britons are married to first cousins.

Among that growing population of Yorkshire Pakistanis is a fellow called Lord Ahmed, a Muslim member of Parliament. He was in the news the other day for threatening (as the columnist Melanie Phillips put it) "to bring a force of 10,000 Muslims to lay siege to the House of Lords" if it went ahead with an event at which the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders would have introduced a screening of his controversial film Fitna. Britain's Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, reacted to this by declaring Minheer Wilders persona non grata and having him arrested at Heathrow and returned to the Netherlands.

The Home Secretary is best known for an inspired change of terminology: Last year she announced that henceforth Muslim terrorism (an unhelpful phrase) would be reclassified as "anti-Islamic activity." Seriously. The logic being that Muslims blowing stuff up tends not to do much for Islam's reputation -- i.e., it's an "anti-Islamic activity" in the same sense that Pearl Harbor was an anti-Japanese activity.

Anyway, Geert Wilders's short film is basically a compilation video of footage from various recent Muslim terrorist atrocities -- whoops, sorry, "anti-Islamic activities" -- accompanied by the relevant chapter and verse from the Koran. Jacqui Smith banned the filmmaker on "public order" grounds -- in other words, the government's fear that Lord Ahmed meant what he said about a 10,000-strong mob besieging the Palace of Westminster. You might conceivably get the impression from Wilders's movie that many Muslims are irrational and violent types it's best to steer well clear of. But, if you didn't, Jacqui Smith pretty much confirmed it: We can't have chaps walking around saying Muslims are violent because they'll go bananas and smash the place up.

So, confronted by blackmail, the British government caved. So did the Pakistani government in Swat. But, in fairness to Islamabad, they waited until the shooting was well underway before throwing in the towel. In London, you no longer have to go that far. You just give the impression your more excitable chums might not be able to restrain themselves. "Nice little G7 advanced western democracy you got here. Shame if anything were to happen to it." Twenty years ago this month, Margaret Thatcher's Conservative ministry defended the right of a left-wing author Salman Rushdie to publish a book in the face of Muslim riots and the Ayatollah Khomeini's attempted mob hit. Two decades on, a supposedly progressive government surrenders to the mob before it's even taken to the streets.

In his first TV interview as president, Barack Obama told viewers of al-Arabiya TV that he wanted to restore the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago." I'm not sure quite what golden age he's looking back to there -- the Beirut barracks slaughter? the embassy hostages? -- but the point is, it's very hard to turn back the clock. Because the facts on the ground change, and change remorselessly. Even in 30 years. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30 percent of the global population to just over 20 percent, while the Muslim world increased from 15 percent to 20 percent. And in 2030, it won't even be possible to re-take that survey, because by that point half the "developed world" will itself be Muslim: In Bradford -- as in London, Amsterdam, Brussels, and almost every other western European city from Malmo to Marseilles -- the principal population growth comes from Islam. Thirty years ago, in the Obama golden age, a British documentary-maker was so horrified by the "honor killing" of a teenage member of the House of Saud at the behest of her father, the king's brother, that he made a famous TV film about it, Death Of A Princess. The furious Saudis threatened a trade boycott with Britain over this unwanted exposure. Today, we have honor killings not just in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, but in Germany, Scandinavia, Britain, Toronto, Dallas, and Buffalo. And they barely raise an eyebrow.

Along with the demographic growth has come radicalization: It's not just that there are more Muslims, but that, within that growing population, moderate Islam is on the decline -- in Singapore, in the Balkans, in northern England -- and radicalized, Arabized, Wahhabized Islam is on the rise. So we have degrees of accommodation: surrender in Islamabad, appeasement in London, acceptance in Toronto and Buffalo.

According to ABC News, a team of UCLA professors have used biogeographic theories to locate Osama bin Laden's hideout as one of three possible houses in the small town of Parachinar, and have suggested to the Pentagon they keep an eye on these buildings. But the problem isn't confined to three buildings. It ripples ever outwards, to the new hardcore sharia state in Malakand, up the road to nuclear Islamabad, over to Bradford on that jet-speed conveyor-belt of child brides, down to the House of Lords and beyond.

Meanwhile, President Obama has removed Winston Churchill's bust from the Oval Office and returned it to the British. Given what Sir Winston had to say about Islam in his book on the Sudanese campaign, the bust will almost certainly be arrested at Heathrow and deported as a threat to public order.

-- Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is author of America Alone.

Pakistan accelerates its downward slide to becoming an Islamic failed state -- with nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them. All those who wanted President Musharraf to give up his authority as head of the armed forces and then to step aside as president should be second-guessing themselves about now. The weak government that succeeded him is showing it is incapable of fighting the radical Islamic uprising within the supposedly settled parts of Pakistan and has lost whatever influence it ever had in the tribal territories along the Afghan border. Musharraf tried a truce and the radical Islamic forces totally ignored what they had signed, using the withdrawal of Pakistani combat troops as an opportunity to strengthen their hold on the territory.

Now the government is sending a "hard-line" cleric to negotiate with the leader of the local Pakistani Taliban, who happens to be his son-in-law Maulana Fazlullah, who has been terrorizing the Swat Valley, forcing adherence to Islamic law.

In the last few months, Swat has largely fallen to militants who have beheaded opponents, burned scores of girls' schools and banned many forms of entertainment. Gunbattles between security forces and militants have killed hundreds, while up to a third of the valley's 1.5 million people have fled.

Fazlullah is the head of TNSN [the banned pro-Taliban Tehrik-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM - Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws) founded in the 1990s by, guess who? His father-in-law Sufi Muhammad who is on his way to negotiate a deal on behalf of the government! One can expect complete capitulation to the demands of the TNSM to install Sharia as the "law" of Swat Valley.

In an interview in July 2007 Fazlullah proundly announced he was Taliban and pledged his allegiance to Mullah Omar and his intention of forming a Omar-led caliphate straddling the Afghan/Pakistan border. (Asia Times, July 14,2007).

NATO commanders rightly express concern about this development, fearing what will result is a "safe haven" for Taliban fighters to rest and rearm in Pakistan before resuming their offensives in Afghanistan.

Muhammad and his convoy of 300 vehicles arrived in Swat's main city of Mingora on Tuesday as hundreds of jubilant residents lined the roads and shouted slogans. Many of those in the convoy with him wore black turbans -- a Taliban trademark.

"We will soon open dialogue with the Taliban. We will ask them to lay down their weapons. We are hopeful that they will not let us down," Muhammad told reporters. "We will stay here in the valley until peace is restored."

Who would believe Muhammad -- who clearly has brought reinforcements for his old organization in his 300 vehicle convoy -- about "peace" in the valley?

NATO forces are disintegrating in Afghanistan. German forces won't go near a battle zone; they're "rebuilding." Spain is pulling out. France refuses to increase its paltry number of soldiers. All this after President Obama's call to NATO allies to step up their commitment. The U.S. will have to increase its presence in Afghanistan and will have to act more aggressively in Pakistani territory if it is to end the violence in Afghanistan. There is great danger that the weak Pakistan government will fall and the military and the intelligence services (which was involved in the Mumbai massacres) will take over.

Despite the evil still stalking the innocent in Iraq in the name of Islam, Iraq itself has achieved a significant victory over the dark forces inhabiting and shaping that country for centuries. Charles Krauthammer expresses his dismay that the President of the United States paid it little heed ("shockingly detached and ungenerous" in his perfunctory remarks), even though the Iraqi success provides the United States with some real hope that progress can be indeed made to change the culture of violence and hatred that has been endemic in the Middle East. Krauthammer explains:

Iraq: Good News Is No News

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 13, 2009; Washington Post

Preoccupied as it was poring over Tom Daschle's tax returns, Washington hardly noticed a near-miracle abroad. Iraq held provincial elections. There was no Election Day violence. Security was handled by Iraqi forces with little U.S. involvement. A fabulous bazaar of 14,400 candidates representing 400 parties participated, yielding results highly favorable to both Iraq and the United States.

Iraq moved away from religious sectarianism toward more secular nationalism. "All the parties that had the words 'Islamic' or 'Arab' in their names lost," noted Middle East expert Amir Taheri. "By contrast, all those that had the words 'Iraq' or 'Iraqi' gained."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went from leader of a small Islamic party to leader of the "State of Law Party," campaigning on security and secular nationalism. He won a smashing victory. His chief rival, a more sectarian and pro-Iranian Shiite religious party, was devastated. Another major Islamic party, the pro-Iranian Sadr faction, went from 11 percent of the vote to 3 percent, losing badly in its stronghold of Baghdad. The Islamic Fadhila party that had dominated Basra was almost wiped out.

