A MUSLIM VICTIM OF 9/11

Dear Gabriel,

We know there are many Muslims in America who do not subscribe to the ideology of political Islam, the advance of jihad, and the imposition of sharia law.

This past Sunday, a courageous Muslim spoke out against the Ground Zero Mosque in a column in the Washington Post (see below).

The buzzing opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque continues to grow, with some polls show opposition now over 60%. Media coverage continues to grow.

This has become, and rightly so, a high-profile national issue, which is why we continue to put out emails about it. Islamists and their politically correct allies are desperately trying to smear anyone who opposes the Ground Zero Mosque. They know they are losing the national debate on this. And as you saw in your email on Saturday, the New York City bus company is censoring a media campaign about the Ground Zero Mosque.

The Ground Zero Mosque is not a done deal. We must keep the pressure on!

***

A Muslim victim of 9/11: 'Build your mosque somewhere else'

By Neda Bolourchi
Sunday, August 8, 2010

I have no grave site to visit, no place to bring my mother her favorite yellow flowers, no spot where I can hold my weary heart close to her. All I have is Ground Zero.

On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I watched as terrorists slammed United Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, 18 minutes after their accomplices on another hijacked plane hit the North Tower. My mother was on the flight. I witnessed her murder on live television. I still cannot fully comprehend those images. In that moment, I died as well. I carry a hole in my heart that will never be filled.

From the first memorial ceremonies I attended at Ground Zero, I have always been moved by the site; it means something to be close to where my mother may be buried, it brings some peace. That is why the prospect of a mosque near Ground Zero—or a church or a synagogue or any religious or nationalistic monument or symbol—troubles me.

I was born in pre-revolutionary Iran. My family led a largely secular existence—I did not attend a religious school, I never wore a headscarf—but for us, as for anyone there, Islam was part of our heritage, our culture, our entire lives. Though I have nothing but contempt for the fanaticism that propelled the terrorists to carry out their murderous attacks on Sept. 11, I still have great respect for the faith. Yet, I worry that the construction of the Cordoba House Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center site would not promote tolerance or understanding; I fear it would become a symbol of victory for militant Muslims around the world.

When I am asked about the people who murdered my mother, I try to hold back my anger. I try to have a more spiritual perspective. I tell myself that perhaps what happened was meant to happen—that it was my mother's destiny to perish this way. I try to take solace in the notion that her death has forced a much-needed conversation and reevaluation of the role of religion in the Muslim community, of the duties and obligations that the faith imposes and of its impact on the non-Muslim world.

But a mosque near Ground Zero will not move this conversation forward. There were many mosques in the United States before Sept. 11; their mere existence did not bring cross-cultural understanding. The proposed center in New York may be heralded as a peace offering—may genuinely seek to focus on "promoting integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion through arts and culture," as its Web site declares—but I fear that over time, it will cultivate a fundamentalist version of the Muslim faith, embracing those who share such beliefs and hating those who do not.

The Sept. 11 attacks were the product of a hateful ideology that the perpetrators were willing to die for. They believed that all non-Muslims are infidels and that the duty of Muslims is to renounce them. I am not a theologian, but I know that the men who killed my mother carried this message in their hearts and minds. Obedient and dutiful soldiers, they marched toward their promised rewards in heaven with utter disregard for the value of the human beings they killed.

I know Ground Zero is not mine alone; I must share this sanctuary with tourists, politicians, anyone who chooses to come, whatever their motivations or intentions. But a mosque nearby—even a proposed one—is already transforming the site from a sacred ground for reflection, so desperately needed by the families who lost loved ones, to a battleground for religious and political ideologies. So many people from different nationalities and religions were killed that day. This site should be a neutral place for all to come in peace and remember. I believe my mother would have thought so as well.

The Iranian revolution compelled my family to flee to America when I was 12 years old. Yet, just over two decades later, the militant version of our faith caught up with us on a September morning. I still identify as a Muslim. When you are born into a Muslim family, there is no way around it, no choices available: You are Muslim. I am not ashamed of my faith, but I am ashamed of what is done in its name.

On the day I left Ground Zero shortly after the tragedy, I felt that I was abandoning my mother. It was like being forced to leave the bedside of a loved one who is dying, knowing you will never see her again. But I felt the love and respect of all those around me there, and it reassured me that she was being left in good hands. Since I cannot visit New York as often as I would like, I at least want to know that my mother can rest in peace.

I do not like harboring resentment or anger, but I do not want the death of my mother—my best friend, my hero, my strength, my love—to become even more politicized than it already is. To the supporters of this new Islamic cultural center, I must ask: Build your ideological monument somewhere else, far from my mother's grave, and let her rest.


