The History of Israel

I often speak with people who express their disappointment with the conservatives and United States foreign policy support for Israel. The objection generally seems to be their belief that the creation of the state of Israel was in itself an immoral act, subsequently compounded by Israel's immoral treatment of the Palestinians.

Having had this discussion many times, I think I know the problem. Most of these people have virtually no idea what the history of the region is. I would suggest that most Palestinian supporters are ignorant of what led up to the present dilemma, and what really is going on now. There is no fair minded person who could possibly condemn Israel, much less draw a moral equivalency between the parties (as most leftists do), if he knew the history of the region and the reality of the current events. Unfortunately most of what anyone hears is what the liberal press elects to convey, which is generally radical left propaganda.

The commonly held belief by these anti Israel Americans is that The United Nations created the State of Israel in what was there to fore Palestinian territory. The fictional narrative is that with the creation of Israel the Jews threw the Arabs off the land, forcing the them into camps outside of its borders. Many even believe that the "occupied territories" came into being because of Israel's aggression. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Here is the Cliff Notes version of the history. The Zionist movement began in the early 20th century with Jews from all over the world immigrating to what is now Israel. It was then part of the Ottoman Empire, but with Turkey's defeat in WWI, the Allied Powers forced Turkey to relinquish the territory, giving Great Britain the job of protectorate.

Partly due to the horror of the Holocaust, and partly due to the fact Jews had been settling in the region for decades, the United Nations created the state of Israel. The UN mandate was for two states. It was envisioned that the Palestinian state would be created when the proper political structure was in place. To this day that has not happened.

The Palestinians were basically nomadic, although many had settled throughout the area, and most had lived in the region for centuries (Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Ottoman Empire, or what is now the Palestinian territories). At one point King Hussein threw them out of Jordan (then Transjordan) because they were a destabilizing force on his monarchy. They emigrated to Lebanon, the Paris of the middle east, and effectively destroyed the state politically and its culture. But the important point is that they never had any claim to the territory other than that granted to them by the UN, exactly the same claim Israel has.

The UN created the country of Israel, it did not give them territory that was owned by Palestinians. Public lands were transferred to the new state, but private property remained private. Much of the land comprising Israel was already owned by the Jews, having been purchased from Turks and Arabs alike before and after statehood. There is property that belonged to Arabs who stayed in Israel after independence, and they either own it today or voluntarily sold it. Currently almost 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Arabs.

With independence coming, the surrounding Arab states told the Arabs living in the proposed state of Israel that that after independence they would drive the Jews into the sea. They advised the Arabs living there to leave, saying their property (if they owned any) would be restored after the upcoming victory. When independence was declared in 1948, the Iraqis, Saudis, Jordanians, Syrians, Egyptians, Lebanese, and some troops from Sudan attacked the newborn state. They were defeated. Bloodied but unbowed the defeated states promised to return, and urged those Arabs that had left to not return until after the Jews had been removed. Refugee camps were established along the border, and have remained there ever since.

There is a legal concept subscribed to by most societies called constructive abandonment. If a property owner abandons his property, after a period of years he loses all rights and title to that property. This is what happened to the land that belonged to those Arabs who left and never returned.

Many Arabs argue that they have a claim to some of the public lands because they owned it and lived there prior to independence. The history of the region contradicts this. In 1858, 90 years before the creation of Israel, the Turks ordered the Arabs living in these areas to register their land, or lose any claim of ownership. Little if any ever got registered, even though the Turks tried many more times before losing it themselves in WWI. The Arabs now claim it was not registered because the Turks would have taxed them, or drafted them into the army if they complied. That may or may not be true, but it is a weak claim at best, and even if has some basis, the Turks were the offending party, not the Israelis.

The other claim is that the Israelis arbitrarily took towns and land they falsely deemed to be necessary for the state's defense. Certainly defense is a reasonable government action and a proper use of eminent domain. I don't know what really happened, but if land was taken under a false pretext, or not fully paid for, there are many venues for redress (unlike any Arab country).

Claims of current Israeli improprieties are as bogus as the historical claims. Israel is far from perfect, and many tragic decisions have been made, but to suggest that they remotely approach the cruelty and indifference their neighbors show to them is delusional. I will deal with this in a future blog.

