Defending America: Other Recent Posts

Kenneth Timmerman - Skepticism Mounts Over NIE Findings. "Hoekstra said that the closed-door presentation was 'pathetic.' ”We expect them to be forthright, so you don’t have to ask 50 questions to make sure you ask the right one,"he said. 'Members didn’t find them forthcoming, or even well-versed in answering very tough questions that were put to them by Democrats and Republicans.'” READ MORE.

John Bolton on flaws in the Iran report. ". . . [M]any involved in drafting and approving the NIE were not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department, brought into the new central bureaucracy of the director of national intelligence. These officials had relatively benign views of Iran's nuclear intentions five and six years ago; now they are writing those views as if they were received wisdom from on high. In fact, these are precisely the policy biases they had before, recycled as 'intelligence judgments.'
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While the president and others argue that we need to maintain pressure on Iran, this "intelligence" torpedo has all but sunk those efforts, inadequate as they were. Ironically, the NIE opens the way for Iran to achieve its military nuclear ambitions in an essentially unmolested fashion, to the detriment of us all." READ MORE.

New York Sun - Baker-Hamilton Returns. "If you have been scratching your head and wondering exactly what happened to the Bush administration in the last month with regard to its war policy, we think we have an answer. It's the return of Baker-Hamilton. A year ago, this newspaper was the first to alert Americans to the dangers of this panel's recommendations regarding Iraq. We ran the first report that these congressionally-appointed "wise" men were fashioning a call to retreat from the Battle of Iraq and to appease those states sabotaging the nation-building there." READ MORE.

Michael Ledeen on the Great Intelligence Scam. "This document will not stand up to serious criticism, but it will undoubtedly have a significant political impact, since it will be taken as confirmation of the view that we should not do anything mean to the mullahs. We should talk to them instead." READ MORE.

Steve Emerson: Marine Captain Joins FBI Agent in Admitting Immigration Frauds. "Now Samar Khalil Spinelli, 39, admitted she conspired with Prouty and Elfat El Aouar to commit the immigration-related frauds. El Aouar is the wife of Michigan restaurateur Talal Chahine, who is wanted for tax evasion in connection with a scheme to conceal more than $20 million in cash. Some of that money allegedly was funneled to Hizballah." READ MORE.

Caroline Glick on Apartheid, not peace. "This week the Bush Administration legitimized Arab anti-Semitism. In an effort to please the Saudis and their Arab brothers, the Bush administration agreed to physically separate the Jews from the Arabs at the Annapolis conference in a manner that aligns with the apartheid policies of the Arab world which prohibit Israelis from setting foot on Arab soil." READ MORE.

UPDATE: DEBKAfile Special Report. The Hammer and Tongs behind the Hugs of Annapolis.

Power Line: Herb London on Syria and Annapolis. "Moreover, the hidden message at Annapolis is that the U.S. wants a deal even if it means giving tacit support to terrorists and selling out our allies. What other conclusion can one reach if we are unwilling to blow the whistle on North Korean nuclear exports?" READ MORE.

National Review on Line: Rice Comments at Private Session Closing Annapolis Conference [Andy McCarthy]. "From the Washington Post. Excruciating on a number of levels:" READ MORE.

Alex Alexiev on Islamic finance or financing islamism? "Imagine further that in that foreboding atmosphere, Berlin announced a new finance doctrine based on the immutable laws of national-socialist ideology and then proceeded to float the first Mein Kampf-compliant bond to the great acclaim of the financial markets. Indeed, in short order, Wall Street inaugurated a Nazi mutual fund and a Nazi funds index, as the world’s banks traipsed over each other to offer Nazi finance products and the prime minister of Great Britain voiced his determination to make London the international center of Nazi finance. Surely a preposterous scenario? Or is it?" READ MORE.

Center for Security Policy on "Islamofascism through the financial backdoor." "In order to fully address the phenomenon of Islamofascist penetration into Western financial markets, we must urge the media, the Executive Branch, Congress, and Wall Street to scrutinize and challenge Shariah financing with the same sense of urgency that we are now applying to transactions such as the Abu Dhabi - Citigroup purchase." READ MORE.

Michael Ledeen on Elections Down Under. "I think the basic reason for these results is boredom, the most underrated force in world affairs." READ MORE.

Bernard Lewis - on the Jewish question. "Which brings us back to the Annapolis summit. If the issue is not the size of Israel, but its existence, negotiations are foredoomed. And in light of the past record, it is clear that is and will remain the issue, until the Arab leadership either achieves or renounces its purpose -- to destroy Israel. Both seem equally unlikely for the time being." READ MORE.

Richard Baehr - Road to Nowhere. "So long as a Jew-killing ethos is the spoken language of every Arab country and Israel is viewed as a state that can be unraveled in stages, there is no hope for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, or between Israel and any of its neighbors who remain at war with the Jewish state after near 60 years as a nation. Israel has to dig in for a long siege. Little has changed since 1948 when the Arabs tried to emulate Hitler and eliminate the Jews of Israel. Most still want to. The only real change is the increase in firepower available to the regimes that have always found Israel a convenient way to deflect the pressures generated by their own despotic rule or find the presence of a non-Muslim state in their midst a cancer to be eradicated." READ MORE.

Caroline Glick - American Folly. "The mood is dark in the IDF's General Staff ahead of next week's 'peace' conference in Annapolis. As one senior officer directly involved in the negotiations with the Palestinians and the Americans said, 'As bad as it might look from the outside, the truth is 10 times worse. This is a nightmare. The Americans have never been so hostile.'" READ ENTIRE COLUMN.

Bret Stephens on the "Annapolis Fiasco: Condoleezza Rice's pointless Middle East conference." "But look on the bright side: Annapolis may yet serve us well as an object lesson in how diplomacy--the competent kind--just isn't done." READ MORE.

Clarice Feldman on American Thinker Blog: Syrian Spy Prouty Married to Foreign Service Officer. "Now, not only are the CIA and FBI tarnished badly by the Prouty matter, a woman working for both agencies with access to top secret information and quite obviously spying for the Syrians -- no matter how much the government tries to pretend otherwise." READ MORE.

Michelle Malkin :"My God, she’s married to one of our people." READ MORE.

Stanley Kurtz - Pakistan, compared to what. "So it may be that half-a-loaf is the best we can hope for. Instead of chastising the administration for the trouble in Pakistan, we should reflect on the near-miracle of Musharraf’s post-9/11 turnaround. Given long-standing public sympathy for the Islamists, we’re lucky Pakistan has remained in our corner this long. If the most we ever get is on-again/off-again containment of the Islamists, that sadly, may be better than any alternative on offer." READ MORE.

Barbara Ledeen - a military mother on Veterans Day. "The tragedy isn’t what has happened to our soldiers and Marines. The tragedy is what has happened to us. Perhaps we shop on Veterans Day, no poppies worn, no bells rung, no sirens blaring, no time spent to commemorate other people’s sacrifice for our liberty so that we won’t feel ourselves shrink into irrelevancy." READ MORE.

Michael Ledeen - Marines birthday! "The Marines have taken on mythic dimensions, not just in America, but all over the world. Mao instructed his generals to allocate more than four divisions to defeat 2 Marine battalions, which pretty much sums up the awe. READ MORE…

Ken Timmerman. "Part of Iran's goal is to get Turkey to carry its political water in Washington. Iran's leaders hope Mr. Erdogan will convince the State Department and the White House to accept the Iranian fable that PJAK is merely the 'Iranian branch' of the PKK. This is a convenient lie, and a deadly one. If there is any covert cooperation, it is between Iran and Turkey." READ MORE.