Neda Bolourchi lives in Los Angeles.

LET'S ROLL OUT A MISSILE NWO-STYLE

Washington Times opinion writer Wesley Pruden takes on the Obama cult in an article, titled," Reality bites Obama's 'West Wing.'" A good article no doubt about matinee idols and their sycophants, and in particular, one matinee idol and his merry band of worshippers who made up the majority electorate last November. But it's Pruden's third paragraph which struck me.

"Nasty surprises abound across the real world. Iran completes a third round of testing of Shahab-3 and Sajjil medium-range missiles capable of hitting not only Israel, Eastern Europe and several Middle Eastern countries but, if all that were not sobering enough, several U.S military bases as well. Venezuela boasts that it's working with Russia and Iran in finding sources of uranium, the key ingredient of nuclear weapons technology. China says it will display new "upgraded missiles" in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of Red China. India announces that it can now make nuclear weapons up to a strength of 200 kilotons, four times over the line that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty pledges signing nations not to cross."

Now what I read is this. We are in a shrinking global existence, monetarily and militarily, at least according to or even thanks to the several recent as well as the current occupiers at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. While we continue under this present administration to exhibit cultural weakness and across the board apologetics, what we truly should be doing is marginalizing the weak Left, and joining in with our new peers, and blast off a few rockets and unveil a few more death machines in big parades and national celebrations. Then perhaps, once again, we Americans might again feel like we fit into the world as we know it, and how do we know it?

We watch our neighbors. We mimic our enemies who seem to have no shame in calling for our deaths. They know who they are, even if our leadership looks the other way or forgives them seven times seventy and more in what seems to be an impossible struggle to win hearts and minds. We show them our strength as they show us their strength. As the dollar continues to fail, and the bankers conspire, and we give away billions of these dollars to our enemies in a vain attempt to buy friendship even as these foreign governments funnel our US tax monies right back into the coffers of those who seek to kill us, perhaps we should stop this wasted appeasement long enough to ask what comes next when all this bribery and corruption fails to bear fruit. Look at Pakistan. Look at Egypt. Look at Turkey. Look at Iraq and Afghanistan. Look at the immigrants from those countries into the United States and Europe.

We cannot win there. We can only return these haters to their countries of origin, or isolate them in their own countries before they get here, bound by the ummah struggling for a caliphate. That one way. It worked with Isabella in 1492. Tried for treason under penalty of death, or hard expulsion can work again.

Or we can get right with ourselves and expose those of the order of Mohammed to the very best firepower we've got. I prefer the former, but if that fails to stop this drip drip dripping flood of madness we call the New World Order, I suppose the latter will do.

When in Rome...

Unless each American prefers to live in slavery and fear, we cannot long deny nor surely long escape this crisis. Therefore, as responsible and free citizens standing upon this soil beneath this flag with concerted and quiet enjoyment of the United States Constitution and its favor, we must prepare ourselves. I say, let the games begin!

THE OTHER SIDE OF RACISM

DAVID HOROWITZ has commented on Facebook today concerning the continued silence of the liberals with regard to the historical peoples revolt against the totalitarian theocratic dictatorship. His remarks are as spot on...

And let us not get carried away. No one, not even the neo-cons are advocating interceding militarily in Iran, but a voice of support for those marching hordes who are not only exercising the rights of free expression in calling for free elections that we support here in the United States, but they are also voicing opposition to an unquestionably sworn enemy of ours in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

How much plainer can this opportunity to extend textbook American graciousness to an oppressed people be? But I suppose in this case, only the wistful teleprompter of our much heralded Barack Obama knows for sure.

Horowitz writes:

Here's one scene from the historic revolt in Iran. Everything liberals pretend to be concerned about is on the line in Tehran today. Basic freedom to vote and have your vote counted; basic freedom to protest and not be killed. Even the style of the revolt is something for liberals to celebrate—the Tweeter revolution, the women's revolution, the revolution of the young. But liberals are silent. They want their government, their White House, to pretend it has no stake in the outcome, that it can deal with either Iran, the Iran of the Islamo-fascists who oppress their own people and want to kill us, or the Iran of those freedom loving citizens whose blood is running in the streets. Shameful.

Props to Mr. Horowitz for pointing out what seems to be obvious to anyone not blinded by party shenanigans, those poor souls who prefer a knotty grudge match to anything remotely akin to what some of us prefer to call principles. Don't misunderstand me. I speak plainly here. As far as I'm concerned, the Left and the Right are opposing butt cheeks of the same dumb-ass political machine.

