Islamic Terrorism: 2008 Archives

Boston attorney par excellence Jeff Robbins wrote an op-ed piece for the Boston Globe yesterday pointing out how Hamas was causing as much if not more anguish and pain to the Palestinian population as to the Jews of Israel. As he notes in his article, Hamas is perfectly content to have Palestinians become victims in its war of destruction against Israel because it gives them photo-ops that the press in the West will use to mischaracterize what is happening.

How ironic that as Jeff Robbins is making that point on the op-ed page, the Globe in a supersize picture on the front page is doing exactly that favor for Hamas.

A relative carried the body of one of five young sisters who authorities said died in an air strike at Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp. (Reuters Photo / Mohammed Salem)

That's our Globe, as smart and accurate as its parent the New York Times.

The suffering that Hamas causes
By Jeff Robbins | December 30, 2008

LAST MONTH'S commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provided the occasion to ask difficult questions about societies whose political leadership serially violates them. What, for instance, is to be done about places like Darfur or Zimbabwe, or any one of a multitude of places governed by leaders whose consciences appear untouched by the suffering they are causing? To the list of grotesque human rights violators must be added Hamas, whose disdain for the suffering its policies cause the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip is exceeded only by its open, and even proud, infliction of atrocities on Israeli civilians.

This year alone, Hamas, which expressly calls for the obliteration of Israel, has launched approximately 3,000 rockets and mortar bombs into Israeli civilian centers, always for the purpose of killing and maiming Israelis if possible, and terrifying those who are not actually hit. In the last week or so, Hamas has fired some 200 rockets and bombs into Israeli communities.

Under these circumstances - circumstances which would have continued without end had the Israelis failed to act - it seems clear that the Israeli military response was not merely a necessary one. It was, regrettably, the only one left.

Israeli author Amos Oz, whose call for peace with the Palestinians is shared by a majority of Israelis, succinctly described the brutalization of Israeli civilians in terms that cannot fairly be disputed. In a recent piece entitled "Israel Must Defend Its Citizens," the longtime advocate for reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis wrote: "The systematic bombing of the citizens in Israel's towns and cities is a war crime and a crime against humanity."

Oz is correct. But it isn't only Israelis whose fundamental human rights Hamas is violating. It is those of the Palestinian population about whose welfare Hamas professes to care.

In direct contravention of international law, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, utilizing homes, schools and community centers as launching pads, content in the knowledge that if innocent Palestinian civilians are caught in the cross-fire, it will be Israel that is criticized. This amounts to a sort of Daily Double of human rights violations: the use of innocent Palestinians as human shields for the infliction of violence upon innocent Israelis.

It is Hamas that perfected the use of the suicide bomb, by which young Palestinians were induced to kill themselves so that Israelis could also be killed. It is somehow apt that Hamas should be forever associated with the suicide bomb, for in a larger sense Hamas has proved to be an instrument of the demise of Palestinians in Gaza.

Hamas's persistent call for the annihilation of Israel through jihad, its unequivocal rejection of any peace with Israel under any circumstances, its seizure of Gaza through a coup d'etat, its repression of women and freedom of expression, and its embrace of Iran have all disgusted the international community, which will have little to do with it. Hamas has likewise repelled numerous Arab governments, which might otherwise have been expected to dip into their ample reserves of petrodollars to provide much-needed aid and foreign investment to Gaza, but which have steered clear of it.

Thus Hamas leads the Gazan population on a kamikaze course. The suffering of Gazans cannot conceivably be a genuine concern of the leadership, given the perpetuation of that suffering for which Hamas is responsible. And the suffering of Israelis is its avowed goal.

Whether it was South Africa or Sudan, the international community has understood that the way to deal with truly egregious human rights violators is not to placate them, but to speak the truth about them, and to them. If the truth is spoken plainly enough, and forcefully enough, to a Hamas leadership whose cruelty and callousness have reached alarming levels, it may be that the Palestinians and Israelis alike may be spared further suffering of the kind to which they have been relegated in the past.

Jeff Robbins, an attorney, was a US delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Commission during the Clinton administration.

Indian-born Muslim author Salman Rushdie appeared on a panel in New York City on December 19th at the Asia Society. In this video he is making devastatingly critical remarks about the motives of the Muslims who carried out the Mumbai massacre.

The text of his key point is below the video.

"Ask yourself the question that if the Kashmir problem were resolved tomorrow, if Israel-Palestine reached a lasting peace, do we believe that al-Qaeda would disband? Do we believe that Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad would put their guns down and beat them into plough-shears and say we would now be farmers because our job is done. I mean the point about is that is laughable, right? And the point about that is that that is not their project. Their project is power. This is a power grab by the most obscurantist, revanchist, old-fashioned, medievalist idea of modern culture that attempts to drag the world back into the middle ages at the point of modern weaponry ..." Salman Rushdie.

The full panel video may be seen at the website of the Asia Society.

Political correctness, fear of being charged with racism or "Islamophobia" keep those in civilized nations under threat from Islamic suremacist barbarism from defending themselves. Columnist Cinnamon Stillwell of the Middle East Forum asks,

Should not this grave threat to human rights be called what it is? Should not the world rally against this cancer within its midst and spare no expense or effort to stop it from metastasizing? Should not human rights groups make defeating this ideology its chief priority? Should not women's groups make the oppression of Muslim women, both within and without the Muslim world, its first priority? Should not gay rights groups turn their attention to the hangings of young men across the Muslim world? Should not Jewish groups condemn the hateful, anti-Semitic propaganda that is brainwashing Muslim youth? Should not those who believe in religious freedom denounce the persecution of religious minorities, apostates, and atheists in the Muslim world? Should not those who advocate free speech condemn the campaign to silence journalists and activists in the Muslim world, as well as attempts to do the same in the West? Should not the international community do everything in its power to prevent fanatical Islamist regimes from acquiring nuclear weapons and wreaking unprecedented havoc on the planet?

In a richly-linked article Stillwell explains why and how we are endangering ourselves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "GLICK: OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND FOREIGN POLICY ESTABLISHMENT IN FANTASYLAND "

Occasionally, a good idea surfaces in the press. Today Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal -- and former editor of the Jerusalem Post -- suggests how we can help Pakistan, which is in desperate need of $100 billion. Europeans have come up with $15 billion and the only place to turn for the $85 billion is the U.S. (The Saudis don't help anybody, even fellow Muslims, unless it involves spreading Mohammad-era Koranic training on how to take over the world through jihad.)

The quid pro quo for the money would be Pakistan's elimination of its nuclear weapons and its weapons infrastructure. The U.S. would provide safeguards for Pakistan's security against nuclear attack in return. One can be sure that Pakistan's home-grown terrorists would dearly love to get their hands on those weapons. Using conventional weapons, Pakistani terrorists killed 1500 of their felllow civilians in 2007. With nuclear weapons and the opportunity to take over the country, who's to say they would hesitate to use them against the capital city Islamabad? And the U.S. should insist that the Saudi-funded madrassas teaching jihad be shut down as well.

Pakistan is the world's largest exporter of terrorists in the world today and many of them do their work without leaving home. Getting rid of the principal Pakistani threat to the rest of the world -- and Pakistan itself -- would be an excellent accomplishment for the Obama administration.

President-to-be Obama wants to "reboot" America's relationship with the Muslim world and muses about making a speech in the capital of a major Muslim country.

Amir Tahiri, an Iranian journalist in exile since the Islamic state emerged in Iran, is skeptical. He urges Obama to think carefully about what he has said he wants to do and the implications of whatever move he makes. He doesn't quite call Obama "naive," but he comes close.

Obama talks of "a unique opportunity to reboot America's image," as if his nation's problems with terrorism were due to poor public relations on Washington's part. Does he think so highly of his own talent for seducing people with words that he believes that he can do with a single speech what his five predecessors have failed to do since 1979 - namely, remove the threat of Islamic terror?

Hubris has marked Obama all his life and he won't change now. He probably believes he can do it.

An Interesting read.

Doctor Thomas Sowell wonders if the reality of Mumbai has clicked into the heads of those who have fought so bitterly to weaken our national security. He wonders if President Obama understands the hatred that seeks to kill us and is immune to offers of concessions. And the American people who "want it all," do they realize that "benefits have costs"? Are we ready to fight to defend what we have -- country, homes, families?

A self-identified Dutch homosexual "humanist," feeling the noose of Islamic supression tightening around him which will change his life forever, says

coping with the islamization of Europe is like “a process of mourning.” He is overwhelmed by a “feeling of sadness.” “I am not a warrior,” he says, “but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”

Professor Sowell fears we have not awakened from our complacent slumber and that we have fallen prey to the false hope of "Can't we all get along?" Are we ready to fight for what we hold dear?

Will the horrors unleashed by Islamic terrorists in Mumbai cause any second thoughts by those who are so anxious to start weakening the American security systems currently in place, including government interceptions of international phone calls and the holding of terrorists at Guantanamo?

Maybe. But never underestimate partisan blindness in Washington or in the mainstream media where, if the Bush administration did it, then it must be wrong. . ..

[The Islamic terrorists] didn't strike again here, even though they have struck in Spain, Indonesia, England and India, among other places. Does anyone imagine that this was because they didn't want to hit America again?

Could this have had anything to do with all the security precautions that liberals have been complaining about so bitterly, from the interception of international phone calls to forcing information out of captured terrorists?

Dr. Sowell identifies the fatal ignorance:

Too many people refuse to acknowledge that benefits have costs. . . . There are people who refuse to give up anything, even to save their own lives.

He asks:

How many Americans are willing to see New York, Chicago and Los Angeles all disappear in nuclear mushroom clouds, rather than surrender to whatever outrageous demands the terrorists make?

Neither Barack Obama nor those with whom he will be surrounded in Washington show any signs of being serious about forestalling such a terrible choice by taking any action with any realistic chance of preventing a nuclear Iran. . . .

The people who flew those planes into the World Trade Center buildings could not have been bought off by any concessions, not even the hundreds of billions of dollars we are spending in bailout money today.

They want our soul-- and if they are willing to die and we are not, they will get it.

The Meaning of Mumbai
Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Will the horrors unleashed by Islamic terrorists in Mumbai cause any second thoughts by those who are so anxious to start weakening the American security systems currently in place, including government interceptions of international phone calls and the holding of terrorists at Guantanamo?

Maybe. But never underestimate partisan blindness in Washington or in the mainstream media where, if the Bush administration did it, then it must be wrong.

Contrary to some of the more mawkish notions of what a government is supposed to be, its top job is the protection of the people. Nobody on 9/11 would have thought that we would see nothing comparable again in this country for seven long years.

Many people seem to have forgotten how, in the wake of 9/11, every great national event-- the World Series, Christmas, New Year's, the Super Bowl-- was under the shadow of a fear that this was when the terrorists would strike again.

They didn't strike again here, even though they have struck in Spain, Indonesia, England and India, among other places. Does anyone imagine that this was because they didn't want to hit America again?

more...

British writer Melanie Phillips shouts to her countrymen "Wake Up!" But the snoring goes on as Islam's War of Conquest steadily advances everywhere.

What Mumbai shows:

a war is being waged against civilization.

at the core of the Islamists' hatred of Israel festers their hatred of the Jews.

With these atrocities, moreover, Islamist attacks have moved much closer to war than conventional terrorism.

The Mumbai atrocity is a wake-up call for a frighteningly unprepared world

By Melanie Phillips
December 2, 2008

Western commentators still don't grasp what the free world is facing. This was not merely a distant horror.

Around the world, people have reacted with horror to the vile atrocities in Mumbai.

For three days, our TV screens transmitted images of carnage and chaos as the toll of murder victims climbed to upwards of 190 people, with many hundreds more injured.

Despite the fact that Western citizens were caught up in the attacks, there is nevertheless a sense that this was nothing to do with us — a horrible event happening in a faraway place.

Among commentators, moreover, there has been no small amount of confusion.

Were these terrorists motivated by the grievance between Muslims and Hindus over Kashmir, or was this a broader attack by Al Qaeda?

If British and American tourists were singled out over Iraq — which many assume is the motive for such attacks — why were Indians targeted in the Victoria railway station?

And why was an obscure outreach centre geared to Jews marked for slaughter?

