An terrorist facility, it seems, and nothing so far to indicate it has anything at all to do with the pre-invasion Iraqi government.

Possibly just an explosives-making factory. That's just my own guess, because fortunately we haven't seen attacks with mustard gas by the terrorists yet.

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (42)
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Ummm, sure:

The Sept. 11 commission concluded that an intelligence program known as Able Danger "did not turn out to be historically significant," despite hearing a claim that the program had identified the future plot leader Mohammed Atta as a potential terrorist threat more than a year before the 2001 attacks, the commission's former leaders said in a statement on Friday evening.

Seems sort of significant to me.

The statement said a review of testimony and documents had found that the single claim in July 2004 by a Navy officer was the only time the name of Mr. Atta or any other future hijacker was mentioned to the commission as having been known before the hijackings. That account is consistent with statements this week by a commission spokesman, but it contradicts claims by a former defense intelligence official who said he had told the commission staff about Able Danger's work on Mr. Atta during a briefing in Afghanistan in October 2003.

This is horrible spin. First of all, it shouldn't matter even if the name were only mentioned once. The entire purpose of the 9/11 Comission was to determine what went wrong in our intelligence-gathering, and a single mention of Atta being identified as a terrorist in 1999 or 2000 should have prompted a lot of research.

Can you imagine a post-WWII commission being told that an intelligence officer had intercepted a cable saying "We strike Pear Harbor in 12 days," and the commission later saying, "Well, gee, we didn't delve into that any further because we were only told that once."

I'm glad there's a disagreement on this point, because a disagreement provides the impetus for lots of hours of Congressional hearings on this point. And, as small a point as it is, it provides drama, as it becomes a "Who's lying?" deal.

Hey, sometimes you need sizzle with your steak to get the attention of the MSM.

The Sept. 11 commission report made no mention of the unit, disbanded in 2002, and the statement by Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton defended that omission, saying the operation had not been significant "set against the larger context of U.S. policy and intelligence efforts" that involved Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton also noted that the name and character of Able Danger had not been publicly disclosed when the commission issued its public report in 2004. They said the commission had concluded that the July 2004 testimony by the Navy officer, who said he had seen an Able Danger document in 2000 that described Mr. Atta as connected to a cell in Brooklyn "was not sufficiently reliable" to warrant further investigation, in part because the officer could not supply documentary evidence to prove it.

We'll see how much investigation they actually put into coming up with this conclusion.

More... From TKS and Captain Ed.

Both hit upon something curious. The 9/11 has gone from insisting it never heard of this information at all to now claiming they heard of it but thoughtfully considered it and found it not to be "historically significant."

Which is it, guys?

I suppose the obvious answer is "both," in this sense: the Commissioners never heard of this at all, but their staffers decided it wasn't "historically significant."

Well, I know the bona fides, such as they are, of Kean, Hamilton, et al. I don't know who these staffers are at all, if they're young lawyers fresh out of Georgetown or very experienced intelligence analysts, or a mix of both. And I don't know which of these staffers made these decisions. The information does not appear to have been widely shared.

So, which staffers exactly made the decision to spike this information and shield the Commissioners from it?

The very fact that they decided to spike this information, and conceal it from the Commission, makes me doubt their prudence. And, quite frankly, their motives.

Surely this is big enough that it should have been considered by the actual Commissioners, and either included in or excluded from the report according to their expertise (such as it is).

Posted by: Ace at 09:26 AM | Comments (17)
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I'm not articulate enough to help you understand why your son died doing the job he volunteered for.

Instead, I will let a Sunni Muslim in Baghdad do the honors.

Take it away Mohammed.

Posted by: Tanker at 05:34 PM | Comments (45)
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Well, this tears it.
Sobek calls himself a patriot.
Single-celled foreigners invade our pristine home, and what does he do?

He invites them to parley.

I am filled with heart-ache.
I question his patriotism.

Posted by: LauraW. at 04:28 PM | Comments (6)
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Once again, I don't make this stuff up. I just link it.

His positions:

On the economy. "You babies are all gonna be wearin' gold-plated diapahs."