As a staunch constitutionalist I prefer a strict adherence to those founding principles that inform individual liberty with abiding responsibility and uniform and unifying justice. But why did we and why do we continue to waste the perceptions and inertia our founders left us in writing and in deed? Our nation is floundering in a mess. Both parties have contributed heavily to the burdens now foisted upon the American people. And as a result, I fear the worst is closing in upon us all. But I can appreciate the work David Horowitz and Anne Wortham is doing for America today, even though folks of our intellectual ilk will continue to be called racists and nazis by small minds.

So even as we note that the landscape is littered with false assumptions and intellectual scoundrels, let us turn to another important American voice on the issue of racial politics gone awry, Professor Wortham as she writes with a special combination of intelligence and self-awareness:

MY FELLOW AMERICANS, please know I am black. I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival—all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the “change” that Obama asserts has come to America.

Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared “progressive” whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them.

I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration—political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University ’s Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that “fairness” is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to “go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice” is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the “bottom up,” and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting “Yes We Can!” Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead—and no one including, especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over—and Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.

So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to—Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine—what little there is left—for the chance to feel good.

There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

Dr. Anne Wortham is author of “The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness” which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality. Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.

OBAMA SOWS MIDEAST WHIRLWIND

From Frank Gaffney, Jr., an esteemed analyst for the Center for Security Policy, dated Jun 01, 2009, I received this letter warning us of those dire circumstances most of us who follow US foreign policy already realize, namely that the persistently barnstorming POTUS is boxing our own nation and our staunchest Middle East ally, Israel, into an impossible standard where self-defense is not about safety but about survival. However, Mr. Gaffney makes several other newsworthy disclosures.

Read for yourself:

FROM THIS VANTAGE POINT [Jerusalem], two events this week appear to be ominous straws in the wind, warnings of a "man-caused" maelstrom that may inexorably plunge the Middle East into another, potentially cataclysmic war.

The first is the fact that Israel feels obliged to undertake an unprecedented, country-wide civil defense exercise this week. At one point in its course, every man, woman and child in the Jewish State is supposed to seek shelter from a simulated attack of the kind Iran may shortly be able to execute against it.

The second is President Barack Obama's latest effort to reach out to the Muslim world, this time on June 4 from one of its most important capitals, Cairo. There, he is expected to make an address that will reiterate his previous statements on the subject—pronouncements that, unfortunately, can only have been interpreted by his intended audience as acts of submission.

If past is prelude, the President of the United States will: apologize yet again for purported offenses against Muslims by his country; promise to be respectful of Islam, including those who adhere to its authoritative, if virulent, theo-political-legal program known as Shariah; and enunciate diplomatic priorities and initiatives designed to reach out to America's enemies in the region, while putting excruciating pressure on its most reliable ally there, Israel.

This pressure has become more palpable by the day. It has taken various forms, including: U.S. stances adopted at the United Nations that will serve to isolate Israel; blank political and even financial checks for Palestinian thugs like Mahmoud Abbas; diminishing U.S.-Israeli cooperation on intelligence and military matters; and the withholding from Israel of helicopters (and perhaps other weaponry) being provided to Arab states.

Perhaps the most chilling example of this coercive pressure so far, however, was originally reported in the Israeli paper Yediot Aharonot and given international prominence by my esteemed colleague and Jerusalem Post columnist, Caroline Glick. According to these accounts, in a recent lecture in Washington, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, the American officer charged with training Palestinian military forces in Jordan, made a shocking declaration.

In Ms. Glick's words, "[Gen. Dayton] indicated that if Israel does not surrender Judea and Samaria within two years, the Palestinian forces he and his fellow American officers are now training at a cost of more than $300 million could begin killing Israelis." She went on to note that neither the general nor the Obama administration seemed to find this prospect grounds for rethinking the wisdom of such a training-and-arming program. In fact, her column observed that Defense Secretary Robert Gates "just extended Dayton's tour of duty for an additional two years and gave him the added responsibility of serving as Obama's Middle East mediator George Mitchell's deputy."

Taken together with the U.S. administration's refusal to come to grips with what truly is the most serious threat to peace in the Middle East—Iran's rising power and growing aggressiveness, reflecting in part its incipient nuclear weapons capabilities—the stage is being inexorably set for the next, and perhaps most devastating, regional conflict.

Whether the signals Mr. Obama is sending are intended to communicate such a message or not, they are going to be read by Israel's enemies as evidence of a profound rift between the United States and the Jewish State. In this part of the world, that amounts to an invitation to an open season on Israel.

It is hard to believe that the Obama Middle East agenda enjoys the support of the American people or their elected representatives in Congress. Historically, the public and strong bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill have appreciated that an Israel that shares our values, that is governed democratically and that is in the cross-hairs of the same people who seek our destruction is an important ally. Quite apart from a sense of moral and religious affinity for the Jewish people's struggle to survive in their ancient homeland, most of us recognize that it is in the United States' strategic interest to stand with Israel.