Such perceptions and questions suggest that, even now, Western commentators still don't grasp what the free world is facing. This was not merely a distant horror.

We should pay the closest possible attention to what happened in Mumbai because something on this scale could well happen here.

But because we don't understand what we are actually up against, we are not doing nearly enough to prevent this — or something even worse — occurring; and if it were to happen here, we would be unable to cope.

The Mumbai atrocities show very clearly what too many obdurately deny — that a war is being waged against civilization.

It is both global and local. It is not 'our' fault; it has nothing to do with Muslim poverty, oppression or discrimination.

The Islamic fundamentalist fanatics use specific grievances — Kashmir, Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya — merely as recruiting sergeants for their worldwide holy war against all 'unbelievers'.

The Mumbai attackers targeted British, American and Indian citizens simply because they wanted to kill as many British, American and Indian 'unbelievers' as possible.

Where they found Muslims, they spared them.

They also singled out for slaughter the occupants of an outreach organization geared to Jews with no Israeli or political agenda — underscoring the point that at the core of the Islamists' hatred of Israel festers their hatred of the Jews.

This was not, as is so often described, 'mindless violence'.

On the contrary, the terrorists precisely calibrated both their choice of targets and the way in which they attacked them. This tells us many things.

India was chosen in order to further two aims. First was to foment greater tension between India and Pakistan.

No less important was the wish to destroy the ever more vital strategic alliance between India and the West in common defense against the Islamist onslaught.

That was why British and American visitors in those two grand hotels were singled out.

And that was why Mumbai itself was chosen — as the symbol of India's burgeoning commerce and prosperity and its links with the West.

The manner of these attacks also carried a message.

Many hostages were taken, but no attempt was made to use them to demand redress of any grievances. They were simply killed.

That made a statement that the terrorists' agenda is non-negotiable.

The attacks demonstrated, above all, the reach of the perpetrators and the impotence of their designated victims.

Those who believe that Islamist terror can be halted by addressing grievances around the world are profoundly mistaken.

With these atrocities, moreover, Islamist attacks have moved much closer to war than conventional terrorism.

The Iranian-born foreign affairs specialist Amir Taheri has pointed out that the Mumbai attacks embody the plan outlined by a senior Al Qaeda strategist after the U.S. decided to fight back following 9/11 — a decision that the Islamists had not expected.

This new strategy entails targeting countries with a substantial Muslim presence for 'low-intensity warfare' comprising bombings, kidnappings, the taking of hostages, the use of women and children as human shields, beheadings and other attacks that make normal life impossible.

Such a simultaneous, multi-faceted onslaught quickly reduces a city and a country to chaos. It can be repeated anywhere — and our cities must be among the most vulnerable.

Mark Steyn worries about the all-too-obvious silence of Muslims about Islamic atrocities and their loud complaints about being put "on the defensive once again about bloodshed linked to their religion.” Mumbai is just another sorry example.

And the press in its multicultural political correctness wonders just who are these youths running amok and what if anything is the purpose of this "random violence." Random?

The discovery that, for the first time in an Indian terrorist atrocity, Jews had been attacked, tortured, and killed produced from the New York Times a serene befuddlement: “It is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene.”

Hmm. Greater Bombay forms one of the world’s five biggest cities. It has a population of nearly 20 million. But only one Jewish center, located in a building that gives no external clue as to the bounty waiting therein. An “accidental hostage scene” that one of the “practitioners” just happened to stumble upon? “I must be the luckiest jihadist in town. What are the odds?”

While the media is scratching its collective head, what are the "moderate" Muslims doing, Stey wonders?

“[R]eforming” Islam is something only Muslims can do. But they show very little sign of being interested in doing it, and the rest of us are inclined to accept that. Spread a rumor that a Koran got flushed down the can at Gitmo, and there’ll be rioting throughout the Muslim world. Publish some dull cartoons in a minor Danish newspaper, and there’ll be protests around the planet. But slaughter the young pregnant wife of a rabbi in Bombay in the name of Allah, and that’s just business as usual. And, if it is somehow “understandable” that for the first time in history it’s no longer safe for a Jew to live in India, then we are greasing the skids for a very slippery slope. Muslims, the AP headline informs us, “worry about image.” Not enough.

Islamic apologists insist on referring to Islam as a "religion" when it clearly is a totalitarian ideology waving the banner of religion in its war of world conquest. ("It isn't the devil who made me do it; it's Allah.") Why not confuse non-Muslims into thinking that Islam is just another "peaceful religion"? The Irony about the Religion of Peace is that in the view of its adherents there will only be Peace when Islam rules all the world.

By their adoption of multiculturalism -- that is, the belief that all cultures are equally good, except Western civilization, which is universally bad and responsible for the world's ills -- as their religion, Western elites (which include the elites in India) are putting millions in extreme danger.

The Middle East's leading political analyst Caroline Glick finds the post-Mumbai reporting, analyses and governmental commentary unreal if not insane. The mulitculturists immediately began blaming the victims because of the grievances the jihadists had supposedly suffered at the hands of India (ignoring the history of Islamic murder of 80 million Hindus in their centuries of assault). Newspapers such as the New York Times were at pains not to identify that all the attackers were Muslims (instead they were called Pakistanis and one Indian!) and to overlook the fact that the small, out-of-the-way Jewish center had been deliberately targeted.

The jihadists in Mumbai, like their counterparts from Gaza to Baghdad to Guantanamo Bay, have been defended, and their acts and motivations have been explained away, by their allies and loyal apologists: Western multiculturalists. Multiculturalism is a quasi-religion predicated on both moral relativism and a basic belief in the inherent avarice of the West - particularly of the US and Israel. Multiculturalists assert that Westerners - or, in the case of India, Hindus - are to blame for all acts of violence carried out against them by non-Westerners.

What the Mubai attack and its aftermath shows:

THE ATTACKS in Mumbai and the multiculturalists' rush to minimize their significance exposed two disturbing truths about the global jihad. First, they showed that the jihadists are quick studies. With each passing day, their capacity to attack grows larger. . . .

THE SECOND truth about the global jihad that the Mumbai attacks exposed is that there is nothing that jihadists can do to make the multiculturalists stop defending them. And there is nothing effective that democratic governments can do to defend against the jihadists that multiculturalists will deem acceptable. This is the case because multiculturalists cannot accept the fact that the jihadists are waging war against the West without disavowing multiculturalism itself. And since they will not disavow what has become their religion, they will never be convinced that they must stop defending jihadists.

This frightening] "refusal to acknowledge the fact of the global jihad [is shared by] many of the governments principally targeted by jihadist regimes and terror armies. Take the incoming Obama administration for example.

Iran daily threatens to destroy the US, annihilate Israel, close the Straits of Hormuz, use nuclear weapons and proliferate nuclear weapons to other states. It controls Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. It is the primary sponsor of the insurgency in Iraq and, with Pakistan, the major sponsor of the insurgency in Afghanistan. It has cultivated strategic ties with US foes in the Western Hemisphere like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

Yet one of the first foreign policy initiatives promised by the incoming Obama administration is to attempt to diplomatically engage Iran with the aim of striking a grand bargain with the mullahs. . . .

Unless something changes soon, the consequences of the jihadist-multicultural alliance will be suffered by millions and millions of people.

To read Glick's full analysis, click here.

Note: A Power Line reader notes just how assiduously the opinion-setters in the media are going through these multicultural hoops to avoid linking Islam with terror.

Update: Mark Steyn in his weekly column also points out the way in which the cowering media avoids linking "Islam" to "terrorism" in their reports, instead referring to "gunmen," "militants," "youths" and "teenage gunmen."

Columnist Charles Krauthammer points out tha the American and Iraqi success in hammering out an agreement on military and strategic cooperation is an extraordinary achievement. "It constitutes our best hope for the kind of fundamental political-cultural change in the Arab sphere that alone will bring about the defeat of Islamic extremism." He explains why this is so:

A self-sustaining, democratic and pro-American Iraq is within our reach. It would have two hugely important effects in the region.

First, it would constitute a major defeat for Tehran, the putative winner of the Iraq war, according to the smart set. Iran's client, Moqtada al-Sadr, still hiding in Iran, was visibly marginalized in parliament -- after being militarily humiliated in Basra and Baghdad by the new Iraqi security forces. Moreover, the major religious Shiite parties were the ones that negotiated, promoted and assured passage of the strategic alliance with the United States, against the most determined Iranian opposition.

Second is the regional effect of the new political entity on display in Baghdad -- a flawed yet functioning democratic polity with unprecedented free speech, free elections and freely competing parliamentary factions. For this to happen in the most important Arab country besides Egypt can, over time (over generational time, the time scale of the war on terror), alter the evolution of Arab society. It constitutes our best hope for the kind of fundamental political-cultural change in the Arab sphere that alone will bring about the defeat of Islamic extremism. After all, newly sovereign Iraq is today more engaged in the fight against Arab radicalism than any country on earth, save the United States -- with which, mirabile dictu, it has now thrown in its lot.

Read it all.

Not only has President Bush kept the nation safe for eight years, which Mumbai reminds us is no easy task, he has planted the tree of liberty in the heart of the Islamic world. May it grow in numbers.

-- Symbol of Sons of Liberty, Boston, 1765

Barbarians.

In Mumbai, Islamic killers murdered 172 or more. Random killings in restaurants, hotel corridors, shopping malls, aiming at foreigners and rich Indians to strike terror, hurt commerce and destroy terrorism. Ramdom, except for Mohammad's favorite target, Jews, whom they sought out in a small Orthodox synagogue serving Jews passing through Mumbai. Those there were all tortured and killed, except for a 2-year old left crying hysterically over the twisted bodies of his mother, six-month pregnant, and rabbi father.

Not that far away Muslim pirates terrorize shipping lanes for hostages and ransom, much as Muslim pirates did in the Mediterranean for centuries till President Jefferson put an end to it.

There is no right or wrong as the West knows it in Islam. The model is the perfect man Mohammad. If he raped, pillaged, raided caravans and killed Jews, why, then, true believers in Islam can do what their founder did. And they do.

As Mohammad did it for wealth and power, so too do his modern day followers.

A personal note: This summer a wonderful cruise took place on the Regatta, an identical sister ship of the Nautica, both owned by the cruise line Oceania. So the Nautica's brush with Muslim pirates has special meaning.

Allowing this alien ideology into the West is a serious mistake that hopefully will be corrected before it is too late. It is late already for Europe.

Cruise passengers describe "cheeky" pirate attack
By SEBASTIAN ABBOT, Associated Press Writer Sebastian Abbot, Associated Press Writer
Wed Dec 3, 5:12 pm ET

MUSCAT, Oman – Ordered to get inside and stay down, Oregon tourist Clyde Thornburg heard the pirates' rifle shots hit the side of the luxury cruise liner — "Pop! Pop! Pop!" — then felt the ship speed up to escape.

At this port north of the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden, passengers told The Associated Press on Wednesday they had been warned of the danger even before they embarked, and the crew used a device that blasted painful high-decibel sound waves to keep the marauders at bay.

The attack on the nearly 600-foot-long cruise ship in the dangerous waters between Yemen and Somalia was the latest evidence pirates have grown more brazen, viewing almost any vessel as a potential target — even a large luxury liner with hundreds of tourists on board.

But the assault on the M/S Nautica lasted only five minutes Sunday, and the ship with about 650 passengers and 400 crew members sped away quickly and was not seized.

"We didn't think they would be cheeky enough to attack a cruise ship," said Wendy Armitage, of Wellington, New Zealand, shortly after disembarking for a daylong port stop in the Omani capital of Muscat.

During the assault, pirates on one of two skiffs fired eight rifle shots at the ship, according to its American operator, Oceania Cruises, Inc. The captain ordered the passengers inside and accelerated the cruise liner quickly, leaving the pirates far behind in their 20- to 30-foot wooden speedboats, powered with twin outboard motors.

"I couldn't see them shooting, but I heard them hitting the ship, 'Pop! Pop! Pop!'" said Thornburg, of Bend, Ore. "It wasn't really scary because the captain announced for the safety of everybody to get inside and get down, and by that time he was pouring on the coals to the ship and was outrunning them."

Lynne Pincini of Australia said she was heading to a friend's cabin when the order came to keep their heads down and stay inside.