The once-dominant Sunni party affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and the erstwhile insurgency was badly set back. New grass-roots tribal ("Awakening") and secular Sunni leaders emerged.

All this barely pierced the consciousness of official Washington. After all, it fundamentally contradicts the general establishment/media narrative of Iraq as "fiasco."

continue reading...

A survivor asked the key question after a female suicide bomber in Iraq blew herself up killing 40 women and children in Karbala, Iraq for a religious observance:

"What kind of belief system do these people have? Are they monsters?" a man shouted as he held his dazed and wounded son, wrapped in a red and yellow.

What belief system encourages committing suicide to kill others?

Female suicide bomber kills 40 in Iraq

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer
February 13, 2009

BAGHDAD - A female suicide bomber struck a tent filled with women and children resting during a pilgrimage south of Baghdad on Friday, killing 40 people and wounding about 80 in the deadliest of three straight days of attacks against Shiite worshippers.

The grisly assault, which also appeared to be the deadliest in Iraq this year, demonstrates the determination of some extremists to re-ignite sectarian warfare. It also underscores how fragile security remains here, even as the U.S. turns over more responsibility to the Iraqis.

Witnesses said many of the injured were hurt in a stampede as terrified survivors -- most of them poor Shiites exhausted after days of walking -- scrambled away from the tent in terror.

They left behind piles of clothing, small rugs and toddlers' strollers, Associated Press Television News video showed. A dismembered leg believed to have been the bomber's lay wrapped in an abaya in a cardboard box.

"It was a horrific scene with dead and screaming injured people on the ground," said Sadiya Kadom, 40, a Baghdad resident who was near the tent when the blast occurred.

more....

It is a matter of grave concern when the President of the United States doesn't seem to have a clue about the war being waged by Islamic supremacists against the West and, in particular, against the leader of the West the United States. Obama misstates history of U.S.-Muslim relations, apologizes for who knows what and seeks to make overtures to regimes that want to see us destroyed. He has studiously avoided even the mention of "War on Terror," which itself is an inadequate euphemism for the war to preserve civilization from the assaults of barbarism.

During the campaign we chuckled at his reference to visiting 57 states with only one to go, but his historical ignorance on matters of world importance is breathtaking, as Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe points out below. Other observers have commented on Obama's know-it-all-superiority and incuriosity reflective of his extreme (some say pathological) narcissism that leads him to believe his rhetorical skills can put to rest a 1400-year war against the infidels. despite his apparent lack of knowledge about the ideological imperative driving the global jihad.

How ironic that on the same day a commentator at the blog Gateway Pundit made this observation:

There are two kinds of people in the electorate:

1. People who remember how horrible the Jimmy Carter years were.

2. People who are about to find out.

Jacoby:

Obama's charm offensive and the global jihad
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | February 4, 2009

EARLY IN HIS presidency, Jimmy Carter set about to a letter US policy toward the Soviet Union. Six days after his inauguration he sent a letter to Soviet ruler Leonid Brezhnev, hailing the two countries' "common efforts towards formation of a more peaceful, just, and humane world" and saluting Brezhnev's supposed "aspiration for strengthening and preserving. . . peace." In a commencement address at Notre Dame, he declared that Americans had shed their "inordinate fear of communism." In the months that followed, Carter slashed the defense budget, scrapped the B-1 bomber, welcomed the Sandinista coup in Nicaragua, and launched diplomatic relations with Cuba's dictator, Fidel Castro.

It wasn't until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 that Carter finally woke up to his naiveté. Moscow's brutal aggression "made a more dramatic change in my opinion of what the Soviets' ultimate goals are," he admitted, "than anything they've done in the previous time that I've been in office."

Carter's failure to understand the threat posed by the Soviet Empire had costly consequences for America and the world. Will that pattern now be repeated with Barack Obama and the threat from radical Islam?

Ever since taking office two weeks ago, Obama has been at pains to proclaim a change in US-Muslim relations. In his inaugural address he invited "the Muslim world" to embark on "a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect." Six days later he gave Al-Arabiya, an Arabic-language satellite channel, his first televised interview as president. This week he continued his charm offensive with a friendly letter to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. He has promised to deliver a major address in an Islamic capital by spring.

