Interesting news items
Some news items that make you think.
The lady who shot Colorado church gunman prayed to the Holy Spirit for help.
Bill Roggio reports a suicide bomb attack at a Pakistani nuclear weapons complex.
Five Reasons To Doubt The Claim Iran Has Shuttered Nuke Program (Hat tip: Tigerhawk)
Nothing follows.
posted by wretchardthecat at 12/10/2007 09:54:00 PM
26 Comments:
While Taliban and al Qaeda suicide bombers have targeted secure military facilities over the past year, it is unclear if the suicide attack was a target of opportunity or a demonstration of the groups' capacity to penetrate security at sensitive locations.
I'll take Penetrate Security at Sensitive Locations for $500, Alex.
On November 1, a suicide bomber killed eight at Pakistani airbase in Sargodha in the province of Punjab.
Not so fast there ...
This test was conducted in tunnels bored in the Kirana Hills near Sargodha, home of the Pakistan Air Force’s main air base and the Central Ammunition Depot (CAD).
The Kirana Hills test tunnels were reportedly bored by the SDW after the Chagai nuclear test sites, i.e. sometime between 1979 and 1983.
In little over a month there are attacks upon the staff and families of those working at two different Pakistani nuclear sites.
Al Qaeda is clearly looking to overthrow President Musharraf, with the ultimate prize being the state of Pakistan and its nuclear weapons stocks.
Q'elle surprise! I'm really hoping that someone is whispering in Musharraf's ear about how he can exchange those irksome warheads for a fat Swiss bank account and his own private beachfront villa on the Riviera.
Were nuclear weapons not involved, it would be hilarious in the extreme to watch Pakistan's military suffer so badly from infiltration by the ISI. Instead, this is one of the absolute worst nightmares imaginable.
If Pakistan's nuclear weapons fell into terrorist hands, my adamant opposition to first use of nuclear weapons would vanish instantaneously. I'd allow for one conventional attempt to confiscate their arsenal and—if that attempt failed—then be just as happy if the whole country was glassed and Windexed immediately thereafter.
Pakistan and North Korea both stand as shining examples of what to expect when countries that cannot even feed their people or build a car are, nonetheless, allowed to construct nuclear weapons. It can only be 100 times worse in the case of Iran.
From the "Five Reasons" article:
The Iranians shut down the network, however, when "a CIA clerk mailed letters to all of the agents, all at the same time, all from the same mailbox, all in the same handwriting, all to the same address." This yielded a predictable result: "Every one of the CIA's Iranian spies was imprisoned, and many were executed for treason."
The CIA managed to reconstitute a human spy network inside Iran after this fiasco, but that too was lost. According to James Risen, Weiner's colleague at the Times, a well-intending CIA agent inadvertently e-mailed a list of all of the CIA's spies inside Iran to a double agent, who was merely posing as our ally, in 2004.
The mind boggles. Anyone care to bet whether either of the above dunderheads were removed from their jobs? I wouldn't.
Zenster,
Don't blame the clerks, I'm sure they just fell victim to an ingenious ISI counterintelligence op.
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Zenster: ...a well-intending CIA agent inadvertently e-mailed a list of all of the CIA's spies inside Iran to a double agent, who was merely posing as our ally, in 2004.
Gosh! And the preceding year Robert Novak disclosed Valerie Plame's name and status as an covert operative who worked in a CIA division on the proliferation of WMDs. Novak's primary source was Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who got the information from a classified memo. By revealing her name, other agents who used her same cover company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, was immediately exposed as CIA, and all the effort to set up that ersatz corporation went in the toilet. So important was Plame's role in nuclear non-proliferation, the CIA redacted every passage in her book about the affair that mentioned her employment in the CIA before 2003 when Novak spilled the beans.
To change the subject. The link to the Colorado shooting.
The MSM strikes again. The Denver Post article mentions an "Assam" who wounded the gunman, with no identification of who "Assam" was.
The article appears to have been written and published in a panic. Maybe I'm missing something.
Chuckle of the Day:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq will never allow the United States to have permanent military bases on its soil, the government's national security adviser said.
The MSM strikes again. The Denver Post article mentions an "Assam" who wounded the gunman, with no identification of who "Assam" was.
Jeanne Assam, 42. Over at the Elephant Bar they would say it was a nice piece of Assam.
(1) Please explain to me why I should take Reuters seriously.
(2) With your snide comment, also tell me what YOU would have done in Ms. Assam's shoes.