On our shared American heritage. "The way your dad looked at it, this watch was your birthright. He'd be damned if any of the slopes were gonna get their greasy yellow hands on his boy's birthright. So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass. Five long years, he wore this watch up his ass. Then when he died of dysentery, he gave me the watch. I hid this uncomfortable piece of metal up my ass for two years. Then, after seven years, I was sent home to my family. And now, little man, I give the watch to you. "

On the interrogations of terrorist detainees. "Sicilians are great liars. The best in the world. I'm a Sicilian. And my old man was the world heavyweight champion of Sicilian liars. And from growin' up with him I learned the pantomime. Now there are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give him away. A guy has seventeen pantomimes. A woman's got twenty, but a guy's got seventeen. And if you know 'em like ya know your own face, they beat lie detectors to hell. "

On using harsher methods to extract information from terrorists. "That smarts, doesn't it? Getting slammed in the nose. Fucks you all up. You get that pain shootin' through your brain, your eyes fill up with water. That ain't any kind of fun, but what I have to offer you, that's as good as it's gonna get."

On the Highway and Energy Bills. "Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline."

On criminal law. "I was talking to my old friend Charlie Manson the other day, and he said to me: 'Is it hot in here, or am I crazy?'"

Chris Walken For President

Because he's a fuckin' lunatic. A fuckin' lunatic... like a fox!

Thanks to JeffB.

Once More With Content Warning.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:45 PM | Comments (9)
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Repeat after me: There were no operational ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Thanks to The Corner.

Posted by: Ace at 12:14 PM | Comments (7)
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He doesn't understand, according to the sub-hed, why he should love his own country (Britain) any more than any other country.

Which is, you know, the whole problem in a nutshell. I've said it ad nauseum, but left-liberals believe their attachment to their country is a thing of pure happenstance, and should not therefore engender any sort of love of country. Global progressives consider themselves global citizens, and their loyalties are not primarily national, but transnational and ideological, a loyalty and affection for a worldwide (anti-nationalist) progressive/socialist solidarity movement and not to any particular country.

Which is their right. But I grow weary of them claiming that I should not question their patriotism. Most are not so forthright to admit this, but they are not patriots, at least as patriotism is conventionally understood. If they are "patriots" at all, it is according to a novel definition of the term-- love not of country but of transnational socialist ideology, which they believe, indirectly, is love of country, because if we would all just do what the transnational socialists wanted it would be better for everyone.

And there's that ever-present bugaboo that patriotism leads to war:

The argument runs as follows: patriotic people don't turn on each other. If there are codes of citizenship and a belief in Britain's virtues, acts of domestic terrorism are unlikely to happen. As Jonathan Freedland writes, the United States, in which "loyalty is instilled constantly", has never "had a brush with home-grown Islamist terrorism".

This may be true (though there have been plenty of attacks by non-Muslim terrorists in the US). But while patriotism might make citizens less inclined to attack each other, it makes the state more inclined to attack other countries, for it knows it is likely to command the support of its people. If patriotism were not such a powerful force in the US, could Bush have invaded Iraq?

To argue that national allegiance reduces human suffering, you must assert that acts of domestic terrorism cause more grievous harm than all the territorial and colonial wars, ethnic cleansing and holocausts pursued in the name of the national interest. To believe this, you need to be not just a patriot but a chauvinist.

And he explicitly makes his anti-patriot case here:

And what, exactly, would a liberal patriotism look like? When confronted with a conflict between the interests of your country and those of another, patriotism, by definition, demands that you choose those of your own. Internationalism, by contrast, means choosing the option that delivers most good or least harm to people, regardless of where they live. It tells us that someone living in Kinshasa is of no less worth than someone living in Kensington, and that a policy which favours the interests of 100 British people at the expense of 101 Congolese is one we should not pursue. Patriotism, if it means anything, tells us we should favour the interests of the 100 British people. How do you reconcile this choice with liberalism? How, for that matter, do you distinguish it from racism?

No offense, buddy, but one is supposed to favor one's kith and kin (whatever the hell "kith" is) over strangers. And, to a lesser extent, one favors one's countrymen over non-contrymen.

You can reject that idea, but I'm sorry, that's part of the social compact that, for example, Coast Guard sailors abide by when they risk their lives to save you. True, I suppose, they don't check the nationalities of the people they rescue at sea, but they sign up and train with the assumption that most of the people they save will be their fellow countrymen.