This is one of the best articles about "climate change" I have read in a long time. I will read the book, but the article is very impressive itself. Please read it all. It gets better and better. Also, anyone interested in this can look at "The Great Global Warming Swindle" at video.google.com/videoplay?docid=288952680655100870
and see what was being said by very credible people a couple of years ago. The evidence contradicting this myth of global warming is far greater today. Yet Obama proposes a cap and trade tax that it is estimated will cost every American over $1,300..and I fear this is a low estimate..

I have taken a wonderfully phrased last paragraph and put it before the article to whet your appetite.

Green politics have taken the place of failed socialism and Western Christianity and impose fear, guilt, penance and indulgences on to a society with little scientific literacy. We are now reaping the rewards of politicising science and dumbing down the education system. If book sales, public meetings, book launches, email and phone messages are any indication, there is a large body of disenfranchised folk out there who feel helpless. I have shown that the emperor has no clothes. This is why the attacks are so vitriolic.


Ian Plimer May 29, 2009
Article from: The Australian
IT is well known that many university staff list to port and try to engineer a brave new world. The cash cow climate institutes now seem to be drowning in their own self-importance.
In a wonderful gesture of public spiritedness, seven academics who include three lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and a former director of the World Climate Research Program wrote to Australian power generating companies on April 29 instructing them to cease and desist creating electricity from coal.
In their final paragraph, they state with breathtaking arrogance: "The unfortunate reality is that genuine action on climate change will require the existing coal-fired power stations to cease operating in the near future.
"We feel it is vital that you understand this and we are happy to work with you and with governments to begin planning for this transition immediately.
"The warming of the atmosphere, driven by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases, is already causing unacceptable damage and suffering around the world."
No evidence is provided for this statement and no signatory to this letter has published anything to support this claim.
These university staff are unctuously understanding about the plight of those who face employment extinction in the smokestack towns of Australia.
They write: "We understand that this will require significant social and economic transition that will need to be managed carefully to care for coal sector workers and coal-dependent communities.". This love for fellow workers brings tears to the eyes.
The electricity generating companies should reply by cutting off the power to academics' homes and host institutions, forcing our ideologues to lead by example.
Some 80 per cent of Australia's electricity derives from coal, large volumes of cheap electricity underpin employment and our self-appointed concerned citizens offer no suggestion for alternative unsubsidised base-load power sources to employ Australians.
The Emissions Trading Scheme legislation poises Australia to make the biggest economic decision in its history, yet there has been no scientific due diligence.
There has never been a climate change debate in Australia. Only dogma. To demonise element number six in the periodic table is amusing. Why not promethium? Carbon dioxide is an odourless, colourless, harmless natural gas. It is plant food. Without carbon, there would be no life on Earth.
The original source of atmospheric CO2 is volcanoes. The Earth's early atmosphere had a thousand times the CO2 of today's atmosphere. This CO2 was recycled through rocks, life and the oceans.
Through time, this CO2 has been sequestered into plants, coal, petroleum, minerals and carbonate rocks, resulting in a decrease in atmosphericCO2.
The atmosphere now contains 800billion tonnes of carbon as CO2. Soils and plants contain 2000 billion tonnes, oceans 39,000 billion tonnes and limestone 65,000,000 billion tonnes. The atmosphere contains only 0.001 per cent of the total carbon in the top few kilometres of the Earth.
Deeper in Earth, there are huge volumes of CO2 yet to be leaked into the atmosphere. So depleted is the atmosphere in CO2, that horticulturalists pump warm CO2 into glasshouses to accelerate plant growth.
The first 50 parts per million of CO2 operates as a powerful greenhouse gas. After that, CO2 has done its job, which is why there has been no runaway greenhouse in the past when CO2 was far higher.
During previous times of high CO2, there were climate cycles driven by galactic forces, the sun, Earth's orbit, tides and random events such as volcanoes. These forces still operate. Why should such forces disappear just because we humans live on Earth?
The fundamental questions remain unanswered. A change of 1 per cent in cloudiness can account for all changes measured during the past 150 years, yet cloud measurements are highly inaccurate. Why is the role of clouds ignored? Why is the main greenhouse gas (water vapour) ignored? The limitation of temperature in hot climates is evaporation yet this ignored in catastrophist models.
Why are balloon and satellite measurements showing cooling ignored yet unreliable thermometer measurements used? Is the increase in atmospheric CO2 really due to human activities?
Ice cores show CO2 increases some 800 years after temperature increase so why can't an increase in CO2 today be due to the medieval warming (900-1300)?
If increased concentrations of CO2 increase temperature, why have there been coolings during the past 150 years?
Some 85 per cent of volcanoes are unseen and unmeasured yet these heat the oceans and add monstrous amounts of CO2 to the oceans. Why have these been ignored? Why have there been five significant ice ages when CO2 was higher than now? Why were warmings in Minoan, Roman and medieval times natural, yet a smaller warming at the end of the 20th century was due to human activities? If climate changed at the end of the Little Ice Age (c.1850), is it unusual for warming to follow?
Computer models using the past 150 years of measurements have been used to predict climate for the next few centuries. Why have these models not been run backwards to validate known climate changes?
I would bet the farm that by running these models backwards, El Nino events and volcanoes such as Krakatoa (1883, 535), Rabaul (536) and Tambora (1815) could not be validated.
In my book, I correctly predicted the response. The science would not be discussed, there would be academic nit-picking and there would be vitriolic ad hominem attacks by pompous academics out of contact with the community.
Comments by critics suggest that few have actually read the book and every time there was a savage public personal attack, book sales rose. A political blog site could not believe that such a book was selling so well and suggested that my publisher, Connor Court, was a front for the mining or pastoral industry.
This book has struck a nerve. Although accidentally timely, there are a large number of punters who object to being treated dismissively as stupid, who do not like being told what to think, who value independence, who resile from personal attacks and have life experiences very different from the urban environmental atheists attempting to impose a new fundamentalist religion.
Green politics have taken the place of failed socialism and Western Christianity and impose fear, guilt, penance and indulgences on to a society with little scientific literacy. We are now reaping the rewards of politicising science and dumbing down the education system. If book sales, public meetings, book launches, email and phone messages are any indication, there is a large body of disenfranchised folk out there who feel helpless. I have shown that the emperor has no clothes. This is why the attacks are so vitriolic.
Ian Plimer is emeritus professor of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne. His book Heaven and Earth is published by Connor Court.