The president cannot be faulted for using his bully pulpit to reach out to the world's Muslims, especially given his Muslim roots and family ties. But running through his words is a disconcerting theme: that US-Muslim tensions are a recent phenomenon brought on largely by American provincialism, heavy-handedness, and disrespect. Missing is any sense that the United States has long been the target of jihadist fanatics who enjoy widespread support in the Muslim world.

"My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy," Obama said, although "we sometimes make mistakes" and "have not been perfect," and even though "too often the United States starts by dictating" and fails to use "the language of respect."

Such apologetic pandering is inexcusable. For decades, as commentator Charles Krauthammer noted last week, "America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them." To liberate oppressed Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Americans risked - and in some cases lost - their lives. Respect? Not even the Islamist atrocities of 9/11 provoked American leaders to treat Islam with disdain. "We respect your faith," George W. Bush earnestly told the world's Muslims on Sept. 20, 2001. "Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah."

Even more troubling is Obama's seeming cluelessness about US-Muslim history.

"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," he said on Al-Arabiya.

Well, let's see. Twenty years ago, American hostages were being tortured by their Hezbollah captors in Beirut and hundreds of grief-stricken families were in mourning for their loved ones, murdered by Libyan terrorists as they flew home for Christmas on Pan Am Flight 103. Thirty years ago, the Ayatollah Khomeini seized power in Iran, proclaimed America "the Great Satan," and inspired his acolytes to storm the US embassy and hold scores of Americans hostage. That same year Islamist mobs destroyed the US embassies in Pakistan and Libya, and staged anti-American riots in other countries.

Radical Islam's hatred of the United States is not a recent phenomenon, it has nothing to do with "respect," and it isn't going to be extinguished by sweet words - not even those of so sweet a speaker as our new president. Sooner or later, Obama must confront an implacable reality: The global jihad, like the Cold War, will end only when our enemies lose their will to fight - or when we do. Let us hope he's a quicker study than Jimmy Carter.

Obama -- and by inference the United States -- was subjected to ridicule by India when he voiced his intention to step into the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir to work out a solution. India reacted with outrage and the U.S. immediately backed off. A Singapore-based expert on Indian affairs expressed satisfaction with India's diplomatic offensive:

"You kill a chicken to scare a monkey," Mr Mohan said at a recent seminar in New Delhi on US relations with south Asia. "We killed the chicken and the monkey got the message."

The Obama administration is starting out by making Israel the bull's-eye of its foreign policy target.

As Caroline Glick reports, Obama is rolling out the failed Clinton/Mitchell plan of 2000 that will "engender radicalism, instability and death" for Israel and its Jewish population." In this case, history as tragedy is not repeating itself as farce; it is farce repeating itself as farce.

Israel will have to save itself. Its continued existence depends on its own strength and resolve. A victory for Likud and Netanyahu in the election of February 10th is essential for Israel's future if international fantasies are to be overcome and Israel is to survive.

Column One: History's tragic farce

Jan. 23, 2009 Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

It is a fundamental truth that while history always repeats itself, it almost never repeats itself precisely. There is always a measure of newness to events that allows otherwise intelligent people to repeat the mistakes of their forebears without looking completely ridiculous.

Given this, it is hard to believe that with the advent of the Obama administration, we are seeing history repeat itself with nearly unheard of exactness. US President Barack Obama's appointment of former Sen. George Mitchell as his envoy for the so-called Palestinian-Israeli "peace process" will provide us with a spectacle of an unvarnished repeat of history.

In December 2000, outgoing president Bill Clinton appointed Mitchell to advise him on how to reignite the "peace process" after the Palestinians rejected statehood and launched their terror war against Israel in September 2000. Mitchell presented his findings to Clinton's successor, George W. Bush, in April 2001.

Mitchell asserted that Israel and the Palestinians were equally to blame for the Palestinian terror war against Israelis. He recommended that Israel end all Jewish construction outside the 1949 armistice lines, and stop fighting Palestinian terrorists.

As for the Palestinians, Mitchell said they had to make a "100 percent effort" to prevent the terror that they themselves were carrying out. This basic demand was nothing new. It formed the basis of the Clinton administration's nod-nod-wink-wink treatment of Palestinian terrorism since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994.

