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Page 4: Opinion
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Home Front: Politix
"Administration Critics Chafe at State Dept. Shuffle" Condi at work
I briefly heard one report on Fox about this -- it then disappeared. Finally found this article.. there is some shakin' up goin' on at the State Department.. trying to convince these folks, they work for the United States of America

Tuesday, February 21, 2006; A04

A State Department reorganization of analysts involved in preventing the spread of deadly weapons has spawned internal turmoil, with more than half a dozen career employees alleging in interviews that political appointees sought to punish long-term employees whose views they considered suspect.

Senior State Department officials deny that and say an investigation has found that the proper personnel practices were followed. But three officials involved in the reorganization, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, acknowledge that a merger of two bureaus reduced the influence of employees who were viewed by some political appointees as disloyal to the administration's policies.

"There are a number of disgruntled employees who feel they have been shoved aside for political purposes. That's true," said one of these officials. "But there was rank insubordination on the part of these officers."

About a dozen top experts on nonproliferation have left the department in recent months, with many citing the reorganization as a reason.

The dispute has thrown a spotlight on the tensions that often exist between longtime career employees and the political appointees who come and go with successive administrations. It is also being closely watched within the State Department as another sign that, under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's leadership, the department will no longer be at war with the rest of the administration.

Rice and her top aides have sought to heal the damaging rifts that existed with the Pentagon and other agencies. Some State Department officials privately acknowledge that they used to be thrilled by the department's reputation as a renegade in President Bush's first term, but they say the message has become clear in the past year that such attitudes are no longer acceptable.

Few people would speak about the controversy for the record, either because they fear retaliation or because they must continue to work with State Department officials in their new jobs.

"The suspicion is we would undermine the policy," said one of the officials who have felt sidelined. "That is what all of us find most offensive. We are here to serve any administration."

Robert Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control, who oversaw the reorganization, and Henrietta H. Fore, the undersecretary for management, said in interviews that political motives were not a factor, adding that any change is going to cause distress. Fore said she has listened to employee concerns, reviewed the implementation and determined that "all steps were taken according to the law."

"None of these allegations stand up," Joseph said. "You have got a small group of individuals who are resisting the changes. I am not surprised by that. Change is difficult, but change is absolutely necessary."

The employees who say that they have been targeted once had a back channel to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who they said would on occasion ask them to bypass their superior, John R. Bolton, now the ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, with backing from allies in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, frequently battled the rest of the State Department on policy issues.

But Joseph, who worked for Rice at the White House, is an ideological soul mate of Bolton's and retained much of Bolton's staff -- and now officials say the policy disputes that characterized Powell's State Department have largely faded under Rice's tenure. The back channel that these employees used to alert senior management to their problems with Bolton no longer exists, the career officials said.

By many accounts, the decision to merge two key bureaus focusing on nonproliferation and arms control was necessary. The merger was originally approved by Powell, in his waning days as secretary, after the department's inspector general recommended combining the bureaus on the grounds of efficiency and workload. The IG said the nonproliferation bureau -- which seeks to deter the spread of weapons of mass destruction -- was overworked, and the arms-control bureau -- which negotiates and implements arms-control agreements -- was underworked. The IG also recommended that a third bureau, verification and compliance, be downsized.

But once a panel of Joseph's top aides began implementing the plan, some of the IG's recommendations were set aside -- the verification bureau was expanded, not downsized, while officials in the arms-control bureau appeared to attain more authority. Both bureaus had appeared more in sync with the administration's views, officials said.

The merger was accomplished with unusual speed this fall because, officials said, they did not want it to become mired in excessive bureaucracy. "We wanted to pull the Band-Aid quickly as opposed to slowly, hair by hair," one official said.

But other officials said the process was opaque, and even supporters say it could have been better managed because it hurt morale throughout the bureaus and energized intense opposition. "We shouldn't have given the other side ammunition," an advocate of the changes said.

Mark Fitzpatrick, who was deputy assistant secretary for nonproliferation before leaving the department in October after 26 years, said, "I've heard about low morale and a number of people seeking to leave because they don't find the atmosphere as rewarding as it had been when it was not so politicized."