The Myth of the Multiplier Effect

Our busy lives prohibit us from thinking about much less understand various claims and proclamations about a variety of things. Consquently, if something is repeated enough we often mindlessly buy into it, even though we don't really understand. The so called "multiplier effect" is an idea that has gained currency in just this way. It is a myth. It is part of a discredited economic theory (Keynesian economics), but unlike the general theory that does get some things right now and then, this has the distinction of having no merit at all.

The economist John Manyard Keynes idea is that during a recession, heightened government spending will put more money in consumers hands (through public works, cash distributions etc.) and will stimulate the economy faster and greater than if left to its own devices. He said that if money were spent to move dirt from one hole to another, it would help activate the economy. Each dollar spent will result in a series of purchases as it passes through various hands, creating several additional dollars in economic activity. He named this the "multiplier effect." The conclusion is that the downstream effect of government spending is more jobs and more wealth. It is of course sheer and utter nonsense.

Think about where the government got the money to begin with. It either taxed someone or borrowed it. If something like the multiplier effect were real, would it not follow that taking this money out of the economy would reduce economic activity? The dollar coming from the private sector which was used in stimulating the economy didn't get spent by the private sector, and so that multiplier effect was lost. Does this effect exist only in government but not in the private sector? I won't even argue here that the greater efficiency found in the private sector's deployment of capital would suggest that if this effect could be quantified, it would be greater when executed in the private sector than by politicians. Let's just call it a draw, and with a draw the theory fails.

If the government could create a lasting increase in economic activity by taxing, borrowing and spending, we could just tax and spend our way to prosperity- a sort of never ending Ponzi scheme. Winston Churchill said that a country that tries to tax it's way to prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to pull himself off the ground by the handles.

The reason this idea gets promoted along with Keynesian economic theory is that it serves as cover for politicians to spend money. Democrats have lavished vast amounts of money on their constituents in the recent stimulus bill, all in the name of enriching you and me. I don't think so.

This is a blog I was sent that I think hits the mark exquisitely..