It is worrisome in the extreme that Mr. Obama does not appear to share this appreciation. To those who worried about his affinity for the Saudi king and Islam more generally and his longstanding ties to virulent critics of Israel like Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi and former Harvard professor-turned-National Security Council staffer Samantha Power, the President's attitude is not exactly a surprise. His administration's posture may have been further reinforced by Arab-American pollster John Zogby's recent Forbes Magazine article arguing that friends of Israel made up John McCain's constituency, not Obama's. (This raises an interesting question about the sentiments towards Israel of the 78% of American Jews who voted for the latter in 2008.)

My guess, however, is that, as the implications of President Obama's Mideast policies—for the United States as well as Israel - become clearer, he is going to find himself facing the sort of popular and congressional revolt that has confronted him in recent weeks on Guantanamo Bay. The question is: Will such a reaffirmation of American solidarity with and support for Israel come in time to prevent the winds of war being whipped up by Mr. Obama's posturing and rhetoric—and driving Israelis into bomb shelters—from wreaking havoc in the Middle East, and perhaps far beyond?

Not hardly. Just a day after his warm massage of His Majesty in Saudi Arabia, and on the heels of his suggestive distortion that America is one of the largest Muslim nations (after declaring that the US was no longer a Christian nation) in the world, the truth-challenged but egregiously adored POTUS gave his much anticipated speech in Cairo this morning, brimming with bogus remarks about the nature and history of Islam. To his credit, however, he did concede in rather soft terms that he believed Israel had a right to exist as an independent state.

Such a marvelous concession after all these years from such a marvelous gamer. Unfortunately, he also suggested that Iran had a right to "peaceful nuclear power" which as we all know is a red herring given the evidence Iran has provided that it wants to extinguish the nation of Israel with one mighty blow, and liquidate every remaining infidel Jew in the necessary clean-up. Frankly, this is not an acceptable solution, Mister President.

OBAMA SUSPICIOUSLY THREADS NEEDLE

"Can we guarantee that they're not going to try to participate in another attack? No. But what I can guarantee is that if we don't uphold our Constitution and our values, that over time that will make us less safe. And that will be a recruitment tool for organizations like al-Qaeda." —President Obama to NBC on potentially released Guantanamo detainees

BARACK OBAMA WALKS A FINE LINE in pursuing the Constitution when it comes to endangering America. First of all, Gitmo has no relevant prcedence in the US Constitution, and to infer that such is the case, is mere boondoggling and cloaking what he really means. He, like many of America's enemies, will use our liberty and freedom against us while systematically dismantling our general defense by any means necessary, starting with defense cuts and pork barrel blowouts.

Change? Hell yes, his buddies in Iran and Syria approve. Oh yes, Hamas has also piped in with their salute to these new Obama footsteps toward the promised land (that one world ummah). The Darling Big-Brained Bigger-Hearted Left continues to roll up the tent of America, while handing the keys to the garage to those who have sworn to conquer us today or in a hundred years. Heard the news lately? Hope? Not a chance.

OIL PRICE COLLAPSE WEAKENING DESPOTS

IMAGINE THIS MY FRIENDS, I'm quoting the ineffable Dick Morris. The sky is indeed falling. Good news comes in strange packages sometimes. This is one of those times.

The depression—let's call it what it is—leaves us, well, depressed. But there is very good news from around the world. Our enemies are collapsing under the strain of dropping oil and gas prices.

What we had all hoped conservation and offshore drilling would achieve, the global economic collapse is accomplishing: the defeat of OPEC, Iran, Chavez, Putin and the weakening of the financial underpinnings of Islamist terrorism. In each of these nations, the hold of the dictator is weakening as, one after the other, they face the consequences of dropping oil prices.

Read it all.

SWISS INVOLVED IN NUCLEAR SHENANIGANS

THE PRESIDENT OF SWITZERLAND stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.

The files were of particular interest not only to Swiss prosecutors but to international atomic inspectors working to unwind the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani bomb pioneer-turned-nuclear black marketeer. The Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, were accused of having deep associations with Dr. Khan, acting as middlemen in his dealings with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.

The Swiss president, Pascal Couchepin, took no questions. But he asserted that the files—which included an array of plans for nuclear arms and technologies, among them a highly sophisticated Pakistani bomb design—had been destroyed so that they would never fall into terrorist hands.

Behind that official explanation, though, is a far more intriguing tale of spies, moles and the compromises that governments make in the name of national security.

The United States had urged that the files be destroyed, according to interviews with five current and former Bush administration officials. The purpose, the officials said, was less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a clandestine relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A.