Always Right: With your snide comment, also tell me what YOU would have done in Ms. Assam's shoes.
1. It wasn't a snide comment, so this time at least, you are wrong.
2. Three disabling rounds, center of mass.
The media all reported that the gunman in Colo Sprgs was shot by a s "church security guard" - which give you the image of someone checking packages at a J.C. Penny store in Detroit.
In reality, the lady who shot the gunman was a member of the church who happened to have a concealed carry permit. She approached the minister of the church and suggested that, given the shooting the previous day up by Denver that the Church take some extra precautions. He agreed to let her carry her gun into the church.
It was a private, armed, citizen with a legal right to carry permit that took down that gunman. Every church ought to have at least one around. And every mall, school, Wal-Mart store, and nuclear weapons storage facility, too.
I think I am going to take a couple of my handguns down to the local range and get some practice.
I notice that the media seems very reluctant to mention that this lady wasn't a cop. The MSM seems afraid to propagate the notion that ordinary people can take charge of their own security. Do you suppose there is still an anti-gun bias in the media?
DLA: I notice that the media seems very reluctant to mention that this lady wasn't a cop.
What are you talking about? There are 764 different outlets carrying the story of Jeanne Assam, including ABC News, USA Today, MSNBC, UPI, and hundreds of local television and print news services.
"Assam worked as a police officer in downtown Minneapolis during the 1990s and is licensed to carry a weapon"
Heroes come in all shapes, sizes and gender. She is one!
Supposably the three guys responsible for the bogus Iran NIE are:
Thomas Fingar
Vann Van Diepen
Kenneth Brill
It's interesting to do the following Google search:
"Thomas Fingar, Vann Van Diepen and Kenneth Brill"
Opinions about these three guys vary all over the map, e.g. from happy moonbats slapping each other on the back to angry conservatives wanting to hang these guys from lamp posts.
What I don't understand is how the NIE got through the review process. Doesn't the CIA and State Department have a multi-level review process to nip this stuff in the bud? Some of the Googled articles speculated that the three people responsible threatened to go directly to the MSM if the NIE wasn't published. What that tells me is the whole NIE review process broke down because three well placed moonbats were willing to go to jail.
Something here doesn't add up....
The Bush Administration has been accused of "distorting" or "cherry picking" intelligence so much that the NIE could have claimed Saddam was enriching uranium in the Lincoln Bedroom and the Bush Administration would have nodded and attempted to put a positive spin on it.
eggplant: What that tells me is the whole NIE review process broke down because three well placed moonbats were willing to go to jail.
Something here doesn't add up....
What doesn't add up is why these three are not being brought up on charges of treason or sedition. My Iranian friend was totally flabbergasted at the NIE and wondered how anyone could so brazenly contravene national security. His command of English failed him as he sought for words and he nodded vigorously when I suggested "treason".
Suffice to say that my Iranian friend has never had the slightest doubt about Iran's nuclear aspirations and finds it completely laughable how anyone could even remotely consider that Tehran has abandoned its quest for nuclear weapons.
Eggplant: What that tells me is the whole NIE review process broke down because three well placed moonbats were willing to go to jail.
It seems to me if there are senior career intelligence veterans willing to go to jail to make sure this report (which has been bottled up since November 2006) finally got out so the American people would know there was no intelligence supporting another war in the Middle East, they are patriots of the highest order. Iran's retaliation for a bombing campaign would have killed many troops in Iraq and many civilians in Israel, not to mention the attacks on other US interests around the glob.
Among other things a patriot is a person who having taken an oath to uphold the Constitution does exactly that. The NIE triumvirate are not policy makers, neither is the USA an oligarchs' narcissism playground. Fingar, Van Diepen and Brill, if the seemingly obvious be true, should be publicly executed.
I wonder if those three moonbats also placed this article in the Wall Street Journal.
Bush Engages Foreign Foes As Policy Shift Accelerates
Some of the highlights:
The White House said that President Bush sent a letter directly to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il seeking cooperation in implementing a pact to dismantle its nuclear arms in exchange for full normalized relations.
The move is the latest example of the White House accelerating its reversal on numerous foreign-policy fronts.
[clip]
On other fronts -- particularly Iran, Syria and Lebanon -- the Bush administration is also shifting tactics in ways that could affect American interests long-term, say U.S. officials and foreign policy analysts. President Bush is generally receiving praise for engaging Pyongyang and Damascus, but he is also risking alienating the Republican Party's conservative wing, which believes the U-turns will undermine U.S. standing around the world.
