If you were hoping (or worried) that the Ft. Hood attack would wake people from their PC slumber, it won't.

Siraj Wahhaj has defended the convicted WTC bomb plotters, called the FBI and CIA the "real terrorists," and said he hopes all Americans eventually become Muslim.

He was among religious and civic leaders who met with (Mayor Mike) Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to discuss the deadly Fort Hood shooting spree.

... As he was leaving, a Channel 2 reporter asked the mayor if he was uncomfortable about Wahhaj's presence.

"I don't know. He's not here," the mayor responded. When told that Wahhaj was in fact in the meeting, Bloomberg reversed course.

"That one. Yes. We have to talk to everybody," he said. "That's what dialogue is all about. That's how you prevent tragedies."

No Mayor Nanny, how you prevent tragedies is to correctly identify and marginalize figures within the Muslim community who praise those who, you know, murder citizens of your city.

It's hard enough to get people to stand up and disavow these clerics but there's zero incentive for average Muslims to do so when these same "leaders" are invited to mayoral sit downs and feted as if they are the keys to keeping the city safe.

For those of you unfamiliar with NYC, City Hall (where this meeting took place) was quite literally in the shadow of the Twin Towers. The fact that 8 years after their destruction and a week after the Ft. Hood attack, a guy like Wahhaj is welcomed their as a respectable member of the community shows just how lost we still are when it comes to dealing with Islam in this country.

In Bloomberg's defense, he's far too busy telling New Yorkers what they can and cannot eat to worry about unimportant things like not embracing terrorist sympathizers.

Posted by: DrewM at 04:23 AM | Comments (82)
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If this is true then just about all the worst fears we had about Obama as Commander in Chief are coming true.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

He has already had the advice of his entire military chain of command with a near unanimous call for for reinforcements to move to the strategy that won in Iraq. We have watched as he has heard from the deep wisdom of Joe Biden and Rahm Emanuel. We have seen him dither and quibble and show a completely ineffectual and uncommitted face to our enemies and the rest of the world. Now months after his hand-picked commander has told him the situation is bad and getting worse, our troops in the field fight and die without the support of their Commander in Chief. He sent 21,000 more brave men and women there and now they are flappin' in the breeze. How can a squad leader look his men in the eyes and tell them to saddle up and head out on a patrol, perhaps to be the last to die for a cause their President no longer believes in?

You can't set the circumstances for victory before you commit to trying to win one. You can't set your strategy based on the hope that quality government will just spring up in the midst of chaos with no security. You can't just magic a functional, fighting Afghan Army out of nothing without competent US forces to first beat the insurgency down to a manageable level. Then they take the Afghans to the field for joint operations to build their confidence just like we did in Iraq. If your goal is simply to turn things over to the Afghans, then hand them the goddamn keys right now. Make a couple of passes over the worst Taliban strongholds, bomb the living shit out of them and then bring our troops home.

Whatever decision you end up making, you have shown a complete lack of leadership ability. You have made the job of our military more difficult everywhere as our enemies have seen you are not the strong horse. This entire process reeks of politics and the hands of your slimy Chicago fixers Emanuel and Axelrod. Why do I think you are looking for someone to hand you a plan that lets you start retreating before your 2012 elections and an appointment with your left wing? Well the rest of us get to vote as well sir, and we are watching your every back sliding step. America doesn't go to war based on an exit strategy, we go to win. Think about that. Also think about just how wrong you were about Iraq, over and over and over. Go in to win or bring them home now.

Make the call!

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 06:45 PM | Comments (246)
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"to pursue new opportunities.". Sounds like maybe he really wants to take the gloves off...

Charlie Gibson sez:

Lou Dobbs? Never heard of him.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 06:23 PM | Comments (106)
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Good evening morons! Tonight as part of Veteran's Day we honor those who have served.