Over four years, several of these officials said, operatives of the C.I.A. paid the Tinners as much as $10 million, some of it delivered in a suitcase stuffed with cash. In return, the Tinners delivered a flow of secret information that helped end Libya’s bomb program, reveal Iran’s atomic labors and, ultimately, undo Dr. Khan’s nuclear black market.

In addition, American and European officials said, the Tinners played an important role in a clandestine American operation to funnel sabotaged nuclear equipment to Libya and Iran, a major but little-known element of the efforts to slow their nuclear progress.

The relationship with the Tinners “was very significant,” said Gary S. Samore, who ran the National Security Council’s nonproliferation office when the operation began. “That’s where we got the first indications that Iran had acquired centrifuges,” which enrich uranium for nuclear fuel.

Read it all in the New York Times. And, of course, far be it from the Times to hold the lid on American secret operations. Here's the deal:

An inventor and mechanical engineer, Friedrich Tinner got his start in Swiss companies that make vacuum technology, mazes of pipes, pumps and valves used in many industries. Mr. Tinner received United States patents for his innovative vacuum valves. By definition, his devices were so-called dual-use products with peacetime or wartime applications. Governments often feel torn between promoting such goods as commercial boons and blocking them as security risks.

As recounted in books and articles and reports by nuclear experts, Mr. Tinner worked with Dr. Khan for three decades, beginning in the mid-1970s. His expertise in vacuum technology aided Dr. Khan’s development of atomic centrifuges, which produced fuel for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, now variously estimated at 50 to 100 warheads.

Yet while Mr. Tinner repeatedly drew the attention of European authorities, who questioned the export of potentially dangerous technology, he never faced charges. Mr. Tinner’s involvement with Dr. Khan deepened beginning in the late 1990s, when, joined by his sons, he helped supply centrifuges for Libya’s secret bomb program.

In 2000, American officials said, Urs Tinner was recruited by the C.I.A., and American officials were elated. Spy satellites can be fooled. Documents can lie. Electronic taps can mislead. But a well-placed mole can work quietly behind the scenes to get at the truth.

For instance, the United States had gathered circumstantial evidence that Iran wanted an atom bomb. Suddenly it had a direct view into clandestine Iranian procurement of centrifuges and other important nuclear items.

This is all very sad, and precisely why the peace movement, dear friends, can and should never be localized. War is a global business with unsavory players in every nook and cranny. There is always more cloak and dagger intrigue going on behind the scenes than any self-righteous group of ordinary citizens can possibly know at any given moment in time. There will be a war of massive scale, so devastating, so wicked, so awful in its reach that finally mankind will be defeated in its pursuits for domination. Only then will peace be possible. I personally despise this notion, but I fearfully suspect it is also the truest statement to be written about the mind of man in these dangerous times. Thus, I support my own government to do its military best to stop this next war, by any means necessary. Because this next war will not be cheered by victors.

QADAFFI WARNS IRAN

JUST WHEN I'd begun to think the whole world had gone flipping mad with regard to realities on the ground, here's a splash of fresh water across the face from a former wild child on the world stage. It's about time.

It has been reported this week that the somewhat reformed Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi has suggested that Iran risks the same fate as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its protracted confrontation with the West over its nuclear program and is too weak to meet the challenges it faces alone.

“What Iran is doing is pure vanity,” Colonel Qaddafi said during a visit to Tunisia. “If a decision is taken against Iran, it will suffer the same fate as Iraq. Iran is no stronger than Iraq and will be unable to resist.”

He was referring to the United States invasion of Iraq in 2003, which the Bush administration said was intended to rid Iraq of illicit weapons. Colonel Qaddafi, whose relations with the West improved when Libya scrapped its efforts to develop nuclear weapons, said countries that chose isolation were doomed to fail.

Note that this former wild child is not rushing to join forces with Iran, either.

PUSHING WAR WITH IRAN

IT IS ONLY A MATTER of time before the confrontation between the world and Iran’s mullahs, with the U.S. leading the charge, sets off a catastrophic conflagration. The present stand-off is bound to change, either by the U.S. use of force to make good on its threat that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable, or by the mullahs managing to make the unacceptable an accomplished fact.

Although the main adversaries are the U.S. and Iran, much of the world has a huge stake regarding this potentially catastrophic confrontation. Israel, the Persian Gulf states, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq as well as nations farther away from the region are willing and unwilling parties to this unfolding crisis.

Amil Imani is located in Washington, DC, and has posted the previous two paragraphs today in the comments section of Pat Buchanan's latest essay published at HUMAN EVENTS.

The two paragraphs were originally published as part of a large, informative essay Imani—an Iranian ex-pat— posted on his own website in February, 2007.