By insisting that the PLO make a "100 percent effort," to quell the terror it was enabling, the Clinton administration gave the Palestinians built-in immunity from responsibility. Every time that his terrorists struck, Yasser Arafat claimed that their attacks had nothing to do with him. He was making a "100 percent effort" to stop the attacks, after all.

After getting Arafat off the hook, the Clinton administration proceeded to blame Israel. If Israel had just given up more land, or forced Jews from their homes, or given the PLO more money, Arafat could have saved the lives of his victims.

Mitchell's plan, although supported by then-secretary of state Colin Powell, was never adopted by Bush because at the time, terrorists were massacring Israelis every day. It would have been politically unwise for Bush to accept a plan that asserted moral equivalence between Israel and the PLO when rescue workers were scraping the body parts of Israeli children off the walls of bombed out pizzerias and bar mitzva parties.

But while his eponymous plan was rejected, its substance, which was based on the Clinton Plan, formed the basis of the Tenet Plan, the road map plan and the Annapolis Plan. And now, Mitchell is about to return to Israel, at the start of yet another presidential administration to offer us his plan again.

MITCHELL, OF COURSE, is not the only one repeating the past. His boss, Barack Obama, is about to repeat the failures his immediate predecessors. Like Clinton and Bush, Obama is making the establishment of a Palestinian state the centerpiece of his foreign policy agenda.

Obama made this clear his first hour on the job. On Wednesday at 8 a.m., Obama made his first phone call to a foreign leader. He called PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah. During their conversation, Obama pledged his commitment to Palestinian statehood.

Fatah wasted no time responding to Obama's extraordinary gesture. On Wednesday afternoon Abbas convened the PLO's Executive Committee in Ramallah and the body announced that future negotiations with Israel will have to be based on new preconditions. As far as the PLO is concerned, with Obama firmly in its corner, it can force Israel to its knees.

And so, the PLO is now uninterested in the agreements it reached with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. For Israel to enjoy the privilege of negotiating with the PLO, it must first announce its willingness to expel all the 500,000 or so Israeli Jews who live in Judea, Samaria and the neighborhoods in east, south and north Jerusalem built since 1967, as well as in the Old City, and then hand the areas over, lock, stock and barrel, to the PLO.

This new PLO "plan" itself is nothing new. It is simply a restatement of the Arab "peace plan," which is just a renamed Saudi "peace plan," which was just a renamed Tom Friedman column in The New York Times. And the Friedman plan is one that no Israeli leader in his right mind can accept. So by making this their precondition for negotiations, the PLO is doing what it did in 2000. It is rejecting statehood in favor of continued war with Israel.

What is most remarkable about the new administration's embrace of its predecessors' failed policy is how uncontroversial this policy is in Washington. It is hard to come up with another example of a policy that has failed so often and so violently that has enjoyed the support of both American political parties. Indeed, it is hard to think of a successful policy that ever enjoyed such broad support.

Apparently, no one in positions of power in Washington has stopped to consider why it is that in spite of the fervent backing of presidents Clinton and Bush, there is still no Palestinian state.

SINCE ISRAEL recognized the PLO as the "sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" in 1993, the US and Israel have based their plans for peace on their assumption that the PLO is interested in making peace. And they have based their plans for making peace by establishing a Palestinian state on the assumption that the Palestinians are interested in statehood. Yet over the past 15 years it has become abundantly clear that neither of these assumptions is correct.

In spite of massive political, economic and military support by the US, Israel and Europe, the PLO has never made any significant moves to foster peaceful relations between Israel and the Palestinians. Not only did the PLO-led PA spend the six years between 1994 and 2000, in which it was supposedly making peace with Israel, indoctrinating Palestinian society to hate Jews and seek their destruction through jihadist-inspired terrorism. It also cultivated close relations with Iran and other rogue regimes and terror groups.

Many are quick to claim that these misbehaviors were simply a consequence of Arafat's personal radicalism. Under Abbas, it is argued, the PLO is much more moderate. But this assertion strains credulity. As The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh reported on Monday, Fatah forces today boast that their terror cells in Gaza took active part in Hamas's missile offensive against Israel. Fatah's Aksa Martyrs terror cells claim that during Operation Cast Lead, its terrorists shot 137 rockets and mortar shells at Israel.