New Trailer for HBO’s “The Pacific”
HBO has released a new trailer for “The Pacific”, an epic mini-series about the war with Japan from the creators of “Band Of Brothers”. You can see the first trailer here.

The miniseries is based on E.B. SledgeÂ’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, a book that I highly recommend. It's a honest matter of fact account of his experiences in the Pacific and yet it's also haunting and even poetic. It has a 5 star average rating and deservedly so.

Also here is a partial interview with E.B. Sledge himself.

Posted by: Open Blog at 06:00 PM | Comments (598)
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I have no idea how these schedules and the money play out, but there's a game tomorrow night so you pickers need to be pickin. SF and the Bears.

I'm already picking Seattle in this matchup. Takin the points.

Yep.

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 03:41 PM | Comments (50)
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A growing chorus.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) Wednesday called the Fort Hood killings an “act of terror” and joined a parade of GOP critics in suggesting that “political correctness” might have been a factor in not preventing the shootings.

“We ought to make sure ‘political correctness’ never impedes national security,” McCain said in a speech at the University of Louisville.

McCain’s comments echoed those of a variety of Republican politicians and commentators — as well as Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn) — over the past few days as information about the background of the alleged shooter has surfaced in the media. The criticisms, which initially focused on the failure of the administration and the Army to use the word “terrorism” or “jihadism” in connection with Fort Hood, are now being merged with a larger Republican portrayal of the Obama administration’s approach toward terrorism generally.

Good for McCain.

By the way, he's still alive, so if he had been elected we would not yet have to face the fear of having an inexperienced person assuming the presidency.

They Knew He Was Mental: Although, as Allah says, it's not clear he was crazy at all, at least not in medical terms. They may have just been trying to explain his jihadism and Islamofascist zealotry in clinical, nonjudgmental, non-"discriminatory" terms.

And yet they still shipped him off to Fort Hood.

Someone else's problem.

This is what bureaucracies faced with a political correctness charged situation do: No one wants to take ownership of the problem, because there is no correct, winning strategy. If you write this guy up as a jihadist jerkoff, you get a black mark in your file for "discrimination."

Best solution? Just don't deal with it all; pretend it's not a problem; let the problem go to someone else's desk.

That is just human nature and cannot be changed. What can be changed is the policy that is causing this intolerable buck-shifting, and clarifying (while meaning it), that political correctness does not trump security and safety, and that if a Muslim is showing signs of Not So Sudden Jihadi Syndrome, the correct, rewarded action is to write him up and investigate him and maybe discipline and charge him, and the wrong, punished action is to do nothing and hope the bomb explodes on someone else's base.

But I doubt that will happen. We've had this bullshit going on since 9/11.

When a group of key officials gathered in the spring of 2008 for their monthly meeting in a Bethesda, Md., office, one of the leading — and most perplexing — items on their agenda was: What should we do about Hasan?…

Both fellow students and faculty were deeply troubled by Hasan’s behavior — which they variously called disconnected, aloof, paranoid, belligerent, and schizoid. The officials say he antagonized some students and faculty by espousing what they perceived to be extremist Islamic views. His supervisors at Walter Reed had even reprimanded him for telling at least one patient that “Islam can save your soul.”…

One official involved in the conversations had reportedly told colleagues that he worried that if Hasan deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, he might leak secret military information to Islamic extremists. Another official reportedly wondered aloud to colleagues whether Hasan might be capable of committing fratricide, like the Muslim U.S. Army sergeant who, in 2003, killed two fellow soldiers and injured 14 others by setting off grenades at a base in Kuwait.

They actually feared this was coming. And yet, Rule 1 -- do not make waves regarding obviously jihadist Muslims -- still prevailed.

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (173)
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DrewM. and I have been kicking around an idea with increasing seriousness. It's premature to write about this, as I have a lot of "ideas" that remain firmly in the realm of ideation, and there's nothing really I need from you guys now, but as I've been talking about it for an hour, might as well get a blog post about it.

