Finally, Nouri al-Maliki – a guy I’ve been calling an empty suit for years – seems to have grown a pair and is standing up for the Iraqi people against the Americans.

The Iraqis want our combat forces to leave in an orderly fashion by withdrawing troops using a timetable that will be mutually agreed upon. What’s not to like in this?

Well, if you’re President Bush or John McCain, you have a political problem in that you have opposed a timetable being attached to our withdrawal for years. But that was Democrats setting arbitrary timetables not the sovereign nation of Iraq giving their problematic allies a graceful way to exit with honor and a true “Mission Accomplished.”

Saddam is gone. His WMD programs are history. The Iraqi army has proven in Basra, in Sadr City, and most especially in Mosul that they are capable of handling the security of the country (internal). The police – while still a large problem as far as corruption – performed quite well in Mosul also.

Just what is it we are still needed for?

Security from external threats? Agreed – but we don’t need 135,000 troops for that. We don’t need 50,000 troops in Iraq either. A “tripwire” force of less than 20,000 should be all that’s needed to keep Iran or Syria or any other hostile power from violating the territorial integrity of Iraq. With the pre-placement of equipment for a much larger force along with several thousand American advisers to continue the Iraqi’s training, a large combat presence will be tough to rationalize.

It was unrealistic of us to think that we could nurture this fledgling democracy through its growing pains and into the light of true liberty. At some point, the apron strings must be cut and the Iraqi government and people must go out on their own and find their own path to freedom. It will be messy. There will be stops and starts. It won’t look much like western style democracy. But the Iraqis must develop their own traditions, their own institutions if they are to succeed in joining the free nations of the world.

Ben Franklins admonishment to a woman outside of Independence Hall after the Constitution was agreed upon at the convention should hold special meaning for the Iraqis. When asked by the lady what kind of government to delegates had given the people Franklin responded “A republic ma’am – if you can keep it.” I don’t know exactly what kind of government will emerge in the coming years in Iraq. All I’m sure of is that it will be an Iraqi government. It may be free. It may be less free. It may devolve into a dictatorship – perhaps even mimicing the clerical fascists next door in Iran.

And while we will watch with great interest and even powerful emotions, it matters not what we think. We have done all that we can to give them this opportunity – an opportunity that cost us more than 4,000 brave souls and countless thousands who returned maimed, disfigured, and emotionally troubled. Other unforseen consequences will no doubt emerge not the least of which is a regional power in Iran who will try their best to undermine what we have started in Iraq. They may succeed. And then again, they may not. There are many in Iraq who are dedicated to establishing a secular democratic state. Perhaps their good hearts and good intentions will hold off the beast to the south who will work through proxies to try and destablize the nascent state.

But it will not be our direct concern anymore. Take the deal, Mr. President. The Iraqis have grown up and are ready to take responsibility for their own security, their own state. Hasn’t that been our goal all along.

Make the deal, Mr. Bush. It will be your parting gift to the country and might – just might – raise you up in the estimation of your countrymen. Goodness knows you’ve done enough the last 8 years to lower it.

A couple of weeks ago, the New York Times published an exciting story about how the CIA broke 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaik Mohammed. The hero of the story was a nondescript CIA interrogator who astonished his CIA colleagues by eliciting enormous amounts of valuable information from KSM, all by using psychological ploys and developing a rapport with the terrorist rather than the tactics used by the “knuckledraggers” as the interrogator’s colleagues called the CIA paramilitary types, who were using waterboarding and other methods of torture.

As Allah points out, the story in the Times was not about the interrogator but rather the US government’s stumbling about in the post 9/11 intelligence climate searching for a counter terrorism strategy. Why then, did the Times reporter Scott Shane, his Washington Bureau Chief Dean Baquet, and executive editor Bill Keller decide to include the real last name of the interrogator when publishing the story?

An editor’s note published with the article explaining the decision to out the interrogator is self serving twaddle:

The Central Intelligence Agency asked The New York Times not to publish the name of Deuce Martinez, an interrogator who questioned Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other high-level Al Qaeda prisoners, saying that to identify Mr. Martinez would invade his privacy and put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency.

After discussion with agency officials and a lawyer for Mr. Martinez, the newspaper declined the request, noting that Mr. Martinez had never worked under cover and that others involved in the campaign against Al Qaeda have been named in news stories and books. The editors judged that the name was necessary for the credibility and completeness of the article.

The Times’s policy is to withhold the name of a news subject only very rarely, most often in the case of victims of sexual assault or intelligence officers operating under cover.

The backstory, revealed today by Times “Public Editor” Clark Hoyt, is even more shocking in its implications. What it reveals about the people who make such decisions at the highest editorial level at the Times is that quite simply, they do not believe that al-Qaeda poses much of a threat to individuals and, by extension, the United States.