"We heard the announcement, and of course we went straight out on the balcony to have a look," she said. "It was like a very large speedboat. It was running alongside the boat."

The passengers were on a monthlong cruise from Rome to Singapore, a route that took them through the Gulf of Aden between Somalia and Yemen, where pirates have hijacked dozens of vessels this year.

Cargo ships, cruise liners and other vessels use the route — the only access to the Suez Canal shortcut between East and West — unless they are willing to add weeks to the trip by traveling around the southern tip of Africa.

At the beginning of the journey, the Nautica's captain briefed the passengers on what the vessel could do to ward off pirates.

Alicia Moorehead said they were told the Nautica could outrun pirates and was equipped with high-pressure water hoses and a device that blasts painful sound waves at any bandits. Such devices can emit sounds up to 150 decibels — well above the normal pain threshold of 120 decibels — focused on targets several hundred yards away.

"We had been reassured that they had these ghetto blasters that could go through them. And we could outrun anything that they had," Pincini said.

Moorehead's husband, Pat, said the crew laid out the water hoses before the vessel entered the Gulf of Aden.

"They had laid out the fire hoses for a high pressure repellant. They never did fire them up, but they were ready for them," said Moorehead, a native of Long Beach, Calif.

"I will say the crew was very calm. They had prepared for this. Every staff member has an assignment in case of an emergency, and every one of them did it calmly and quickly," he added.

Some passengers said the crew used the long-range acoustic device to ward off the attack, and at least two passengers described hearing two booms after the pirates fired their rifles.

Oceania Cruises would not comment on specific details of the ship's security other than to say the ship's captain and crew used "evasive maneuvers and took all prescribed precautions."

Roger Middleton, author of a recent report on piracy for the London-based think tank Chatham House, said such non-lethal defenses are preferable to having armed guards on board — but their effectiveness is limited. Earplugs can foil the sound device, for example.

The ship's high speed and the difficulty of boarding such a large ship probably were the reasons the pirates were not successful, Middleton said.

"Lots of pirate attacks fail ... They will go for anything and keep trying until they get on board," he said. "I think they see these things as how much money they get out of them. And lots of Western tourists is very valuable."

International warships patrol the Gulf of Aden and have created a security corridor under a U.S.-led initiative, but attacks on shipping have not abated.

In about 100 attacks off the Somali coast this year, 40 vessels have been seized. Thirteen remain in the hands of pirates, including a Saudi supertanker filled with $100 million worth of crude and a Ukrainian ship loaded with 33 battle tanks.

Large ransoms are usually paid for the release of hijacked vessels, but a Somali official maintained Wednesday that a Yemeni cargo ship and its eight crew members were freed without a ransom after an appeal by local clan elders and regional officials.

The ship, released Tuesday, was seized last month in the Arabian Sea. A Yemeni security official had said the pirates were demanding a $2 million ransom

The Wall Street Journal continues its extraordinary reporting of the murders by Islamic supremacists in Mumbai. (For its earlier report, click here.) Evidence collected by American and Indian intelligence points to a Pakistani mastermind of the massacre. All ten of the terrorists were Pakistani. The one survivor has been confirming information that was intercepted by American communications monitoring.

Read the story that will appear in tomorrow's WSJ:

DECEMBER 3, 2008

India Names Mumbai Mastermind Article

By GEETA ANAND, MATTHEW ROSENBERG, YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and ZAHID HUSSAIN

MUMBAI -- India has accused a senior leader of the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba of orchestrating last week's terror attacks that killed at least 172 people here, and demanded the Pakistani government turn him over and take action against the group.
Just two days before hitting the city, the group of 10 terrorists who ravaged India's financial capital communicated with Yusuf Muzammil and four other Lashkar leaders via a satellite phone that they left behind on a fishing trawler they hijacked to get to Mumbai, a senior Mumbai police official told The Wall Street Journal. The entire group also underwent rigorous training in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, the official said.

Mr. Muzammil had earlier been in touch with an Indian Muslim extremist who scoped out Mumbai locations for possible attack before he was arrested early this year, said another senior Indian police official. The Indian man, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, had in his possession layouts drawn up for the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel and Mumbai's main railway station, both prime targets of last week's attack, the police official said.

Mr. Ansari, who also made sketches and maps of locations in southern Mumbai that weren't attacked, had met Mr. Muzammil and trained at the same Lashkar camp as the terrorists in last week's attack, an official said.

U.S. officials agreed that Mr. Muzammil was a focus of their attention in the attacks, though they stopped short of calling him the mastermind. "That is a name that is definitely on the radar screen," a U.S. counterterrorism official said.

Information gathered in the probe also continues to point to a connection to Lashkar-e-Taiba, that official said. Along with a confession from the one gunman captured in the attacks, officials cited phone calls intercepted by satellite during the attacks that connected the assailants to members of Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan, and the recovered satellite phone from the boat.

It also emerged Tuesday that U.S. authorities had warned Indian officials of a pending attack by sea. Hasan Gafoor, Mumbai police commissioner, told reporters there was a general warning issued in September that hotels could be targeted as well, after the bombing of the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad.

Two militants arrested in early 2007 also told police officials then that they were part of a band of eight Lashkar members who slipped into India by boat from Karachi, Pakistan, and made their way to Mumbai, an Indian police official in Kashmir said in an interview Tuesday. The group broke into pairs -- just as last week's attackers did -- and made their way north using safehouses provided by local sympathizers, the police official said.

The evidence cited by investigators is giving fresh ammunition to the Indian government, which has long tried to pressure Pakistan into cracking down on Lashkar-e-Taiba. India claims the group enjoys support from elements of the Pakistani intelligence agency. Pakistan denies that and outlawed the organization in 2002, but has done little to curtail its operations.

Mr. Muzammil's name is on a list of people -- numbering about 20 in all -- that India gave Pakistan earlier this week, demanding their immediate extradition, a senior Pakistani official told the Journal. The official said Pakistan was examining India's list of suspects and has assured New Delhi that action would be taken against them if there is evidence of involvement in the attacks.

Any move by the shaky civilian government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari against Lashkar-e-Taiba could create a huge backlash, however, particularly from Islamic groups, said a senior official in Pakistan. On Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani convened a meeting of all of the country's political parties in the capital to develop a joint response to Indian demands for extradition.

"The government of Pakistan has offered a joint investigation mechanism and we are ready to compose such a team which will help the investigation," Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said in a televised statement. Mr. Qureshi, however, declined to say whether Pakistan would hand over any of those sought by India.

The Mumbai attacks have ratcheted up tensions between the two nuclear-armed neighbors, who have been exchanging verbal fire for the past several days and sparking fears of a conflict. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to arrive in India Wednesday, as is Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Indian authorities say evidence highlights how Lashkar has broadened its operations to include recruitment of both Indian and Pakistani Muslim extremists.

Lashkar-e-Taiba -- literally Army of the Good -- has been implicated by Indian officials in several recent terrorist attacks on Indian soil. The group initially focused on fighting the Indian army in the disputed state of Kashmir. Over the years, it has expanded its cause into the rest of India and aims to establish Islamic rule.

India has told Pakistan that the latest attacks in Mumbai were masterminded by Mr. Muzammil, aided by others in Lashkar's senior ranks including an operative named Asrar Shah, according to a senior Pakistani official. Mr. Muzammil, a Pakistani in his mid-30s, became head of Lashkar-e-Taiba's anti-Indian planning cell some three months ago, according to Dipankar Banerjee, director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, an independent think tank in New Delhi. Indian authorities believe he is in Pakistan but officials there haven't acknowledged that.

India also claims the attacks were approved by Hafiz Muhammed Saeed, the Pakistani official said. Mr. Saeed is the head of Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the parent organization of the Lashkar group. Mr. Saeed, who is free in Pakistan, denied the accusations. "India has always accused me without any evidence," he told Pakistan's GEO News television channel.

Indian investigators -- helped in part by the testimony of the one terrorist they captured alive, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab -- say they now possess solid proof. "We have made substantial progress in the investigation," said A.N. Roy, director general of the State Police of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located.

According to Mumbai police chief Hasan Gafoor, Mr. Kasab told interrogators that he and fellow gunmen spent between a year and 18 months in a Lashkar-e-Taiba camp.

An armed policeman guards the Victoria Terminus station on Tuesday in Mumbai.
The 10 militants left Pakistan's port city of Karachi on Nov. 23 aboard a ship called the Al Husseini, which also carried a crew of seven, another senior police official said. Investigators believe that all the 10 gunmen were Pakistani because they spoke Punjabi or Punjabi-accented Urdu.

When they entered Indian waters, the terrorists hijacked a fishing trawler called the Kuber and took its five crew members prisoner. The terrorists transferred four of them to the Al Husseini and they were subsequently killed, police believe. The terrorists kept the Kuber's lead crewman alive and sailed close to Mumbai.

The terrorists abandoned the Kuber in haste, fearing detection by an approaching vessel, the senior police official said. In the process, they forgot their satellite phone on the Kuber. Investigators found in the call log the numbers of five people, including Mr. Muzammil, two of his deputies and his personal aide, the senior police official said. Indian officials had already intercepted phone conversations made while the terrorists were traveling to Mumbai.

Indian Muslim leaders are skeptical of Lashkar's reach into India. But police say Lashkar has increasingly sought contacts and recruits among Indian extremists. In October, for instance, five Muslims from the southern state of Kerala were recruited into Lashkar-e-Taiba and traveled to the Indian part of Kashmir, according to T.K. Vinod Kumar, Kerala's deputy inspector-general of police. They tried to cross the line of control that runs between India and Pakistan and reach training camps on the Pakistani side.
Four among the group were killed in a firefight with the Indian military during that attempt. The fifth, construction worker Abdul Jabbar, was arrested two weeks ago, Mr. Kumar says.

Unlike other Pakistani-based jihadist organizations, Lashkar draws its recruits across a broad social spectrum, from universities as well as among unemployed youths. The majority come from Punjab; Mr. Kasab used to live in the Punjabi village of Faridkot, according to Indian investigators.

In March 2007 when two militants were arrested in the Indian-controlled section of Kashmir, the pair told police that Lashkar was looking to start slipping people into India from the sea to avoid heavily guarded land borders. The sea also provided a winter route to Kashmir for Lashkar members, when high mountain passes crossing to India's part of the state are often blanketed by deep snow.

—Siobhan Gorman, David Crawford, Tariq Engineer and Peter Wonacott contributed to this article.

Just ten Islamic terrorists did it all.

Just ten men paralyzed Mumbai for three days, killing at least 174. Only one survived and he's from Pakistan.

This gripping account by the Wall Street Journal is a tale of horror and sheer incompetence on the part of the Indian police and much of the military.

DECEMBER 1, 2008

India Under Fire for Security in Wake of Attacks

At Tourist Haunts and Train Station, Swiftly Launched Assault Overwhelmed Police; Home Affairs Minister Steps Down

By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV, GEETA ANAND, PETER WONACOTT and MATTHEW ROSENBERG

MUMBAI -- As waiters started setting dinner buffets in Mumbai's luxurious hotels, the killings that would ravage this Indian metropolis began out of sight, in the muddy waters of the Arabian Sea.

In the dusk hours of Wednesday, fisherman Chandrakant Tare was sailing his boat about 100 yards from a fishing trawler when he spotted young men killing a sailor on board. He says he saw them toss the body into the engine room. Assuming he had stumbled upon pirates, Mr. Tare says, he sped away.

Hours later, at least 10 terrorists, having arrived by small craft on the shores of Mumbai, began to sow death and destruction at will across India's financial capital.

Pieced together from interviews with dozens of witnesses and officials, this account of the three days of the battle for Mumbai shows just how a small but ruthless group of skilled militants, attacking multiple targets in quick succession, managed to bring one of the world's largest cities to its knees. The human toll -- currently at 174 fatalities, including nine terrorists -- was exacerbated by the Indian authorities' lack of preparedness for such a major attack. But the chain of events also points to just how vulnerable any major city can be to this type of urban warfare.

Continue reading "THE ISLAMIC TERROR ATTACK ON MUMBAI"

War is being waged by Islamic supremacists worldwide. Their goal is to conquer the world. Don't laugh. They've been at it for 1400 years, with much success over the centuries. With the Middle East awash with billions of petrodollars, a potential support base of 1.3 billion Muslims worldwide, of which an estimated 10-15% are supportive of the supremists' goal, the followers of Mohammad are in the best position to wage war they have been in since 1453.