Read it all.

But lest we forget, let's remind ourselves that before Bush invaded Iraq, we heard similar appraisals by Ahmed Chalabi and a cadre of other Iraqi ex-pats who, we now know, were only serving themselves, and no one else.

DON'T LET THEIR BREASTS DROOP

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION IS SOON BEHIND US, and not a moment too soon. To transcribe the hypocritical nature of "the decider" is a long and arduous task, too daunting a task to deal with here, so let's just point a finger at all this, uh, trading with Iran during his administration. After nearly fifty years of tough sanctions against tiny, powerless Cuba, and no end in sight, what does America do in the face of a more challenging opponent, that oppressive yet boastful member of the axis of evil nations our president named in his very first State of the Union address—Iran, supposedly hamstrung with official policy sanctions issued from both the United Nations and the United States government?

Oh yeah, humanitarian aid.

Or so we thought. It turns out that the Bush Administration is even more hypocritical than even we knew—reversing a Clinton Administration stranglehold on Iran in trade. Motor City blogger Debbie Schlussel knows. In 2001 we exported only $8.3 million worth in goods to Iran. Last year it was $146 million. And, as with the Coke and the Pepsi, it wasn't just the "bare necessities" that the Bushies allowed to go to prop up this Crown Jewel in the Axis of Evil.

There are plenty of items on Iran's shopping list the United States is more than happy to supply: cigarettes, brassieres, bull semen and more. U.S. exports to Iran grew more than tenfold during President Bush's years in office even as he accused it of nuclear ambitions and sponsoring terrorists. America sent more cigarettes to Iran—at least $158 million worth under Bush—than any other product.

Other surprising shipments during the Bush administration: fur clothing, sculptures, perfume, musical instruments and military apparel. Top states shipping goods to Iran include California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of seven years of U.S. government trade data...

"I understand that these exports have increased. However, we believe that they are increasing to a segment of the population that we want to reach out to, we want to know and understand that the U.S. government, the U.S. people want to be friends with them, want to work with them to integrate them into the world economy and become partners in the future," Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman, said Tuesday when asked by reporters about AP's findings.

The government tracks exports to Iran using details from shipping records, but in some cases it's unclear whether anyone pays attention.

Sanctions are intended in part to frustrate Iran's efforts to build its military, but the U.S. government's own figures showed at least $148,000 worth of unspecified weapons and other military gear were exported from the United States to Iran during Bush's time in office. That included $106,635 in military rifles and $8,760 in rifle parts and accessories shipped in 2004...

Iran received at least $620,000 in aircraft parts and $19,600 worth of aircraft during Bush's terms. Iran relies on spare parts from other countries to keep its commercial and military aircraft flying. In some cases, U.S. sanctions allow shipments of aircraft parts for safety upgrades for Iran's commercial passenger jets. . . .

The U.S. government seems uncoordinated on efforts to limit trade with Iran.

Read it all.

Bush, oh Mr. Bush, why did you sell us out to the enemy? Tell us why. We know, you just wanted the money and the friends you made, and you just wanted things to go way the they were supposed to, we know, but we just want you to admit it, fair and square.

CHALABI'S TAQIYYA FLUMMOXES STATE

SOURCES IN BAGHDAD TELL NBC NEWS that as of this week American military and civilian officials have cut off all contact with controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, the former favorite of Washington's once powerful neoconservatives.

The reason, the sources say, is "unauthorized" contacts with Iran's government, an allegation Chalabi denies. Iran has been accused of arming and training rebel Shiite forces in Iraq. Chalabi had been making a remarkable comeback in Iraq, but that may now be in question, American officials tell NBC News on condition of anonymity.

Chalabi had gained notoriety after his group provided false information to journalists and intelligence organizations about Saddam Hussein before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A former banker who was convicted of embezzlement in absentia in Jordan in 1992, Chalabi nevertheless was a key organizer of the Iraqi opposition and received substantial funding from the U.S. government in the 1990s and up till 2003, after the invasion. He had remarkable influence in Washington until several years ago.

After the U.S. invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Chalabi drifted in and out of favor with U.S. officials in Baghdad. In the 2005 Iraqi elections, he lost decisively, scoring less than 1 percent of the vote. Since the invasion, reports of Chalabi's ties to Iran and his contacts with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards have at times been sore spots. The FBI once sought to interview him, sources say, about allegations that secret U.S. codes had been passed to Iran.