And beyond the security calculations made on behalf of the interrogator by those noted terrorism experts Bill Keller and Dean Basquet, there is the extraordinary lack of common decency in deliberately and knowingly placing someone’s life and the lives of his family in danger. This is especially true when you consider that the story would have gotten along just fine without us knowing the real name of the interrogator.

This raises a couple of other questions, none of which would flatter the editorial leadership at the Times. Are they so enamored of their own policies and rules governing the naming of names that they got caught up in a fight to identify a non-covert employee of the CIA at the expense of his safety? Did Keller et al sacrifice common sense and common decency on the altar of corporate inflexibility rather than bend the rules to accommodate a special situation?

I do not ascribe wicked ulterior motives to the Times outing of the interrogator. I believe it much more likely that the bureaucrats and lawyers at the Times insisted on following established policy – the God of the small minded – instead of making an exception in the interrogator’s case.

Clark Hoyt’s non-explanation of why the interrogator’s name remained in the story despite entreaties made by DCIA Hayden and the interrogator’s personal attorney, the high-powered, well connected Washington lawyer Robert Bennett, is more incredible than the “Editor’s Note” that appeared in the original story. Note the lack of empathy for the interrogator’s concerns for his safety and that of his family as well as the disingenuous of the explanations:

Shane said he had sought the C.I.A.’s cooperation in reporting the story but was rebuffed by the agency and by Martinez, who now works for a private contractor. After Shane contacted friends and associates of Martinez and sought an interview with him, Mark Mansfield, the C.I.A.’s director of public affairs, sent a strongly worded letter to Dean Baquet, The Times’s Washington bureau chief. Naming the interrogator “would be reckless and irresponsible,” Mansfield said, and “could endanger the lives of this American and his family” by making them Qaeda targets. And in the “poisoned atmosphere” of the debate over the C.I.A.’s interrogation techniques, Mansfield wrote, Martinez could be “vulnerable to any misguided person who believes they need to confront ‘torture’ directly.”

Baquet asked for a meeting to discuss the C.I.A.’s request. Mansfield refused. He told me the letter said it all and nothing could be accomplished by a meeting. But to Baquet, Shane and Rebecca Corbett, the editor of the story, the refusal suggested that the C.I.A. was not actually that concerned. The Times has been asked before by the C.I.A. to withhold information — it has sometimes agreed, sometimes refused — and serious requests have usually come from the top of the agency, with an opportunity to discuss them.

But the reporter and editors said they were still worried about Martinez’s fears and tried to assess how realistic they were. Shane said he repeatedly pressed the C.I.A. for more information. He called John Kiriakou, a former covert operative who was the first to question another top Qaeda terrorist, Abu Zubaydah. Kiriakou voluntarily went public last December, and Shane wanted to know what happened. Kiriakou mentioned a death threat published in Pakistan and didn’t go into much more detail. Kiriakou said he advised Shane not to use the name.

The Times was not looking for a reason to keep the name of the interrogator quiet. They were looking for justification to publish it. When the CIA wouldn’t give it to them, they went outside the agency and were told exactly the same thing – publishing the name would put the man and his family in danger.

How much danger? Here is what the former agent told Hoyt about what happened when his name became known:

When I asked Kiriakou for full details about his experience, he said he received more than a dozen death threats, many of them crank. His house was put under police guard and he took his family to Mexico for two weeks after the C.I.A. advised him to get out of town for a while. He said he lost his job with a major accounting firm because executives expressed fear that Al Qaeda could attack its offices to get him, though Kiriakou considered that fear unreasonable.

Apparently, the Times brain trust did not press Kiriakou for these details because they simply didn’t want to hear them. Our brave Public Editor did not see fit to criticize his colleagues for this gross negligence.

Finally, the last leg of the Times case for publishing the name was cut from under them (“serious requests have usually come from the top of the agency, with an opportunity to discuss them…”) when the DCIA calling Bill Keller to plead the interrogator’s case:

[name redacted] hired a Washington super-lawyer, Robert Bennett, to plead his case. With the story two days from publication, Gen. Michael Hayden, the C.I.A. director, called Bill Keller, The Times’s executive editor. Keller said Hayden acknowledged that he did not know of any specific threat to [name redacted] or of any Qaeda hit list. But Hayden said that naming [name redacted] could subject him to harassment or even put him in danger. Keller said, “I had this impression that he was doing it out of respect for [name redacted] and his family’s concerns more than a concern the C.I.A. had.”

Through his spokesman, Hayden agreed with Keller’s description of what was said but disagreed with the editor’s interpretation of the call. Hayden was “extremely disappointed” in the newspaper’s decision, Mansfield said.

Keller’s “impression” that Hayden wasn’t serious about trying to protect the interrogator is a breathtaking example of journalistic arrogance. With that kind of insight, Keller should be transferred to the Business Section and made into a stock touter. Instead, it is clear that the Times editors placed the interrogator’s safety as a secondary concern while trying to justify their decision to name him.