One particular office in the nonproliferation bureau, dealing mainly with the International Atomic Energy Agency, was especially targeted, numerous officials on both sides of the dispute said. Several top officials in the office were close to IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei and had privately objected to the administration's public campaign to deny him a third term. A former office director who had been on loan to the IAEA asked for his job back -- but was given a non-managerial position in another bureau; the acting office director also did not get the job.

Instead, a relatively junior Foreign Service officer, who is outranked by several officials in the bureau but who is considered skeptical of the IAEA, was named acting head of the office. Last year, two months before ElBaradei and the IAEA were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the official sent an e-mail to his colleagues ridiculing the idea. The subject line read: "A Nobel for the IAEA? Please."

Three officials familiar with the reorganization said the actions were necessary because this office -- and others -- had been openly opposed to administration policies and thus was perceived as incompetent. "You can't expect everyone to agree with you. But you do expect results," one official said. "The office became a black hole and was very ineffective."

Supporters of these officials acknowledge that they were sometimes appalled by administration positions, with several saying they had at times been embarrassed for the United States. But they also noted that the IG report had praised the office as being effective, well-run and having high morale -- in contrast to the assessment of its counterpart in the arms-control bureau.
Posted by: Sherry || 02/26/2006 16:16 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  "There are a number of disgruntled employees who feel they have been shoved aside for political purposes. That's true," said one of these officials. "But there was rank insubordination on the part of these officers."... Few people would speak about the controversy for the record... because they must continue to work with State Department officials in their new jobs.

Rank insubordination on the part of state department officers? Never! ;p I think these guys are senior state dept officials. I would have no problem reminding them that they work in the executive branch, and the chief executive is POTUS. Some of those smug a*holes over in Foggy Bottom have been setting their own agenda for too long... No harm in reminding them who they work for. I doubt this affects mid or low level folks - it's the high level career folks who think they should be making policy.
Posted by: Fodamage || 02/26/2006 16:42 Comments || Top||

#2  Chop faster, Condi. So many empty heads, so little time.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 02/26/2006 16:52 Comments || Top||

#3  I have a spare pair of hobnail boots, but they're prolly too big for Condi. She should just go ahead and schedule private appointments with all the Dept Heads, Desk Chiefs, and mebbe everyone else who's been there for more than, say, 10 years - and apply SPo'D's banned guaranteed sink-trap solution.
Posted by: .com || 02/26/2006 16:56 Comments || Top||

#4  outlaw all post-retirement Saudi-funded employment, and the game changes....

gravy train ends, traitorous bastards
Posted by: Frank G || 02/26/2006 16:57 Comments || Top||

#5  Heh - so many things would change with the founding of The Republic of Eastern Arabia...
Posted by: .com || 02/26/2006 16:59 Comments || Top||

#6  Long overdue
Posted by: DMFD || 02/26/2006 18:05 Comments || Top||

#7  The mere fact that we have people drawing government pay who think the IAEA is doing a good job astounds me. Believing in el Baradai is the definition of incompetence. He and Khan are the fathers of the 'islamic bomb'.
Posted by: JAB || 02/26/2006 19:02 Comments || Top||

#8  Ban any post-DoS employment as a consultant. It's too risky.
Posted by: 11A5S || 02/26/2006 19:13 Comments || Top||

#9  Out of all the administration "Vulcans", she is the one most befitting that label. I would not be surprised if she had personally ferreted out the disloyal heads at State.

There is a good possibility that she has a photographic memory, and did things like give them individual briefings using chosen keywords, then looked for those keywords in leaked news items later.

There is also no mention that Clinton purged every republican-leaning bureaucrat he could, from the WH travel office and all over town. Many of the scoundrels he replaced them with tried to sabotage their office when Clinton was leaving his, knowing they would undoubtedly be replace by Bush.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/26/2006 19:19 Comments || Top||

#10  Colin left the mess the way it was when he arrived, tried to power their asses. This, for obvious reasons, made him a total waste of time as SoS.

Now, with the new sheriff in town, Prez Bush has given the marching order -- get rid of the rot wood, just like he clears brush down in Texas.