"Our foreign policy is in free-fall at the moment," said John Bolton, Mr. Bush's former ambassador to the United Nations and an ally of Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Bolton argues that engaging dictators will only "diminish our prestige and influence."
[clip]
In addition to the report on Iran, Washington's sudden opening to Syria and President Bashar Assad has also stunned many diplomats and foreign-policy analysts. For most of the past six years, the White House viewed Damascus as among its most intractable foes in the Middle East, charging it with supporting militant groups fighting in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories. Many U.S. officials also believe Damascus was directly involved in the 2005 murder of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, a charge Syria denies.
teresita: It seems to me if there are senior career intelligence veterans willing to go to jail to make sure this report (which has been bottled up since November 2006) finally got out so the American people would know there was no intelligence supporting another war in the Middle East, they are patriots of the highest order.
Traitors violate their loyalty oaths, not patriots. You also assume that the NIE is valid, whereas there are numerous and well-founded doubts as to its credibility. wretchard has already outlined the issue of data points rather expertly, even if you have elected to disregard his analysis. More than anything, you seem quite well disposed to totally ignore the implications of this NIE being wrong.
Most of this nation's military community recognizes the simple fact that the only thing worse than invading Iran is Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. This is a no-option situation and pretending that it is rates as intensely pureile behavior.
If this disclosure had happened during WWII, it is doubtful whether this trio would ever have seen the light of day, much less continued with their ongoing theft of oxygen for longer than it took to try and convict them.
Teresita is employing the same rhetorical ploy as Algore and the warmeners - invent a catastrophic future and then use the imagery to persuade people and justify whatever you want to do now to "prevent" that future. If it's done well it's a double payoff because you get what you want now and then you get hero status for preventing the catastrophe that was never going to happen anyway.
And you never, never discuss any actual facts.
Zenster said:
"My Iranian friend was totally flabbergasted at the NIE and wondered how anyone could so brazenly contravene national security."
I know the mullahs have restricted access to the Internet by Iran's citizens. However many (most) of Iran's more savy Internet users have circumvented these restrictions. The conclusions that we at Belmont Club have reached concerning Israel's loss of non-military options against Iran's nuclear weapons program must have also been deduced by Iran's intelligensia. Surely knowledgable people in Iran must find the prospect of near term nuclear war with Israel extremely frightening. However I have read nothing to indicate that people in Iran are worried about this.
Iranians lurking this website: What do you think is going to happen? Are you prepared to do nothing to prevent your nation's march towards national suicide?
Re: The pistol packing mama at the church followed the old dictum to "praise the Lord and keep your powder dry".
I can believe that the Holy Spirit led her to plug the crazy boy. Even as God uses doctors sometimes to heal the sick; so he uses shooters to purge human cancers and save innocent lives.
Terasita prefers being clever to being principled in her opining. Follow her train of musings and you'll see wildly inconsistent thought processes . As long as she can find the bon mot ,why hold to any kind of principle. That's the problem with democracy's marketplace of ideas; it's hard to hear the pearls of wisdom amongst the jackasses braying.
Teresita wrote...
What are you talking about? There are 764 different outlets carrying the story of Jeanne Assam, including ABC News, USA Today, MSNBC, UPI, and hundreds of local television and print news services.
I think you misunderstood...the issue isn't the replication of the same story hundreds of times. The issue is that the most interesting point was down-played. Joesephine citizen, not a Swat team, stopped a shooting rampage.
The bias I was pondering has to do with a basic interpretation of the 2nd amendment - does it apply to militia or an individual?
Virginia Tech was an obvious repudiation of US gun control laws - the good guys were disarmed and left at the mercy of an armed bad guy. This church shooting, stopped by lone armed civilian, is a sorrowfull reminder to the loved ones of the V Tech victims, of the travesty of anti-gun policies.
dla (and teresita): Indeed, it will be fascinating to see how the effete European media covers this story. It rolls two of their strongest negative stereotypes about the denizens of Flyoverland, USA into one: the gun-totin' Jesus freak. She even claimed to draw strength from God while snuffing out this guy's life! Sacre merde!
The Euro secular/statist worldview has more to fear from the likes of Jeanne Assam than it ever did from George W. Bush.
dla: The issue is that the most interesting point was down-played. Joesephine citizen, not a Swat team, stopped a shooting rampage.
I can only add that few others than an American citizen could have wielded the force necessary to halt such a massacre. Good on Josephine, may she carry for many years to come.
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