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Well, of course neither NBC News nor the US Government will admit that the diabolical Islamic doctrine of taqiyya actually exists, let alone is in constant play with regards to informers and "official" spokesmen from the Camp of Islam in dealing with the kafir. From the looks of the well-tracked Chalabi arc, it seems that he, as a Shiite Muslim, was acting as an informal espionage agent of Iran from the beginning, in his hopes of breaking the Sunni-dominated secular grip on Iraq held by Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist party, knowing the Bush administration would prove gullible.

So here's an example of what we mean. President George W. Bush opens up a can of worms today in a speech given to the Israeli parliament, rebuffing those who would negotiate with terrorists, suggesting that those who would are suffering a "foolish delusion." We believe that the Bush administration has some gall. We believe that the Bush administration has allied itself with terrorists and their accomplices in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, ISNA, ICNA, and numerous other Muslim groups who speak, shall we say it, in forked tongues, that is to say, under the Islamic spell of taqiyya.

When will the US wake up, and recognize the threat posed by Islamic infiltrators into State, the Pentagon, and elsewhere, as indicated by continued arrests and prosecutions making headlines in a way that never happened during World War II?

Soon, very soon, we hope.

OBAMA'S PROBLEM WITH JEWISH VOTERS

Seems the Barack Obama campaign will be facing trouble in critical swing states if he prevails, as expected, over Hillary Clinton, and faces the Republican nominee, John McCain, in November. In a spot of good news, Obama's apparent coziness and unfortunate naivité with regard to the bellicose stances of Hamas and Iran have unsettled many Jewish voters who traditionally vote the Democratic ticket. The Washington Times explains Obama's dilemma in an editorial, excerpted here:

AS HE MOVES CLOSER TO WINNING the Democratic presidential nomination, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Barack Obama has a huge problem winning the trust of Jewish voters, and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain knows it. On Friday, Mr. McCain criticized Mr. Obama for advocating unconditional talks with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who last week called Israel a "stinking corpse" which is doomed to disappear. In October, Mr. Obama attacked then-Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton for supporting a nonbinding Senate resolution declaring Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization—which it manifestly is. (The resolution passed the Senate 76-22 in September, winning the votes of almost half of Senate Democrats.)

On Friday, Robert Malley, an Obama advisor, resigned from the senator's campaign as reports surfaced that he had met with the terrorist group Hamas. Last month, Hamas political advisor Ahmad Yousef said on WABC Radio in New York that he hoped Mr. Obama would be elected president. Mr. McCain said Hamas would never want him to be president, "so if Mr. Obama is favored by Hamas, I think people can make judgments accordingly."

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HILLARY'S THE OBLITERATOR IN CHIEF

AS PENNSYLVANIA VOTERS go to the polls in a primary widely regarded as do-or-die for Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, the New York Democrat apparently is positioning herself to the right of some Republicans, vowing that if Iran attacks Israel with nuclear weapons, she would respond in kind against Tehran, with the ability to "totally obliterate them."

Would she, or won't she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure.

Clinton's remarks came during an interview airing tomorrow morning on the ABC News show, Good Morning America. ABC's Chris Cuomo asked Clinton what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, according to the network. "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."

Aim big, but level a soft kick at the groin, just to get their attention. That's what many of us think about Hillary's commitment to defending Israel and America from this menace called Ahmadinejad's Mahdi. That poor fellow Ahmadinejad has been blustering for so long, his chin is dragging across his soup most of the time these days, but if he were to manage to finally go nuclear, there is little doubt he would immediately seek to create all that chaos that he believes his mysterious Mahdi requires for making that next appearance.

But somehow I believe her affinity for the button more than I believe Mister Obama in his earlier threatening words to Pakistan. Obama will opt for the jizya tactic. More bribery money to the troublemakers. That's his ticket. Bah, humbug. Stop all US payments to these crouching leopards, and while you are at it, why don't you show your toughness by being tough at home, and help police and eradicate the roving thugs already terrorizing our own urban and suburban neighborhoods throughout the nation...

MORE TRAITORS IN HIGH PLACES

Just when you thought that the Left in our university system were at the beginning stages of growing a pair thanks to Dr. Bollinger's crispy introduction of the Iranian president last fall, an academic delegation of Columbia University professors and deans of faculties announces its plans to visit Tehran to officially apologize to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. The delegation plans to express regret for the insulting remarks Columbia University President Lee Bollinger directed at the rather ridiculous Ahmadinejad on September 24 in his introductory speech, the Mehr News Agency correspondent in New York reported.

To refresh our memories of Mr. Bollinger's rather courageous anti-dhimmi remarks, courageous, given the tenor of our decadent times, he is recorded as having said to Ahmadinejad: "Mr. President, you exhibit all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator, and so I ask you, why have women, members of the Bahá'í Faith, homosexuals and so many of our academic colleagues become targets of persecution in your country?"