Don't envision a chainsaw....yet
Posted by: Captain America || 02/26/2006 20:29 Comments || Top||


Home Front: WoT
Steyn on One World Government
Something very remarkable is happening around the globe and, if you want the short version, a Muslim demonstrator in Toronto the other day put it very well:

''We won't stop the protests until the world obeys Islamic law.''

Stated that baldly it sounds ridiculous. But, simply as a matter of fact, every year more and more of the world lives under Islamic law: Pakistan adopted Islamic law in 1977, Iran in 1979, Sudan in 1984. Four decades ago, Nigeria lived under English common law; now, half of it's in the grip of sharia, and the other half's feeling the squeeze, as the death toll from the cartoon jihad indicates. But just as telling is how swiftly the developed world has internalized an essentially Islamic perspective. In their pitiful coverage of the low-level intifada that's been going on in France for five years, the European press has been barely any less loopy than the Middle Eastern media.

What, in the end, are all these supposedly unconnected matters from Danish cartoons to the murder of a Dutch filmmaker to gender-segregated swimming sessions in French municipal pools about? Answer: sovereignty. Islam claims universal jurisdiction and always has. The only difference is that they're now acting upon it. The signature act of the new age was the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran: Even hostile states generally respect the convention that diplomatic missions are the sovereign territory of their respective countries. Tehran then advanced to claiming jurisdiction over the citizens of sovereign states and killing them -- as it did to Salman Rushdie's translators and publishers. Now in the cartoon jihad and other episodes, the restraints of Islamic law are being extended piecemeal to the advanced world, by intimidation and violence but also by the usual cooing promotion of a spurious multicultural "respect" by Bill Clinton, the United Church of Canada, European foreign ministers, etc.

The I'd-like-to-teach-the-world-to-sing-in-perfect-harmonee crowd have always spoken favorably of one-worldism. From the op-ed pages of Jutland newspapers to les banlieues of Paris, the Pan-Islamists are getting on with it.
Posted by: Nimble Spemble || 02/26/2006 09:28 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Steyn clarifies so that even the left can understand - if they chose to listen. Think they'll be celebrating that Gays, Lesbians, and Transsexuals parade when Sharia come to town? If so, it'll be a march to a large and foul-smelling bonfire
Posted by: Frank G || 02/26/2006 16:10 Comments || Top||

#2  You know Frank, you make sharia law sound, well.. Not so bad.
Posted by: Uneregum Thromoling6246 || 02/26/2006 16:23 Comments || Top||

#3  believe in Jesus? You're next on the list....They're just minor-league Nazis wearing thobes. F*&k em and fight back. Demand they show NASCAR in the ME! Teach knife-fighting skills in preschool to all females!
Posted by: Frank G || 02/26/2006 16:32 Comments || Top||

#4  Guns, Frank. NRA safety class and then right into handguns. And rifles.
Posted by: lotp || 02/26/2006 16:33 Comments || Top||

#5  ya don't hear mahmoud ordering his chattel into the kitchen to cut the lamb up with guns....let them start with what they (at least) got...then guns
Posted by: Frank G || 02/26/2006 16:54 Comments || Top||

#6 
Posted by: .com || 02/26/2006 20:12 Comments || Top||

#7 
We have to eradicate Islam, and its organs. That means we deny them the facility or facilities, that means to derive profit from us.

Starting with the management of our port facilities. We are at WAR you know.


Posted by: Vinkat Bala Subrumanian || 02/26/2006 21:40 Comments || Top||

#8  Sometimes I wonder if the left has decided that its only hope for the one-world Socialist happy land is for the Islamists to crush Western Civilization. I figure the left has finally realized (at least the ones who can actually make it from one idea to the next), there is no way they can triumph over democratic capitalism - too many people succeeding, lots of happiness, peace and justice and too many folks who know the truth about socialism. So they have to have some one do the dirty work of overthrowing the system for them(especially as they mostly gator-mouthed hummingbird-tailed wusses).

Maybe they figure - give the west a few decades of Sharia along with some nice historical book burning to ensure no one can remember all those unfortunate facts about Communism in all its nasty forms, and they might actually be able to sell the world wide Socialist revolution to the dhimmidudes. And, of course, get them to do all the hard fighting but hey to make an omelet...