While they don't currently have military might to attack the U.S. frontally, they can inflict damage through terrorist attacks, as happened on 9/11/2001. The attack of just ten Muslim terrorists in Mumbai is illustrative as well. Fortunately, since the Bush Administration quickly went on high alert immediately after 9/11 and strengthened national defenses, it has became much more difficult for Islamic forces to launch a major strike in this country. In fact, several significant plots have been thwarted and the nation has been able to protect itself successfully in the years since.

However, there is a quieter offensive underway to weaken our culture to advance the cause of Islamic supremacism that largely escapes notice. One of the foremost experts on Islamic supremacism who is very much focused on Islamic efforts to undermine society is Robert Spencer. He calls this under-the-radar, quiet offensive to establish Islam as the ruler in the U.S. "Stealth Jihad," which he describes in detail in his book of that name.

Jihad in common parlance means violent war against unbelievers, which, according to Mohammad, is to be unrelenting until victory is achieved. Stealth Jihad is part of that same war, but it is being being waged by non-violent means. Among other things, it involves raising money for "charity," which gets funneled to support terrorist organizations and Islamic fighters in other parts of the world -- as well as Stealth Jihad in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere..

A major victory was won last week in a Dallas courtroom when the Holy Land Foundation and several of its leaders were found guilty of knowingly funding the terrorist organization Hamas in Gaza. During the course of this trial and a prior one it was revealed that the Holy Land Foundation was but one of up to 70 Islamic organizations in a network established by the Muslim Brotherhood to undermine the United States from within with the ultimate goal of replacing the U.S. Constituton with Islamic law, Sharia. To be specific, the goal is to conduct in the United States

"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 Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

Continue reading "AMERICAN ISLAMIC SUPREMACISTS CONVICTED OF FUNDING TERRORISM"

If President Obama (after January 20) closes Guantanomo, where is he going to put those guys?

As everyone but President-elect B. Hussein Obama's base knows, many of the Guantanamo detainees cannot be sent to their home countries, cannot be released and cannot be tried. They need to be held in some form of extra-legal limbo the rest of their lives, sort of like Phil Spector.

Will we send them all to Afghanistan where they can resume jihad? Does anyone -- except some nutty judge -- want them released in the United States if no one will take them?

One story illustrates the challenge.

TERRORISTS' RESTLESS LEG SYNDROME

Guantanamo detainees not exactly philanthropists
by Ann Coulter
November 26, 2008

I thought the rest of the world was going to love us if we elected B. Hussein Obama! Somebody better tell the Indian Muslims.

As everyone but President-elect B. Hussein Obama's base knows, many of the Guantanamo detainees cannot be sent to their home countries, cannot be released and cannot be tried. They need to be held in some form of extra-legal limbo the rest of their lives, sort of like Phil Spector.

And now they're Obama's problem.

Continue reading "GUANTANAMO TO BE CLOSED? WHERE DO 'THEY' GO?"

Geert Wilders, the outspoken Dutch parliamentarian, sat down with the Wall Street Journal to discuss the invasion of Europe by Muslims and the danger presented by European multiculturists who claim all cultures are equal and denigrate their own civilization. We posted Wilders' plea to the Dutch parliament to act and his must-see short film Fitna earlier.

As he sees it, the West suffers from an excess of toleration for those who do not share its tradition of tolerance. "We believe that -- 'we' means the political elite -- that all cultures are equal," he says. "I believe this is the biggest disease today facing Europe. . . . We should wake up and tell ourselves: You're not a xenophobe, you're not a racist, you're not a crazy guy if you say, 'My culture is better than yours.' A culture based on Christianity, Judaism, humanism is better. Look at how we treat women, look at how we treat apostates, look at how we go with the separation of church and state. I can give you 500 examples why our culture is better."

Already Muslims in the Netherlands are 6% of the population and a tipping point is close,he believes.

He acknowledges that "the majority of Muslims in Europe and America are not terrorists or violent people." But he says "it really doesn't matter that much, because if you don't define your own culture as the best, dominant one, and you allow through immigration people from those countries to come in, at the end of the day you will lose your own identity and your own culture, and your society will change. And our freedom will change -- all the freedoms we have will change

We have just seen what ten determined Islamic terrorists can do to a city of 15 million in India.

Wilders says all the circumlocution about the Global War on Terror is missing the point.

Since 9/11, American political leaders have struggled with the question of how to describe the ideology of the enemy without making enemies of the world's billion or so Muslims. The various terms they have tried -- "Islamic extremism," "Islamism," "Islamofascism" -- have fallen short of both clarity and melioration. Melioration is not Mr. Wilders's highest priority, and to him the truth couldn't be clearer: The problem is Islam itself. "I see Islam more as an ideology than as a religion," he explains.(emphasis added)

What would he do?

He says he would end Muslim immigration to the Netherlands but work to assimilate those already there.

A key requirement of Wilders' would be to give up the Koran, from which the problem that is Islam springs. Islam, he believes, is an ideology, much as HItler's National Socialism was..Since the Koran is the ideology's handbook inciting hatred and violence it should be outlawed.

A proposal to halt Muslim immigration into the United States and to work to assimilate those already here has been made as well by an American scholar of Islam Hugh Fitzgerald.

Read all of the Wilders interview.

From NRO's The Corner yesterday, November 28th:

Both of the above [Mark Steyn]

Andy [McCarty] wrote yesterday about our confused thinking re events in Bombay:

The obsession over whether al Qaeda or its endless jumble of affiliates pulled off the operation is a misguided attempt to mimimize the challenge. The bin Laden network is not unimportant, but it is tapping into something that is much bigger than itself.

We're reluctant to address that "bigger than itself" elephant. All jihad is local: If rockets are fired at Israel, it's a failure to settle the Palestinian question. If an NHS doctor drives a flaming Cherokee into the check-in desk at Glasgow Airport, it must be Tony Blair's foreign policy. The Jerusalem Post's headline writer poses the question:

Homegrown Terror Or International Jihad?

False choice. The answer is: Homegrown terror in the service of international jihad. Clearly, India has had a Muslim problem to one degree or another in the 60 years since partition, but increasingly those locally driven grievances have been absorbed within the global pan-Islamic ideology. What strikes you, as the dust clears in Bombay, is that one assault provided an umbrella for manifestations of almost every strain of Muslim grievance.

There's the local element - the fatal shooting of the city's anti-terror squad, and other prominent officials. There's the crusader element - the targeting of British and American passport holders. There's the Jew-hating element - the Munich massacre nesting within the more general carnage.

And there are the more ironic nuances of jihad: British subjects were to be found not just among the victims but among the perpetrators.

To pose the question as that Jerusalem Post headline is to miss the point. Moreover, the global ideologues correctly see our determination to attribute every attack to purely local phenomena unconnected to any bigger picture as a sign of weakness.

This can't be said often enough:

In so many of the reports about Islamic terrorist attacks the media wonders what the connection to Osama Bin Laden might be. The answer is simple: In all cases the connection is the Koran. All Islamic true believers are doing what the Koran says and Mohammad commanded: Wage unrelenting war against the infidels untiil Islam rules supreme over the world.

Islamic supremacism is mandated by the Koran and Mohammad, the "perfect man" as Muslims call him, whose example provides all the latitude for violence one can imagine. As Muslims learn more about their core ideology, more true believers who become a danger to the world are born. At heart, Islam is a political ideology carrying a religious banner to justify its expansionism by whatever means work, including murder. Conquering the world today requires such things as instilling fear to force submission, damaging if not destroying economies, assassinating leaders and undermining the values of targeted civilizations, be it Europe's or that of the United States.

Among the 1.3 billion Muslims in the world are many good people who simply believe in one god and live good lives. They probably have never read the Koran or the Hadith (the sayings and doings of Mohammad). It's when they do that problems can arise. Saudi Arabia has spent and is spending tens of billions around the world to "educate" those who are in ignorance.

Among those killed by the Islamic terrorists were a young Jewish rabbi (29) and his wife (28). Both were Americans.

Wealthy foreigners in luxury hotels were among the principal targets in the Mumbai Islamic attacks. But so were Jews, rich or poor.

The bodies of Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka were found after Indian commandos seized Nariman House from the militants today.

Their deaths were confirmed by Rabbi Zalman Schmotkin, a spokesman for Chabad Lubavitch, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish group that ran the centre.

The couple's two-year-old son, Moshe Holtzberg, managed to escape with the centre's cook, Sandra Samuel, yesterday morning. The toddler is now with his grandparents.

In so many of the reports about Islamic terrorist attacks the media wonders what the connection to Osama Bin Laden might be. The answer is simple: In all cases the connection is the Koran. All Islamic true believers are doing what the Koran says and Mohammad commanded: Wage unrelenting war against the infidels untiil Islam rules supreme over the world.

This map shows India at the center, Pakistan and Afghanistan to the west and Bangladesh (dark green) to the east. Mumbai is on the west coast of India about halfway down. Click on the map to get a bigger picture.

Pakistan and Bangladesh are almost 100% Muslim; their non-Muslim populations have shrunk ever sent the Great Partition when the British left in 1948. Those who weren't killed have fled; only a handful remain and they are persecuted.

India has the third largest number of Muslims (130-150m)in the world after Indonesia (200m) and Pakistan (173M). Bangladesh has the fourth largest Muslim population (124m).

Amir Taheri is an exiled Iranian who writes frequently about Iran, Islam and Islamic supremacism. He is immensely well-informed and his insights on the situation in India are very much worth reading.

Mumbai attacks: the terrorists' tactics

As India burns, Amir Taheri examines how radical Islamists may be changing their tactics to inspire home-grown jihadists

Amir Taheri
28 Nov 2008
Telegraph, London

The Army of Muhammad is back. This was the message buzzing in radical Islamist circles yesterday as the world tried to absorb the shock of the terrorist attacks in Bombay, India's economic capital.

While it is not yet clear which group was behind the attacks, it looks as if the perpetrators were trying to imitate the tactic of ghazwa, used by the Prophet against Meccan caravans in his decade-long campaign to seize control of the city.

The tactic consists of surprise no-holds-barred attacks simultaneously launched against a caravan or settlement with the aim of demoralising the enemy and hastening his capitulation.

The Bombay attacks differed from previous terror operations in India in a number of ways. In the past, one approach had been to place explosive-packed devices in crowded places with the aim of killing large numbers at random. Another was suicide attacks on specific targets by lone "volunteers for martyrdom".

This time, however, the approach was "symphonic", in the sense that it involved different types of operations blended together.

Involved in the operations were men who had placed explosives at selected points. But there were also gunmen operating in classic military style by seizing control of territory at symbolically significant locations along with hostages. Then there were militants prepared to kill, and be killed, in grenade attacks against security forces.

Whoever designed the operations had another important Islamic tactic in mind: tabarra or exoneration.

This consists of separating the "outsider", in this case the British and American "infidel", from the community with the intent of blaming them for the ills of the world before sacrificing them. It was no accident that one of the places attacked was a Jewish centre, where gunmen seized a rabbi and several members of the congregation as hostages.

The loud message was that a small group of individuals could turn a megalopolis of almost 15 million inhabitants into a battlefield for at least a day.

Terrorism is a beast with an extraordinary ability to mutate. As soon as its victims have learnt to cope with its methods, it develops new ones. Groups of anarchists throwing bombs follow the lone assassin who would target a king or a political leader. The hijacking of passenger jets is replaced by the transformation of aircraft into missiles against fixed targets.

All the time, the intention is to terrorise the largest number of people, eroding the ordinary man's confidence in the ability of the authorities to protect him, and, in the long run, persuading a majority of the people, who just want to live their lives, to trade their freedom for the security that the terrorist promises in his utopia.

Although new to India, the tactic of "symphonic" attacks has been tried in a number of other countries in the past decade, notably Algeria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, at times with devastating effects.

Most recently, it was tried, on a smaller scale, by the Taliban in the Afghan city of Qala-Mussa. Theoretically, the tactic could be used in any city, from Bombay to New York, passing through London and Paris.

On Wednesday, it was obvious that India's various anti-terror units were surprised, unable to cope with methods of operations not mentioned in their manuals.