Abbas's supporters in the US and Israel claim that these Fatah members acted as they did because they are living under Hamas rule. They would be far more moderate if they were under Fatah rule. But this, too, doesn't ring true.

From 2000 through June 2007, when Hamas ousted Fatah forces from Gaza, most of the weapons smuggling operations in Gaza were carried out by Fatah. Then, too, most of the rockets and mortar shells fired at Israel were fired by Fatah forces. Likewise, most of the suicide bombers deployed from Judea and Samaria were members of Fatah.

The likes of Madeleine Albright, Powell and Condoleezza Rice claimed that Fatah's collusion with Hamas and Islamic Jihad and its leading role in terror was a consequence of insufficient Israeli support for Arafat and later for Abbas. If Israel had kicked out the Jews of Gaza earlier, or if it had removed its roadblocks and expelled Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria, or if had prevented all Jewish construction beyond the 1949 armistice lines, then Arafat and later Abbas would have been more popular and able to rein in their own terror forces. (Incidentally, those same forces receive their salaries from the PA, which is funded by the US and Israel.)

THE PROBLEM with this line of thinking is that it ignores two essential facts. First, since 2000 Israel has curtailed Jewish building in Judea and Samaria. Second, Israel kicked every last Jew out of Gaza and handed the ruins of their villages and farms over to Fatah in September 2005.

It is worth noting that the conditions under which the PA received Gaza in 2005 were far better than the conditions under which Israel gained its sovereignty in 1948. The Palestinians were showered with billions of dollars in international aid. No one wanted to do anything but help them make a go of it.

In 1948-49, Israel had to secure its sovereignty by fending off five invading armies while under an international arms embargo. It then had to absorb a million refugees from Arab countries and Holocaust survivors from Europe, with no financial assistance from anyone other than US Jews. Israel developed into an open democracy. Gaza became one of the largest terror bases in the world.

Four months after Israel handed over Gaza - and northern Samaria - the Palestinians turned their backs on statehood altogether when they elected Hamas - an explicitly anti-nationalist, pan-Islamic movement that rejects Palestinians statehood - to lead them.

Hamas's electoral victory, its subsequent ouster of Fatah forces from Gaza and its recent war with Israel tells us another fundamental truth about the sources of the repeated failure of the US's bid for Palestinian statehood. Quite simply, there is no real Palestinian constituency for it.

Even if we were to ignore all of the PLO's involvement in terrorism and assume like Obama, Bush and Clinton that the PLO is willing to live at peace with Israel in exchange for Gaza, Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, what Hamas's control of Gaza and its popularity throughout the Palestinian areas show is that there is no reason to expect that the PLO will remain in control of territory that Israel transfers to its control. So if Israel were to abide by the PLO's latest demand and accept the Friedman/Saudi/Arab/PLO "peace plan," there is no reason to believe that a Jew-free Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem wouldn't then be taken over by Hamas.

Given that there is no chance that Israeli territorial giveaways will lead to a peaceful Palestinian state, the question arises, is there any way to compel American politicians to give up their fantasies of fancy signing ceremonies in the White House Rose Garden that far from bringing peace, engender radicalism, instability and death?

As far as Mitchell is concerned the answer is no. In an address at Tel Aviv University last month, Mitchell said that the US and Israel must cling to the delusion that Palestinian statehood will bring about a new utopia, "for the alternative is unacceptable and should be unthinkable."

So much for "change" in US foreign policy.

Jihad Watch notes the release of two transcripts:

A transcript of phone calls between terrorist headquarters in Pakistan and the terrorists doing the killing in Mumbai has been released by Indian intelligence. The terrorists on the ground were being directed every step of the way from Pakistan:

Transcript: Mumbai gunmen were commanded by phone," from the Associated Press, January 7:

"We have three foreigners, including women," the gunman said into the phone. The response was brutally simple: "Kill them." Gunshots then rang out inside the Mumbai hotel, followed by cheering that could be heard over the phone.
The ruthless exchange comes from a transcript of phone calls Indian authorities say they intercepted during the November Mumbai attacks. They were part of a dossier of evidence New Delhi handed Pakistan this week that it says definitively proves that the siege was launched from across the border.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Tuesday that he did not believe the gunmen were acting alone, and Pakistani state agencies must have had a hand in the attacks.
The dossier made no mention of any Pakistani officials or agencies.
Indian leaders have made clear they do not want a military conflict with Pakistan, and Pakistan's intelligence chief said there will be no war over the Mumbai attacks. [...]
"We may be crazy in Pakistan, but not completely out of our minds," Pakistan's intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha, told German news magazine Der Spiegel. "We know full well that terror is our enemy, not India."
The Mumbai transcripts, which were obtained by the newspaper The Hindu, show that the 10 gunmen who carried out the attacks were in close contact with their handlers throughout the siege. India says the handlers directing the attacks that left 164 dead were senior leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant group.
"There are three ministers and one secretary of the cabinet in your hotel. We don't know in which room," the handler told a gunman inside the Taj Mahal hotel at 3:10 am on the first night of the attack.
"Oh! That is good news. It is the icing on the cake!" the gunman said.
Shoot Jews, save Muslims
The handlers told another team of gunmen who had seized a Jewish center to shoot hostages if necessary.
"If you are still threatened, then don't saddle yourself with the burden of the hostages. Immediately kill them," he said.
He then added, "If the hostages are killed, it will spoil relations between India and Israel."
"So be it, God willing," the gunman replied.
Six Jewish foreigners, including a rabbi and his wife, were killed inside the Jewish center.

UPDATE: Power Line notes some additional transcripts of Mumbai terrorist communications published by The Hindu found by Gateway Pundit.

And a transcript from the pro-Hamas rally in Ft. Lauderdale caught this:

"Protester Calls for Jews to 'Go Back to the Oven' at Anti-Israel Demonstration," from FOX News, January 7:

Like many other protests of Israel's campaign in Gaza, this one ended badly — police had to cool an ugly fight between supporters of Israel and Gaza, breaking up the warring sides as their screaming and chanting threatened to turn into something worse.

But some protesters at this rally in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., took their rhetoric a step further, calling for the extermination of Israel — and of Jews.

Separated by battle lines and a stream of rush-hour traffic outside a federal courthouse last week, at least 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators faced off against a smaller crowd of Israel supporters.

Most of the chants were run-of-the-mill; men and women waving Palestinian flags called Israel's invasion of Gaza a "crime," while the pro-Israel group carried signs calling the Hamas-run territory a "terror state."

But as the protest continued and crowds grew, one woman in a hijab began to shout curses and slurs that shocked Jewish activists in the city, which has a sizable Jewish population.

"Go back to the oven," she shouted, calling for the counter-protesters to die in the manner that the Nazis used to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.

"You need a big oven, that's what you need," she yelled...

And the woman in Fort Lauderdale wearing the hijab and crying out for ovens for Jews presumably is living in America and may be an American citizen. Where is she filled with this hatred of Jews? There are two mosques in Fort Lauderdale. One of them, Majid al-Iman, is where Jose Padilla studied Islam.

Iran supplies munitions to Hamas in Gaza as well as to Hezbullah in southern Lebanon. Iranian missiles fired from Gaza can now reach 20 to 25 miles into Israel, putting major population centers such as Ashkelon (pop. 105,000) and Ashdod (205,000) in danger.

The Hamas thugs know they are firing at civilian centers. The missiles analyzed by the Israli bomb experts contained

metal balls designed to act as shrapnel, and the intended effects were visible at a home situated just a few meters from where one of the rockets hit, which looked as if it had been sprayed with a machine gun.

Large, gaping holes peppered the front of the house.

Rocket and missile fire from Gaza has been a constant even during the so-called six-month truce which Hamas ended. Since the truce ended ten days ago the projectiles fired have been in the hundreds. Israel had warned repeatedly that the firing must stop or they would attack all Hamas security centers. Hamas often fires the missiles and rockets from mobile platforms in the middle of civilian areas, knowing that when the Israelis retaliate some of their civiilans will be killed, thus providing Hamas with pictures of "victims" for the gullible media.

Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel, refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, has not renounced terrorism and has not ceased terrorist operations against Israel's citizens. An American Muslim so-called charity the Holy Land Foundation was recently convicted in Texas of funneling money to a know terrorist organization Hamas. In that case CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) and the North American Islamic Trust, the owner of the new mosque in Boston's Roxbury district, were named as unindicted co-conspirators.)