With increasing seriousness, we are discussing the possibility of a right-wing blogocentric (but not blog-exclusive by any means; we'd be looking to tap into the Tea Party movement, for example) version of the Yearly Kos (now called "Netroots Nation").

My blog itself is too small in readership to support something like this (although the similarly-sized RedState just pulled it off in Atlanta), but we're thinking partner up with a lot of other blogs, pull in all that collected audience, and then see what happens, in terms of questionnaires and response rates and hard commitments.

We have a name but I'm not spilling. Nothing to do with "Ace."

The only idea I am definite on is that it is not going to be held at some dreary city like DC. It's going to be in Vegas, or Miami, or Coronado Island off of San Diego, or someplace fun like that that caters to tourists. If you've ever traveled for political stuff, you know that all too often you wind up in dreary DC in the wintertime, and it feels very much like a working vacation. Or... just work.

Basically, I think if you're paying to travel, you should be having fucking margaritas or something, not shivering your ass off in freezing rain.

We don't have a lot of of ideas besides that, except we'd try to get a few people like Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham to come and give a speech or something. Obviously we'd put the word out to big-name politicians who wouldn't mind free airfare and hotel in a destination city (and I guess an "honorarium," maybe three free drink tickets at the local Laff Factory).

And we'd have to partner up with some or other sponsor.

Who? I don't know. Chico's Bail Bonds.

I guess there's no point asking "Are you interested?" because you liars will all say you are, like you said when I asked if you really wanted t-shirts. (Kidding...)

Just tossing it out there.

Oh: What I do need is for people who can add credibility to this to say "Yeah, I'd probably come" without actually offering a commitment. Like name-type people. Like, just so we can use your name to get other suckers to commit to coming.

Like Fred Thompson.

You don't even have to mean it. Just let us claim it.

Posted by: Ace at 12:57 PM | Comments (724)
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He's getting paid for it. The rest of us do it for free.

"The first woman was about 25 years old. She paid for half an hour but soon got tired and spent the rest of her time just chatting to me," Lin says. "The second customer also only lasted for a few minutes but they both looked much happier afterwards. It does people good to let off some steam."

Every time the women punch him in the junk, they say "There's nothing wrong, why do you keep asking?"

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (146)
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Perhaps the Constitution is a suicide pact after all.

Investigators would have been "crucified" over First Amendment rights if they had launched a full-scale probe into e-mails Fort Hood massacre suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly sent to a radical imam, a government investigator told Fox News.

The claim comes as the squabble grows among officials in different branches of law enforcement and the military over who knew what, and when, about Hasan's leanings toward faith-inspired violence, and amid charges that "political correctness" prevented officials from taking pre-emptive action.

The government counterterrorism investigator familiar with the FBI's review of the Fort Hood case told Fox News that they simply did not have enough evidence to launch an investigation. Though officials discovered Hasan's e-mails to the imam, the investigator said the messages suggested he was seeking "spiritual and religious guidance."

"Had we launched an investigation of Hasan we'd have been crucified," the investigator said, adding that the communications were shared with the "appropriate chains."

Of course they are right. "Better dead than to offend" after all is practically the motto of the terrorist apologizes on the left and within the government.

Among the many reasons to respect those who serve in the military is that they often suffer restrictions on the rights they fight to preserve for others. The idea that a military officer enjoys a first amendment right to discuss a damn thing with a member of an enemy group is as laughable as it is tragic.

Rest assured however there are still some restrictions in place. I mean, imagine if Nadal were Smith and he were email buddies with the leader of the Aryan Nation or the KKK. How fast would our mythical Maj. (or Pvt.) Smith last in the Army?

Their first amendment rights wouldn't even be consider (and rightly so).

*I just realized I originally referred to the traitor by his first name in the headline. I fixed it.

A Few Politically Correct Men [ace]: I was about to post this.