‘Diversity Through Homogenization’ and the Cowardice of the EliteHot Air ^ May 18, 2009 The Other McCain
Posted on Monday, May 18, 2009 6:36:20 PM by Delacon
At Right of Course (FMJRA Site O’ Th’ Day at The Other McCain), Chance makes an important observation about Obama at Notre Dame:
The other problem with this whole ‘open discussion’ argument is the very people making it. These are the same people who see no problem at all with the near monopoly the left holds on the public and secondary education system. There is no open discussion on evolution or global warming, it is taught as absolute fact. I took several Sociology courses at two separate state universities (my college career was long and meandering). There were no opposing arguments offered regarding Karl Marx. I didn’t even hear about Friedrich Hayek (The Road to Serfdom) until after college. These are the same people who invite a man like Mahmoud Ahmadenijad to speak but protest Ann Coulter. These are the same people who attack Carrie Prejean for being against same sex marriage but for breast implants. Open discussion my ass.
Read the whole thing. Way back when, a friend of mine coined the term “diversity through homogenization” to describe the Left’s philosophy of multiculturalism. Rather than democratic pluralism — where different ideas and different people voluntarily cooperate through free institutions — the progressive fanatic insists that all institutions must be equally diverse.
The problem, of course, is that this approach destroys genuine diversity at its very source. The Boy Scouts must be forced to accept gay scoutmasters, Georgia Tech must pander to the Muslim Students Association, Larry Summers cannot be allowed to question feminist dogma at Harvard, and a Catholic university must have “open discussion” on abortion.
Such mindless multiculturalism advances like a conquering army because anyone who questions it is automatically accused of mala fides (bad faith). This is the psychological terror that Perez Hilton sought to wield against Carrie Prejean or Steve Benen wishes to wield against Rush Limbaugh. And it succeeds because most people are either too mentally lazy to analyze the bogus argument or too cowardly to speak the truth:
Mental laziness — Most people are smart enough to get the visceral sense that there is something fundamentally wrong and dishonest about progressive dogma. But the Ordinary American has a real life to deal with and isn’t accustomed to deconstructing abstract concepts like “homophobia” and “social justice.” And it is easier for intellectuals (“second-hand dealers in ideas,” as Hayek called them) to speak in widely-accepted categorical generalities than to examine the truth-claims hidden within those generalities. Without intellectual leadership, the opposition to fanatical multiculturalism suffers from a lack of prestige. When all the admirably articulate people haphazardly sling around terms like “income disparity” as if they were describing a manifest threat to civil society, why should Joe the Plumber question these categories?
Moral cowardice — The experience of Larry Summers at Harvard is the quintessential example of how the Left wins through intimidation. Summers was a liberal in good standing when he made the mistake of mildly questioning feminist dogma. Feminists believe with religious fervor that “underrepresentation” of women in any field can only be the product of sexist discrimination. This is merely the gynocentric variation of the basic argument of the Left that inequality always equals injustice, a transparent myth of the sort that inspired George Orwell to remark, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” Summers’ error was to challenge dogma half-heartedly, then to cower defensively when the fanatics howled in rage, rather than speaking with the bold determination of a man convinced of truth. Final score: Feminists 1, Summers 0.
Elitists like Summers are naturally cowards because they are motivated by personal ambition and a desire for prestige. This is why you’re never going to get heroic truth from the likes of David Brooks:
In your meteoric ascent through the ranks of the punditocracy, be sure to choose as your friends only those who are important enough to be helpful in your career. Take care never to stake yourself too clearly to any policy position that might be unfashionable with the producers of “Nightline,” and avoid directly denouncing any Democrat named Kennedy.This way, no matter which party is in power, you’ll never be out of work and you’ll always be invited to the White House Correspondents Dinner because, after all, you’re so gosh-darn influential. In short, you will be one of The Republicans Who Really Matter.
What the influential elite count on is that none of their members will ever break ranks and call them out as the dishonest cowards they really are. They further assume that no Ordinary American is smart enough to analyze the elite’s output and expose the fraudulence of their “smelly little orthodoxies” (Orwell again).
These assumptions were safe, so long as (a) the only people dealing in second-hand ideas were those who shared the elite’s obsession with prestige; and (b) the elite exercised exclusive control over the means of intellectual production. But then the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, Al Gore invented the Internet, and there gradually emerged an Army of Davids — a hitherto unimagined mass of intelligent people who had “no skin in the game” of elitist ambitions and thus spoke truth fearlessly. Really, why should Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, or Michelle Malkin care what the editors of the New York Times think of them?
“Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.”– Thomas Jefferson
Well, there I go again, quoting another right-wing extremist. The editors of Newsweek would never hire somebody who does something like that, so I guess I’m never going to be one of The Republicans Who Really Matter. Diversity through homogenization can never succeed, so long as Ordinary Americans do not discard the weapons of “free argument and debate” by succumbing to the cowardice of elite ambition.
Honest people love truth like they love liberty. Better to freeze in the snow of Valley Forge than to be a lickspittle fawning at the feet of tyrants. Better to die for the truth than live for a lie.
“You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin — just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard ’round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn’t die in vain.”– Ronald Reagan, Oct. 27, 1964
Men with less hope of success have stood courageously in defiance of more powerful foes than we face today. One might hope that more Americans, desiring heroic reknown, would emulate the patriots at Concord Bridge.
Why, then, has ambition become the enemy of courage? Of the great many wise things Ronald Reagan said, he seldom spoke truer words than when he said, “You can accomplish much if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
It is the selfish craving for credit, the second-rater’s lust for awards and honors and praise, that characterizes the cowardice of the elite. David Brooks couldn’t stand to be left out of the Atlantic Monthly’s weekly salmon-and-risotto affairs, because these are the rewards of elite membership, the validation of his prestige.
Such is the nature of this elite that only cowards ever apply for membership. No one expects honesty from the New York Times, because no honest man (or woman) would seek employment there. Yet this craven, selfish, dishonest path of ambition beckons the “best and brightest,” who desire the elite’s admiration so much that they learn to prefer smooth lies to rude truth.
So it is that Notre Dame embraces the lie of “open discussion” — as if the Culture of Death actually believes in “open discussion” — giving Obama a prestigious forum to proclaim the lie of “common ground,” and anyone who dares to disagree will be denounced and ridiculed by the elite.
Question the authority of liberalism, and you will be adjudged guilty of “intolerance,” “divisiveness,” “incivility” and whatever other accusation of mala fides the elite finds convenient to hurl at you. And you will forever be excluded from the ranks of The Republicans Who Really Matter.
(Cross-posted at The Other McCain.)