So far the only claim of responsibility has came from a hitherto unknown group using the name the "Deccan Mujahedin".

This may be a cover for other groups, perhaps the Lashkar Tayyiba (the Army of the Pure) and the Jaish Muhammad (the Army of Muhammad), two terrorist organisations created by the Pakistani military intelligence services.

Earlier this year, in one of his last acts as president, Pervez Musharraf announced the dissolution of both, but it is possible that the two groups and their backers in the Pakistani military and intelligence elite have returned to the market under a new brand, with new tactics.

The attacks came 48 hours after Pakistan's new president, Asif Ali Zardari, practically threw away 50 years of Pakistani policy by announcing his readiness to end the dispute with India over Kashmir.

Zardari is an ethnic Baluch who, unlike previous Pakistani leaders who had Indian backgrounds, has no direct family history in pre-partition India. As a result, he is not as sensitive on Kashmir as his predecessors.

The Bombay attacks could be a message to Zardari that, though he may be uninterested in Kashmir, the issue is still central to many in Pakistan.

The new label used may also be significant. Deccan, a region in south-central India, was the intellectual and cultural capital of Indian Islam for centuries.

By using the term "Deccan Mujahedin", the terrorists may be trying to pass two messages. First, that the Islamist movement is no longer interested only in Kashmir but intends to strive for the reconquest of the whole of India for Islam.

This runs in line with the new pan-Islamist thinking that propagates the will to recover all lands once ruled by Muslims – from India to Spain and southern France, passing by Siberia, parts of Russia and the Balkans. "Deccan" designates a movement that has universal aspirations precisely because it claims local roots.

The designation is also intended to show that India now has a home-grown Islamist terror movement.

This started to form more than a decade ago after Hindu nationalists won power in New Delhi through the BJP and its radical anti-Muslim allies. The Islamist terror movement has adopted what is known as the Matryoshka method, after the Russian dolls nested one into another. The outer and bigger doll in this case is the Students' Islamic Movement of India (Simi), which claims millions of members.

Indian authorities call Simi an antechamber of terrorism. Within it are nested other dolls in the form of cultural associations, charities and political lobby groups. The smallest and deadliest doll represents the kind of groups that may have been behind these attacks.

The need for a home-grown terror movement in India may have been further emphasised by the success of the US-led coalition in destroying virtually all Islamist training bases and safe havens in Afghanistan.

With Pakistan also becoming inhospitable, partly thanks to Zardari's apparent determination to move his country close to both India and the United States, Indian Islamists are forced to look for training centres and safe havens at home.

While many have mentioned al-Qaeda as the perpetrator of the latest attacks, the connection is not easy to establish.

Many experts believe al-Qaeda has ceased to exist as an organisation, although it survives as a model and inspiration. Al-Qaeda's number two, the Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been calling on militants to refocus their efforts on winning power in Muslim countries such as India, which is home to 150 million Muslims, and thus the [third] largest "Muslim" country in the world, [after Indonesia and Pakistan].

This is in contrast with Osama bin Laden's theory that the US and its Western allies must be prime targets because, if they fall, the world system they dominate will disintegrate, opening the way for Islam's final triumph.

It is possible that al-Zawahiri's writings influenced the Bombay attackers. But it is unlikely that he and al-Qaeda had any direct role in planning or executing them.

There are other reasons why India is targeted. Over the past five years, it has emerged as the largest aid donor to Afghanistan and the second most important backer of President Hamid Karzai's regime after the US.

The buzz in jihadist circles is that once the US and its allies have left, India will emerge as the principal foreign power behind the new democracy in Afghanistan. India is already playing a leading role in training and equipping the new Afghan army and police.

India has also moved from its traditional anti-Americanism to a new policy of close friendship with the US. Earlier this year, India signed a landmark nuclear co-operation agreement, paving the way for massive purchases of American military hardware in the future.

In jihadist circles, the new Indian economic boom is often described as the "House of the Spider", a reference to a sura of the same name in the Koran, Islam's holy book. On Wednesday, the attackers may have wished to show the flimsy nature of the "House of the Spider" by attacking Bombay, the engine of India's economic transformation.

However, if that was the intention, the terrorists are likely to be disappointed. Bombay and India in general have been victims of terror before, although not in so spectacular a fashion. And yet they have managed to absorb the shock and move ahead.

As always, the terrorists may end up like the man who, having won a great many tokens at the roulette table, is surprised when the casino tells him his winnings cannot be cashed.

Amir Taheri is author of 'Holy Terror: Inside the World of Islamic Terrorism'. His new book, 'The Persian Night', will be published next month.

A great many comments were posted by readers in response to this article. What follows is a representative sampling. Most were from Britain, though a few were from the U.S. The sentiments were similar.

***
The attack as it unfolds tells us it is multipurpose. It attacks Indian financial center, takes foreigners as hostages and also Jewish center is taken. so it is not easy to pinpoint, what exactly is its purpose. It may be just that by this attack, it tells us that Islamists want to tell the world, that be forewarned and Islamists is on the rise again everyone else.
Posted by Satish K Batta on November 27, 2008 12:27 PM
***
“Add to this chaotic background the fact that sections of India's disgruntled 130m-strong Muslim minority have proved highly receptive to the extremists message and you are left with near perfect-storm conditions for an outbreak of terrorist activity."

India has already had three wars with Muslim Pakistan, (the 1947–48 War, 1965 War and 1971 War) and regular border skirmishes with Islamic Kashmir. I would imagine that many are already uneasy about such a large Muslim minority of around 13.5 %. Conversely Hindus only make up 2.5 % of Pakistans population and are a victimised minority with forced conversions and intimidation being a regular occurrence.
link Pakistan.htm.

This is not lost on Indian Hindus and lacking the excruciating finessing of political correctness and human rights we exersise in the West will eventually tire of this ridiculous situation and react. Meanwhile the US is nipping at Pakistan's lawless north-west borders leaving Pakistan in a situation of painting themselves into a very dangerous corner. What then?

This is not going away, it is all part of the global jihad which is patently manifesting itself in a multitude of guises. From the UN's OIC inspired censorship of so called defamation of Islam which, quite frighteningly will place Islam in a position of unassailability from any critisism to the violence we see on a daily basis committed by Islamists it is clear that Islam is once again on the march to global power. We must join the dots and remove our masks. The days of 'teaching the world to sing' are well and truly over. The use of Kumbaya against Kalashnikovs is simply not working as Churchill foretold. Here
is his view in 1899 and how true it still is?

'How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident
habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of
commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the
followers of the Prophet rule or live.

A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and
refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that
in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man
as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a
concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the
faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the
influence of the religion paralyses the social development of
those who follow it.

No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from
being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and
proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central
Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not
that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science,
the science against which it had vainly struggled, the
civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization
of ancient Rome.'

***
He talks of our defence in the 'arms of science' but Pakistan
already has that nuclear science, stolen by AQ Khan fom his
Netherlands workplace and Iran is gearing up to join the club
so, quoting another 20th cetury titan, what is to be done?
***
Listening to the BBC news on five this morning. No mention of who was responsible for this attack. All we were told that it was "gunmen". No mention that it was Islamic-inspired gunmen! Now,did the BBC not genuinely know who might have been responsible, or did this reticence stem from a desire not to rock any boats, upset any applecarts etc!
Posted by ray douglas on November 27, 2008 4:12 PM
***
Dar al Islam = House of Islam (submission)

Dar al Harb = House of War

These are the only 2 realities according to their 'prophet'. Go read it in his 'holy' book.

With a leading UK barrister calling for the incorporation of Sharia Law - appeasement & capitulation no less- I wonder how long before Britain becomes Balkanised or submits totally to Dar al Islam.

Socialism = Failure

Reject Christ at your own peril.
Return to Him for He is the only True Hope.
Posted by Ming Ye on November 27, 2008 4:32 PM
***

Between January 2004 and March 2007 the death toll from terrorist attacks in India was 3,674, second only to Iraq during the same period, according to the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington. At last the world has woken and taken notice as few westerners have died. Every year hundreds are killed by the islamic militants and india has been trying to bring it to the international attention. We had our 9/11 ten years before america in bombay. If you look at the history of the mugal invasion of india, 60-80 million hindus were slaughtered as they refused to convert to islam. Persecution is a lame excuse, but main aim of the jihadists is to convert the world to Dar ul Islam.
Posted by pranit on November 27, 2008 5:25 PM
***
There appear to be few places in this world, that followers of that peace loving religion of Islam are not butchering their fellow human beings.
Posted by Agnostic. on November 27, 2008 6:03 PM
***
What are 120M of them doing in India? When they insisted upon Partition, to the great distress of Ghandi, they got it after a few fracas where 1M people died.

They've got their Muslim country now, it's called Pakistan; why don't they go there if they are so 'oppressed'?

Wherever there is Islam, there is trouble and bloodshed. When are the rest of us going to stop pussy-footing around these manic butchers.
Posted by Graham King on November 27, 2008 12:02 PM
***

A clever Brit whipped up the following visual right after the attacks attributing the violence to the spirit of Bin Laden. Bin Laden almost certainly had nothing to do with the attacks.

For some reason the Minneapolis-St.Paul area has become the number one gathering point for legal and illegal Somalis to settle in the United States. Virtually all are Muslims. Somali taxi drivers have been in the news recently for refusing to pick up passengers at the international airport who were carrying alcoholic beverages. They also wanted to refuse passengers with dogs (even seeing-eye dogs). Such actions are part of the Stealth Jihad underway in this country to gradually change our culture to an Islamic one. Such a transformation is quite far advanced in Europe. Other examples in the U.S. are Wal-Mart cashiers not being required to ring up sales of pork products and Harvard having women-only gym hours for Muslim students. There are many more.

Now there is a report of a Minneapolis Somali, a naturalized American, who returned to Somali to join with the Islamist forces at war to install Islamic law throughout the country, who has killed himself in a suicide attack. Where did he become infused with Islamic supremacist zeal? At a mosque in Minneapolis? Here's the report:

11/25/2008 10:25:29 PM
KSTP Channel 5
By: Sam Zeff, Assistant News Director; Bob McNaney, Investigative Reporter; Nicole Muehlhausen, Web Producer

FEDS: Twin Cities man behind Somalia bombing

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has learned that federal law enforcement sources believe that a Twin Cities man blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Northern Somalia last month.
The FBI and Homeland Security are investigating whether Shirwa Ahmed had developed a terrorist recruiting network in the area.

5 EYEWITNESS NEWS learned that Ahmed came to the Twin Cities in 1996 and graduated from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen.

More than a dozen young men of Somali descent, mostly in their 20s, from the Minneapolis area have recently disappeared, U.S. law enforcement officials tell 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS. All are thought to be associates of Ahmed. U.S. officials suspect most of the young men have departed for Somalia to fight in ongoing violence there or to train in terrorist camps. Family members of the young men are said to be distraught, trying to figure to out what happened to them, sources say.

So far, the investigation has not uncovered credible evidence of a plot targeting the U.S. but American officials want to track down all these young men before they can say for certain what this is or is not, according to ABC News. Sources say the situation is being closely monitored by senior law enforcement and intelligence officials in Washington.

CIA Director Michael Hayden recently voiced his concern about increased fighting in Somalia and the Horn of Africa and the desire of Al Qaeda to strengthen it's ties in Somalia.

"In East Africa, Al Qaeda's engaging Somali extremists to revitalize operations," said Hayden. "And while there clearly has not yet been an official merger, the leader of the al-Shabaab terrorist group is closely tied to al-Qa’ida. And the recent bombings in Somalia may have meant, at least in part, to strengthen the bona fides of this group with al-Qaeda's senior leaders. A merger between al-Shabaab and al-Qa’ida could give Somali extremists much needed funding while al-Qaeda could then claim to be re-establishing its operations based in East Africa. That's a base that was severely disrupted about two years ago when Ethiopia moved into Somalia."