Regards,
Dave
Posted by: davemac || 02/26/2006 21:47 Comments || Top||

#9  Re: Port Management -- You seem to be stuck on stupid. Aren't you capable of reading and comprehending what you read?

What's uber-clear is you're way the fuck behind the curve. Get smart. Read. Think. Meanwhile, I'd advise that you stop proving just how far.
Posted by: .com || 02/26/2006 21:48 Comments || Top||

#10  Note #9 is in response to #7.
Posted by: .com || 02/26/2006 21:51 Comments || Top||

#11  #6 .com....huh.... well, something about that Sherry in that graphic.... great name!
Posted by: Sherry || 02/26/2006 23:27 Comments || Top||

#12  So, is she single?

Lol - sorry, couldn't resist, heh.
Posted by: .com || 02/26/2006 23:30 Comments || Top||

#13  She is...
Posted by: Sherry || 02/26/2006 23:41 Comments || Top||

#14  Sorry, couldn't resist
Posted by: Sherry || 02/26/2006 23:43 Comments || Top||

#15  Woohoo, a single Texas Lady! My friend, if RB regulars know what that means, you're gonna get a LOT of email, lol!
Posted by: .com || 02/26/2006 23:43 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
What India Means To Me
From a 2003 speech... "We will win the war on terrorism, and the United States and India will win it together - because we represent good, and terrorists are evil incarnate. God will make it so."

By Ambassador ROBERT D BLACKWILL

Ten days ago, I gave my final policy speech as US ambassador to India. Today, I shall share with you personal thoughts about how this country has shaped me during these past two years.

Unlike Siddhartha, my meditations while preparing this address have not produced total Enlightenment. Unfortunately, Brahma and Saraswati, because of my own limitations, will not adequately inspire my remarks on this occasion with regard to my spiritual and intellectual advancement. I clearly need to spend more time at Brahma’s temple in Pushkar. And, despite my continuing contemplations, I am not always able to follow Krishna’s wise words, “Be thou of even mind.” He might have added, including at your Round Tables at Roosevelt House.

Notwithstanding my many inadequacies and the persistence of Maya, the ever-present veil of illusion, please permit me to proceed since India is the great storyteller, and because I am soon leaving this amazing country.

Continued on Page 49
Posted by: john || 02/26/2006 12:21 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  And I became more and more angry. Innocent human beings murdered as a systemic instrument of twisted political purpose.

Needless to say, this did not make him very popular in Islamabad.
Posted by: john || 02/26/2006 12:47 Comments || Top||

#2  The State Department was not too fond of him either.
He went over their head repeatedly to Condi Rice and President Bush.

Posted by: john || 02/26/2006 14:38 Comments || Top||

#3  Inspiring.
Posted by: anonymous5089 || 02/26/2006 14:56 Comments || Top||

#4  Not your typical ambassador.
The lack of influence of the islamophiles in the State Department probably helps...


Posted by: john || 02/26/2006 15:45 Comments || Top||

#5  his speech alone makes me want to visit India
Posted by: Frank G || 02/26/2006 15:56 Comments || Top||

#6  Ah, that got me all choked up - I spent five years as a kid there ('60-65). I remember going to the Ellora caves and being absolutely enthralled. And driving to Mysore on washed out dirt/mud roads right after the monsoon. And lots of other very unpleasant stuff that doesn't get montioned in the tourist brochures. Someday I will go back ...
Posted by: xbalanke || 02/26/2006 18:38 Comments || Top||

#7 
I'm leaving for New Delhi early March for a three week trip. I'll be shooting hundreds of megabytes on the digital.

If anyone is interested, I'll make the photos available.

Posted by: Vinkat Bala Subrumanian || 02/26/2006 19:27 Comments || Top||


Bush and India
In early 1999, George W. Bush met with eight foreign policy advisors, collectively known as the Vulcans, in his ranch at Crawford, Texas. He was preparing for his White House bid. They were there to tell him about the world.