If you want to opt out of that social compact, please do so via a legally-binding contract, and make it clear that you do not expect your government-by-happenstance or any of its soldiers, police, or rescue workers to endanger their lives to save you, because you would not do the same for them.

That said, kudos to Monbiot for admitting what so many left-liberals prefer to lie about. They reject the entire notion of conventional patriotism as akin to racism and conducive to war. They consider themselves Global Citizens first and foremost, Patriots of the Progressive Cause.

Which, again, is fine. But stop telling me not to question your patriotism. You're not patriotic. Have the courage of your convictions and admit this and explain why your anti-patriotic stance is justifiable and preferable to actual patriotism rather than constantly lying about how super-duper-patriotic you really are.

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (22)
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All you have to do is buy the molds, cast the pieces for the diorama, paint them to look like stone, assemble dozens and dozens of these pieces into a dungeon, and there you go.

You're all ready to roleplay your heart out after having only spent a thousand bucks and untold manhours.

More.

How to order and assemble your geekporn dioramas.

Thanks to OgreGunner.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (18)
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Oddly enough, this was omitted from the 9/11 report as well.

But [NY] The Post has learned that White was so upset that she bitterly protested with another memo — a scathing one — after Reno and Gorelick refused to tear down the wall.

With eerie foresight, White warned that the Reno-Gorelick wall hindered law enforcement and could cost lives, according to sources familiar with the memo — which is still secret.

The 9/11 Commission got that White memo, The Post was told — but omitted any mention of it from its much-publicized report. Nor does the report include the transcript of its staff interview with White.

What a shock, huh?

Thanks to Eric.

Posted by: Ace at 11:01 AM | Comments (8)
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See Correction At End.

Not sure why she goes by "Malkin," but I imagine it's just as lots of immigrants with strange-sounding (to the America-born) names do: they change their names a bit to be more comprehensible to English speakers.

More breaking news: Ralph Loren's real given last name is "Lipshitz."

And I've got more breaking news: if a first generation immigrant tells you his or her name is "Lisa" or "Patty" or "Don," there is a very good chance that's not their real first name at all, but rather an English-name analogue of their actual first name.

Those liars. If a Chinese girl whose given name is Wu tells me her name is Wendy, she's trying to "pass" as a normal American, and that just sticks in my craw. I want to know who these dirty, filthy foreign-born types are; I'm sick of this infiltration.

I say this is breaking news because the left, especially the very tolerant Oliver Willis, thinks it's being very clever and cutting by calling her "Michelle Maglanang." Apparently the discovery that she's of Filipino descent is very important.

I mean, she's always trying to hide that when she appears on TV. She never mentions, for example, that she herself is an immigrant or the daughter of immigrants. And she's always trying to hide those Filipino features by wearing a hockey mask like Jason in Friday the 13th.

She further hides the fact that her given last name is "Maglalang" by craftily copyrighting her books as "Michelle Maglalang." Yup, it's right there on the first page, the last place anyone would ever think of looking.

I'd like Oliver Willis to explain what importance he thinks this fact possesses, and why this tolerant person of the left is constantly harping on her ethnic descent. Would he think it was all right if I referred to him as "the black Oliver Willis," or "Oliver Willis, who by the way is (wink, wink) not caucasoid in the least"?

And it's not just Willis; the entire left cannot help but continue "scoring points" by charging Michelle Malkin, nee Maglalang, with being Filipino.

Filipino in the First Degree.

They preach tolerance, we practice it. And it drives them batshit crazy.

Whoops! Update: There's an even more insidious reason for the change of name than at first I thought. I suspected she called herself "Malkin" because it was a comprehensible English analogue to "Maglalang," but I'm afraid the truth is even more awful. Michelle got her last name from her husband, if you can imagine such a thing. She actually married a normal American man just to get that sneaky-stealthy "passing" last name.

How low, and how desperate, is that?

I'd just like to note, however, that if things don't work out with this "Malkin" feller, I've got a "passing" English last name, too.

Just sayin'.

Posted by: Ace at 10:57 AM | Comments (50)
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