What kind of fallout can the interrogator expect?

The Times and other news organizations have been asked over the years to withhold stories for fear of harm. And they have done so when a persuasive case has been made that the danger — whether to national security or an individual — is real and imminent. In this case, there is no history of Al Qaeda hunting down individuals in the United States for retribution. It prefers dramatic attacks that kill indiscriminately. And The Times took reasonable precautions to prevent Martinez from being easily found.

Bennett said The Times did “a terrible thing.” He said Martinez had been threatened repeatedly by Mohammed and others he interrogated but they did not know his identity. Now their friends do, at least to some degree. Martinez has received no threats since the article was published. Shane, on the other hand, has received abusive e-mail bordering on the threatening.

I understand how readers can think that if there is any risk at all, a person like Martinez should never be identified. But going in that direction, especially in this age of increasing government secrecy, would leave news organizations hobbled when trying to tell the public about some of the government’s most important and controversial actions.

Of all the self serving tripe contained in this backstory, the notion that there is no threat because al Qaeda hasn’t gone after individuals yet is perhaps the most ridiculous. It suicidally underestimates the capabilities of our adversary while giving the paper another “out” when it comes to responsibility if anything does happen to the interrogator. “How could we possibly have known they would kill the guy? They had never done it before…” would make an excellent lead editorial if, God forbid, al-Qaeda makes good on its threats.

And poor little Shane! He’s been getting “abusive” (name calling) emails “bordering” on being threats. What shameless sophistry from Hoyt. To try and equate an al-Qaeda threat with that of some internet magpie is patently stupid and transparent in the extreme. It is perhaps revealing of how the Times editors actually view the War on Terror that they would compare al-Qaeda to an anonymous web rabble rouser.

And in a case like this, it is up to the paper to prove how it would be “hobbled” if they published an alias for the interrogator rather than mention him by name – not the other way around where the subject of the story must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would be in danger if his name was published. That is perhaps the most telling proof of hubris on the part of the Times. In their little cocoon of arrogance and self importance, they place the life of a man on a scale and weigh it against their own petty policies and personal notion of the public’s “right to know.”

The fact that the interrogator was no longer with the agency and therefore was being punished with notoriety years after he had served his country honorably shows that the Times concerns were not with national security or the personal security of the interrogator but rather with their own warped view of journalistic standards that apparently brook no revision – even if it could cost someone’s life.

Hoyt never bothers to criticize any of his colleagues in this story. He accepts their “explanations” – some of which are outrageously inapt – at face value with no comment on whether they pass the smell test. To my mind, the excuses made by Keller, Shane, and Baquet stink – reason enough to bring down disapprobation on the Times, their editorial staff, and most especially, their Public Editor who once again has failed to do his job.

There is something refreshing in the astonishing ignorance demonstrated by Mike Huckabee when the candidate talks about foreign affairs. It’s just not something experienced everyday in the civilized world that we see one of the major party’s presidential front runners more knowledgeable about the bible than anything recently published in Foreign Affairs magazine about Pakistan.

If this race continues the way it is, we will be entertained with many more such moments of hilarity. Mike Huckabee is the first candidate in a while who needs a team of aides to spread out after he speaks and tell the press what the candidate really meant when he stuck his foot so far into his mouth his nosehairs were tickling his kneecap:

Explaining statements he made suggesting that the instability in Pakistan should remind Americans to tighten security on the southern border of the United States, Mr. Huckabee said Friday that “we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities, except those immediately south of the border.”

Asked to justify the statement, he later cited a March 2006 article in The Denver Post reporting that from 2002 to 2005, Pakistanis were the most numerous non-Latin Americans caught entering the United States illegally. According to The Post, 660 Pakistanis were detained in that period.

A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security, however, concluded that, over all, illegal immigrants from the Philippines, India, Korea, China and Vietnam were all far more numerous than those from Pakistan.

In a separate interview on Friday on MSNBC, Mr. Huckabee, a Republican, said that the Pakistani government “does not have enough control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists.” Those borders are on the western side of Pakistan, not the eastern side.

Further, he offered an Orlando crowd his “apologies for what has happened in Pakistan.” His aides said later that he meant to say “sympathies.”

He also said he was worried about martial law “continuing” in Pakistan, although Mr. Musharraf lifted the state of emergency on Dec. 15. Mr. Huckabee later said that he was referring to a renewal of full martial law and said that some elements, including restrictions on judges and the news media, had continued.

Anyone who still thinks Mike Huckabee has what it takes to lead this nation as President in the extremely perilous days ahead after watching and listening to him flail about the last couple of days needs a reality check.