Well into the briefing, Bush interrupted: “Wait a minute. Why aren’t we talking about India?” The Vulcans — who included Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz — looked at each other. India didn’t matter, they explained.

Bush’s response: “You’re wrong.” He gave three reasons.

One, India was a democracy of one billion people and that was “just incredible.” It is a mantra he still chants with near reverence at the mention of India. Two, Indians were geniuses with software. No Vulcan knew what he was talking about. Three, “You all are going on about the need to balance China. You can’t do that without India.”

Bush later took aside two Vulcans, the present National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and Bush’s first ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill. “If I am elected, I want a paper on how to transform the US-India relationship on my table before inauguration.”

In December 2000 Bush became US president-elect. He called in Hadley and Blackwill and demanded, “Where’s my paper on India?” They had forgotten. They spent Christmas in the White House reading up on this faraway country that the most powerful man in the world was so fixated on.

Bush’s first term was tumultuous for much of the world but advantageous to India. Funnily, these apposite experiences were for the same reason: Dubya was, as Rice once put it, “convinced that he hadn’t come here to leave the world the same way he found it.”

Echoing the Vulcans, Bush saw the world unprepared for new threats like rogue states and rogue nukes. So he worked to change the international order. Europe feared the loss of privilege. But an aspiring India saw an opportunity to move up the ladder. The sole superpower was rewriting the global rules; India worked hard to influence the writing in its favour.

It helped that large chunks of Bush’s worldview fitted neatly with Indian objectives: missile defence, use of force against terrorism and, finally, reworking the nuclear regime. In each case, India manoeuvred to be inside the tent rather than out.

Nukes were the Big Shift . Ashley Tellis, an author of the US policy, explained that Bush “chose to turn Washington’s long-standing approach to New Delhi on its head.” His administration “embarked on a course of action that would permit India more — not less — access to controlled technologies”. Bill Clinton had offered the same — but only if India gave up its nukes.

The new approach was labelled Next Steps in Strategic Partnership. Hadley later admitted the state department couldn’t have come up with a duller name. It was a symptom of what bedeviled the India policy of Bush’s first term.

NSSP was designed to liberate US technology policy in every sphere that did not require actual US legislation. But there was stiff resistance from mid-level bureaucrats in almost every US agency involved. As one US official said, “Every time the various departments would meet, the question everyone would ask is ‘Why should we do this for India?’” Bush may have had a vision. But for most US officials, India was an ex-Soviet ally, prone to “whining and moralising”.

The personification of all this was US Secretary of State Colin Powell. A hero in Europe, he was a villain in India. Powell rarely questioned the conclusions of his subordinates about South Asia. When he was told to trust Pakistan, not India, on the Taliban, he believed it. When he was told India was a proliferation threat, he believed it. “He was an example of how the obstacle to Indo-US relations is not anti-Indianism, but bureaucrats without imagination,” says an Indian official.

Reelection in 2004 allowed Bush to put a more personal stamp on his foreign policy. Rice took over from Powell. Her number three, Nicholas Burns, was put in charge of the India file. The second Bush administration basically asked New Delhi: What should we do to make you believe in us? India asked for a nuclear deal. New Delhi was torn: Should it ask for just a supply of nuclear fuel or should it go the whole hog and ask for de facto nuclear power status? It was the Americans who said, “Ask for more, our president really wants to do something for you.”’

From this was born the July 18th statement and the present negotiations on separating India’s civilian and nuclear programme, a necessary first step to entering the nuclear club.

What Bush sees in India baffles his countrymen. Almost the entire US mainstream has editorialised against his India policy. Even those who implement his policy seem puzzled.

Ambassador David Mulford, during a speech last year underlining how Bush was personally driving the India policy, paused, and in obvious puzzlement added, “And he’s never even been to this country.” Indian Embassy officials in Washington fret the scales will fall from Bush’s eyes when he actually arrives here. After all, his only real experience of Indians is the 8,000-strong — and wholly unrepresentative — community that runs the hi-tech corridor outside Austin, Texas.

Here are two guesses as to why an ex-alcoholic Texan oilman should be toiling so hard for India.