Hugh Fitzgerald, the Vice President of the website Jihad Watch, had this to say:

What does it cost the FBI, the local police, the judicial system, to monitor sometimes around the clock, to hold enless meetings about, to investigate an actual plot or a completed crime, to prepare a criminal case, to hold a trial, to prosecute, to hold another trial if, given the ignorance and idiocy of so many juries, the first one goes awry, to defend an appeal, to lock someone up and support him for ten or twenty or fifty years, or life, to do all of these things, and many more, including fighting off every kind of lawsuit based on demands by Muslims for every kind of yielding and accommodation by non-Muslims whose political and legal institutions, whose way of life, those Muslims have nothing but contempt, and who do not share, who cannot possibly share, any sense of loyalty for the history of this nation, created as it was entirely by non-Muslims, and until the last few decades peopled entirely by non-Muslims, and based on principles and an idea of individual autonomy that are not merely foreign to Islam, but flatly contradicted by the principles of the Shari'a, the Holy Law of Islam which, Muslims are taught, should ultimately be imposed everywhere, for all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam -- which means the Shari'a -- must be removed, everywhere.

Why do we ask for more and more trouble? Can't we in the United States see what Muslims have done in Great Britain, in Germany, in the Netherlands, in Belgium, all over Western Europe? Is there a sane person in Western Europe who would not wish to turn the clock back, wish that the Pakistanis had never been allowed into Great Britain, the Moroccans and Turks into the Netherlands, the Algerians (and Moroccans and Tunisians) into France, the Somalis and Egyptians and Libyans into Italy, the Turks (and Moroccans) into Germany, and so on? Is there an honest Infidel who would dare to disagree with the statement that "the large-scale presence of Muslims in the countries of Western Europe has led to a situation, for both the indigenous non-Muslims, and for other, but non-Muslim, immigrants, that is much more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for them, than would be the case without that large-scale Muslim presence."

Will the Qu'ran change? Will the Hadith change? Will the facts of Muhammad's life, as recounted in the Muslim biographies, the Sira, change? If they cannot, because the Qur'an is the immutable word of God, and the Hadith were winnowed and assigned ranks of "authenticity" more than a thousand years ago by the most respected muhaddithin, then why should one entertain the wan hope that somehow, in some way, simply because it has just got to be, doesn't it, that Islam will change, or as Tariq Ramadan, that snake, likes to put it, without ever explaining what he means, a "European Islam" can be created, without of course telling us what texts, what tenets, what attitudes, what atmospherics in this "European Islam" would differ from the Islam of North Africa, or the Middle East, or of Muslims in Pakistan or Bangladesh or Indonesia.

Are we not entitled to ask that those in the government take notice of reality, and cease to allow Muslims into our country, where they can only increase that unpleasantness, that skyrocketing expense, that ominous threat of physical insecurity? What does it take to get the government to respond to our most essential needs and desires? What?

The infiltration of an alien ideology incompatible with the U.S. Constituion is a serious and growing problem almost universally ignored by the federal government and the media. In some countries of Europe, such as the Netherlands and perhaps France, it may already too late. Popular resistance is growing in Europe, but it has not been joined by officialdom in any country as yet and certainly not by the bureaucrats in Brussels who run the European Union. In the U.S., the debate must begin. It is a matter of national security.

As we have reported again and again, the Islamic war of conquest is global and aimed at all non-Muslims. India has suffered from Islamic warfare for centuries; it is estimated that some 80 million Hindus were killed by Muslim invaders and occupiers before they were driven out.

Today's attacks in Mumbai (Bombay) are intended to bring down the government, deliver a body body to tourism and the economy, sow fear, discord, anger and chaos.

Muslims constitute 10 to 15% of India's population, which translates into some 110 to 160 million. How many of those are active terrorists or supportive of such terrorists is unknown.

n addition, suspicions about recent murderous Islamic attacks inside India have centered on Muslims from Pakistan. Pakistan itself has become a target of homegrown Islamic supremacists as well as of terrorists leaving Iraq. To this point, the Indian government has, incredibly from an American point of view, treated these attacks as business as usual, sort of a nuisance, a large nuisance to be sure, but a nuisance nonetheless.

The decades-long insurrection by Muslims in Indian-controlled Kashmir has resulted in thousands of deaths. Kashmiri terrorists have been arrested staging terrorist attacks outside Kashmir elsewhere in India.

What's difference about today's attacks is the level of sophistication and its magnitude. Will this shake the Indian government out of its torpor?

Will it also have the effect of making the U.S. government finally acknowledge that the terrorism and other attacks being fought worldwide are Islamic in nature, flowing from the core documents of Islam?

Rumors are surfacing that similar attacks are in preparation for New York City's subway system during the holidays. Hugh Hewitt reminds us:

When highly coordinated attacks like those in India unfold, the families of victims have to wonder whether the attacks might have been prevented but for the blows to surveillance of terrorism suspects brought about by leaks such as those involving the Swift program that tracked terrorist financing. The New York Times defended its actions and those of the Los Angeles Times at the time, but it is in the aftermath of deadly attacks that we should all revisit the recklessness of MSM in dealing with such matters.

No one will ever be able to prove whether an uncompromised Swift program might have penetrated such a big ring of terrorists, but at the time of the controversy, I did interview the Los Angeles Times' Doyle McManus, who admitted that the story might have helped terrorists elude capture. When hell breaks loose, we ought to remind ourselves that the media has in the past decided for itself when security could be breached.

The villains are the terrorists, of course, but their lives are made easier by every leak of a national security secret.

The Middle East's preeminent political analyst Caroline Glick, who writes for the Jerusalem Post, says her fears of Obama's true intent with respect to the Middle East are being realized. To win Jewish votes he seemed to shun his anti-Israeli advisers as the election neared, but it now appears that the two most virulent opponents of Israel's right to exist are deeply involved in Obama's foreign policy. The signals emanating from the Obama campaign suggest that the first target of Obama's new foreign policy will be Israel, forcing it to give way to Palestinian demands. Closely related is what appears to be Obama's desire to "reconcile" with Iran's ayatollahs.

As Glick logically asks, what wil Obama offer up to Iran for renewed relations and a supposed end to its nuclear weapons program?

As for direct talks with Iran itself, the question immediately arises, what could Obama offer Teheran in exchange for an end to its nuclear program that Bush hasn't already offered?

What it can offer is Israel.

We predicted exactly that before the election, but enough of the electorate was so giddy with the idea of electing what some call the first affirmative action president to not care much about who he was or what he stood for.

Therefore, Israel finds itself in a deadly race for survival: Iran is feverishly pushing ahead with its nuclear weapons program, which is an existential threat to Israel. Israel has two dates of urgent consequence ahead -- January 20th when the new Obama policy can begin to be implemented and February 10th, when Israel elects a new government. If Israel elects a Netanyahu govenment it can save itself. If not, Israel will be at the mercy of Iran and Obama.

Prominent American Jewish supporters of Israel now rightly fear Obama will "throw Israel under the bus." That possibility was quite obvious before November 4th, yet 78% of American Jews voted for Obama.

Some hope that Obama's Jewish chief of staff Rahm Emaneul will prevent that from happening. But Emanuel was a chief aide to President Clinton when he forced Israel to offer virtually all of Judea and Sumaria and East Jerusalem to Arafat in his last minute push for a peace agreement. Fortunately for Israel, Arafat refused (showing he really didn't want peace, he wanted all of Israel gone, as does his successor Mahmoud Abbas.)

Update:

Did we say "giddy?"

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post says the press on Obama is showing "a giddy sense of boosterism." Will honest reporting every return?

Continue reading "ISRAEL FACES THE OBAMA PERIL"

Joe Biden incredibly -- except the Senate's number one dunce keeps doing this, so how can it be incredible? -- predicts with 100% certainty that President Barack Obama will be tested within his first six months in a "manufactured crisis" to see how he responds and seems to suggest that Obama will flunk that test. If that what VP nominee Biden thinks, that's a firm recommendation of why McCain should be president.

Sarah Palin felt she should discuss this strange statement.

The text:

Two weeks from today, Americans will be asked to cast their vote for the next president of the United States. There’s no time to wait. Let’s get right to it.

Did you hear what Senator Biden said at a fundraiser on Sunday? He guaranteed that if Barack Obama is elected, we’ll face an international crisis within the first six months of their administration. He told Democrat donors to mark his words – that there were “at least four or five scenarios” that would place our country at risk in an Obama administration. Thanks for the warning, Joe!

He didn’t specify what all those four or five scenarios will be, but for clues, let’s review the Obama foreign policy agenda.

Our opponent wants to sit down with the world’s worst dictators. With no preconditions, he proposes to meet with a regime in Teheran that vows to “wipe Israel off the map.” Let’s call that crisis scenario number one.

Senator Obama has also advocated sending our U.S. military into Pakistan without the approval of the Pakistani government. Invading the sovereign territory of a troubled partner in the war against terrorism. We’ll call that scenario number two.

He opposed the surge strategy that has finally brought victory in Iraq within sight. He’s voted to cut off funding for our troops, leaving our young men and women at grave risk. He wants to pull out, leaving some 25 million Iraqis at the mercy of Iranian-supported Shiite extremists and al Qaeda in Iraq. By his own admission, this could mean our troops would have to go back to Iraq. Crisis scenario number three.

After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence – the kind of response that would only encourage Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine next. That would be crisis scenario number four.

But I guess the looming crisis that most worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden’s next speaking engagement. Let’s call that crisis scenario number five.

The real problem is that these warnings from Joe Biden are similar to his earlier assessment of Barack Obama. It wasn’t so long ago that he said Barack Obama wasn’t up to the job, and that, quote, “the presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.”

The same Joe Biden said he would be honored to run on the ticket with John McCain because, quote, “the country would be better off.” And here we have some common ground. I want a president who spent 22 years in uniform defending our country. I want a president who isn’t afraid to use the word “victory” when he talks about the wars we are fighting. I want a president who’s ready on Day One. I want a president with the experience and the judgment and the wisdom to meet the next international crisis – or better yet to avoid it. I want John McCain as our commander-in-chief.

Unrepentant terrorist bomber (Pentagon, Capitol) William Ayers and Obama were friends and colleagues from at least 1995. Ayers to this day expresses his hatred of America (the thought of which makes him "want to puke") and has worked continually since his terrorist bombing days to destroy the American system. Ayers calls himself "a small "c" communist."

In 1995 Ayers conned a charity into giving $50 million to a new organization he formed to make socialist revolutionaries out of Chicago school teachers and children. Who did he pick to chair the board of the new organization to dispense the money to the left-wing, socialist groups that would do the indoctrination? Barack Obama, fresh out of Harvard Law School.

What better indication of the soul mates they were than for Ayers to trust that Obama would send the money to fellow socialist revolutionaries? And over the next several years at that new organization and another one that Obama chaired (with Ayers on the board), that's just what Obama did to the tune of more than $160 million -- and bragged about it in written reports. (ACORN, the violent intimidator of banks and bankers and voter registration fraud expert, was one of Obama gift recipients. As was Jeremiah Wright's and Obama's racist church).

For Obama to say he really didn't know Ayers is not a joke but a lie.

It’s an old saying that you are known by the company you keep. When any candidate for public office emerges, the candidate’s record, his positions, his promises and his associations are all looked at. The slimmer the record, the more important associations are.

There is a good deal that is unsettling about Obama’s history – his admitted Marxist socialist associations in high school, college and his community organizing days, his easy comfort with black power haters of white America such as Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan and his friendship with others with a record of continuing hatred of America, such as unrepentant terrorists William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

While Obama tried to shrug Ayers and Dohrn off as just folks in the ‘hood, in fact there had been a close working relationship between Obama and the terrorists going back to at least 1995.

Obama kicked off his first campaign for the Illinois state senate in 1995 in the Ayers/Dohrn home. In 1995 Ayers established the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and named Obama as Chairman of the Board, a post he held till 2000. A study showed the $110 million CAC spent on trying to inculcate radical ideas into Chicago schools had a negligible effect. (Friends of Obama blocked a distinguished researcher from Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center from gaining access to the public records of the CAC, but the resulting uproar caused the University of Illinois, Chicago to step in to allow such access. Interesting information is sure to follow.)

From 1999 to 2002 Obama served together with Ayers as paid directors on the board of a left wing foundation, the Woods Fund. During the time that Obama was a director, the Woods Fund made generous contributions to an Arab group founded by Obama friend and campaign contributor Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, a supporter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization while it was labeled by the U.S. State Department as a terror group; Khalidi explained he hosted an Obama fundraiser and gave him money because he was sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. The group in question, the Arab American Action Network, subscribes to the notion that the establishment of the state of Israel was a catastrophe.