Hizbullah-type rockets fired

Dec. 28, 2008
Yaakov Lappin , THE JERUSALEM POST
Two Katyusha rockets that Hamas fired deep into Israel on Sunday are the same type launched by Hizbullah during the Second Lebanon War, an Israel Police source told The Jerusalem Post.

The two rockets were Hamas's deepest attacks into Israeli territory to date. The first Katyusha hit in Gan Yavne, 35 km. north of the Strip, and the second struck 20 minutes later in an undisclosed location near Ashdod, 40 km. from Gaza.

Police sappers who analyzed the projectiles said they carried six to seven kilograms of explosives each, and identified them as 122-millimeter PIPE type-81 Katyusha rockets, which have a range of 40 km.

The rockets contained metal balls designed to act as shrapnel, and the intended effects were visible at a home situated just a few meters from where one of the rockets hit, which looked as if it had been sprayed with a machine gun.

Large, gaping holes peppered the front of the house.

"This is our Hanukka miracle," said Avital, a mother of five who hid with her children and husband in a safe room in the house after hearing the air raid siren. Her family was one of the few in her community on Sunday morning - most of the moshav's families were away on an organized trip. Hours later, the families returned and examined the damaged home with stunned expressions.

Dozens of people lit a large hanukkia and sang holiday songs near the home, in a show of solidarity with the family.

"At 9:30 we heard the first siren. I was praying," Avital said. "My son woke his siblings up and we entered the safe room. Soon afterward, we heard a second siren."

Avital's husband, Eyal, was working in the garden outside their home. "I wouldn't be here now if I hadn't heeded that second siren," Eyal told the Post. "I would be dead."

"We entered the safe room [again] and 30 seconds later, we heard an enormous explosion and shrapnel flying," Avital said.

"My little girl cried, but on the whole we were calm," said her husband.

Police sappers quickly arrived and removed the rocket, which hit moist sand next to the home. The soil appeared to absorb much of the explosion.

"We're reciting psalms and thanking God," Avital said. "Property is replaceable, human lives are not," she added. "We are still in shock from what happened."

Avital expressed support for the current IDF operation in Gaza, saying, "This is a kind of war, and we are prepared to take this in order to win. In Sderot, they have this every day."

The Home Front Command added Yavne and Gadera to its list of communities under threat from Hamas rockets, telling residents there they had one minute to enter shelter in the event of an air raid siren.

However, unlike in Gaza-periphery communities, the Home Front Command said life in Gadera and Yavne could continue as usual.

Britain's Channel 4 TV network created some controversy by inviting Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to deliver a message for Christmas Day. It contended that European viewers really didn't know Ahmadinejad and his positions and it was a public service to have him, in a sense, respond to Queen Elizabeth's Christmas message as head of the Church of England.

Caroline Glick, the most perceptive of all Middle East political analysts, believes Channel 4 did the right thing.

THE FACT of the matter is that Channel 4 is right. There is a great deal of ignorance in the West about what the likes of Ahmadinejad and his colleagues in Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas stand for. But this isn't their fault. They tell us every day that they seek the destruction of the Jews and the domination of the West in the name of Islam. And every day they take actions that they believe advance their goals.

The reason that the West remains ignorant of the views and goals of the likes of Hamas and Iran is not that the latter have hidden their views and goals. It is because the leading political leaders and foreign policy practitioners in the West refuse to listen to them and deny the significance of their actions.

As far as the West's leaders are concerned, Iran and its allies are unimportant. They are not actors, but objects. As far as the West's leading foreign policy "experts" and decision-makers are concerned, the only true actors on the global stage are Western powers. They alone have the power to shape reality and the world. Oddly enough, this dominant political philosophy, which is based on denying the existence of non-Western actors on the world stage, is referred to as political "realism."

Glick rightly denounces this "realism" as fantasy, whether it involves dealing with Iran, Syria, the Hezbollah-dominated Lebanese government, Hamas or North Korea.

These foreign policy realists maintain that talking and appeasement are the way to bend these actors to the will of the West, even though years doing that have not produced the desired Western results. The age-old definition of a madman applies: Doing the same thing that failed over and over again expecting a different result.