First, Bush’s opinions are driven by instinct rather than intellect. Once his opinion forms, it is impervious to even political calculation. Bush once said he “loathed” Kim Jong-Il. Ditto for Saddam Hussein. When political advisor Karl Rove urged him against invading Iraq until his second term, Bush responded, “I am prepared to be a one-term president.”

Bush seems to have a gut feeling about India -- a good one. Bush’s desire for India to succeed is close to religious; geopolitical explanations are post facto and come from others. During the 2003 campaign Rove urged Bush to bash outsourcing. Bush knew outsourcing meant India and refused.

Second, for Bush India’s democracy means it can never be hostile to the US; it is a “natural partner”. To believe otherwise is to deny his instinct about his own country. These days Bush lectures Arab leaders to look at India as a model. When he introduced Manmohan Singh to Laura, he couldn’t help but gush, “Not one Indian Muslim has joined al Qaeda.” What better evidence for Dubya that the axiom of the Bush Doctrine — democracy cures militancy — is true?

Future historians will probably argue Washington was ready for a new policy on India. India’s sun was so clearly rising. Too many Americans had soured on Europe. China’s mix of dictatorship and capitalism was worrisome. Wonks like Walter Russell Mead have already cubbyholed Bush as a president of the “Wilsonian” school — idealistic world-changers that don’t shirk from the use of arms. But right here and now it is about one man, a plan and a faith in two democracies.
They always assume that Bush is a dumb guy, but one with incredible luck, a tremendous ability to make the right guesses, and "instinct" that each and every time turns out to be right. They never heard that Bush has a deep animosity to any form of "self-promotion", and if someone ever tried it with him, that was the end of their job interview.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/26/2006 09:24 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  The release of this story, just ahead of the planned Bush visit to Pakistan, is no coincidence. The story may not even be true, but that is not the point. The point is to make sure both India and Pakistan know India has a friend in the White House - a BIG friend.
Posted by: Glenmore || 02/26/2006 11:14 Comments || Top||

#2  He should get a warm welcome there - he's helped send a lot of US jobs their way.
Posted by: DMFD || 02/26/2006 14:33 Comments || Top||

#3  They never heard that Bush has a deep animosity to any form of "self-promotion", and if someone ever tried it with him, that was the end of their job interview. Neither did I, anonymoose.
Posted by: Edward Yee || 02/26/2006 18:17 Comments || Top||

#4  Edward Yee: That's the one thing you could have done at a Bush interview that was a killer. It came out right when he was elected and he had to interview all sorts of people.

Bam! Dossier closed, have a nice day. You could talk up other people all day, but if you puffed yourself, the door is over there and there will be no phone call. It was no great secret, as the few who screwed up later learned to their horror.

Other than that, Bush preferred the friendly and folksy approach, punctuated with killer questions, for which the interviewee had unlimited time, and had better use a significant amount of it.

The best part was that if Bush accepts you and knows what you offer, you are in his tight circle of intense mutual loyalty.

He also has a down about leaks, which was evidenced by classes being given by the administration to incoming personnel about how not to get trapped or blackmailed into leaking, what to do if you accidently leak, and what will happen to you if you leak.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/26/2006 19:33 Comments || Top||

#5 
American business has helped send a lot of jobs there, and to a whole host of other countries as well.

This was a process that started long before Bush became President.

I find the Indian people fascinating, hell...I married an Indian woman, she's been a damn site better wife than my first two spoiled American wives.

When the showdown with China comes, if ever, India will be key to our success.
Posted by: Vinkat Bala Subrumanian || 02/26/2006 19:40 Comments || Top||

#6  Vinkat - got nothing against India. The government and businesses of India are looking after their own people. That's the way it should be. Too bad the US govt. (and business community) doesn't feel the same way.
Posted by: DMFD || 02/26/2006 21:56 Comments || Top||

#7 
"The government and businesses of India are looking after their own people. That's the way it should be. Too bad the US govt. (and business community) doesn't feel the same way."

You will get no argument from me on this point!

My position is, jobs have been sold overseas for long before Bush.

I think in the interests of disclosure, I'm an American, born and raised. Don't much like outsourcing, as I have benn impacted by it.