That’s not exactly what I wanted to say. I wanted to say that anyone who still supports Huckabee after his performance regarding the Bhutto assassination is an idiot, or should have their head examined, or should be disenfranchised, or should run off and start their own party. They could call it the “Idiotic, Superstitious, Religious Fanatic and Intellectual Twit Party.”

I wanted to say all of that but I’m glad I didn’t. People don’t take you seriously if you go overboard in your criticism – even if those being criticized it deserve it.

The only question I have is will this indeed be a death blow to the Huckabee campaign? If it isn’t and Huckabee still does well in Iowa, and is viable through Super Tuesday and beyond, I will weep for the ignorance of the rank and file in the Republican party. Let them have their preacher man. Let them revel in that old time religion. Let them dream of segregating gays and people with AIDS lest their kids be exposed to the deadly sins of modernity and tolerance. Let them stick their heads in the sand and pretend that a lack of basic knowledge of the world around us should not disqualify someone to be president during a time of war.

The left has been fond of saying that Huckabee’s success is only what we conservatives deserve in courting and pandering to the religious right all these years. There is probably something to that criticism. After all, if Dennis Kucinich were a front runner on the Democratic side, we conservatives would be similarly gloating about chickens coming home to roost for the left.

But beyond such childish analysis is the very real and frightening prospect that Mike Huckabee, despite his demonstrated lack of expertise and knowledge about a vital part of the world where our enemies are making a supreme effort to win an important battle in the War on Terror, is still seen as presidential timber by perhaps a third or more of Republican regulars. I don’t know if that will be enough to get him over the top and win the requisite number of delegates for a first ballot victory at the convention. But it almost certainly will make him a player in the party and will give him a big say in platform deliberations and perhaps even the choice for Vice President.

All because nothing the Huckster says or does that reveals him to be unqualified for the presidency seems to matter to his legions of supporters.

I see from Memorandum that the only people writing about this at the moment are on the left. I sincerely hope that changes because this is a very important story and I would hate to think that a sense of partisanship would intrude on what is a probable violation of the law.

There may be good reason to destroy DVD’s of interrogations. But not when they have probative value in a potential court case nor when they are destroyed to cover up wrong doing by employees of the government:

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.

This is bad enough. But what makes this a budding scandal for the CIA is that both the 9/11 Commission and attorneys for Zacarias Moussaoui specifically requested such evidence and the CIA denied they had it:

The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had made formal requests to the C.I.A. for transcripts and any other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.

C.I.A. lawyers told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005, who relayed the information to a federal court in the Moussaoui case, that the C.I.A. did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge in the case. It was unclear whether the judge had explicitly sought the videotape depicting the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah.

Granted the judge may not have asked for the specific tapes nor did the 9/11 Commission request anything specific. But if the CIA is going to hang its hat on that defense, damn them. Their failure to turn over potential exculpatory evidence may open an avenue of appeal for Zacarias Moussaoui to at least grant him a new trial. And they impeded the 9/11 investigation by failing to fully cooperate with the Commission’s requests for information.

It is against American law to torture prisoners – even terrorists. And American law’s definition of torture mirrors that of the definition given by the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention prohibits the kind of “severe interrogation techniques” that were used on Zubaydah. It’s not a question of whether waterboarding isn’t really “torture” because our special forces guys go through it as part of their training. Or other “stress techniques” aren’t really torture because they leave no marks or don’t really distress the prisoner. The law is the law and these special interrogation techniques are in violation of the Geneva Convention and hence, American law.

If one plus one still equals two, that would mean that the officials who were concerned that the tapes “could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy” and went ahead and destroyed them anyway are up for obstruction charges.

We can argue – and I have in the past on this site – that the Geneva Convention is ridiculously out of date, moldy in its thinking and laughably naive about men at war and the exigencies of the times. And the fact that we and other western countries are the only ones who even make an attempt to conduct ourselves by its rules is patently unfair and revealing of a sickening double standard abroad in the world.

But until and unless it is amended, those officials who authorized the interrogations and who carried them out could be in violation of the law and subject to prosecution. Destroying the tapes therefore is destroying potential evidence in a criminal trial.

I don’t write much about the torture issue anymore because it sickens me to have my friends on the right trying to excuse it and it nauseates me when the left moralizes about it. It is wrong and will come back to haunt us. Not because, as some argue, that it puts our own soldiers in danger. That argument flies in the face of history. We have never fought a war where the enemy we were fighting followed the Geneva Convention. In fact, most of the enemies we have fought have been flagrant violators of human decency in their treatment of prisoners much less paying any attention to the strictures in the GC.

We should not torture because of who we are not because of what the Geneva Convention says, or the left says, or the hypocritical third world moralists say. It is wrong for Americans to do it. And yes, waterboarding is torture. Putting a prisoner in stress positions is torture. Sleep deprivation is torture.