So the myth peddled by the Obama campaign about the Obama/Ayers ties is just that, a myth.

As the outlines of the Obama/Ayers relationship get filled in by independent researchers, the Obama campaign has reacted hysterically, doing all it can to cut off all discussion of Obama-Ayers, from flooding talk radio shows with threatening phone calls and emails to urging federal prosecutors to bring legal action to cut off free speech. As noted, supporters for a time were able to block access to the public records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge.

Ayers himself has sought to calm the storm and, like Obama, is telling the best story, not the true story.

Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor who sent the blind sheikh to prison for the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, has caught Ayers flat out in preposterous lies. Ayers said in a Fox News interview that he and his fellow terrorists didn’t really intend to hurt anybody, just bang up some property.

Absurd.

Three of Ayers' associates were killed when a bomb they were building – according to Ayers’ design – exploded. It was a nail bomb to be used to murder American soldiers at a dance at Fort Dix. If the plan had been successful, hundreds of lives would have been lost as the bomb tore “though windows and walls and, yes, people, too,” in the words of William Ayers.

Ayers described the Weatherman organization he was forming as “an American Red Army” the purpose of which was murder: Its ideology was, according to Ayers, “Kill all the rich people. Break up their cards and apartments. Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents.”

In his 2001 book Fugitive Days Ayers told of the glee he felt in the bombings of the Capitol building and the Pentagon – “the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them.” He also said in the book that America “makes me want to puke.”

McCarthy concludes:

These savages wanted to kill massively. That they killed only a few people owes to our luck and their incompetence, not design. They and the Democrat politicians who now befriend and serve them can rationalize that all they want. But those are the facts.

Despite the publicity surrounding the publication of Ayers’ book in 2001, including an article in the New York Times in which Ayers clearly said he was not sorry for what he had done and actually wished he had done more, the Obama/Ayers relationship continued. The unrepentant Ayers even was featured in 2001 on the cover of a Chicago area magazine standing on an American flag. Will Obama say he didn’t see that as he didn’t hear Reverend Wright slandering America?

At a gathering of “old” terrorists in 2007 Ayers and his wife Bernadine Dohrn were caught on tape waxing nostalgic for their “activist” days.

So Obama lied about his close association with this unrepentant terrorist and Ayers lied about what he intended with his bombings. What drew Obama and Ayers to each other? What world view did they share?

The same could be asked about Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright and other America haters such as Louis Farrakhan.

For the complete article by Andrew McCarthy exposing Ayers’ lies, read on.

Bill Ayers: Unrepentant LYING Terrorist
Andrew McCarthy in NROnline
August 27, 2008

[In a Fox News interview], Ayers preposterously claimed that he and his fellow Weather Underground terrorists did not really intend to harm any people — the fact that no one was killed in their 20 or so bombings was, he said, "by design"; they only wanted to cause property damage:

Between October 1969 and September 1973, the Weather Underground claimed credit for some twenty bombings across the country, in which no one was harmed — save the three cell members who perished in a Greenwich Village townhouse in March 1970, when one of their creations detonated prematurely. Ayers claimed the fact that no other individuals were killed as a result of the Weathermen’s actions was “by design.”

In his autobiography, Fugitive Days: A Memoir, Ayers recalled, he posed the question: “How far are you willing to take that step into what I consider the abyss of violence? And we really never did, except for that moment in the townhouse.… I actually think destroying property in the face of that kind of catastrophe is so — restrained. And I don’t see it as a big deal.

Right.

First of all, "that moment in the townhouse" he's talking about happened in 1970. Three of his confederates, including his then girlfriend Diana Oughton, were accidentally killed when the explosive they were building to Ayers specifications (Ayers was a bomb designer) went off during construction. As noted in Ayers' Discover the Networks profile, the explosive had been a nail bomb. Back when Ayers was being more honest about his intentions, he admitted that the purpose of that bomb had been to murder United States soldiers:

That bomb had been intended for detonation at a dance that was to be attended by army soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plan been successfully executed. Ayers attested that the bomb would have done serious damage, "tearing through windows and walls and, yes, people too."(emphasis added)

In fact, Ayers was a founder of the Weatherman terror group and he defined its purpose as carrying out murder. Again, from Discover the Networks:

Characterizing Weatherman as "an American Red Army," Ayers summed up the organization's ideology as follows: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, Kill your parents."

Now he wants you to think they just wanted to break a few dishes. But in his book Fugitive Days, in which he boasts that he "participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972," he says of the day that he bombed the Pentagon: "Everything was absolutely ideal. ... The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them."

And he wasn't singular. As I noted back in April in this article about Obama's motley collection of radical friends, at the Weatherman “War Council” meeting in 1969, Ayers' fellow terrorist and now-wife, Bernadine Dohrn, famously gushed over the barbaric Manson Family murders of the pregnant actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and three others: “Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!” And as Jonah recalled yesterday, "In appreciation, her Weather Underground cell made a threefingered 'fork' gesture its official salute." They weren't talking about scratching up the wall-paper.

A Weatherman affiliate group which called itself "the Family" colluded with the Black Liberation Army in the 1981 Brinks robbery in which two police officers and an armed guard were murdered. (Obama would like people to believe all this terrorist activity ended in 1969 when he was eight years old. In fact, it continued well into the eighties.) Afterwards, like Ayers and Dohrn, their friend and fellow terrorist Susan Rosenberg became a fugitive.

On November 29, 1984, Rosenberg and a co-conspirator, Timothy Blunk, were finally apprehended in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. At the time, they were actively planning an unspeakable bombing campaign that would have put at risk the lives of countless innocent people. They also possessed twelve assorted guns (including an Uzi 9 mm. semi-automatic rifle and an Ithaca twelve-gauge shotgun with its barrel sawed off), nearly 200 sticks of dynamite, more than 100 sticks of DuPont Trovex (a high explosive), a wide array of blasting agents and caps, batteries, and switches for explosive devices. Arrayed in disguises and offering multiple false identities to arresting officers, the pair also maintained hundreds of false identification documents, including FBI and DEA badges.

When she was sentenced to 58 years' imprisonment in 1985, the only remorse Rosenberg expressed was over the fact that she and Blunk had allowed themselves to be captured rather than fighting it out with the police. Bernadine Dohrn was jailed for contempt when she refused to testify against Rosenberg. Not to worry, though. On his last day in office, the last Democrat president, Bill Clinton, pardoned Rosenberg — commuting her 58-year sentence to time-served.

These savages wanted to kill massively. That they killed only a few people owes to our luck and their incompetence, not design. They and the Democrat politicians who now befriend and serve them can rationalize that all they want. But those are the facts.

.

September 11, 2001 was a public declaration that the 1400-year war proclaimed by Mohammad against the rest of the world had entered a new and very dangerous phase.

This war is being waged every day throughout the world, usually not making headlines, but being proclaimed anew and plotted in mosques in such places as London, Paris, Barcelona, Copenhagen, New York and Islamabad.

The goal of the war of Islamic supremacism is global rule, with, in the United States, the Constitution being replaced by Sharia, Islamic law.

The enemy is patient, clever and determined and works not only through warfare and terror, but also quietly by such techniques as demands for special treamtment and cries of victimhood and discrimination, using our very openness, tolerance, political correctness and laws to subvert our way of life.

We cannot forget, we cannot rest.

Iranian exile Amir Tahiri takes the occasion of a joint visit by McCain and Obama to Ground Zero to contrast their views on the existential threat of Islam to the rest of the world. McCain calls it the "transcendent challenge" of our times. Obama doesn't see it.

WHEN all is said and done, this election may well have only one big issue: the existential threat that Islamist terrorism poses to America's safety. Since McCain and Obama offer radically different policies for facing that threat, American voters do have a real choice.

Tahiri's article:

THE LESSONS OF 9/11 By AMIR TAHERI in the New York Post

September 11, 2008 --
TODAY's joint visit to Ground Zero may give the impression that John McCain and Barack Obama share a common analysis of the causes of 9/11 and how to deal with its legacy. They don't.

The divide starts with the question: Why was America attacked?

McCain's answer is simple (or, as Obama might suggest, simplistic): The United States was attacked because a resurgent Islam has produced a radicalism that dreams of world conquest and sees America as the enemy.

In different shapes and sizes and under a range of labels, that radical streak of Islam has waged war on America since 1979, when Khomeinists seized the US embassy in Tehran and held its diplomats hostage for 444 days.

The killing of 241 Marines in Beirut in 1983, the first World Trade Center attack in 1993 and a host of other operations that claimed more American lives were episodes in a war - the reality of which the United States faced only after 9/11.

McCain doesn't hesitate to acknowledge that his country is engaged in a Global War on Terror. He doesn't believe that 9/11 might've been prompted by some wrong America did to others. To him, the nation was an innocent victim of "Islamic terrorism."

McCain asserts, "America faces a dedicated, focused and intelligent foe in the War on Terrorism. This enemy will probe to find America's weaknesses and strike against them. The United States cannot afford to be complacent about the threat, naive about terrorist intentions, unrealistic about their capabilities, or ignorant to our national vulnerabilities."

He'd pursue and fight these "enemies" wherever they are - including, especially, in Iraq. "If we run away," he says, "they are going to follow us home."

OBAMA, by contrast, doesn't use terms such as "the Global War on Terror" or "Islamic terrorism." Nor does he claim that America was simply an innocent victim.

In one speech, he used the image of a US helicopter flying over the poor countries in Africa and Asia, where it's seen as a symbol of oppression. He says his objective is to turn that helicopter into a symbol of American aid to the downtrodden.

For Obama, the threat comes not from terrorists but from "extremists" and their "program of hate." He never uses such terms as "jihadist," judging them hurtful to Muslims. He speaks of "violent extremists who are a small minority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims."

In one speech, he claimed that the Islamists aim only at "creating a repressive caliphate." He seemingly hasn't heard of jihadist movements whose declared aim is to destroy the United States in the name of Islam.

For McCain, the War on Terror is a "just war" in which Americans fight for their security and their allies'. Obama rejects the concept of "just war." He dismisses the Iraq war as both "unnecessary and unjust" - though the struggle in Afghanistan is "a necessary war."

ONE constant Obama theme is the claim that poverty and economic factors breed terrorism; this echoes the analysis of Jimmy Carter back in the '70s. Strengthening that impression is Obama's pick of Sen. Joseph Biden as running mate.

Read it all.

Doctor Sowell is blessed with practical wisdom and the ability to express his thoughts with great clarity. We are the beneficiaries of his gifts. Today he focuses on the Left's world and the real world.

September 09, 2008, 6:00 a.m.

Grow Up
The vision of the Left.

By Thomas Sowell

Conservatives, as well as liberals, would undoubtedly be happier living in the kind of world envisioned by the Left.

Very few people have either a vested interest or an ideological preference for a world in which there are many inequalities.

Even fewer would prefer a world in which vast sums of money have to be devoted to military defense, when so much benefit could be produced if those resources were directed into medical research instead.

It is hardly surprising that young people prefer the political Left. The only reason for rejecting the Left’s vision is that the real world in which we live is very different from the world that the Left perceives today or envisions for tomorrow.

Most of us learn that from experience — but experience is precisely what the young are lacking.

“Experience” is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were making, only after the realities of the world made us pay a painful price for being wrong.

Continue reading "DREAM IN THE LEFT'S WORLD, LIVE IN THE REAL WORLD"

How does the leading analyst of the Middle East Caroline Glick view the Obama/Biden ticket? She asks whether the addition of Biden as VP nominee means Israel can trust Obama. Her unequivocal answer in effect is “Hell, no.”

OBAMA is currently receiving the support of some 57 percent of American Jews. Although this is less than any Democratic presidential nominee in recent memory, it is still disturbing that a large majority of American Jews support him. The Obama campaign no doubt hopes the Biden selection will shore up Jewish support.

It can only be hoped that despite their party loyalty and what they're telling pollsters, American Jews (indeed, American voters generally) will judge Biden and Obama by their records and positions.

Biden has consistently denied the threat emanating from Iran and Syria not only for Israel but for the U.S. as well. And Obama's statements and actions expose him as a man ill disposed not only toward Israel but America itself.

Here's her analysis.