"Why do you support well-documented terrorist organizations that continue to strike at peace and democracy in the Middle East, destroying lives and the civil society of the region? Frankly, and in all candor Mr. President, I doubt that you will have the intellectual courage to answer these questions, but your avoiding them will in itself be meaningful to us. I do expect you to exhibit the fanatical mind-set that characterizes what you say and do."

Since the incident, the deans and professors from the faculties of history, anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, philosophy, and Islamic studies have criticized Bollinger’s behavior toward Ahmadinejad.

A member of the delegation, who requested anonymity, said the main goal of the visit is to meet the Iranian president and officially apologize to him.

It is our opinion that these professors should be jailed, lose their passports, and be stripped of their teaching credentials. There is no gray area here.

VOTING AMERICAN WITHOUT BLINKING

An unabashed Christopher Hitchens surprises the crowd at the 30th Annual Convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation by announcing his choice for the next US presidency. And while trashing two other sacred cows to boot! This English bloke seems to have his priorities straight.

To hear another interesting clip from this same speech, click here.

FACING DOWN IRAN EYE TO EYE

Mark Steyn writes convincingly:

If we’d understood Iran back in 1979, we’d understand better the challenges we face today. Come to that, we might not even be facing them. But, with hindsight, what strikes you about the birth of the Islamic Republic is the near total lack of interest by analysts in that adjective: Islamic. Iran was only the second Islamist state, after Saudi Arabia—and, in selecting as their own qualifying adjective the family name, the House of Saud at least indicated a conventional sense of priorities, as the legions of Saudi princes whoring and gambling in the fleshpots of the West have demonstrated exhaustively. Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue—though, as the Royal Family has belatedly discovered vis-à-vis the Islamists, they’re somewhat overdrawn on that front. The difference in Iran is simple: with the mullahs, there are no London escort agencies on retainer to supply blondes only. When they say “Islamic Republic,” they mean it. And refusing to take their words at face value has bedeviled Western strategists for three decades.

Twenty-seven years ago, because Islam didn’t fit into the old cold war template, analysts mostly discounted it. We looked at the map like that Broadway marquee: West and East, the old double act. As with most of the down-page turf, Iran’s significance lay in which half of the act she’d sign on with. To the Left, the shah was a high-profile example of an unsavory U.S. client propped up on traditional he-may-be-a-sonofabitch-but-he’s-our-sonofabitch grounds: in those heady days SAVAK, his secret police, were a household name among Western progressives, and insofar as they took the stern-faced man in the turban seriously, they assured themselves he was a kind of novelty front for the urbane Paris émigré socialists who accompanied him back to Tehran. To the realpolitik Right, the issue was Soviet containment: the shah may be our sonofabitch, but he’d outlived his usefulness, and a weak Iran could prove too tempting an invitation to Moscow to fulfill the oldest of czarist dreams—a warm-water port, not to mention control of the Straits of Hormuz. Very few of us considered the strategic implications of an Islamist victory on its own terms—the notion that Iran was checking the neither-of-the-above box and that that box would prove a far greater threat to the Freeish World than Communism.

But that was always Iran’s plan. In 1989, with the Warsaw Pact disintegrating before his eyes, poor beleaguered Mikhail Gorbachev received a helpful bit of advice from the cocky young upstart on the block: “I strongly urge that in breaking down the walls of Marxist fantasies you do not fall into the prison of the West and the Great Satan,” Ayatollah Khomeini wrote to Moscow. “I openly announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran, as the greatest and most powerful base of the Islamic world, can easily help fill up the ideological vacuum of your system.”

Today many people in the West don’t take that any more seriously than Gorbachev did. But it’s pretty much come to pass. As Communism retreated, radical Islam seeped into Africa and south Asia and the Balkans. Crazy guys holed up in Philippine jungles and the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay who’d have been “Marxist fantasists” a generation or two back are now Islamists: it’s the ideology du jour. At the point of expiry of the Soviet Union in 1991, the peoples of the central Asian republics were for the most part unaware that Iran had even had an “Islamic revolution”; 15 years on, following the proselytizing of thousands of mullahs dispatched to the region by a specially created Iranian government agency, the Stans’ traditionally moderate and in many cases alcoholically lubricated form of Islam is yielding in all but the most remote areas to a fiercer form imported from the south. As the Pentagon has begun to notice, in Iraq Tehran has been quietly duplicating the strategy that delivered southern Lebanon into its control 20 years ago. The degeneration of Baby Assad’s supposedly “secular” Baathist tyranny into full-blown client status and the replacement of Arafat’s depraved “secular” kleptocrat terrorists by Hamas’s even more depraved Islamist terrorists can also be seen as symptoms of Iranification.

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