Fiddling While Rome Burns

How long will we sit by while literally millions of children's education is trashed in the wake of the teachers unions, where if they are taught at all, it's politically correct garbage, a fantasy of some radical liberal having nothing to do with the real world, leaving those children with third world education levels, and preparing them for nothing productive?

How long will we sit by while our State Department engages in imaginary fixes for the threats that face us and our allies? While Obama says the actions of North Korea have consequences, they continue to arm themselves and other rogue nations. While Rahm Emanuel says disarming Iran can be accomplished only if Israel moves forward with the "peace" process, the Palestinians continue to plot to drive the Jews into the sea, and Iran rockets forward with their nuclear program threatening the entire world, hiding behind propaganda that ridiculously claims Palestinian grievances as their cause.

How long will we sit by while Obama destroys the rule of law, the latest example being the threats to the senior debt holders in Chrysler who refused to allow the administration to force them to take less money than their contracts call for? Before that the congress tried to pass a law that would allow judges to abrogate mortgage obligations. It is as if the administration is saying, "We don't care what your contract says, we don't care what the law says, we will do what we want" (all for the 'greater good' of course). Activist judges unconstitutionally continue to write law with tortured logic, while Obama applauds. They even have the temerity to try to undo many purely democratic and constitutionally passed ballot initiatives with nonsense disguised as legal reasoning.

How long will we allow the liberals to undermine our security, our life and limb? On the home-front they restrict guns, thereby creating the perverse situation where criminals are armed and law abiding citizens are not. They expose secret and successful programs that have made us more safe from terror, yet these traitors go unpunished. They treat terrorists sworn to our destruction like shoplifters, inventing "rights" and privileges for them that never existed and don't exist now.

How long will we allow fictions like global warming to go unchallenged? The supposed universal agreement on its very existence is no more than a myth promoted by a group of political extremists, the media, and a few scientists, many of whom were bought and paid for through grants and tenure. Imagine a theory dealing with something as vast and complex as the planet's weather, which within a years time revised down its forecast of rising sea levels over the next hundred years from twenty feet to three feet, and then later revised that forecast from taking one hundred years to one thousand years. No prediction ever made by global warming advocates has ever proved correct. This theory is as much proved science as its' predecessors, nuclear winter, the population bomb, and the imminent exhaustion of the worlds commodities, all of which are safely discredited and resting on the trash heap of history.

How long will we allow the nonsense of universal health care to be taken seriously, even as we move closer and closer to that goal? There are 46 million uninsured. 10 million are illegal aliens. 10 million can afford it but choose not to buy, and 10 million already qualify for government paid programs but are too dysfunctional to enroll. The health care quality here is so far superior to what it is anywhere in the world or what it would become that any thinking person should dismiss the idea of nationalizing it as an idiots rant. Anyone who doubts this can just look around the world where government health care has been mandated (to a country it is a disaster), rather than listen to the continuing stream of lies from the left.