Forget the hysterics from our political opponents and examine the issue not as a partisan but as question of simple human decency. If we Americans have lost that – if we’ve forgotten that we hold ourselves to a higher standard than the brutes we are fighting and their allies in the hypocritical third world, then we will have lost a very important component of what makes us an exceptional nation.

I don’t know if we have the courage to face this issue and bring the violators to some kind of justice. I totally reject the idea of allowing any kind of foreign tribunal to judge Americans for the simple reason I wouldn’t trust them to be fair and objective, anti-Americanism being a dominant ideology in much of the world where the efficacy of such tribunals is acknowledged. And facing the music on torture opens a chasm beneath our feet in that the techniques used on these prisoners were approved at the highest levels of the American government. The idea that these officials will walk away scott free is troubling. But if you put Bush on trial, what does that do as far as limiting the options of his successors? And is it the kind of precedent we really want to set?

I don’t know the answers to those questions. And those on the left, blinded by their unreasoning hatred of this president, are not the ones to judge the best course of action. But there clearly must be some kind of accounting for what has been done in our name. How that plays out will say a lot about us as a nation that purports to stand for the best in humanity and not the worst.

UPDATE

More from the Times here.

And The Blotter is reporting that DCIA Hayden issued a statement to CIA employees before the Times article broke, giving a rather disingenuous reason for the destruction of the tapes:

CIA Director Mike Hayden sent a message to CIA employees today saying “the press has learned” that the CIA videotaped interrogations in 2002 and that the tapes were subsequently destroyed in 2005. The decision to destroy the tapes was made by the CIA, but he says the leaders of the congressional intelligence committees knew about the tapes and the decision to destroy them.

Hayden offers an explanation for why the tapes were destroyed—“no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries” and offers another defense of the interrogation techniques used by the CIA.

John Sifton, a human rights attorney who is active in cases involving the CIA’s secret prison program, said today that the destruction of the tapes is a scandal.

“This is a major piece of the mosaic of evidence, and now it’s gone,” said Sifton. “They should be ashamed of themselves.”

If the CIA didn’t have a history of stiffing Congressional Committees, judicial proceedings, and special tribunals like the Warren Commission, we might be more inclined to believe General Hayden.

But it is ridiculous for Hayden to say that the decision to destroy them was made in a political vacuum. As the Times article points out, the tapes were destroyed at the height of Congressional interest in the CIA’s interrogation techniques. To then go ahead and destroy a tape that may have been instructive of how the CIA carried out interrogations would seem to infer cover-up rather than some kind of standard operating procedure.

That is, unless you trust what Hayden and others are saying about the subject. And frankly, they lost the right to get the benefit of the doubt long ago.

UPDATE: 12/7:

Jamses Joyner also sees obstruction of justice as a problem for those who ordered the tapes destroyed. He also points out that there was Congressional oversight of a sort in that the Chairmen and Vice Chairs of the House and Senate Intel Committees were informed of the plan to destroy the tapes. (No mention of informing the Speaker and Minority Leader in the House and the Majority/Minority Leader in the Senate which would also be the custom in these cases of limited notification.)

James pretty much takes Hayden at his word as far as why the tapes were destroyed but points out the discrepancies in his explanation. Any way you slice it, someone needs to be held accountable for the tape’s destruction.

Many of you may have heard or been following the so-called “Holy Land Foundation” trial in Texas where CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to use Islamic charities in this country to fund Hamas in their war of genocide against Israel.

The Dallas Morning News has been doing a bang-up job of covering the trial and all the issues and personalities surrounding it. Here’s a piece that gives some good background on the charges and the issues.

In combing through the thousands of pages of documents seized by federal authorities, prosecutors have translated some documents that will have many blogs buzzing this morning.

The documents detail a Muslim plot to take over the United States.

First, it must be said that I have a better shot of being the closer for the Chicago Cubs than the Muslim Brotherhood has ever had of taking over the country. Reading excerpts from the plan is like taking a walk through a psyche ward for the criminally insane:

A 1991 strategy paper for the Brotherhood, often referred to as the Ikhwan in Arabic, found in the Virginia home of an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, describes the group’s U.S. goals, referred to as a “civilization-jihadist process.”

“The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions,” it states. This process requires a “mastery of the art of ‘coalitions,’ the art of ‘absorption’ and the principles of ‘cooperation.’ ”

Success in the U.S. “in establishing an observant Islamic base with power and effectiveness will be the best support and aid to the global movement,” it states.

A transcript of a Brotherhood orientation meeting recorded in the early 1980s includes discussions of the need for “securing the group” from infiltration by “Zionism, Masonry … the CIA, FBI, etc. so that we find out if they are monitoring us” and “how can we get rid of them.” Discussions later turn to “weapons training at the Ikhwan’s camps” in Oklahoma and Missouri.