I was thinking about The System, as I was on about yesterday. And thinking about Code Reds from A Few Good Men.

How stuff like this is dealt with is simple: The policymakers set what they claim is the policy and the rules. But those aren't the real rules; those are the rules they offer to the public. The real rules are kind of secret, in the sense that no one will admit they're official policy, but everyone knows what they are.

In A Few Good Men, the Marine Corps' rules about poor performance were as follows:

1. You cannot transfer or discharge a poor Marine. It is your job to motivate him into being a good Marine.

2. You may use any tools to motivate this poor Marine, but you cannot, under any circumstances, employ troop-administered beatings ("Code Reds").

Now, these rules may come into conflict. What happens when you have a bad Marine and permitted motivation tools aren't working? Does that mean you can violate rule 2?

The official position (in the movie's fictive code) was that no, Rule 2 has primacy. If Rule 1 and Rule 2 come into conflict, Rule 2 wins. Rule 1 gives way; supposedly, in that case, you can transfer or discharge a poor Marine.

But (again, in the fictive universe of the movie), the real rule, which everyone understood was the real rule, and yet none of the brass would admit was the real rule, was that beatings were permitted. Rule 2 was actually a minor rule compared to Rule 1 -- but people would swear up and down on the Bible, under oath in court, that was the other way around.

This situation is very common in organizations. There is a stated, supposedly primary policy. Often that's not the actual policy at all -- but it's in all the handbooks and all the legal-ish CYA type documents.

Looking at the Hasan situation, there were also two rules in conflict:

1. Diversity and tolerance are extremely important, and the Army must try to promote religious minorities such as a Muslim) when it can, and furthermore, must never act in such as way as to make a religious minority (such as a Muslim) feel singled-out and suspected. The FBI, similarly, must not be over-eager to dig into Muslims' exercise of their "first amendment rights."

2. But, regardless of Rule 1, national security and the preservation of life are the two paramount considerations in conducting an investigation into, and disciplining or discharging, a possible traitor or lunatic.

What happens when these rules come into conflict? Again, the supposed rule that takes precedence -- which we'll be hearing all the time in the Congressional hearings -- is that of course, Rule 2 is the more important rule. Nothing, supposedly, is more important than national security and the preservation of troops' lives.

But everyone knew that was not in fact the actual governing, primary rule. Everyone knew that in reality -- in terms of what would lose you a promotion or get you a black mark on your record -- was that Rule 1 -- diversity and tolerance -- was in fact the more important rule, and the brass was willing to risk a fair amount of security in order to maintain Rule 1.

In fact, General Casey even almost admitted this when he said an even greater tragedy than 14 dead Americans would be if diversity suffered.

An even greater tragedy? Really? Greater than 13 dead adults, one dead unborn child, and 40+ badly wounded people, some of whom will be impaired for life?

And so the higher-ups, the policy-makers, get to, as they often do, give conflicting and or dishonest statements of policy while forcing their underlings to carry out the real policy which no one will admit to.

Illegal immigration is a perfect example of this. Supposedly it's illegal to come to America without permission and take a job. This has been the stated policy for decades. The real policy is that it's perfectly acceptable, and the policy-makers enforce this policy not through actually stating that we now have open borders, but by disciplining and/or failing to promote any LEOs or agents who actually attempt to enforce the supposed rule. Look at Sheriff Araphio.

And so it goes on and on, and no one can question the real policy being enforced, because the policy-makers will continue swearing on their mother's eyes that the real policy isn't the policy at all, it's some other, more rational, more popular, less objectionable policy.

The easiest way to defend a deadly-irrational policy is to simply claim it's not the policy at all.

Get ready for this. And don't expect Jack Nicholson to lose it on the stand and finally admit that Rule 2 is for suckers.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:39 AM | Comments (282)
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Obama is officially the new Carter.

...Overall, there's a malaise about the state of the nation...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 09:09 AM | Comments (215)
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