With Biden On Board, Can Obama Be Trusted?
By Caroline Glick, Aug. 28, 2008

Many American Jewish observers welcomed Barack Obama's selection of Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice-presidential running mate. As a member of the Senate since 1973, and the serving chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden is a seasoned political player and foreign policy heavyweight. His experience, it is argued, will make up for Obama's inexperience; his moderate liberal views will make up for Obama's radical liberal views.

Biden has a track record of often supporting Israel. And as he entered the Democratic presidential primaries last year, he stepped up his pro-Israel pronouncements. In an interview with the Forward for instance, Biden rejected the anti-Israel call to distance the U.S. from Israel in a bid to ratchet up Arab support for the U.S. As he put it, "In my 34-year career, I have never wavered from the notion that the only time progress has ever been made in the Middle East is when the Arab nations have known that there is no daylight between us and Israel. So the idea of being an 'honest broker' is not, as some of my Democratic colleagues call for, the answer. It is being the smart broker, it is being the smart partner.

But while Biden's rhetoric on America's relationship with Israel is firm, his positions on issues critically important to Israel's national security call into question his willingness to stand by Israel. He is a staunch supporter of an Israeli transfer of the strategically critical Golan Heights to Syria and has harshly criticized the Bush administration for its refusal to support Israeli negotiations with Syria. At the same time, he downplays the significance of Syria's strategic alliance with Iran and its sponsorship of terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority. Belittling those ties, Biden has claimed repeatedly and without a shred of evidence that the Syrians really want to put all of that behind them.

Continue reading "'OBAMA'S STATEMENTS AND ACTIONS EXPOSE HIM AS A MAN ILL DISPOSED NOT ONLY TOWARD ISRAEL BUT AMERICA ITSELF.""

The Obama campaign is getting desperate as academic researchers (where’s the mainstream media?) start digging in earnest into the Obama narrative.

It is disturbing that so many of Obama’s influential friends hate America and seem determined to undermine (they call it "change") American society.

Based on Obama's own writings, Obama’s 20-year association with black power advocate Reverend Jeremiah Wright does not appear to represent a philosophical aberration for Obama. What attracted Obama over a 13-year period to unrepentant terrorist bomber William Ayers, who has demonstrated his hatred of America with real bombs and is now pushing a socialist agenda on public school children?

Obama has tried to pass Ayers off as just someone who lives in the neighborhood, but it it turns out there was a close continuing relationship, including through a foundation established by Ayers and chaired by Obama to fund radical socialist and black identity policies centered on the Chicago public school system.

While both Ayers and Obama sent their children to private school, Obama opposes school choice for public school children.

Stanley Kurtz of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington is looking into what was accomplished with the $110 million raised by the Ayers foundation. Where did the money go, what good did it do? So far, the answer seems to be "not much." Kurtz has only recently been able to get into the files of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge at the University of Illinois after having been initially refused access.

The viciousness which the Obama campaign has attacked the highly respected Kurtz ("slimy charcter assassin") in an effort to keep him off a Chicago area talk show demonstrates vividly its panic that its carefully crafted Obama story will be exposed as the fairy tale it is.

Kurtz, in Chicago to review the 1,000 CAC [Chicago Annenberg Challenge] files the university library relented and allowed him to see, was asked to discuss the matter with host Rosenberg. The Obama camp was invited to send a representative and refused to do so although the headquarters is but four blocks away. Instead the campaign organized a swarm of non-stop callers to WGN attacking Kurtz as a “vicious racist” a “slimy character assassin” and suggesting WGN failed its obligations as a broadcaster by allowing him to publicly air his views. The baseless charges and the vitriolic nature of them were startling to the station, the host, and the guest. Except for telling outright lies about the Ayers connection and the CAC, the campaign has done everything in its power to show us that it does not believe there is a free speech right to examine Obama’s record — such of it as has not been buried or “lost.” The unexamined life of Barack is what they prefer we vote on.

Kurtz has only had time for a preliminary look at the CAC files, but actions such as these raise a red flag.

The CAC files show the organization funneled money to activist organizations and did so on ideological grounds, favoring applications that focused on ethnic identity and bilingual education and turning down grant proposals which did not. Thus, CAC funded a Juneteenth (sic) effort by the South Shore African Village Collaboration and a peace school but rejected proposals by the Chicago Algebra Project aimed at increasing student achievement and the District 5 Math Science Initiative which was trying to increase the math and science competence of Hispanic youngsters.

In the Democratic platform is a warning of the socialist program planned for America:

Take a close gander at the draft Democrat platform. It is full of plans to bring community organizers to your own neighborhood — undoubtedly offering us all the chance to watch more money wasted on programs and people unable to improve public school academic performance.

School choice for poor kids? Nah.

Check out how this sordid story of Obama campaign intimidation and attempted cover-up is unfolding.

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal also is demanding that the Obama campaign come clean. There is ugliness, deceit, evasiveness and secrecy in the Obama campaign. They are hiding information about Obama's past. In some cases the media is not doing its investigative job, but often it is the campaign that is refusing to cooperate.

Obama remains a mystery because he has been hiding details of his past life. Fund details some of the matters on which Obama is stonewalling.

"They're terrified of people poking around Obama's life," one reporter told Gabriel Sherman at the New Republic. "The whole Obama narrative is built around the narrative that Obama and [campaign strategist] David Axelrod built, and, like all stories, it's not entirely true." The stakes are high. If the full story of Mr. Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright had been revealed before the Iowa caucus, he wouldn't have won.

David Axelrod is Chicago Mayor Daley's right hand man in running the Democratic patronage and payoff machine, which is Obama's principal patron. Over the years the machine has become expert in stalling, twisting and hiding facts and obfuscating what's really going on. Obama is a beneficiary of that expertise.

Fund also describes the ugly steps the Obama campaign are taking to stifle all criticism of Obama.

Team Obama has launched an offensive against WGN, the Chicago Tribune's radio station, for interviewing Stanley Kurtz. Mr. Kurtz is a conservative writer who this week forced the University of Illinois to finally open its records on Sen. Obama's association with William Ayers, the unrepentant 1970s Weather Underground terrorist.

An Obama campaign email to supporters called Mr. Kurtz a "slimy character assassin" whose "divisive, destructive ranting" should be confronted. WGN producer Zack Christenson says the outpouring of negative calls and emails is "unprecedented." He also notes that it is curious -- because "we wanted the Obama campaign's take" on Mr. Kurtz's findings, but the campaign declined to put anyone on air.

Stanley Kurtz is a highly respected senior fellow at Washington's Ethics and Public Policy Center, hardly a "slimy character assassin."

For a rundown of the obstacles and barriers put in his way as he sought information about Obama's relationship with terrorist bomber William Ayers, see Kurtz's article "Chicago Annenberg Challenge Shutdown?"

Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn were terrorists who bombed federal buildings in the late '60s and early '70s and as recently as 2001 said they wished they had done more. Ayers even said the thought of America made him want to puke. In 2001 Ayers was featured on the cover of a Chicago magazine standing on the American flag.

The terrorist couple (now married) hosted a coming-out party for Obama as he geared up to run for the Ilinois senate in 1995. Obama and Ayers served together on the board of a charity which made grants to questionable groups in the Chicago area. Obama and Ayers appeared together as the star presenters on a Chicago panel organized by Michelle Obama.

Recently there was a gathering of one-time terrorists where Ayers and Dohrn were caught on tape making it clear they were not sorry at all for the bombings they had done, but thought bombing federal buildings (such as the Capitol and the Pentagon) were good deeds.

This association of Obama with terrorists has been ignored or downplayed by the media in their quest to make Obama president. So an independent group not connected with the McCain campaign put this TV ad together to let people know about some of Obama's friends so they can assess his judgment and his indulgence towards those who hate America. It isn't just "God Damn America" Reverend Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger and Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan.

Obama has gone ballistic about this ad and has had his campaign demand that the U.S. Attorney General sue the people funding the ad so it will be taken off the air. The campaign hasn't identified what is false in it. Free speech seems to be for Obama only.

Israel's UN Ambasador's final speech before the UN Security Council has urgent meaning for Americans.

Ambassador Gillerman said the world is not dealing with a clash of civilizations, but rather with a "clash of civilization, in the singular" - within Islam.

Most of the horror, most of the bloodshed, most of the killings, and most of the violence… is sadly and tragically within Islam. Not only are the majority of terrorists Muslim, but also the majority of terror victims around the world.

The Ambassador deplored the "eerie silence of the Muslim world" in the face of terrorism, and expressed his hope to see a Muslim leader emerge who would say "enough is enough, what are we doing?"

The Islam that seems to breed violence, hatred and death is increasingly a threat in Europe and the United States. What Israel has experienced can happen in America unless the nation takes effective steps to prevent it. As Gillerman said,

Imagine a bulldozer cruising down Fifth Avenue or the Champs Elysees and crushing cars.

Sitting in a coffee house in Paris, Moscow and New York, costs a few dollars. Sitting in a coffee house in Jerusalem could cost many lives.

McCain recognizes the threat. Strong leadership is needed to thwart Islamic supremacism's threat to our way of life, wherever it appears, be it in Jerusalem, Baghdad, Kabul, London or New York.

For a report on Gillerman's speech, click here.

The New Yorker chuckles with glee that its Manchurian candidate will make it to the Oval Office despite who he is.

Though this is presumably satire by the left-wing magazine, many will see the cover as making it legitimate to raise questions about such things as Obama's sympathy for the Palestinian cause, why he downplays the seriousness of the War on Terror and his friendship with terrorists who blew up buildings in Washington and New York and with his Muslim cousin Raila Odinga who ran for president of Kenya reportedly promising to Muslim groups that, if elected, he would impose Sharia, Islamic law, and stamp out all Christian missionary activity.

If The New Yorker can raise such issues, why can't others?

Obama has been working diligently to shut down all questioning about his lack of experience, his unsavory associations and his extremism by equating criticism of him with racism. The New Yorker has blown that strategy with its cover. Freedom of speech wins.

For other views on what looks like a bungled effort to show support for Obama, see PowerLine and Michelle Malkin.

.

The West's premier analyst of the Middle East Caroline Glick, who writes for the Jerusalem Post, was in the audience when President Bush gave his address to Israel's Knesset pledging American support for Israel in the face of Iran's threat to wipe it off the map.

In particular, the President said this:

'Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided. We have an obligation to call this what it is - the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Glick had this to say:

‘To Israeli ears, Bush's words were uncontroversial. Israel is beset by enemies who daily call for its physical annihilation and while doing so, build and support terror forces who attack Israel. For most Israelis, the notion that these enemies can be appeased is absurd and deeply offensive.’

‘From an Israeli vantage point then, it was shocking to see that immediately after Bush stepped down from the rostrum, Obama and his Democratic supporters began pillorying him for his remarks. Most distressing is what Obama's reaction said about the Democratic presidential hopeful.’

‘OBAMA'S RESPONSE to Bush's speech was an effective acknowledgement that appeasing Iran and other terror sponsors is a defining feature of his campaign and of his political persona. As far as he is concerned, an attack against appeasement is an attack against Obama.

She went on to observe:

‘LIKE HIS life story, Obama's policies are not based on facts, but on his attitude. And his attitude, like Mencken's in the 1930s, is based on a naïve and arrogant belief that the worst thing that can happen is to have someone who talks about evil in the White House.

Peter Osnos, Obama's former publisher told the Times that Obama's meteoric rise to the pinnacle of politics is due in large part to his gift as a storyteller. In his words, "It's almost all based on these two books, two books not based on a job of prodigious research or risking one's life as a reporter in Iraq. He has written about himself. Being able to take your own life story and turn it into this incredibly lucrative franchise, it's a stunning fact."

Indeed, it is stunning. And frightening. It says that in a world in which evil men are combining and preparing for war and genocide, good men are preparing for pleasant chitchat with their foes because they have come to prefer attitude to substance. It is a world in which indignation can be summoned as readily (and perhaps more easily) for partisan political attacks as for delusional dictators’ open preparation for genocide. And it is a world in which it is more important to discuss "healing" emotional wounds than devising policies capable of coping with an ever-more-dangerous international coalition of murderers.

That Glick was shocked and dismayed at Obama's naivete, self-absorption and indifference to reality is to state the obvious. Indeed, "frightening." To read her entire article, click here.