Not only were these guys lunatics, they were paranoid as well. The Masons? Thank God they don’t know anything about Moose Lodges.

But as nutso as these fanatics are, a germ of truth emerges from their rantings and certain actions by Muslim groups in the west begin to make sense.

I have taken great pains over the years to differentiate between the extremely small, violent minority of Muslims who have taken up jihad against American and the west and the huge bulk of the followers of the Prophet who wouldn’t hurt a flea. You can no more judge Islam by pointing to Osama Bin Laden than you can judge Christianity by invoking the name of David Koresh or Judaism by using Rabbi Kahane as an example. Such thinking is shallow, ignorant, and flies in the face of the facts.

But it is perfectly proper to judge Muslims who have emigrated to the US and Europe by standards we here in the west set for ourselves – tolerance for other faiths being among the most important. That, and a recognition of living in a shared community while adopting similar values and respecting the rights and dignity of all is a fundamental necessity to the smooth functioning of our western societies.

This does not mean that western Muslims should be prevented from proselytizing their faith nor should the process of assimilation destroy their culture or subsume their traditions. Such assimilation has been going on for centuries and has succeeded in building a stable, vibrant western culture where all can share in the advantages freedom has brought us.

But Muslims have failed in Europe (not so much in the US) to assimilate the western values of tolerance and freedom of thought and resist joining the societies that they have chosen to live. Certainly a large part of the problem have been short sighted policies promulgated by the relatively homogeneous, Christian governments of Europe that segregate the newcomers and deny them many of the benefits of living in the west. But beyond the material, there is the very real and growing problem of Muslim resistance to the very idea that there are certain tenets of western society that all must believe in if it is to work.

The fanatics who wrote the plan to “take over” the US reveal tactics being used in Europe by Muslims to further isolate their communities, shielding them from the influence of western culture while seeking to impose their own beliefs on the majority. There is nothing subtle about this which makes it all the more incomprehensible that governments acquiesce to some of the demands of the “moderates.” If the goal is to avoid social unrest, all they are doing is putting off the inevitable. Eventually, the newcomers will demand more than any government will be able or willing to give. And at that point, the clash they could have avoided by resisting calls for codifying intolerance now will certainly come back to haunt them.

The tactics of “absorption, “cooperation, and using the “art of coalitions” in order to further isolate Muslims in Europe are familiar to anyone who has followed recent history in countries like Great Britain, France, Holland, and Denmark. Ironically, European Muslims build coalitions and garner cooperation not to assimilate but rather to further separate themselves from the societies where they live. They have little thought of “taking over” France or Great Britain (at the moment). But building a separate society, removed from the mainstream and governed by their own laws is almost certainly within their reach. And when the demographics favor them 50 years from now, it won’t be a matter of them “taking over” but instead simple “absorption” of the minority of original Europeans will be all that is necessary.

Such a scenario will not play out here in America. There would have to be a massive influx of Muslims for that to occur. The latest census shows around 3 million Muslims in the United States or about 1% of the population. Even with lax immigration, the idea that Muslims will be able to resist the pull of assimilation in any great numbers doesn’t make any sense. The US is too big, too diverse, for any one group to “grow” themselves to dominance.

Those Muslim Brotherhood nut cases should go back to the drawing board. The plan they’ve come up with doesn’t pass the loony test.

It’s the Administration says the left. It’s probably al-Qaeda themselves, say those more reality based.

Whoever made it, may very well have faked it:

Osama Bin Laden’s widely publicized video address to the American people has a peculiarity that casts serious doubt on its authenticity: the video freezes at about 1 minute and 36 58 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30. The video then freezes again at 14:02 remains frozen until the end. All references to current events, such as the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, and Sarkozy and Brown being the leaders of France and the UK, respectively, occur when the video is frozen! The words spoken when the video is in motion contain no references to contemporary events and could have been (and likely were) made before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The audio track does appear to be in the voice of a single speaker. What I suspect was done is that an older, unreleased video was dubbed over for this release, with the video frozen

Just to be sure, I downloaded the MPEG file and played it on my Windows Media Player (I sometimes have issues with the Flash Player). Sure enough, the video freezes right where Mr. Maschke says it does – in both instances.

In effect, what we have is about a 3 1/2 minute video that has been stretched out to more than 26 minutes by simply freezing a frame of OBL over first about ten minutes then more than 12 minutes of the tape.

The Telegraph gives us a possible explanation:

The al-Qaeda leader’s first video message for three years featured a bizarre rant against America, with references to global warming, “insane taxes”, the US mortgage market meltdown and rising interest rates.

American spy chiefs were quick to name Adam Gadahn, the head of al-Qaeda’s English language media operations, as the author of large sections of bin Laden’s broadcast.

Last October, the 28-year-old “loner” became the first American charged with treason since 1952, for appearing in a succession of al-Qaeda videos under the guise of “Azzam The American”, in which he condemned globalisation and made American cultural references.