But it cannot be blamed on Bush.

Importing Muslims! Bad idea. My wife, (Hindu from pre-partition Pakistan) can tell you, Muslims are BAD NEWS, all the way around.

I agree. There are those that will say that allowing an Islamic country to manage our ports is no big deal, because the security is controled by us.

To them I say, you are idiots. I will not itemize all the reasons why it is bad, saner minds than me have already done so.

We are under a full scale invasion, economicaly and psychologically. Our enemies have discovered what paralizes our political aparatus, and our instinctual resolve.

In essence we have been infected with a pathogen that uses our own system against us. How the .com's of the world can juxtapose "hunter/killer teams" with lets let them manage our ports amazes me.

Zenster has been a voice calling for HARD action, I have called for genocide against our enemies. Numerous voices have enumerated the same but with different language. I don't quibble.

Islam MUST be DESTROYED. This is for all the marbles, we are already WAY behind the 8Ball.

In reality, I will be dead as most of you will be if Islam is allowed to play out its game. I'ts what we leave for our children and grand-children...and maybe our great-grand-children that I worry about.

As horrible as it may sound, the cost of exterminating Islam and its adherents today, is a small price to pay for what the cost of not doing it might bring tomorrow.

If no one else is prepared to harden their resolve and sacrifice their soul, I, and others are. ISLAM
must be stopped.

If it it means killing 1.7 billion people to save the other 5 or so billion, so BE IT!

This could all be obviated by seizing their only source of income. We must inject ourselves as stewards of their future, Without Petro-Dollars they are nothing, we must moderate, or destroy.

I am willing, are you? If so, then write you reps, they don't respond vote them out. Also, buy weapons and ammunition, prepare for the conflict ahead.

Premption: (.com, Frank Git, et al now is the time to stop waffling on both sides of the fence.). NO MORE MUSLIMS in THE USA!

Posted by: Vinkat Bala Subrumanian || 02/26/2006 23:02 Comments || Top||

#8  Fuck off. You're a thoughtless fuckwit - "saner minds" - LOL - that's no stretch. Truth is, you haven't read or comprehended the facts on the ports issue. It sounds as though you expect everyone who fears or hates or sees Islam for what it is to just fall in line cuz you're a tough-guy anti-jihadist or some such blather.

I'll wager you don't have the first clue what to do, when or where, much less how. I'll wager the toughest thing you've ever personally faced is someone dissing your threads.

You have opinions. Fine. When the facts are revealed, and it has been glacial on the ports thingy, then you should be man enough to change your opinion to keep synched with them. That you've failed, as Zenster has failed, you invite ridicule. That was, and still is, my point. Many people, far "saner" than you have illuminated the rest of us with facts that make it singularly foolish to continue in your position.

Now you've escalated. If you have been around awhile, you'll know that lecturing me about the dangers of Islam is, at the very least, tantamount to preaching to the choir. You can't teach me dick about Islam in practice. So unless you're a world-renowned fucking expert on their texts, then you're sorta shit out of luck. Save the bandwidth.

Your posts don't impress - we've heard this shit so many times before it's boring. In fact, I'll bet serious money you've been here under other nyms, spouting the same half-baked views. Your inability to adapt makes all of your commentary suspect - or aren't you smart enough to grasp that?

Are you our moron from San Jose? Or a different moron?

Tough guy. Right. I've killed more people than you've had fist-fights with, sonny. Get a grip, and get constructive or get fucked. I won't be around much longer, but I'll be happy to make fun of you every time I see you post more butter-bar wannabee nonsense.
Posted by: .com || 02/26/2006 23:21 Comments || Top||

#9  Vinkat Bala Subrumanian: I do see a future alliance between India and the US, but I'm afraid that I also foresee a horrific, apocalyptic, knock-down-drag-out fight between India and China.

With both nations keeping their professional militaries in the rear as second eschelons, and throwing astouding numbers of lightly armed infantry at each other, as in World War I, and to much the same effect, but on a far more grotesque scale.

More than anything else, this would be a demographic war, the cause of which is based on more young men than there are women, or jobs. Men sent to die because they are excess. It would be a war of senseless slaughter, for slaughters' sake.