How long will we sit by and allow the government to take over the economy? In varying degrees the government currently controls Citi Bank, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, GM, Chrysler, AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama proposes nationalizing health care (one sixth of the economy), and imposing a cap and trade energy tax that will effectively give the bureaucrats control over the energy sector. This has all been tried before and failed, but some people never learn. See the old Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea etc. for details.

When are we going to stop the growth of laws and regulations governing and smothering everything we do, thereby snatching away the very freedoms guaranteed to us under the constitution? Don't people understand that laws by definition are direct restraints on our freedom, and although we need laws to take us out of "a state of nature" as Hobbs said, extending legal controls as broadly as we are doing today can only result in a Soviet style society.

When are we going to give God the same status in the public square that we give the other religion, atheism? Those unfortunate enough not to know God should be given a voice, but those of us who embrace Him are entitled to speak out as well.

Our friends at the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan and others remind us that we must accept some of this garbage on the theory that 51 votes in a Senate comprised of 20 John McCains and Olympia Snows is better than 30 votes made up of all Jim DeMints and John Kyls. I disagree. If we run only genuinely conservative candidates, we will get our chance to govern, and then we have at least a chance of doing it right. Bush senior and junior slowed the pace of the race towards socialism, but allowed it to continue. W was great on taxes and the War on Terror, but he also yielded to the global warming enviro maniacs, signed a clearly unconstitutional campaign finance law, signed a new drug benefit, signed "No child left behind" (a euphemism for more money for the unions), and generally expanded government, although at a slower rate than Obama. Reagan was the only President since Eisenhower to even attempt to stop the growth of government. The 30/20 mix of Republicans will only delay our decline, not arrest it.

For those who doubt that an all conservative coalition will get a chance to govern, I would suggest that governments are almost always voted out, not voted in. During the depression every ruling party in every democracy, liberal and conservative alike, was voted out. Obama didn't win nearly so much as Republicans lost. I predict that this fantastic surge towards socialism, this vast overreaching, will usher in a new government in a very few years. The question is will it be the party of Reagan, or Obama lite?

Memos and the Media

The left exists on a mountain of lies, and by the left I mean the main stream media, academia, and the Democratic party. Any reference to the truth is coincidental. The latest example is the "torture memos."

Obama released the memos describing the CIA interrogation techniques. Every CIA director alive has said this disclosure should never have been made. It is of course great for our enemies. They know what to expect and can prepare. Obama first said we must move past this, and no interrogators or advisers to President Bush that gave opinions as to the legality would be investigated. Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff, confirmed it over a week ago, but George Soros and move-on.org wanted blood, so the president reversed himself two days later. Now he appears to have gone back to the first position, but I can't be sure. It really doesn't matter anyway. He is a moving target, too weak to stand up to any constituents, and his position will continue to "evolve".

In either case, the whole thing is a farce. How can an opinion be illegal? Even if the Presidents advisers were wrong (they weren't), should anyone be put in jail for a mistaken opinion? Imus asked Jeffry Toobin of CNN and The New Yorker (I wonder where he comes down on this..jkjk : ) what laws might have been broken. This is not an exact quote, but close. Toobin said..err..ahh..that's a tough one..there...(long pause) might be..ummm..something..err..ahh..to do with..err..ahh..a conspiracy..to umm..deny someone their civil rights. That should be an easy case for the justice department to make. I don't believe this was torture, but no matter what one believes there was no law broken.

The Bush administration did not want any of this information released, arguing it would help our enemies and demoralize our CIA operatives. However, Obama decided to prostrate himself and the country before the world by releasing them, much as he did before King Abdullah. Dick Cheney said that as long as the memos were already out there, we should also release the ones showing the intel we gathered as a result, and the effect of that intel (lives saved and al Qaida leaders captured). The damage had been done by releasing the memos, so now in fairness we should let the public know if the policy worked. Almost in unison the left began to mock him, saying he didn't want them released while in office, but does now, implying inconsistency/ hypocrisy or anything else negative they could imagine. This is nonsense of course, having no relation to the truth, but that is standard for the left.