[snip]

What surprised analysts was his use of the language of Left-wing protesters, which showed detailed knowledge of the economic travails of middle America.

Bin Laden referred to “the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgage” and blamed “global warming and its woes” on “emissions of the factories the major corporations”.

A former senior US intelligence official said: “It has Adam Gadahn written all over it.” Mike Baker, a former CIA covert operations officer, said the tape left bin Laden with “the title of biggest gas bag in the terrorist world”.

CIA officials said voice analysis of the tape proved it was definitely bin Laden.

Funny that the CIA concludes that it’s Bin Laden on the tape but never mentions – or perhaps didn’t catch – the freeze framed video. It is hugely significant because as Maschke points out, all of the topical references that “prove” the tape is recent are uttered when the “video” is in freeze frame.

If our government is going to release a tape showing that Osama is alive, one would think that this kind of little detail would be hugely important to point out to the press and the American public. If anything, this video chicanery buttresses the case that Osama has been worm food for a while.

Wheels within wheels: The CIA knows Osama is dead but doesn’t want al-Qaeda to know that we know. Why? Perhaps they have someone close to al-Qaeda’s inner circle. Not close enough to know where they are, but close enough that our intelligence people are kept abreast of a few things. Letting on that we know Osama is dead might expose that source to al-Qaeda.

And how about the idea that this is a speech that may have been written by some poor deluded leftist twit pretending to be a jihadist read by the world’s number one terrorist? Adam Gadahn may be a useful idiot to al-Qaeda but I hardly think they have grown so unsophisticated that they would be using him as Osama’s ghost writer – literally. Besides, CNN International is seen all over the world. If they want to copy leftist propaganda spouted here in the United States, they can do no better than use Ted Turner’s creation for that.

Michael Ledeen is not convinced either:

Third, is it really Osama? As you know, I was reliably told something like two years ago that Osama had died. Nothing in this speech sounds at all like the “old” OBL. That man knew how to give a stemwinder, he used elegant language, his threats were blood-curdling, his calls to the faithful inspiring. This man talks like, well, a high school dropout. In fact it reads like an “Onion” spoof. And the sound is bizarre, at least on my IBM desktop. It sounds almost as if there was enough garble in it to make it difficult to match with voice prints of the “real” guy. I’m not convinced.

Is it possible that this “tape” was manufactured by the Bush Administration and released just days before the Petreaus Report to Congress on Iraq in order to sway nervous Republicans into standing firm while reminding the American people that Iraq is part of the War on Terror?

The question has to be asked because it will probably be the number one topic of conversation on lefty blogs today. And the answer is a qualified no, it is not possible. One can accuse the Bush Administration of incompetence in many areas but you would think if they were going to run a fake video, they might have done a better job of manufacturing it so that some guy in pajamas sitting in his mother’s basement couldn’t expose them.

And al-Qaeda shutting down it’s various websites immediately after the tape’s release is an interesting tell as well. They wouldn’t want their sympathizers telling the world that the video is an obvious fake.

Yes, I suppose it is possible that the Administration ordered up the video for the Iraq debate. Anything is possible. But there is not one scintilla of evidence that points the finger at the Administration while logic and inference finger this as an attempt by al-Qaeda to stick their nose into the debate themselves – just as they tried to do with the 2004 election when they released the last Osama video.

I’m sure this is not the end of this story. By the end of the day, I suspect a Blogswarm as well as further interesting speculation. Perhaps even more revelations will be forthcoming once bloggers with professional audio and video equipment start putting the tape to the test.

One of those days when it’s great to be a blogger…

I had some fun with this post yesterday, postulating that Osama Bin Laden would feel right at home blogging at Daily Kos. It’s silly, of course. The confluence of interests between radical jihadist kooks like OBL and the Democratic left has more to do with talking points than ideology. Once a Democrat is in the White House in 2008 and the left controls Congress, the leaders of the party (and, presumably, the netroots) will be confronted with the exact same situation that a Republican would be faced with if he should, despite all the signs, win through to victory and grab the presidency.

That situation boils down to one, overarching reality: We are at war. We have been at war for 30 years. If the netroots want to parse the definition of war or even try and pretend that this is not so, it hardly matters. Radical Islamists believe they are at war with us. They believed it before there were netroots, before there was an internet. And they will continue to believe it no matter who is president, no matter what foreign policy we espouse, and no matter what their apologists and appeasers here and abroad would have you believe.

This then, is The Long War – a struggle against an ideology that threatens more than our complacency, more than our sense of security, and more than the illusions we have of our invincibility. It is a war against the secular, nebulous, undefinable freedoms we enjoy in the west versus the dogmatic holy writ of the Koran and those who warp and twist its teachings for their own murderous ends.