I do not know how such an eventual war could be averted. The demographic pressure continues to build.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/26/2006 23:29 Comments || Top||

#10  One item that most forget about Bush... he worked in his Dad's White House... he's had experience with Dad as CIA director, then VP and as US President. There was lots he saw about foreign policy from his view in his Dad's White House, that began to formulate some thoughts.

Folks forget, he does have an MBA. That's business and management. These are the folks that are paid to have "the vision," not the day to day operations.
Posted by: Sherry || 02/26/2006 23:39 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Culture Wars
The fascists of free speech
By Catherine Seipp

A FRIEND OF MINE took his young daughter to visit the famous City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, explaining to her that the place is important because years ago it sold books no other store would — even, perhaps especially, books whose ideas many people found offensive. So, although my friend is no fan of Ward Churchill, the faux Indian and discredited professor who notoriously called 9/11 victims "little Eichmanns," he didn't really mind seeing piles of Churchill's books prominently displayed on a table as he walked in.

However, it did occur to him that perhaps the long-delayed English translation of Oriana Fallaci's new book, "The Force of Reason," might finally be available, and that because Fallaci's militant stance against Islamic militants offends so many people, a store committed to selling banned books would be the perfect place to buy it. So he asked a clerk if the new Fallaci book was in yet.

"No," snapped the clerk. "We don't carry books by fascists."
Rest at link.
Posted by: ed || 02/26/2006 11:27 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  For the left, freedom of speech has a different meaning. It doesn't mean you are free to say what you believe. It means you are expected to say what others' believe: the officially approved, PC views of other leftists.
Posted by: Jules || 02/26/2006 12:08 Comments || Top||

#2  Why let facts and reason muddie up your worldview?

Posted by: 3dc || 02/26/2006 12:17 Comments || Top||

#3  Orianna is like 76, and has inoperable cancer, and could still kick that clerk's ass: figuratively, morally, and intellectually
Posted by: Frank G || 02/26/2006 14:13 Comments || Top||

#4  Some lefties are losing it so much that they can pick up almost any news story and find "fascists" or "fascism" in it. It is their most common invective and they use it to describe anything they don't like. They punctuate their sentences with it to such a point they sound like imbeciles.
Posted by: Anonymoose || 02/26/2006 15:44 Comments || Top||

#5  Orianna used to be an anti American leftist.

Her old books might still be in that store.
Posted by: mhw || 02/26/2006 16:45 Comments || Top||

#6  Some people learn; others just keep getting dumber.
Posted by: Bobby || 02/26/2006 16:52 Comments || Top||

#7  mhw - true! Wisdom comes with experience
Posted by: Frank G || 02/26/2006 16:58 Comments || Top||

#8  When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years - attributed to Mark Twain.
Posted by: Grinegum Snerens2450 || 02/26/2006 20:53 Comments || Top||



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Two weeks of WOT
Sun 2006-02-26
  Jihad Jack Guilty
Sat 2006-02-25
  11 killed, nine churches torched in Nigeria
Fri 2006-02-24
  Saudi forces thwart attack on oil facility
Thu 2006-02-23
  Yemen Charges Five Saudis With Plotting Attacks
Wed 2006-02-22
  Shi'ite shrine destroyed in Samarra
Tue 2006-02-21
  10 killed in religious clashes in Nigeria
Mon 2006-02-20
  Uttar Pradesh minister issues bounty for beheading cartoonists
Sun 2006-02-19
  Muslims Attack U.S. Embassy in Indonesia
Sat 2006-02-18
  Nigeria hard boyz threaten total war
Fri 2006-02-17
  Pak cleric rushdies cartoonist
Thu 2006-02-16
  Outbreaks along Tumen River between Nork guards and armed N Korean groups
Wed 2006-02-15
  Yemen offers reward for Al Qaeda jailbreakers
Tue 2006-02-14
  Cartoon protesters go berserk in Peshawar
Mon 2006-02-13
  Gore Bashes US In Saudi Arabia
Sun 2006-02-12
  IAEA cameras taken off Iran N-sites


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