The fact is that Cheney and 4 out of 5 of the last CIA and FBI directors that weighed in on this said we were successful gathering important information as a result of torture, or enhanced interrogation (take your pick). The problem the left has is that during the presidential campaign when this came up, they claimed "torture" doesn't work anyway. They acted as if it was "proved" (like global warming is "proved"- part of the "everyone knows" big lie technique). But like may of their fictions, no such thing has been "proved," and in this case the preponderance of evidence tends to prove the opposite.

The Republican and Democratic leadership, and the entire intelligence committees in both houses, Nancy Pelosi included, were informed of the opinions supporting the legality of water-boarding etc., and were regularly briefed over a couple of year span (the leadership in greater detail than the committee members). The Democrats now laughably admit they were told, but never thought it would be used. Most likely they were told it was being used (Republicans in the meetings claim the Democrats were 100% on board), but even if they did not know, could they possibly have believed that the executive branch briefed them with no intention of using it? This is the same as those Democrats who voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq claiming later they never thought Bush would use it. Of course they never made that silly argument when we first invaded Iraq and the war was polling well, but disclosed this well kept secret only after the war became unpopular.

A couple of days ago on the Imus show John Kerry was asked if he knew about the water boarding at the time it occurred (he was neither in leadership nor on the intel committee). Listen to the answer of a scoundrel. I was not on the intelligence committee. I was shocked..I mean they did it 180 times. He wants you to believe he did not know, and at the same time condemn Bush for authorizing it. Based on those carefully chosen words I suspect he is lying but wants an escape hatch if it later comes out that he did know. He could then claim he never said he didn't know, but that he was shocked when he found out how many times it was used.

Have you hear the "we are better than that" argument against torture? Those making it are either deluding themselves, or lying. If your family could be saved, or better yet, if you could increase the likelihood of saving your family 10% by water boarding some fanatic, would you authorize it? So would everyone else on the planet.

The army general in charge of Abu Ghraib prison who was demoted and told to retire because the torture there happened on her watch, said these memos somehow vindicated her claim that what happened was authorized by the CIA. A bipartisan commission concluded otherwise, and I believe properly determined that what went on was the sadistic acts of a few guards acting alone. Nothing in these memos contradicts it.

The ACLU is now trying to get the photographs of the water boarding released under the Freedom of Information Act. Obama can withhold them based on a national security exception (as these memos under Bush were withheld), but I fear he will not (although he will make the claim it was court ordered, not mentioning his right to argue for the exception). He and the ACLU somehow are intent on embarrassing the US, and fanning the fires of hatred towards us (at least among terrorists and those that hate us already).

All the while our own citizenry is being told by the MSM how Bush administration people acted illegally, and your safety after 9/11 would have been the same without water boarding, wiretaps, or wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Our great democracy would improve immeasurably if only we got a little more honest news, and opinions/ conclusions were left to the citizenry.

Homeland Insecurity

I have seen political figures given jobs they were totally unqualified for (it is commonplace), but never has anyone been appointed to a position of such importance who is so out of her element, so clueless, so dangerous, and with virtually no idea what she is doing, as Janet Napolitino, the head of Homeland Security. She is as radical as she is inept.

Instead of focusing on the country's defenses, she renamed the war on terror with (I have no idea what it is supposed to mean) overseas contingency operations. Her new name for a terrorist act is, man made catastrophe. Now those should really help stop these animals.

She informed us that all the terrorists, including the September 11 terrorists, entered the United States through the Canadian border. The September 11 Commission said that the only terrorist coming into the US by way of Canada was the millennium bomber, Ahmed Ressam. This is like your cardiologist not knowing where your heart is.

A lawyer and former governor of a border state (Arizona), Napalitano said that crossing the border without proper documentation is not criminal, but only a civil offense. She really believes sneaking into the US is not a crime? Is this for real? I guess that our cardiologist learned his medicine hanging around a drugstore.

Then the Department of Homeland Security, under her direction and with her express approval, sent out a memo warning the public and law enforcement that because we have a black president and the economy is bad, returning veterans and right wing extremists may be planning terrorist acts. Think about it. Those of us who disagree politically with radical left extremists like her, and those men and women who put their lives on the line (giving the country more than we have a right to ask), are potential terrorists.

For Secretary Napolatino her department is a political organization, and anything related to its supposed purpose, like..ahh.. protecting the homeland, is only a tool to further Obama and her radical political agenda. It is as if Homeland Security has officially down graded the al Qaida threat and upgraded the patriotic American citizen threat.