How big a threat is the global jihad being waged against the United States and the west? I agree with the left that the threat should be kept in perspective. I do not agree with the left when they attempt to minimize it.

Fred Thompson’s take on OBL and The Long War is just about right:

“Bin Laden being in the mountains of Pakistan or Afghanistan is not as important as there are probably al-Qaida operatives inside the United States of America,” Thompson said.

Bin Laden is considered the man behind the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The former Tennessee senator and actor argued that “bin Laden is more symbolism than anything else. I think it demonstrates to people once again that we’re in a global war.”

Thompson said the al-Qaida leader and the Iraq war must be seen as part of the larger war on terrorism.

“It’s one that bin Laden and people like him are heading up and we need to catch him and we surely need to deal with him, but if he disappeared tomorrow we still have this problem. If Iraq disappeared tomorrow, we’d still have this problem,” Thompson said.

GOP presidential candidates jumped on Fred’s “symbolism” statement like starving dogs who are tossed a slab of prime rib:

“He’s more than a symbol,” McCain told ABC News when asked about Thompson’s comments. “He’s motivating and recruiting using the internet as we speak. He’s a threat. He’s a threat.”

McCain said bin Laden poses an enormous threat to Americans because of his ability to communicate, motivate and recruit people who are dedicated to the destruction of the U.S.

“It’s very important that we get him. I’ll get him,” McCain said.

Another Thompson rival, former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., suggested the al-Qaeda leader is a real threat.

“Osama Bin Laden is the face of evil,” Romney said in a statement reacting to the bin Laden tape. “His stated goal is conversion by compulsion, the surrender of liberty to terror and the abandonment of the foundations of a free society.”

The last two National Intelligence Estimates have made it clear that al-Qaeda – the parent organization that planned and executed the 9/11 attacks as well as other operations against our citizens and interests – is a shadow of its former self. Their financial networks are shattered. Their cells have been smashed in city after city, country after country. Their leadership caught or killed – except Osama himself who even Romney admits is a symbol, being “the face of evil.” What McCain, Romney, and other candidates are doing is what the Bush Administration was accused of doing for the last 6 years; ratcheting up fear of al-Qaeda and terrorism in order to score political points with the public.

Al-Qaeda may be smashed but, as the NIE’s made very clear, they have spawned dozens of smaller, less capable, but very deadly offshoots such as al-Qaeda in Iraq and Fatah al-Islam in Lebanon. Their connections to the “old” al-Qaeda may be more spiritual and ideological in nature. But that doesn’t lessen the threat they pose to the US and the west, given that they are plugged in to a loose but very real network of jihadists worldwide who share conduits for funding, arms, and even expertise in the planning and execution of terrorist attacks (the 7/7 London bombings are an example).

It is impossible to look into the mind and hearts of men and glean important truths. Inevitably, our perceptions regarding the actions of others are colored by our own biases, our own prejudices. I have no doubt that on occasion, the Bush Administration has stooped to using the tactic of deliberately overstating the threat of terrorism in order to scare people into voting Republican. Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has said as much. But to extrapolate from the political use of the terrorism issue to the idea that The Long War is some plot to establish a permanent Republican majority is just plain daft.

The Long War is as much a part of politics in America as social security, welfare, health care, or any other issue. This can’t be helped anymore than the Democrats can help their time honored tactic of scaring old people into believing that if they elect Republicans, their social security benefits will be cut, or even disappear. In a free society, all public matters become political matters. We created a political world so that there would be a framework where decisions on national issues like war and peace could be discussed by the representatives of the people. It should not surprise us or disappoint us, or anger us that The Long War would be affected by the political tug of war between those who jockey for power in Washington.

The threat is real, it is serious, and has the potential (given the fact that someday it is a dead certainty that terrorists and WMD will marry up in a nightmare few liberals seem willing to confront) to destroy our society. Jihadists may not invade and take over the White House. But a couple of nukes detonated in American cities will accomplish most of OBL’s goals. Far beyond the damage to the cities themselves would be the resulting chaos, refugees, economic catastrophe, and the probability that our response would be to nuke a target of choice – even if that target had little or nothing to do with the strike itself. Choose your nightmare scenario to follow that action.

Fred Thompson’s response to OBL’s statement shows that there is at least one Republican who gets it. Romney, on the other hand, wishes to fall back on playing the fear card in order to score political points. It’s time we moved a little closer to the moderate left on the issue of The Long War and begin to place the struggle in a realistic, historical context that will beget policies that give us the opportunity to confront the threat without allowing politics to either diminish or exaggerate it.

It may not be possible given the current state of the political culture in Washington. But it would certainly start us on the road to defeating the terrorists, thwarting their designs, and perhaps even allow for the recognition that we fight the ideas of jihad with other, more powerful ideas; that freedom is better than slavery, liberty is better than tyranny, and knowledge is better than ignorance.